Thirteen Specimens (17 page)

     Because he didn’t hate Asian women! He respected them, admired them, coveted them! He had read in books, and heard from women at work like the married Vietnamese woman he had developed an aching crush on, how they looked after their men, pampered them...fed them when they were hungry, massaged them when they were sore. They were so graceful, so feminine; he had come to consider American women crass, vulgar, tomboyish in comparison. For so, so many years now he had longed for a woman from the mysterious Orient.

     The closest he had come to acquiring one of them had come a year before he passed a love note to that Asian teenager in the town library. He had been fixed up with a blind date, a friend of his best friend’s girl. His buddy’s girl was Caucasian but her friend was half Asian. Half Korean, in fact, now that he thought of it! He had been both thrilled and dismayed to meet her and see how pretty she was. Her hair was almost auburn in color. He exchanged tense hellos with her father before the four of them left for the movies; the father had met the mother while he was a soldier stationed in Korea, and his military background showed in his gruff demeanor. As for the girl, whose name he could no longer recall, he could tell from the start that she did not find him attractive. She spoke more to her friend than to him, barely even looked at him. Before the film started they did chat briefly; she told him the last thing she’d seen was an animated movie about a unicorn. He had taken her to see
Videodrome
. He and his friend laughed about their choice of movie, later on – at least
they
had liked it. And of course, he had never seen or heard from the girl after that night. Well, what had he expected, with his untucked flannel shirt, his big dirty work boots? She had struck him as snobby, so he didn’t feel sad as much as he simply felt embarrassed. He was embarrassed even now, recalling that night. No wonder he hadn’t remembered the half-Korean girl until this moment. Sometimes memories can become mercifully shielded.

     But he had not given up, over two decades later; he still loved Asian women. He meant them no harm. He would not really go back to the travel agency, when he returned home, and kill that lovely girl with the uncanny gray contact lenses, as he had told An he would do in an email...even if it was her fault that his visa had been prepared with the incorrect date on it. No – he would be sure not to go near that travel agency again, not even to demand a refund. But he would keep an eye on the Worcester, Massachusetts newspapers, when he was home, to make sure that he spotted nothing...awful...in them.

     He saw the sign for the guest house ahead, as he plodded up the street with his new backpack riding empty on his shoulders. Now that his final errands were taken care of he was ready to ask the guy with the injured eye to give the Vietnam Embassy a call about that new visa.

     Everything would be alright soon. An would be his
dream come true, the fulfillment of his fantasies, the balm on his soul. And she was still alive. He made himself recall that he had read messages by her in the past few days, since he had been deported from her country. Last night, during his hours of pacing, he had been haunted for a while by the fear that he might have...done something to her already, during the short time he had spent in her country. Had he met her at the airport, after all, and didn’t recall it now? Had he tried to do her some harm, and was that the real reason the immigration officers had put him on a plane back to Korea? But he excavated through his memories roughly, and he found nothing to support those suspicions.

     No, An was safe. He would not hurt his An. He knew her already; she was not a stranger. He loved her, and she loved him; she swore she did, vowed that she was not merely after US citizenship. No, An would be safe. The
doppelganger would remain behind in this country. He would
will
it to stay here. He hoped to see its tiny black figure standing on the tarmac of the runway, gazing up at him, as his plane lifted above the hilly landscape of South Korea. It would be wearing the mask, that missing mask. It would be the exiled one, the deported one...the rejected one...not him.

     Ford stood at the front desk, waited while his man made the call to the embassy. While waiting, he glowered defiantly at those two full-sized masks close at hand,
Yangban and the raped girl, Bune. He had never known about Korea’s traditional masks before, because he didn’t know as much about this country as he did Japan or Vietnam. Japan had its
No
play masks, and a samurai’s armor might contain a fierce
menpo
war mask.

     He knew that Vietnam had its own masks, too. For centuries, masks made of rattan or bamboo, called
mat mo
or
mat met
, with faces painted on them, had been used in special rites to banish evil spirits. Various colors were used, in painting them, to express the range of emotions. And again, as with the theatrical Japanese
No
masks and Korean masks, the Vietnamese had used masks in their
tuong
operas.

     He had always been fascinated by masks, and had hoped to encounter these Vietnamese sorts that he’d read about. He might purchase one, he thought, and bring it home for a souvenir.

     After all his trials and tribulations – a test, perhaps, to prove just how devoted he was to meeting his An – things went a bit more smoothly for him now. His document was ready as promised. His disfigured friend drove him to the embassy, he picked up his passport with the new visa pasted inside, he walked back through the embassy gates onto the street, and within five minutes he was in a cab on his way to the domestic Gimpo Airport. From Gimpo he took a shuttle bus to Incheon International Airport. There, downstairs, he bought new tickets to and from Vietnam from a travel agent (a woman, but middle-aged, and without disturbingly alluring gray eyes). He would need to wait more hours than he cared for, but he had a few books in his backpack that he could read, and he killed some time and filled his belly sitting in a
Kentucky Fried Chicken
.

     He emailed An from one of the airport’s little internet cafés. “I’m coming, ba xa,” he told her.

     The flight wouldn’t be terribly long; it was nothing compared to the leg of the journey from Texas to Korea. He tried to doze, but couldn’t, and so he unzipped his new backpack – tucked down near his feet instead of stored in the overhead compartment – and decided to browse through his travel guide to Vietnam.

     But in reaching into his bag, his fingers touched something soft, pliant, slithery. He flinched, almost gasped,
and the Vietnamese man seated to his right glanced over at him, but Ford quickly composed himself.

     At first he had thought it was the face of the cleaning woman that he had touched. But his fingers had brushed a kind of raised circle, and he knew what this was. It was a flattened lump or tumor molded onto a forehead made of rubber, a growth shaped like the head of a huge spike driven deeply into a skull.

(Upper left breast of T-Shirt, FRONT:)

Scared Shirtless

(BACK of T-Shirt:)

There are as many portals to other dimensions as there are other dimensions. Some of these portals are ostentatious, such as the circle of megalithic standing stones in a secret cave under the jungle at the border between Vietnam and Laos. Others are as humble as a graffiti door painted on the wall of a subway tunnel in Boston’s “Blue Line”. Some portals have been open for thousands of years, others blink open for barely a second. There is just such a humble portal to alien planes of existence in the neck-hole of this very T-shirt (and all its identical garments). A subtle but disturbing pattern in the fabric’s weave engenders this effect. When one thrusts his or her head through the opening in this piece of apparel, one can view the manifold realities of the universe (though
which
of these alternate realities depends upon the alignment of the planets at that particular moment). When wearing this shirt, one might be able to perceive the hidden anatomies of the people around him – such anatomies either unspeakably hideous or unbearably beautiful. One day, the wearer might see unnamed colors churning all around him. Another day, the wearer might observe animals like a cross between insects and clockwork machines, gnawing at the auras the human form exudes. Instead of one’s living room, the wearer may perceive himself to be standing in a gorgeous but abandoned and decaying city. There is a danger, however, not only to the owner of such a garment but also to those who come into contact with him. As one reads these words, a sort of ritualistic chant begins to be repeated by the subconscious mind. This chant in itself opens more dimensions, unfolds layer upon layer of further realities, until the universe blooms before the reader like a radiant flower. But this flower can also be hungry, can lunge and snap its jaws and swallow the reader of these lines into one of the infinite realms. In fact, if you have read this far, then the chant has already begun in your own mind. Cosmic layers are spreading open like petals. The comb-like teeth of the universe-flower grin and glisten. The mouth may not swallow you soon, but it
will
swallow you. It will consume you. You will vanish from this mundane plane of existence. Yet we shall see each other again – when I don this T-shirt once more. I will see you standing on the bank of a river of living blood. Or I will see you at the heart of a cloud of those voracious insect-machines. But I will not be able to touch or help you. The most I can do is strip this transfigured article of clothing over my head – and shut out your image before it burns the delicate fabric of my mind, and of my very soul. (For the love of all things holy, do not bleach or wash in hot water.)

The Burning House

1: The Angel

    
After Michael stepped through the doorway of blinding light, he found himself in a room lined in white ceramic tiles, floor and ceiling included. The room’s only feature was a riveted metal hatch with a wheel-like valve in its center, and he saw this immediately turn with a squeal. A blast of steam entered the small white chamber...followed by the first Demon Michael had met since his death, several months earlier.

     “Greetings, sir,” the thing said, unfolding to its full height. At eight feet tall, it had had to stoop to fit its body through the hatchway. “I am Iblis Al-Qadim – governor of this sector of Hades.”

     Michael almost said, automatically, “Nice to meet you” or “thanks for having me”, so stunned into a sleepwalker’s state was he by the thing’s appearance. He had taken an involuntary step backwards as it had joined him in this, one of apparently countless entry points into the netherworld.

     Iblis Al-Qadim’s heavy black robes did not fully hide the fact that his body was an unpleasant cross between
human skeleton and insect exoskeleton. His face was more human, but a human long dead, his skin a mere black parchment clinging to jutting bone, twin stars gleaming in the deep wells of his skull sockets. Even his teeth were black, in a lipless and humorless grin. He wore a black metal miter, making him all the more towering, intricate patterns of holes in this officious headpiece showing the green flames that blazed from the top of his skull...where it had apparently been sawed open to emit them.

     He carried a staff of iron with a strange swirling design at its head, either a sign of office or a weapon’s blade, or both. His shoulders were bulked with a framework under the robes to make his width more commanding, as if taking a cue from football players (maybe if the ball were a human head), and on one of these shoulders perched and squirmed what Michael at first took to be some kind of familiar. It was a black octopus, its head so bloated with, perhaps, the gases it breathed that the stretched skin was almost translucent. It had small, bat-like wings growing out of the sides of its head, above its golden eyes with their horizontal pupils.

     Despite that rasping whisper of a voice coming from the scarecrow-like giant’s jaws, Michael had the strange intuition that – rather than being a mere familiar – it was the octopus that was in charge, and the looming skeleton creature merely its vehicle and mouthpiece. Were they both, then, Iblis Al-Qadim?

     Seeing that Michael was still dazed, at a loss, the official went on, “Was it not your wife’s intention to join you, sir?”

     Michael recovered enough of his voice to stammer, “Yes...well...not today. We decided it was best, after all, if I came here first by myself to assess the situation, so I could go back and...prepare her for it.”

     “I see. Very good, sir.” The thing tipped its head slightly
and pointed a finger twice as long as one of Michael’s at the belt gathering his white, angelic robes. A holster was clipped onto this belt, and from the holster protruded the grip of a handgun. “Did you intend to do some hunting, as well, during your stay?”

     “Hunting?” Michael looked down at his gun himself, and then became horrified when he grasped the entity’s meaning. Horrified, and outraged. But even though he was an immortal Angel – and this creature, however seemingly important, a lowly Demon who could be killed because he had no immortal soul – Michael was too intimidated to raise his voice to the being. He kept his tone stern but even. “My son is one of the Damned now, is he not? So I should hardly think I’d want to hunt any of the Damned for sport.”

     “I see, sir. Many do, of course.”

     “I’m aware of that. And those Angels should be here in place of many of the Damned. But my Father works in ways even more mysterious than I suspected when I was alive.”

     The Demon paused with apparent discomfort. “That isn’t for me to say, sir.”

     “The gun is for my protection,” Michael explained tersely.

     “We will see that no Damned assault you during your stay. And of course, you are not capable of being killed, or injured for very long, so...”

     “I’m well aware of that.”

     “Of course you are, sir. In any case...allow me to take you to your quarters, now. We have insured your comfort, for the duration of your stay.”

     “Thank you, but I’d really rather get to where my son is, as quickly as I can.”

     “Yes, as I understand, sir...but you see, first we must ascertain his whereabouts, and we will assist you in every way we can, in that endeavor.”

     “His whereabouts?” Now Michael felt too great a heat rising in him to be cowed by the cadaverous titan. “What do you mean? Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know where my son
is
?”

     “We know the general vicinity, sir...we feel confident he is still in this territory that I govern, and that is why you were directed to this portal. But we have not yet been able to narrow down his exact location.”

     “I don’t believe this!” Michael snapped. “This is unacceptable! My son is suffering here, do you understand? He’s in Hell and he could be tied to a stake in the middle of a bonfire right this moment!”

     “You see, sir, there is a breakdown in our former lines of communication. Gaps, and irregularities. Our methods of intelligence gathering, and monitoring of the Damned, have become eroded. I’m sure you have been informed of the conflict we are facing here – the rebellion of certain breeds of the more human-like Demons. These species are to be phased out, but they are resisting violently. There is an atmosphere of chaos, I am sorry to report, that has...”

     “Look,” the Angel snarled, retaking that step he had lost when the monster had entered the portal chamber with him, “I want my son located immediately, do you understand? I don’t care if it takes every Demon in your jurisdiction...I want him found! I want my boy brought to me!”

     “We will do that, sir. But you understand, of course...even when we find him, you may not bring him out of Hades with you. You can not take him to Heaven. He will still be one of the Damned.”

     “I am only too aware of that, believe me. I am only too fucking aware that my son is damned for all eternity because he didn’t have a little holy water dribbled on his head by some fucking child-molesting priest...doomed the same as murderers and rapists because a few words weren’t said to placate the Creator that I’d put my trust in for my entire fucking life!”

     “It is a pity,” the Demon stated in its emotionless, sepulchral hiss. “But as a religious man, sir – if I may presume to ask you this question – why did you not have your child baptized, since you and your wife obviously were yourselves?”

     “My wife is my second wife; my son’s stepmother. She was a Catholic in life, as I was. But my first wife – my son’s mother – was always an atheist. She was very adamant about my son not becoming baptized or even attending church until he was old enough to make that decision for himself, as an adult.”

     “And you gave in to her desires.”

     “I gave in. Yes, I gave in.” Michael was still seething. His voice trembled with his stoppered fury.

     “It must have been a great source of enmity between your wife and yourself – you being devout, and she denying the Creator.”

     “That’s why she’s my
ex
-wife...isn’t it?”

     “And she is still in the world of the living?”

     “She’s alive, yes. She’s there, still breathing...still not believing. Maybe even disbelieving more than ever, in her grief. But she’ll learn one day, won’t she? Learn how wrong she was. When she joins her son in Hades. And then she can apologize to him. She’d fucking damn well better apologize to him!”

     “Come, sir,” Iblis Al-Qadim said, sweeping his arm, in a tone that almost sounded sympathetic. “Let me take you to your quarters. And I assure you – the search is already underway.”

     “Why did I listen to her? Why was I so
weak
?” the Angel lamented.

     “Sir?” The Demon had his hand on the metal door’s wheel.

     Michael grunted, and in starting forward met the eyes of the mollusk-thing poised like a parrot on one of the Demon’s shoulders. An uncanny intelligence glowed in them. He remembered what Iblis Al-Qadim had said – the human-like Demons being gradually phased out, because of the revolts incited by several demonic races. Was he looking at Iblis Al-Qadim’s replacement-in-training?

     He saw that one of its glistening tentacles had reached out and curled with insidious slowness around the handle of that great iron staff.

2: The Damned

     Before they became lovers, both of them had lain with Demons.

     In one region of Hades, Roger had been captured in his wanderings by a group of Apsaras, as their breed had been named by the Damned (since the Demons themselves tended not to give appellations to their many races). The blue-skinned Apsaras were beautiful and terrifying, with voluptuous perfumed bodies and long black hair that swam in the air above their heads endlessly as if they were drowned women under the sea, their dark eyes blazing and tusk-like fangs curving up from their lips. During his confinement, which may have lasted a year or more (how could he judge?), the Apsaras would seize him and arouse him against his will...rape him. Somewhere in the course of this – like a female mantis consuming the head of her mate as he copulates with her – the Demon would rip his throat
open with her fangs, or dismount him as he climaxed and tear off his manhood with her powerful hands (it seemed to be a sport, with the Apsaras, to pluck the organ just as it squirted), or bite off his member as she fellated him, or slash his scrotum open with her long nails to eat the savory oysters of his testes. But there were male Demons in this territory as well, incubi known as the Asuras, and they had performed their own brand of sex acts on him, or forced him to perform acts upon them, followed by the usual mutilations. These torments became almost mundane (if no less excruciating) with time, and of course he always fully recovered later on, regenerating whole once more so that he could be rent afresh the next time around.