

                                     *******************
                                     NAMELESS AND DAMNED
                                          Issue #2
                                        2 March 2004
                                     *******************

     EDITORIAL
     Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata

     Welcome, one and all, to the second issue of Nameless and Damned, in our 
continuing mission to publish only slightly less erratically than The Equinox.  
It has been a long time coming, but I think it's worth it.  There is a lot of 
good material in this issue, though only one of the secret numbers is encoded in 
the date.

     I suppose I should apologize to the readers, some of whom actually seemed 
to care if there would be a second issue.  My main apologies go, however, to the 
writers, who all managed to get their submissions in on time except one, a 
sniveling excuse for a human being who will remain nameless, though hopefully 
not damned, but who looks suspiciously like me.  And I don't mean that as a 
compliment.

     No matter, though.  That is behind us.  And we will hopefully see even more 
people contributing material for future issues of the zine.

     We have one exciting novelty in this issue.  The alert reader may notice a 
common thread in the last five stories.  Three common threads, actually.  A 
coffee shop called The Garden of Forking Paths, a character named Emmanuel 
LeCorre, and the phrase, "Arthur Gordon is dead."  Thanks go to our associate 
editor, who selected those three elements, as well as most of the quotes, and to 
the authors who rose to the challenge and wrote stories around them.  They show 
the diversity an author can achieve, even when writing within specific rules.  
Each story is very different, and all are well worth reading.  We will hopefully 
be having another game for issue three, so if anyone wants to join the group, 
drop a note to the editor.  Contact information is at the end of the issue, as 
is our website address.

     Aside from those stories, we have several other stories, a few poems, and 
the return of a feature that was popular in the late and lamented State of 
unBeing:  unexpurgated selections from my diary.  I hope all enjoy.  (But if you 
must steal my story idea, at least give me a credit.)

     And so, without further delay, I offer you Nameless and Damned, issue 
number two.  This way to the Great Egress!


                                     ***** ***** *****

Editor:
  Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata

Associate Editor:
  Marc A. Beherec

Writers This Issue:
  Le messager sombre
  Lucifer's Sunflower
  Mark D. Warner



                                     ***** ***** *****

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[articles]

Pages From a Diary
  Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata



[poetry]

Three Poems
  Marc A. Beherec

Absolved (21 August 2003)
  Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata



[fiction]

The Garden
  Lucifer's Sunflower

The Rebbe
  Marc A. Beherec

Visiting a Friend
  Lucifer's Sunflower

One Day in Edom
  Marc A. Beherec

Week's End
  Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata

Halloween
  Lucifer's Sunflower



The Unfortunate Events of Emmanuel LeCorre
  Le messager sombre



Hard News
  Mark D. Warner



                                     ***** ***** *****

                                        [ARTICLES]

                                     ***** ***** *****

     PAGES FROM A DIARY
     Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata

0552 040129

     By thinking in allegory, I have been thinking about time.  I have been 
trying to imagine a four dimensional space-time continuum, and then I have been 
trading off the dimensions, trying to visualize all the dimensions equally.  I'm 
not sure that's clear.  If one takes a body, for example, and slices it near 
infinitely thin, and takes pictures of them in succession, one can use a two 
dimensional plane -- such as a television screen -- and display these two 
dimensional images in time -- one after the next, in order -- and thus 
demonstrate space.  This is a way of lifting out one dimension, and substituting 
another dimension for it.  When one looks at a three dimensional space, one sees 
one can name any axis x, any y and any z, because on that level they are 
interchangeable.  There are differences -- subjectively -- between height, depth 
and width, but when one lifts oneself out of that space and views it from 
outside, these subjective differences are seen as subjective.

     Now, all this is basic.  We learn it in high school, if not earlier.  I had 
been playing with this concept with time, and I thought I had it.  I thought I 
had some kind of insight or illumination or something.  I thought here I was, 
viewing time as a dimension just like the others, and seeing it was not so 
interesting after all.  Until today, I think I finally realized I was still 
treating time like a special dimension.  Time was the only dimension I was 
viewing as a line.  A line that can be viewed in either direction, of course, 
but to be Janus is not to be YHVH.  So then I tried to view time as a dimension 
like the other three.

     The ramifications are difficult to get my head around.  In some sense, I am 
seeing how some of the science fiction stories of stepping out of time and 
living "parallel" and all that make some sense, but in another way they still 
seem somewhat simplistic.  We must have "depth" in time -- "duration" would be 
the word -- and most of these stories seem to think that we exist in an 
infinitely thin duration, and can step in and out.  I'm not quite sure how to 
express what I'm trying to grasp here.  Think Flatland.  I could, in a sense, 
lift my foot from the plane of Flatland, and place it down again elsewhere.  To 
the person in Flatland, that would seem miraculous, presumably.  But I could 
have nothing to do with Flatland, and even if I could understand it, the lifting 
of my foot, being an issue of another dimension, would presumably be an infinite 
progress, or at least a lengthy one.  How long does it take for a three 
dimensional form to pass through an infinitely small plane?  Sounds like Xeno's 
arrow.  It can't, because the plane does not exist.  It is subjective.  Am I on 
to something here, or drifting from my point?

     I can move in space, and I could move a very thin creature in space, but 
could not move an infinitely flat -- i.e. two dimensional -- creature.  If 
they can exist, they cannot exist "to me."  I can move in the fourth dimension, 
and I do.  I suppose if I moved in the fourth dimension, I could appear 
to teleport?  I don't know.  But I don't think I could move "parallel" or "out 
of synch."  Nothing in a higher dimension could move me, unless I too shared 
in that higher dimension.  Perhaps the first step would be to realizing I move 
in time at the rate of one second per second, and halt or change my speed.  
But that makes no more sense that saying I shouldn't "move" -- viz. exist in 
expansion -- at the "rate" of one inch per inch.  But, just as "I" am not an 
infinitely small point in space, so too I am not an infinitely small "point" 
-- duration -- in time.  I "am" through myy whole life.  If I move my body, I 
have to move my whole self, and not leap quantumly.  Or so it seems to me.  In 
the same sense, to move in time I would have to move my whole "self" -- all 
four dimensions of me.  "I am" from conception to death, and perhaps before   
and perhaps after.  It is all relative, time as well as space.  And my "self-
ness," if I do exist in a transcendent way -- and I insist I do -- most not 
even be in a dimension.  It may be in the totality of dimensions -- a me in 
all four directions -- or it may be in something other than dimension, which 
is incomprehensible to me tonight.  But it is not an infinitely small flicker 
of consciousness that I can divorce from my body and send skipping through 
space.

     Or so I think just now.

     I had intended to get up this afternoon, go to the meeting at work, and 
then food shop.  I woke up late, and I was weak and confused from hunger.  (I 
hadn't eaten anything except coffee and a piece of candy or two in over a day 
by that point.)  I figured I had better get something to eat, and eventually 
did.  I have the questionable habit of food shopping about once every couple 
of weeks, and buying a week's worth of food each time.  I am, thus, constantly 
hungry.  It helps me suppress my passions, but doesn't do much good for my 
mind.  I'm considering changing that habit.

     Did I mention Blavatsky is incomprehensible?

     I got The Fish today.  I'm pretty excited about that.  Only 750 copies ever 
printed.  I paid about sixty bucks for it, which is competitive, and I'm excited 
about it.  Today, though, I've still been reading The Dedalus Book of the Occult.  
I've finished the text, and now I'm reading the selections in the back.  Quite 
enjoyable book, even if he is somewhat prejudiced against Crowley.  I think it 
shows in his research.  It seems to me he has read general work, but isn't too 
clear on some of the controversial points.  Oh well, in general it is fair.

     I got a prank phone call today.  The girl on the other end sounded in her 
late teens, and Dominican or some other kind of Hispanic from the Islands.  She 
asked if "Booboo" was there.  When I told her she had the wrong number -- and I 
suspect she knew, because she had her number blocked on my caller ID -- she 
acted exasperated, saying "I hate that nigger" and "he told me he wanted to 
freak me, he wanted to fuck me."  I go into all this because it inspired in me a 
story idea.  I jotted it down on an envelope, but I'm going to try to go into it 
here.  Since, after all, it's not likely I'll actually write it.

     I thought it might be appropriate in a diary form.  In any case, I think 
the first person would be ideal.  The main character is a recovering alcoholic, 
and this should be made clear in the beginning.  Something like, "Exhausted 
again.  The doctor told me this would end with the drinking."  And so on.  This 
idea of being exhausted should occur a couple of times.  "Why should every 
morning feel like a hangover?  Isn't it out of my system yet?"  "I swear, it 
feels like I never even sleep."

     He receives a phone call, much like the one I describe above.  He notes, 
for one, he doesn't remember giving anyone his number.  "It's not like I go out 
anywhere anymore.  Have to stay focused.  Work, sleep, stay out of trouble and 
off the bottle.  And seems like I need to sleep more and more, anyway, lately.  
Guess it's a blessing.  Or healing.  Whatever."  He also notes it's not 
customary language.  "Said he wants to freak me.  Do people really say that?  
'Hey, Boo.  Looking hot.  I'd really like to freak you.'  Pathetic.  But then, I 
wonder what I would say.  'Good afternoon.  You quite awaken the Humbert in me.  
Want to come by my place and see my collection of riding crops?'  Maybe that's 
why I never get laid anymore.  I lack the vocabulary."

     I think it would be good -- narratively tight -- to include the first 
complaints of exhaustion in the first sentence, and the first phone call in the 
same diary entry, or first day of internal narrative.  They won't appear related, 
which will make it look like a real diary -- a collection of unrelated comments 
-- and set up the story in the reader's suubconscious.  It will also be a subtle 
metacomment on the nature of the interrelation of existence.  Not sure I believe 
that these days -- not in the literal way it's presented in this story -- but it 
is a good comment, and can be spun in a way I agree with.

     A day or two may go by between phone calls.  He comments on work, perhaps.  
Minor complaints.  One or two things that will make sense in retrospect.  
Perhaps something like, "Can't believe I walked all the way up to my apartment 
like that, with all that mud on my boots.  How didn't I notice?"  Or, "On my way 
to work this morning, found the front door unlocked.  My God, what's happening 
to me?  I can't believe I was too tired to remember to lock it.  I always lock 
it, right as I come in from work."  Or, "Found something in my pocket looking 
for my gloves.  Looks like a hairband of some kind.  Pink.  Must have picked it 
up somewhere.  Exhaustion really doing a number on my memory.  Wonder why it 
wasn't muddy.  Seems like everything else in the world is these days, what with 
the storms we've been having."

     There might be another phone call or two.  Presumably, by then he's more 
blase about it.  "Another phone call today.  Suppose it says something positive 
about the youth of America these days that at least some of them have the 
attention span for a long term project, but, hell, prank calling me?  Maybe her 
guy's got a number very close to mine.  Doesn't explain her insistence, or why 
she keeps calling back."

     Next step:  Perhaps he has to stay up late to work on a report or something, 
or perhaps this doesn't matter -- I'll try to remember to explain in a moment -- 
and he receives a phone call.  Now, the girl is saying something like, "Boo, you 
got my hair band?  I know you got my hair band."  Or teddy bear, or whatever he 
found in his pocket.  I'm not sure if he realizes it's the one he has, or puts 
it up to a coincidence.  Perhaps it's something more than a hairband, but 
something valuable.  A watch or something.  Or something sentimental.  He's put 
it somewhere and forgotten about it, but she calls more insistent.  Perhaps 
after the first call he says something like, "Odd, though, she'd pick a hair 
band.  Probably a coincidence."  Second time or third time, she drops a 
throwaway line, like, "The pink one.  The one with the bow.  The pink one.  I 
know you took it."  And he makes the connection, and/or believes her.

     From here, I'm not sure where it goes.  One way would be he communicates 
with the girl, and another would be much more -- oh, I guess here I should 
explain.  The secret is, when he goes to bed, he slips into another personality 
and goes out.  Somehow met this one girl.  Perhaps others.  He has no memory of 
his other self, but this is why it feels like he never sleeps.  This is also why 
it may or may not matter that he had to stay up late.  Perhaps his other self 
gets the phone calls while he is asleep, or perhaps his other self does not take 
the phone calls, and gave the phone number out for no clear reason.  Perhaps 
this would be why there would be less phone calls, as she realizes he doesn't 
answer right in the afternoons.  "What?  What?  You got another girl?  You got 
somewhat listening?  What?  I'm not enough for you now?"

     If this was a happy, optimistic, American novel, he might arrange to meet 
the girl in the daytime, try to work out between them what's going on, try to 
reintegrate his personality.  If this was a more dark, more Maupassant story, he 
might end here, either sulking about how he's going mad or blowing his own head 
off to kill this other that has taken over his nights.  The most amusing answer, 
though, might be if he does meet the girl, gets to know something about this 
other personality, a person he doesn't like at all, and then finds the guy 
slipping into his waking hours.  He starts hearing thoughts and having feelings 
he doesn't approve of, which aren't "like him."  (Obviously an incursion of his 
shadow.)  And ends up killing himself to get rid of it.   

     Another option, of course, is he begins drinking again, to "drown" the 
shadow.

     And another way for him to find out there's another "him":  He could find a 
message on his answering machine, where the girl called.  "It sounded like she 
called, and the machine picked up.  She started to talk, but there was a click, 
and for a few seconds the machine kept running, recording the conversation, her 
and this man.  But the strange thing, the thing I can't understand, the thing I 
can't get out of my head:  The man had my voice!"  Maybe he just got a new 
answering machine; that would be an explanation for why it slipped his other 
him's mind to erase the message.  But then again, we've already seen his other 
self is somewhat careless or forgetful, or somehow feels like he has as much 
right to this fellow's body and things as the fellow has.

     Which, I suppose, is true.

     Anyway, there's the story concept.  Very Stevenson.  Don't know I'll ever 
bother to write it.  On the other hand, I see I have made it writing for about 
an hour today, which is quite an accomplishment.  If only I hadn't done it at 
sunrise.  I see the sun coming in through my windows now.  And so, I should sign 
off.  Read a little more of The Dedalus Book of the Occult, and try to get some 
sleep before work.

0650 040129

0540 040130

     I have spent much of the day revolving in my mind the issue of time.  And 
"revolving" might be the exact term, since I have continued to use the analogy 
of the other dimensions.  I may have had a number of insights, if we can assume 
time is indeed a dimension analogous to the other three dimensions.  On the 
other hand, I'm not sure how I feel about what I may know.  It is in the nature 
of such insights that one tends to lack a rudder.  I'm not at all sure I know 
I'm not just spinning my wheels, or spinning off into madness.  In any case, it 
makes for interesting thought experiments.

     I think the fundamental insight I think I had was that projection in time 
should not be thought of as "movement."  Perhaps we can move through time, and 
perhaps we cannot, but the tautology that we "move" through time at the rate of 
one second per second is misleading.  Rather, we extend through time at the rate 
of one second per second, just as we extend through space at the rate of one 
inch per inch.  If we do exist in four dimensions, and find ourselves in the 
peculiar position of facing in one direction and "extending" without control, 
rather than "moving" as if under our own volition -- and the big distinction I 
seek to make here isn't that if we move we move mindlessly, since inanimate 
bodies do the same in our three dimensions, but rather that we don't go forward 
into time, leaving an empty time behind us, and stepping up into an empty time 
that is now filled with us, but rather we extend into the future and into the 
past; we are not a singularity hurtling through time, but a continuity extending 
through time -- I wonder if we can be said to be "people" so to speak in four 
dimensions.  I have been trying to imagine my body parts in two dimensions 
extended into three, and I think I may have had a glimpse timewise into the Body 
of Christ or the Adam Cadman or whatever.  There is not a whole lot to be said 
here.  Either you see it or you don't.  Mankind, projected into the four 
dimensions, may be the Body of Christ.  Or some of us may be.  And in this case, 
Swedenborg may be somewhat right on, with all the nonsense about people of the 
head and stuff, but his mistake was in thinking one can extend us unchanged into 
the fourth dimension.  Rather, we could have to expand into the fourth dimension.  
A cube is not a bunch of squares stacked up here, and a bunch of squares stacked 
up there, making a whole cube of squares, and the Body of Christ is not a whole 
bunch of bodies stacked up to make a head, and a whole bunch of bodies stacked 
up to make feet.  The Body of Christ is a body in an entire dimensional shift.  
If we are three dimensional beings who make up a four dimensional body, we 
presumably cannot grasp it anymore than a dog can grasp self-awareness.  It is 
that different.  I keep wanting to say "an order of magnitude different," but 
even an order of magnitude is just bigger.  It's a bigger bigger, but it's not 
on the order of a square into a cube.

     Anyway, this seems to make some sense, in a Kabbalistic, Mormon kind of way.  
It makes some rational sense, but being virtually ungraspable I can't even 
imagine how it can be proven.  I'm also a little antsy about the ramifications 
in terms of free will and the like.  I have a hard time getting my head around 
the absence of time and the presence of free will.  Well, that's not entirely 
true.  I got over that before, with the tested as an entity thing, which also 
kind of eases the whole theodicy issue.  But I suppose I'm really just 
complaining it doesn't seem to put much point into life.  Now that I reflect on 
it, that's not even true, either.  My pride makes me want to be autonomous, but, 
seriously, how much can it bother me to not be able to move freely in a 
dimension I can't even imagine.

     I wonder then if the whole resurrection thing was a demonstration, a fourth 
dimensional entity coming in to demonstrate as a living parable the nature of 
reality, and now we in the Body of Christ are effecting the resurrection again, 
the second coming, by becoming aware of the exalted body.  Something like that.  
Amusing, and probably harmless speculation, so long as one remembers not to 
replace the historical Jesus with the cosmic Christ, but rather to see them as 
mystically one and the same.  (In these speculations, "mystically" is more or 
less synonymous with "fourth-dimensionally.")

     Anyway, I've been thinking through these things so much today I'm pretty 
well bored with it, so I'll quickly move on and present my second insight.  It 
is, to put it flippantly:  Just as there is no here here, there is no now here, 
either.  Which is to say:  There is no here.  There is no singularity of space 
where a person exists, as we are not singularities and everything we see is 
hallucination.  Or, rather, we hallucinate a singularity where there are 
relationships.  From the beginning there has never been a thing.  Now, take this 
insight into space and extend it into time.  Duration does not exist.  (Or did I 
already go over this yesterday?)  If you divide the duration into an infinitely 
small slice, duration will still have to be, and, as all duration must be, this 
duration will be a relationship.  Time is yoga.

     I suppose this is obvious from my whole extension into time thing.  Once 
you get over the idea there is a solid particle of me-ness flying through space 
at the rate of a second per second, you can get over Xeno's arrow.  Why that was 
used for space and not for time, I don't know.  For that matter, this is a 
pretty obvious insight, and so probably people have used it for time, too.  
Which is another reason for breezing over it as the non-insight that it is.

     If one assumes time to be a dimension analogous to space, these deductions 
-- there is no now here, and we extend --  are pretty solid.  The extrapolations 
into what a fourth dimensional --  There isn't even a word for it.  Line, plane, 
solid, can there even not be a term for an object that exists in four dimensions 
as perceived in the fifth?  I suppose not.  So, the extrapolations into this 
nameless thing of which I know nothing but might conceivably be my Lord and 
Savior Jesus Christ are more speculative.

     Back to reality.  My racing mind did not let me sleep much at all yesterday.  
About three and a half hours.  I was awakened twice by phone calls, and 
then by my alarm.  I snooze buttoned myself until I had scarcely ten minutes 
to get up and get dressed.  Hopefully I won't do that again tonight.  Spent 
the night reading -- parts of The Dedalus Book of the Occult, parts of The 
Fish, parts of The Confessions of Aleister Crowley -- and watching pornography.  
I do that a lot; perhaps rather too much.  My mind seems to think it 
will relax me, but it doesn't seem to.  Like cigarettes, it may have a soothing 
effect on my body, but does nothing to quiet my mind.

     Now, though, I think I shall go back to The Dedalus Book of the Occult.  
Almost done.

0608 040130

0703 040130

     Finished The Dedalus Book of the Occult, and still no sleep.  Shelved, and 
still no sleep.  The sun rises, another beautiful, slate grey sky, and still no 
sleep.

     I swear my bedroom wall is hissing at me.  It has been doing so for 
months on and off, but I think it grows louder.  It also seems to be swelling 
and falling in pieces, but only in one corner.  I suppose the reasonable thing 
to do would be to get my superintendent in to take a look and either slay it or 
say it is fine.  But I don't like to be bothered by the worry of people in 
my apartment, and anyway, I don't keep it clean enough for company.  I suppose 
I'll just vacuum up the wall pieces and hope it doesn't spread.

     I forgot to mention that last night I seem to have begun to remember my 
childhood again.  Except, that is not exactly correct.  Last night, I became 
aware I had been remembering my childhood for some time.  There wasn't a burst 
of memory, but rather I'd find myself remembering things.  Some of them may be 
fabricated, but I think some of them seem to be accurate.  There are only a 
few memories I have that I likely would not have told anyone -- or, if I had, 
that would not have been told back to me -- but I think enough to begin to see 
memory returning.  The inner sadistic thoughts I had about Sammy, the girl I 
didn't know in fourth grade.  The loneliness and confusion, almost desperation, 
of fifth grade.  The story behind my obsession with the end of the world 
in 1985, and the visions I'd had as a child.  Smells, thoughts, feelings.

     Fifth grade would have been a terrible year.  It's strange I even want to 
go north.  The isolation and confusion as I became sexually awake, not really 
knowing what was going on or what to do about my utter isolation and changing 
feelings.  What I suppose would have been a sense of abandonment, had I been 
aware of it.  I don't know.  I'd always been pretty isolated, but I remember 
some things from that year.  Cindy, for example, but I keep having this weird 
feeling there was another girl I'm not remembering.  I don't know.  So much I 
can't recall.

     Anyway, so there it is.  Yesterday as I walked with a little boy, I found 
the little boy was me.  He had, I suppose, been following me for years, and I 
don't know if I never noticed he trod behind me, or if I simply refused to know.  
He's a sad little boy, lost and confused.  I think he was always looking for his 
father, and fearing he was going to lose his father.  Probably, his fear of love 
comes from that.  Probably, too, his sadism from his desire to hold his loved 
ones by any means at his disposal, to try to drive them away to make sure they 
are really his.  Interesting, though, that I am clearly aware of erotic sadism -
- though not of a sexually awakened kind --- in fourth grade, in second grade, 
almost as far back as I was aware of my heterosexuality.  (I had intimations of 
that very far back, though what I may be remembering as the first may have been 
as late as 1983, and I'm pretty sure I had an inkling I wanted Misty before that.  
I just didn't know why I liked to hold her hand.)

     Anyway, now I'm off to read some more, I suppose, listen to my wall and 
watch the sky brighten where the aluminum foil is coming away from my windows.  
And, as always:  more later.

0716 040130



                                     ***** ***** *****

                                         [POETRY]

                                     ***** ***** *****

     THREE POEMS
     Marc A. Beherec

     "The Audience:  A Warm-Up and Warning"

     I went to a poetry reading one time,
     and the audience filled me with ire.
     So I burned that whole damn building down
     and shot all who escaped from the fire.

     Now *that's* art!

                                           * * *

     "The Poets"

     I attended a poetry reading once,
     and the poets there really sucked.
     I killed them one by one afterwards
     and stuffed their mouths up with muck.

     They suck less now!

                                           * * *

     "When I Am Dead"

     When I am dead, pass me beneath the pestles of a hundred apothecaries.
     Grind every piece into an homogenous pulp.
     Let no bone avoid being crushed and destroyed.
     If the sight of my face ever brought you pleasure, 
     then see to it that it shall never be seen as a lifeless form.

     I write these words not out of any antagonism for the fleshy body,
     for God made it, and He will resurrect what He will,
     but rather out of pure vanity.
     I shall live on in this world and in the next, 
     but I do not wish to live on in the bodies of flies and worms and strange
          segmented insects.
     Those who love me shall eat my flesh and drink my blood,
     so that I might live on in the flesh of my friends.

                                           *****

"Our love was like a child that died.
 Our love was like a child that died." 
                                   -- Unto Ashes, "This Duration of Emptiness"

                                           *****

     ABSOLVED (31 August 2003)
     Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata

     Do you remember the time I called
     And you -- only you -- could set my spirit still
     As the snow brushed away my footprints
     And I imagined I was being erased?

     Do you remember our loss, together
     -- She who was us --
     And do you remember our loss of us
     And the future we'd dreamt, together?

     And again, the snow erases my steps
     Now you're no longer here
     Gone to learn forgiveness
     In another's bed

     On the beach, the snow erases me
     Now I know it is forgiveness
     And by being erased
     I have been absolved

     But beneath the white
     The snow destroys the beach
     And I might be absolved
     Only by my world's destruction

                                     ***** ***** *****

                                         [FICTION]

                                     ***** ***** *****

     THE GARDEN
     Lucifer's Sunflower

     Twilight.  It was always twilight here.  Sometimes it was a brighter or a 
dimmer twilight, but never dawn, or day, or night.  Today was an exceptionally 
well-lit twilight.

     A tall, slender man sat in a feather-soft cushion in front of a flame-
filled hearth.  His wavy obsidian hair veiled his perfectly crafted features on 
his paper-white skin.  His body, relaxed in slumber, was clad in a fine black 
material, perhaps velvet.  His soft breathing was the only movement in the room.

     He dreamed.

     Bright twilight.  The man dreamed of childhood memories; running through 
meadows, climbing trees in the forest, fishing with his best friend.  And 
resting in his favorite place:  his mother's garden.  He loved the different 
colors, the gentle breeze carrying the soft aroma of blooming flowers, and the 
feeling of safety and tranquility that he found only there.  Unless his mother 
was there, tending to the flowers.

     The dreamer's breaths began coming more and more shallow.

     "Mother?"  The child approached a woman in a sundress, originally white, 
but now tainted with dirt and grass stains.  "Mother, may I help you with your 
flowers?"

     The woman turned to face the child.  Her skin was as pale as his, and the 
same waves of obsidian cascaded to her waist.  The only thing the child didn't 
share were her eyes; her harsh, red eyes which conveyed an emotion that could 
only be described as malice.

     "Mother, which flowers are you tending to?"

     "Sunflowers."  Her soft voice, otherwise musically pleasant, was saturated 
with the same malice that glittered in her eyes.

     "May I help you, Mother?  I want to help you grow sunflowers."

     "Of course you can help, Lucifer."  She picked up a spade and held it out 
to the boy.  But when he reached for it, she snatched his wrist and brought the 
small, dirt-encrusted shovel down with force.  The child screamed as scarlet 
rain from his wrist fell to the ground, watering the tiny plants and filling the 
small holes the woman had dug to be nests for seeds.  "You can help by leaving 
me alone, you disgusting little brat!"  She struck her son several more times 
before he managed to free himself from her grip and fall to the ground, 
splashing in the small-but-growing puddle of his own blood.

     Gasping -- almost screaming -- the man's eyes snapped open.  Looking around 
in a near panic, the man panted to himself, "Just a dream."

     No, not a dream.  A memory. 

     He pulled the sleeve of his shirt up and looked at the deep, faded scar 
that adorned his wrist.

     Just then, a young girl stepped through the doorway.  Her pale yellow 
nightgown was embroidered with sunflowers.  Long white strands of hair framed a 
dark-skinned face, but her features were strikingly similar to the man's, and to 
the mother's he had just seen in his dream.  "Lucifer?"  Her voice sounded like 
a younger, more pleasant version of the dream woman's, but her crimson eyes 
blazed with nothing more menacing than childish mischief.

     Lucifer took a breath.  "What's up, *kaijin*?"

     "I heard you calling out.  Are you okay?"

     "Yeah, I'm fine.  It was just a bad dream."  He smiled.  "Go back to bed 
now, little monster."

                                           *****

"In the East is the Magick Fire, in which all burns up at last."
                                       -- Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, part 2

                                           *****

     THE REBBE
     Marc A. Beherec

     Pigeons now gather in what was once the Rebbe's apartment.  I have heard 
that the building super made what was once an apartment into an ocean overlook, 
a tiny park in the high place atop the high rise, but I have never seen it.  
That place holds too many memories for me.  Memories of that night the Rebbe 
died, and of the terrible deeds committed in our place of worship.
	
     Roise and I had always talked of retiring in South Florida.  We visited 
there often, and she always wanted a little bungalow in Boca.  But when she died, 
just a year before I planned to retire, it seemed an empty thing to move there.  
Living there alone would seem almost like a mockery of our plans.  So I just 
moved down the coast to Atlantic City, hoping to relax a little before I joined 
her.  I took a little apartment in a tall art deco building near the boardwalk, 
a short walk from the local Reform Temple.  It was there that I met the Rebbe. 

     I was returning from a walk along the boardwalk with Jon, a neighbor from 
down the hall, when we met the Rebbe in the lobby.  I had seen him around the 
complex before, getting mail or chatting with the residents.  Something about 
him always reminded me of old pictures of Judah Loew with the golem.  He was 
sitting in one of the incredibly uncomfortable, unmatched armchairs the 
management sadistically put for visitors in the lounge, and looked up from his 
newspaper as we came in.
	
     "Shalom, Jonathan!  Gershom, I really wish you would try harder to stay 
kosher."  With that, he went back to his paper.  I looked at him puzzled for a 
moment, failing to think of a retort, and finally followed Jon into the elevator.

     "I didn't know your Hebrew name was Gershom, Art."

     "Yeah, my middle name.  My parents were pretty secular; they didn't want me 
running around with a name like Gershom.  But I don't know how he knew that. "

     Jon just looked at me, grinning.  "Well, that's the Rebbe.  He knows 
things."

     Jon then told me a little about his Rabbi.  How he was born to liberal 
parents and rebelled, studying mysticism from everyone but Jews before what he 
called his Great Return, when a Kabbalist in New York taught him the mysteries 
of his own religion.  Now, Jon said, he corresponded with sages all over the 
world, and led prayers from his ninth-floor apartment.

     "He likes to say, 'Solomon rejected the Lord in his old age, but in my old 
age He has finally granted me wisdom.'

     "You really should come up one Shabbat," Jon finally suggested.  "He 
wouldn't have even talked to you at all if he didn't want to see you there."

     That night, I had a very strange dream about the Rebbe.  I was on a hilltop 
in a wild, open place.  The Rebbe stood with two other men -- but he was clearly 
not their leader.  At first I did not even recognize the man I saw.  All three 
wore strange robes, the Rebbe wearing a long white robe with a silver sigil over 
his left breast.  He was clean-shaven and wore his hair cropped close without 
side locks -- a look I had never seen him wear.  The three stood within a double 
circle drawn on the ground with some white substance.  Hebrew letters and other 
signs were drawn between the two circles -- names of God interspersed with 
jumbles of letters and symbols that made no sense to me.  The white shapes 
seemed to glow eerily in the moonlight.  The wind whipped about the three men, 
howling as it beat the nearby trees against each other, but all was oddly calm 
around me.  Suddenly, the Rebbe turned to face me.  He did not seem to see me, 
though he seemed very aware of my presence.  Then he looked to the sky and I 
followed his gaze.  A strange light was dancing there, descending and changing 
colors as it moved to a strange tempo I could not quite make out.  It was one of 
the most beautiful things I have ever seen.  Suddenly I awoke, and looked about 
myself unclear of where I was.  It took some time to sink in that it was only a 
dream, and remembering that light I wished that the dream had been reality.

     That was when I decided to visit the Rebbe's Shabbat.

     Jon came by my apartment that Saturday, dressed in his Sabbath best, but by 
then I went with him somewhat reluctantly.  The Rebbe's apartment took up the 
whole top floor of the building, but it still seemed crowded by the group of 
devout men and the few pious women.  I was a little disappointed by the service 
-- it was the same sort of hard to follow  Orthodox service that my friend Isaac 
had once talked me into visiting when I was a teenager.  That service was held 
in a strongly Ashkenazi neighborhood, and the ceremony was so different from the 
Reform services I had been raised with that I was uncomfortable.  But at the end 
of the service Jon and the Rebbe asked me to come back the next day and study 
Torah.  I almost said no, but the way the Rebbe looked at me made it difficult 
to refuse him anything.  Sometimes I wish I had been stronger.

     It was at those meetings that followed the first Shabbat that I truly 
became a follower of the Rebbe.  He spoke with authority on the Torah, and he 
opened my mind to many strange things.  We studied the Law and the Prophets, and 
I began to buy more books he told me about:  Apocalypses not found in the Bible 
but which, he said, held great meaning.  And so I studied the Vision of Iddo and 
the Apocalypse of Elijah alongside Ezekiel and Daniel.  I bought the Bahir and 
selections from the Zohar and many arcane books besides from the big boxes the 
Rebbe kept in his hall closet.  Some were published by various large publishing 
houses; others seemed printed at the copier service by the Rebbe himself.  Jon 
and I would talk for long hours, walking up and down the boardwalk; rehashing 
the lessons the Rebbe gave us.  We both considered ourselves very wise.

     One day, I got a call from Rabbi Swartz at the Reform Temple.  I was 
surprised.  I liked the man, but I didn't know I made enough of an impression 
for him to remember me.

     "It's been a while since we've seen you over here, Art.  Have you been sick 
or something?"

     I felt embarrassed to tell him where I was spending my time.  I did not 
want him to think I felt his services somehow lacking, though it was how I was 
beginning to feel.  Finally, I told him about the Rebbe and his congregation.  
Rabbi Swartz was affable about it all.  But then he surprised me again, and 
warned me that some people did not feel the Rebbe to be a real Jew at all.

     "Some people say he's incorporated more pagan practices than Jewish ones 
into his religion, but I don't know how true any of it is.  They say he studied 
witchcraft or sorcery or something for a while with some guy in California.  But 
that was before he became a rabbi, and you know me; I really don't think there 
is such a thing as a bad Jew.  As our forefathers said, 'The Torah is a Tree of 
Life for those who grab it.'  And as I once read in a book by G. K. Chesterton, 
'Who am I to quarrel with the wild fruits upon the Tree of Life?'"  (Rabbi 
Swartz liked to appear well read.)  "I'm glad you've found a spiritual home, Art, 
even if it's not with us.  Just don't forget about us over there; you're always 
welcome!"

     The weather was already beginning to turn when I first met the Rebbe, and 
it was unseasonably cold as August turned to September.  I celebrated Rosh 
Hashanah with joy as the new year of my religious revival.  As the ram's horn 
blared that Day of Judgment, I felt the awesome Power of God, and I felt that I 
would be found clean in His Eyes.  During the services, I had a mystical moment.  
I felt so deep in prayer -- so spiritual -- that my body felt entirely alien.  I 
felt almost as though my soul would leave my body.  But I was afraid that rather 
than enter the World of Emanation, I would float into chaos or nothingness.  I 
snapped out of this with a start.  Even before the terror of Yom Kippur I knew 
the place of our congregation in the world was changing in ways I could not 
comprehend.

     Jon told me that the Rebbe had a special kapparot ceremony for Yom Kippur, 
one that he culled from a mediaeval manuscript preserved in a geniza in New York.  
The Rebbe told Jon that the entire contents of a synagogue's library had been 
moved to a New York synagogue from Russia during the pogroms following the 
Revolution.  After the long journey, this document and others like it had been 
separated out and consigned to the synagogue's geniza, the tomb of forgotten and 
forsaken texts -- too holy to be destroyed, but no longer to be used.  Jon told 
me the Rebbe had learned many secrets from documents found searching genizas.  
This was one of the hidden texts; the works that only the Rebbe had the wisdom 
to interpret and which only he was allowed to see.

     I told Jon about the time I visited Jerusalem with Roise, years ago.  There 
we saw a chicken sacrificed in a kapparot ceremony, its throat slit as a proxy 
for the slaughterer.  I was disgusted with what I had been raised to see as a 
sort of Jewish Voodoo.  Jon told me the Rebbe's ceremony was much like that, 
only more effective.  I steeled myself to see blood once more.  After all, much 
blood was spilt in the Temple before the heathens destroyed it.

     The Ten Days of Repentance came and went, and I deeply repented of my past, 
of all the years I had wasted not seeking God's Face.  Cold winds were coming 
off the Atlantic, shaking the windows of our tall apartment building and blowing 
in dark clouds, as we prepared ourselves for the Day of Atonement.

     Jon stopped by my place at the appointed hour, and together we went up to 
the Rebbe's apartment.  The air seemed electric in my anticipation; the walls 
and art deco moldings seemed suddenly teeming with repressed life.

     The Rebbe's apartment was more crowded than I had ever seen it.  Some of 
the congregants who attended services only occasionally were sure to be here for 
this, and other worshippers I had never seen before.  In one corner a woman 
tended to a black infant.  Gesturing towards it, Jon said, "They found it in 
back Maryland."  It seemed odd to me, but I quickly forgot the child's existence 
in the general excitement. 

     The beginnings of the ritual were ordinary enough.  The Rebbe lead the 
centuries old prayers and singing, forgoing any cantor, as he always did.  The 
appropriate responses were intoned at the appropriate moments.  It was all 
fairly ordinary, up to the point when the Rebbe stepped forward and took the 
child.

     Suddenly it became clear why a Gentile child was in our midst.  I almost 
stood up -- I almost said something -- but Jon seized my arm.

     "It's not one of us," he hissed at me.  "And this needs to be done!"





     By that point I believed with a true, pure faith.  And so I sat down. 

     The child began to wail as the Rebbe swung it over his head, declaring in 
Hebrew, "This is our substitute!  This is our exchange!  This is our atonement!  
This one shall go to death, and we shall enter the Garden!"

     I am not sure if the blade ever went home.  As the Rebbe raised the knife, 
the roof burst apart, and the fire descended from Heaven.  For a moment or two 
it hovered, as though glorying in its own existence before doing its work.  It 
was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever beheld, as it danced there 
changing colors.  I knew I had seen it before, somewhere, and that the Rebbe was 
with it.  It was only later that I knew it was the flame of my dream.  Then it 
descended, destroying whatever was left of the little black body.  The 
congregation gasped, and one woman shouted, "Adonai is claiming His own!"  A few 
simply threw themselves on their faces.  But then what no one expected happened.  
Having turned the child to ash and molten fat, the flame moved down the Rebbe's 
arm, consuming him in foul smelling smoke.  The flame burned down amazingly 
quickly, dancing to its own peculiar, silent rhythm, as it consumed flesh and 
bone with equal dedication, destroying all of what had been the Rebbe's earthly 
form.  I was amazed, for it was as terrible as it was beautiful.

     Then, suddenly, the spell was broken, the fire vanished entirely, and the 
room exploded into panic.  Amid the turmoil -- amongst the confused cries, while 
the men shifting through the smoking yet surprisingly cool ashes with the tips 
of their boots -- I looked up through the hole in the roof.  A rebellious sun 
fought through the ragged clouds to shine down on us and then was swallowed by 
the raging thunderheads.  I wished that the fire were still there, near me.  I 
suddenly felt an emptiness I never felt when Roise died.  I now understood in a 
new way what the Kabbalists meant when they spoke of the emptiness God created 
by withdrawing Himself so that the universe might exist.

     The authorities made their decisions before they appeared on the scene.  
Some freak bolt or possibly even the rare ball lightning did away with a beloved 
religious leader.  The papers carried the story to the public in the typical 
lurid fashion.  The authorities found no trace of the child, and we told them 
nothing of it.  The dead were dead; and it was the last unspoken decision of the 
congregation to keep our silence.

     After the Rebbe's death, the congregation broke up.  Most of us returned to 
our old congregations.  I tried to talk to Jon about what happened, but he just 
said something about high places and passing children through the fire.  He told 
me that the Rebbe was punished for sacrificing children to Moloch, destroyed by 
the same fire that consumed Sodom.  He would never say another word about the 
Rebbe.  Jon may be right.  But I find myself thinking of other fires -- of the 
column of fire that lead the Israelites in the desert; of the flame that 
attended the sacrifice of Abraham.  Most often I think of Elijah, who 
disappeared in a fiery chariot in the midst of a whirlwind, and I pity the fifty 
poor prophets who were left behind -- denied even the grace of seeing Elijah 
taken.  I wonder if the Rebbe were cursed, or if in fact he somehow found a 
hidden, forbidden path to the Garden of God.  And I think of that quote Rabbi 
Swartz read to me, speaking of the Rebbe himself -- "Who am I to quarrel with 
the wild fruits upon the Tree of Life?" 

                                           *****

"Do what we will, our hasty minutes fly,
 And while we sleep, what do we else but die?"
                                             -- John Hall, "On an Houre-Glasse"


                                           *****

     VISITING A FRIEND
     Lucifer's Sunflower

     *I'm going out to see a friend.*

     The thought scrolled through her head slowly, repetitively, ceaselessly.  
It was her crutch that Friday afternoon, supporting her for the whole of the day.

     Trista Connelly had recently moved out of her parents' house.  She was 
eighteen years old, and her youth showed in the depths of her dark blue eyes.  
Her hair was wavy and black.  She kept it pulled back in a ponytail.  Sometimes 
she put it in pigtails.  Her skin was fair, but not pale.  She wished it were 
pale.  She wished her eyes were darker.  She wished she were thinner.  She 
wished she were happy.  Manic-depressive, her mood swings were enough to drive 
most people away.

     She walked up the steps to her apartment building.  She didn't have a car; 
she had to walk home from work.  She was a waitress, underpaid and overworked.  
She was inside the building; she trudged up the steps.  Her apartment was on the 
fifth floor.

     *I'm going to see a friend.*

     She turned the key to the door.  She was greeted by a white room, furnished 
only by a small cushion.  "I'm home!" she announced, making her way to her 
bedroom.  She opened the closet door.  What to wear?  She stood for a moment 
with her left arm across her stomach, her right elbow resting on it and her 
index finger touching her bottom lip.  Finally, she selected a lacy white dress.  
It had bell-sleeves; Trista loved bell-sleeves.  It was long; it touched the 
ground.  It was her favorite dress.

     *I'm going to see a friend.*

     She held the dress up to herself.  "What do you think?"  She turned to the 
pile of stuffed animals that were on her bed.  They didn't answer.  Trista 
didn't seem to notice.  "It's pretty, isn't it?  My mother gave it to me.  It 
was the only thing she gave me."  She pulled her shirt over her head and let it 
fall on the floor.  She tugged her jeans off her thighs.  She put the dress on.  
Smoothing it out, she smiled.  "How do I look?" she asked the pile of stuffed 
animals, twirling.  She loved the way the dress fluffed around her when she 
twirled.  "I'm going to see a friend, you know.  I have to look pretty."  She 
looked in her closet, and pulled out a pair of white dress shoes.  They matched 
her dress.  She slipped them on.  "I'm ready now."  She smiled, picking up the 
letter that was on her dresser.  It wasn't labeled.  She had written it the 
night before.  It said, "I'm going to see my friend."  She smiled, reached into 
the top drawer of her dresser, and retrieved the gun therein.  She smiled as she 
held it in her right hand.  "I'm going to see my friend now," she said to her 
stuffed animals.  She pulled the trigger.

                                           *****

"Imagination is decidedly a very good thing:  it allows you to credit people
 with ideas even more stupid than those they undoubtedly already have."
                                -- J.K. Huysmans, "The Folies-Bergere in 1879"

                                           *****

     ONE DAY IN EDOM
     Marc A. Beherec

     "I can't believe Arthur Gordon is dead," she said.

     The wind rushed across Qurayqira like an army of invaders through a 
breached wall.  It carried with it sand and the odor of chicken manure that 
foretold the coming of the crops in a few months' time.  "THE GARDEN OF FORKING 
PATHS" proclaimed the sign that was beaten against the wall outside.

     It wasn't much of a garden to which our forking paths had led us.  A couple 
of rose bushes stood by the coffee shop's door; oddities she decided she wanted 
with her in the Jordanian desert.  I pricked myself on the thorns of one as I 
came in, when I hoped no one was looking.

     "Are you sure it was him?" she said after a pause.

     "I read the reports.  The body had his tattoo."

     "He's not the only person who had a tattoo like that."  I wasn't sure if it 
was fear or hope I heard in her voice.

      I thought of the tattoo on my chest, and of hers.  "No one had a tattoo 
exactly like his.  And anyway, the body had the scars, too."

     "And they're sure it was suicide?"

     "He had a hole through his head, and they recovered the gun."

     "But you said they found him floating in the San Gabriel."

     "And the gun was in the river nearby."

     "Couldn't he have been dumped there?"

     "I suppose so."  I looked into those deep, dark eyes contrasting against a 
creamy face.  I'd seen her troubled so often, but I'd never seen that beautiful 
face twisted in so much torment.  It was yet another source for my own pain.

     Unbidden, an image of Arthur Gordon's face, no longer strong and jovially 
defiant, but slack-jawed and puffy, bleeding from the mouth, the thick blond 
hair matted with blood, came to mind.

     "Enough people had reason to hate Arthur Gordon."

     "I loved Arthur Gordon," she lashed back.

     "So did I.  Enough people had reason to hate Emmanuel LeCorre as well."

     "No one had reason to hate you."

     "A reason to hate is a reason to love.  No one had a reason to love me."

     We were interrupted by laughing at a nearby table.  A bald-headed American 
poured something from a flask into his coffee, as he joked with a blonde woman 
who spoke with an accent I could not place.  It surprised me the number of 
people who came to her refuge in the desert.  It seemed that whether or not she 
wanted to flee the world, she couldn't -- she'd recreated the world in microcosm 
in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny town between a nature preserve and the 
desert.  Something moved in the shadows, and I was reminded of other things we 
couldn't flee.

     "I hope he's in a better place now," she said.

     "'The Stars move still, Time runs, the Clock will strike,'" I quoted.  
"'The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.'"  I don't know why I said it, 
and as I saw the anguished expression on her face deepen, I regretted having 
spoken.  I was simply shocked that anyone could still hope.

     "'Why, this is hell,'" she quoted back at me, "'nor am I out of it.'"

     "I'm sorry," I said, and for once I truly was.  "It's just that we did 
things -- we made deals we knew were irrevocable."

     "I don't know that anything is irrevocable."

     Something strange, a form I'd seen many times before, moved in my 
peripheral vision, and I thought I heard a familiar twittering coming from 
outside, but I said nothing.

     "I remember when I first met Arthur, at that school dance in high school.  
He seemed so confident and so -- innocent."

     I'd taken her to that dance, but Arthur took her home.

     I tried to remember when I had first met Arthur, sometime, somewhere in the 
pastures and cedar breaks of central Texas.  I'd known him since we were both 
children.  I could remember so many pranks pulled, so many hard times we'd 
helped each other through, and I wished so much that I could imagine that single 
moment in time when we had first met.  But bonds of friendship as deep as ours 
develop over time; that sort of love does not occur at first sight.  Our 
destinies must have been written then and I wondered if there were some way I 
could have done something differently, if somehow our lives could have been 
happy.  And I tried to remember if there was ever a time when I had been 
innocent.

     "If you can get to heaven just by wanting it, then Arthur is in heaven.  He 
wanted it so badly."  It was the nicest thing I could say about Arthur -- or 
anyone.

     The wind rushed across Qurayqira like water over a drowning man.  It 
carried with it sand and the odor of chicken manure that foretold the coming of 
the flies in a few days' time.  "THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS," proclaimed the 
sign that beat itself against the wall outside.

     "I can't believe Arthur Gordon is dead," I said.

                                           *****

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write,
 compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic
 fear which is inherent in the human situation."
-- Graham Greene, Ways of Escape


                                           *****

     WEEK'S END
     Patrick Beherec/Crux Ansata

     Thursday.

     The trees are dead.  It is winter, and one hopes the dead trees merely 
sleep, blood hidden deep in their emaciated limbs.  But what if, what if the 
trees never bloomed again?

     What did I seek?  I don't know.  I don't know that I found it, or that I 
wanted it.  I don't know I sought anything.  Life was as life was, and there 
seemed no need to change it.  What did I seek?  More important, what did I find?  
Who did I find?

     It's easier to hope for the trees.  They die every year; we have the 
evidence of our senses.  How can a man grown old be born anew?

     But then, what difference what I sought?  What I found:

     A tiny room, in a tiny caf�, under the inauspicious name of the Crossroads, 
or the Forked Roads.  The Garden of Forking Paths.

     Guards at a door, looking more frightened than the young men and women, 
weapons ill-hidden and compulsively clutched in sweaty palms, taking names.  If 
the authorities do decide to take an interest in this group, they could follow 
the people in increasing order of terror -- or, more likely, follow the tracks 
of the people who ran away.  He was the only one who seemed calm.  Him, Arthur 
Gordon.  Either self-confident, or resigned.  There comes a point where they 
look identical.  I gave the name of my contact, and then mine:  "LeCorre.  
Emmanuel LeCorre."

     And then inside.  Dark as the tomb.  But he seemed at home, like he 
belonged there.  Or like he saw beyond.  Like there's something he knows, that 
the rest of us don't.  Or perhaps he truly hopes, or has some true faith.

     Even now, it grows hard to remember what he said, why his presence seemed 
so calming.  I don't even think I understood most of what he said; even those 
closest to him seemed only to understand partly.  A hope for the future.  
Freedom for our land.  Many stories, many symbols.  But, to tell the truth, what 
he said is less important.  There is something about that man.  He could lead 
men to their deaths.  Every man and woman in that room was terrified -- but 
every man and woman in that room was there.  And will be there again tomorrow.  
I know I will be.

     Saturday.

     There are many ways of despair.  Probably infinitely more than ways of joy.  
For millennia, our survival skills have been honed to awareness of pain and lust; 
joy is a recent innovation.

     But there is a special form, a unique form of despair reserved to he who 
has lost hope.  He who has truly hoped, and he who has truly lost.

     A blind man, dreaming of his sight, at that point of wakefulness when he 
knows he is dreaming and, in a moment, will be blinded again.  The reverie of 
the amputee when he feels for a moment how his lover felt, warm in arms blown 
away.  A despair not of hopelessness, but emptied of a hope that once meant so 
much, more even than he realized.

     This, this despair of loss after hope, is what I felt on hearing the words:  
Arthur Gordon is dead.

     In one night, he had brought me so much hope, the vision of the green buds 
in winter's dead world.  And now, nothing is.

     I had thought I saw a door out of my cell, but the door was painted on the 
wall.  I thought I heard my lover's hoarse, lustful cry, but it was the groan of 
the garroted man.  Is it the greater loss to have loved him so late -- would it 
have been better to have never known him at all?

     Why even write these pages?  Now I've had some time to reflect, now I've 
had some time to grow numb.  It no longer burns; it weighs heavy.  A constant 
feeling of emptiness.  A missing limb.  An undelivered miscarriage.

     Friday night, returning to the cafe, to hear him more, to see him again.  
Stopped at the door with those four words.  I think I must have roamed the city 
blind for hours.  Drowning myself in drink, smothering myself in someone's arms, 
I spent a night, I spent a day, I hoped to lose myself, but could never lose 
that feel of the hope, that hope that drags with it ever despair.

     And now, and now -- if only there were nothing...

     But we can never truly be nothing.  The ultimate tragedy.  Nothing would be 
a sort of peace, the peace of dissolution.  But we can never truly be nothing.  
What solace in death, knowing we leave everyone we love to the despair we 
"escape," even if we could be sure there was a nowhere to which to escape.

     One survives.  It's never worth it.  But what choice does one have?  What 
means free will, with no option but despair?

     Sunday.

     They say he's no longer dead.  Or, at least, he's no longer in the morgue.  
And, can a corpse rise up and walk away?

     It's insane to hope.  Do I dare hope?

     Have I a choice?

     Yes, I have a choice.  Yes, I choose to hope.  Yes, and yes.

                                           *****

"You treat someone like they're a criminal and most likely they'll prove you
 right, because most people want to be right more than they want the truth.  And
 they'd rather be right than be happy so they make themselves miserable creating
 a self-fulfilling prophecy of how their life is a bowl of dogpiss and how the
 world is out to screw them from the starting blocks."
                                   -- Mark Rackers, Nesting

                                           *****

     HALLOWEEN
     Lucifer's Sunflower

     The wind howled through the cemetery trees, rustling autumn leaves to the 
ground.  A tall, emaciated-looking young man stood with his back to a large, 
monumental tombstone.  He was clad in very simple clothes, dark blue jeans, a 
faded-to-grey black t-shirt, and mud-caked, red sneakers.  His brown hair, just 
long enough for the wind to whip in his eyes, was exceptionally calm for such a 
windy night.  He observed his surroundings through apathetic mahogany eyes:  The 
cemetery was obviously old.  Its monuments to the dead were tall, casting eerie 
human-sized shadows over the grass- and dirt-patched ground.  Some were 
crumbling, others, merely wearing from age.  The trees looked more like vines, 
twisting and climbing up the crumbly stone and iron walls surrounding this place 
of the dead.  The iron gate was rusting, and creaked open and closed, bending to 
the wind's whims.  The leaves crunched under the man's feet as he made his way 
to the gate, trying to remember something important that was just beyond his 
reach.  Perhaps it was what had happened in the past few days. 

     The downtown sidewalk was heavily occupied by children in varying costumes.  
They scampered from shop to shop, demanding "Trick or treat!"  The phrase echoed 
and resounded almost constantly.  The man wove through them, coming to an 
intersection.  The shop on the corner, a coffee shop, was naturally decorated; 
vines crept up the building and the lampposts that guarded either side of the 
door.  The wooden sign hung from an iron rod protruding from the side of the 
building, announcing to all that this was the Garden of Forking Paths, and that 
this was the best coffeehouse in the city.  Chilled from the wind, the man went 
inside.

     It was a bustling place.  Couples sat across from each other, chattering 
over warm drinks.  The tabletops were a faded, almost bleached, forest green.  
Once could tell that, originally, they matched the green tile of the floor.  The 
walls were painted in a mural of green vines and violet flowers.  There were 
small potted plants hanging beside the windows, and larger potted plants placed 
in the corners.  Despite the natural feel this was supposed to induce, the place 
felt cold, artificial, and unfriendly to the young man's senses.  All the same, 
he walked through the crowd of people and sat at the bar, right beside the cash 
register.  

     A boy stood behind the register.  His hair and eyes were the same shades of 
brown as the young man's, and he wore a deep green shirt.  His nametag said  
"Emmanuel."

     "May I take your order?"

     The question was lost on the young man, who recognized this boy immediately.  
"Em?  Emmanuel LeCorre?"  Emmanuel was the younger brother of the young man's 
best friend.

     The boy blinked, confused.  "Uh... do I know you?"

     "Em, it's me!  It's Arthur!  Arthur Gordon!  Hey, wow, I must've been away 
for a while or somethin'.  You've grown a lot.  How's Samuel?"

     The boy's eyes widened.  "Arthur... Gordon...?"

     "Yeah, man!"  His eyes glittered with the only hint of emotion they had had 
all night.

     "That's... not possible... Arthur Gordon is dead.  He's been dead for a 
year."

     "...what...?"

     "Yeah.  He and Samuel threw eggs and toilet paper at Old Man's house, and 
he came after them both with a shotgun.  Arthur couldn't get out of range fast 
enough."

     Shock.  Arthur tried to grab at the boy's shirt, only to find his hand went 
straight through it.  He could see the countertop through his arm, and the stool 
through his lap.  He looked up to see nothing but fright in the eyes of the boy, 
and all others around him.  Murmurs of ghosts and disappearing patrons rose.  
Arthur stood in panic, looking around and frantically trying to get someone, 
anyone's attention.  Defeated, he slowly made his way back to the graveyard.  As 
soon as he entered the gate, he noticed his name on a tombstone on the first row.  
With a heaving sigh, he sat down, his back to the tombstone, and drew his legs 
up close to his chest to make a rest for his chin.

                                           *****

"The whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men; and their story is not graven
 only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible
 symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's loves.  For you now it remains to
 rival what they have done."
                              -- Thucydides, "The Funeral Oration of Pericles"



                                           *****

     THE UNFORTUNATE EVENTS OF EMMANUEL LeCORRE
     Le messager sombre

     Emmanuel LeCorre walked outside into his apartment's 8th floor hallway and 
continued down to the stairwell at the end of the hall.  Due to the complex's 
primitiveness, it did not have an elevator.  He made the familiar trot down the 
grimy unwashed marble steps that were once a thing of beauty, but were now 
broken from criminals chipping off a souvenir after robbing one of the early 
twentieth-century rooms.

* * *





     Emmanuel had lived in the apartments ever since he moved away from his 
hometown of Greenville, Maryland.  He never felt the urge to return to 
Greenville after his family was murdered and the house he spent most of his life 
in was burnt to the ground.  The thought of knowing that the murderer still 
lived plagued him daily.  He felt as if he was useless on Earth and wanted to be 
with his family again.  He had tried it once, but after he found Catholicism, he 
thought differently.

                                           * * *

     He stepped outside and into the tranquility of the rain.  While throwing on 
his trench-coat, he lit up a cigarette; a great love of his.  He inhaled and 
felt the sickening warmth that always seemed to bring comfort to him, even in 
the lowest of times.  He continued down the street while nodding to the homeless 
people that he saw almost daily on his walks.  He passed his place of work, and 
walked into his favorite coffeehouse, The Garden of Forking Paths.  He sat down 
in his usual seat and asked his companion of many years, Anastasia, "What's the 
matter?  You seem unusually gloomy."

     "You know my friend from high school I'm always talking about?" she 
exclaimed.

     "Yeah.  I don't remember his name, but I recall you always talking about 
how interesting he made your high school career.  Is he in the area or 
something?"

     "No.  He was in an accident the other day, and he passed away.  Can you 
believe it?  My last real link to my childhood is dead!  Arthur Gordon is dead!"

     "Death is nothing but another part of life, Anastasia.  You said it 
yourself when my family was killed.  Will you be going to the funeral?"

     "I don't think I can make it.  We're already short-handed at work and I 
don't want to do that to you.  Besides, I don't have the money for a trip back 
to Minnesota anyway."

     "I'll take care of it.  I think you owe it to him to go."

     "You're right; thanks."

                                           * * *

     Anastasia grew up in a small town in Minnesota and didn't move away until 
she was 21, when she finished college.  Her brother died when she was 4 of 
cystic fibrosis and her mother died soon after of heartbreak.  After her 
brother's death, her mother refused to eat and slowly drifted into death.  Her 
father ran the house after the deaths and tried to keep her spirits up, but to 
no avail due to the family's financial state.  Her father put her through 
college by selling all of the family's heirlooms and then by robbing local 
stores.  Anastasia was unaware of her father's activities and believed her 
finances were from grants by the government.  Soon after her graduation, her 
father was arrested and put in prison for a minimum of twenty-five years.  He 
died in jail after developing a brain tumor that he was oblivious to.

                                           * * *


     Emmanuel bought two Cafe Mochas and they went upstairs into a loft that had 
been converted into a library for the coffeehouse.  They sat down in their usual 
seat, a brown leather couch by the largest window which overlooked one of the 
only trees left in the city.  They sat and talked a bit more about her travel 
arrangements and what the afterlife must be like.

     "I believe that heaven is a huge coffeehouse that has books everywhere 
about all different subjects and philosophies.  I think it's full of the 
smartest, most respected people that ever lived on the Earth.  If we make it to 
heaven, we can find the true meaning of life, why were put on earth, and how 
everything was created," said Anastasia.

     "I think it's whatever your true happiness is.  For myself, I would be 
reunited with my family and back in my hometown, away from the despair I live 
with now and back to my roots.  Whatever it is, it must be better than what we 
have now."

     "Oh, without a doubt I'm sure!"

                                           * * *


     A few weeks later, Emmanuel heard the worst news he had received in years.  
Anastasia had fallen asleep at the wheel on her drive back to Minnesota and was 
in a coma clinging to life in a hospital in Michigan.  He was surprised to have 
been reached and considered it a true miracle.  By the time he arrived in 
Michigan, Anastasia had already passed on.  He knelt by her bedside and prayed 
while weeping for her to have made it to heaven.

     When he returned back to his apartment, he made a list of what he had left 
to live for.  The list was blank 3 hours after he started and he began to think 
about his family and how good heaven must be.  He wanted to get away from his 
misery and make it to a better place.  He was left with yet another decision, 
should he take his life and hope to see his family in heaven, or continue living 
his pointless melancholy life?  He began to whimper as he picked up the razor 
blades he bought from a convenience store on his way back to his apartment, and 
walked into his bathroom.

                                           *****

"Many that live deserve death.  And some that die deserve life.  Can you give it
 to them?  Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment."
                               -- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring



                                           *****



     HARD NEWS
     Mark D. Warner

     The mist in the evening sky was tinted sepia by the lights along the 
twisting, tree-lined avenue that wound through the apartment buildings, doctors' 
offices, and quaint shops of this shabby-chic sector of the former steeltown.  
Music drifting out of the open door of the redneck rock bar clashed oddly with 
the sweet sounds of a cello playing alone somewhere in an apartment above the 
wet bricks of the sidewalk. 

     Cars passing by made hissing whispers on the asphalt as drivers hurried to 
their unrevealed destinations, lights reflecting from their polished hoods and 
fenders danced with reflected neon greens and pinks from the signs glowing 
bravely above the darkened windows of shops closed for the night.

     Emmanuel LeCorre crossed the street from the muddy park to the surer 
footing of the sidewalk that passed those shops.  He held his long coat closely 
to his body as if the chill of the evening were more severe than the weatherman 
had assured.  His footsteps were a soft pit-pat-pit and small explosions of 
water rose from each step, turning his grey trouser cuffs dark.

     He checked his watch as he approached a wrought iron gate set between two 
imposing concrete pillars.  A lit sign on the fence between the lefthand post 
and the wall of the adjacent building told passers-by that this was the Garden 
of Forking Paths, though several of the bulbs that lit the sign from within 
flickered, off more than on, turning the subscript of "Finest Coffees in Town, 
Finest Pastries" into a more cryptic, "Fine  Coff  in   wn,  Fin  Past". 

     Emmanuel opened the gate to the sound of a musical bass groan from the 
hinges, and passed down the cobbled path between the sculpted topiaries and 
slick wet patio tables and chairs towards the warm light coming through the oval 
glass panel in the front door of the converted Victorian home. 

     Opening the door brought a welcome wave of warm air that chased his chill 
to careless memory.  The smells of freshly ground coffee and baking pastries 
blended with the smell of wet wool sweaters and drying coats, and somewhere near 
the ceiling the speakers were leaking Celtic harp music that softly trickled 
down the walls into the patrons' ears.

     Emmanuel made his way past the third-hand sofas and donated chairs filled 
with gabbling parties, solitary readers, and a couple of chess players who 
seemed more like animatronic statues than real people as they stared at the 
board, their only movement the rise and fall of their cups to their lips.  As he 
approached the counter, the short redheaded man in the stained chef's apron 
behind it raised a pudgy hand in greeting. 

     "'Manuel!  My man!  How's the hammer hangin'?" 

     "Like Mjollnir, man, as always," replied Emmanuel.

     "Dude, it's been a while!  Where have you been keeping yourself?" the chef 
said, wiping his hands and digging into the ice in the case in front of him to 
pull out a couple of bottles.

     "Killian's, you remembered!  Thanks Rollo," said Emmanuel, accepting one of 
the bottles as the two moved to sit at an empty table under an old stoplight 
that was flashing all its lights at once.

     "Hey, anything for a friend.  Besides, what's the point of running a joint 
like this if you can't treat a friend once in a while?" said Rollo.

     "I appreciate it.  I came as soon as I could after Theresa called me," said 
Emmanuel, "she sounded pretty shaken up, but wouldn't tell me what the problem 
was."

     "Yeah, she's been hit kinda hard.  We all have," said Rollo.

     Emmanuel took a long swig from his beer, then asked, "What is it?  What's 
going on?"

     "Dude, Arthur Gordon is Dead," said Rollo.

     Emmanuel just stared at Rollo's face for a moment.  Waiting for the smirk 
that would come just before the grin, telling him that it was a joke.  The smirk 
never came.

     "How...  What happened?" Emmanuel asked.

     "Nobody's sure.  They found him in bed, but he was fully clothed.  The 
police said he smelled of whiskey, but you know how likely that is," said Rollo. 

     "Yeah, Gordy hardly ever drank, and then it was just a wine cooler or 
something.  He absolutely hates... hated the taste of alcohol."

     "That's what I told them when they came around asking about him.  If 
they've done a freaking toxicology report on him, I haven't heard anything."

     "Shit!  Man, this sucks.  Gordy's dead."

     "As a doornail, dude."

     "I guess this means we don't get home."

     "Yeah, looks that way."

     "Damn!"

     "You said it."

     Emmanuel finished his beer.  "Well, thanks for letting me know.  I need to 
go back and tell the others.  We're going to need a plan after this."

     "No shit.  Gordy was the last of our navigators."

     "Yeah.  Fuck."  Emmanuel got up and pulled his coat tighter around his body.

     "Don't do anything dumb," said Rollo.

     "I won't.  Don't worry.  Man, Vonda is going to be crushed.  She's going 
nuts here."

     "Yeah, it's going to be rough, man."  Rollo stood, held out his hand to his 
friend and said, "Don't be a stranger."

     Emmanuel clasped the offered hand.  The pale clamping digits at the sides 
of his palm encircling his countryman's hand.  "And you take care of yourself.  
See what you can find out about Gordy's death.  Something isn't right here."

     "Will do, boss man.  Now get while the rain is still light.  It's supposed 
to dump on us soon."

     "See you," said Emmanuel, and turning, he wound his way past the talking, 
laughing patrons, opened the door, and went back outside into the misty night.

     There was much yet to do.

                                     ***** ***** *****

About the Authors:

Editor Patrick Beherec has been known, inter alia, as Crux Ansata.  He has spent 
the last couple of years in social work in Atlantic City, and vigilantly 
postponing his writing career.  He frequently imagines he's infected with 
invisible, teleporting lice.  His webpage is http://www.geocities.com/c_ansata/ 
and he can be emailed at c_ansata@yahoo.com

Associate Editor Marc Andrew Beherec was born in the United Kingdom in 1979.  He 
has a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, and is 
currently studying anthropological archaeology at the University of California 
at San Diego.  Marc formerly wrote for State of unBeing as Dark Crystal Sphere 
Floating Between Two Universes and as Captain Moonlight; his writing, ranging 
from politics to poetry, appeared in that e-zine from issue three (March 1994) 
until issue seventy (July 2001).  His writing will also appear in a forthcoming 
issue of Necronomicon Press' Lovecraft Studies.  He considers his primary 
literary influences to be H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and William 
Seabrook.  His webpage is http://www.geocities.com/mabeherec/mabwrite.html and 
he may be reached at mabeherec@hotmail.com

Le messager sombre is just a carrier of the sad tales which he writes, recited 
to others to share the parable.  He can be contacted at:  ansate_kross@yahoo.com

Lucifer's Sunflower can be emailed at solar_werewolf@hotmail.com

Mark D. "Dragon" Warner writes for a living.  He currently writes software 
manuals for tax preparation software.  This is so incredibly boring that he'd 
rather chew broken glass with habanero sauce than go to work some days.  So he 
writes other stuff like this to keep himself in the 'mostly harmless' end of the 
insanity pool.  Mark has a B.F.A. in painting from the University of Montevallo 
where he won the President's Award for Excellence in Writing in 1989.  He lives 
in Northwest Georgia with his wife, five cats, and an extended family of 
nutburger friends.

Copyright

Nameless and Damned is copyrighted (c) 2003 and 2004 by Patrick Beherec and 
Nameless and Damned.  All rights are reserved to cover, format, editorials, and 
all incidental material.  All individual items are copyrighted (c) 2003 and 2004 
by the individual author, unless otherwise stated.  This file may be 
disseminated without restriction for nonprofit purposes so long as it is 
preserved complete and unmodified.  Quotes and ideas not already in the public 
domain may be freely used so long as due recognition is provided.  Nameless and 
Damned is available at <http://www.geocities.com/nadmagazine/>.  Submissions may 
be sent to the editor at <nadmagazine@yahoo.com>.  The NaD distribution list may 
also be joined by sending email to the editor.