Zone 4: Clinical Lycanthropy / La Bocca Al Lupo – Daniel Beauregard
August 17, 2020
Blow the candle out. Blow the candlelight out and let us fly fly into the night. Blow it up, blow it out. Let us dance and dance no more upon the walls on nothing. Upon the walls of shadow. Let us dance dance into the walls of shadowed night into the air. Let us leave this rotten sanctuary. THIS PISS SOAKED CAVERN. Do you hear me? I know you’re there, watching. Do you hear me. I’m burning. Please have mercy. I call mercy. I regret what I’ve done let me beg for mercy. I’m begging, do you fucking hear me. You’re watching me aren’t you? I can’t leave this corner. This putrid phosphorescence, it burns. You are slowly killing me. You all. Do you have any idea what it’s like? To live in this way. It will come without regard for you, whether you like it or not. It’s going to a world of ours. Everything will cease and then we can start it like it should have been. Once it ceases forever. The ice will burn your exurbs. You won’t want it but you will. Watch the world fade.
*
Please. Have mercy. I’m begging. Can’t you see?
It’s never not dark in this horrid room where they’re holding us. Amidst to glowing we’re slaked with an impenetrable thirst; a fortress of unsatiated wont. I can tell you all about them if you could only find it in your hearts to let me rest. To lower the rays just a little enough to breathe again. Would that be alright? Could you do that and I’ll tell you about them. About all of them who’ve ever lived. About being born and dying. Could you see yourselves to let us live like that a little, perhaps less blindingly? My god it’s as if our mouth was stuffed with cotton all the time.
*
In the corner we’ve found a little spot that’s not so bright. It’s not dark but maybe so. No. But close to be at least. In the dark corner it’s close to being dark, shaded from the phosphorescent rays. Well-shielded from their output. Now we hardly move. Was there a time this light was burning? It is a sort of primal threat. I think about our morbidity day and night, how we grind it into powder to keep us warm. A man held phosphorescent powder in his hands in the valley of the dead, in the valley of the night. That is where we want to be. In that essence that we’ve always wanted. He blew it forth from his palm and then the world grew. Everything is so white it disgusts us. This place where they’re holding us. They’ve also dressed us so. Unblemished, so to speak.
*
Today something beautiful happened and we’re certain it’s real. We’re saying we saw it at least. But it must be something beautiful since we saw everything so clearly. The light grew dim but only for a moment. It was when they entered and I spat at their feet. They tore away our unblemished vestments and threatened to do worse but only replaced them and carried on. But while they were about we noticed all there is to know. The light grew dim and we saw its thin translucence. We saw how it really is and how it soon would be. When the light grew dim something truly beautiful happened today and now it spells so clearly. They touched us first and pierced our essence and withdrew. Not them but the essence of ourselves withdrew into a capsuled vessel like mercury and when it did the workmen pulsed and the light grew dim but only for a moment. But the beauty was, I could see through them, down into their sanguine gulf, which pulsed its debt and broadcast it.
*
In this corner where we’ve kept exists an opening into another world. We scrape upon its roughneck bark until an edge is honed. Here we’ll elicit something substantial. We’ve kept it in an opening that barely fits inside a bed. That shadow from the oblong post which grants reprieve, shields the eyes a few. The only item dim enough to touch before us, grey like soiled [earth-stained] snow, its surface, sharpening our fingertips to make ourselves dim.
*
In a darkened⎯dimmer⎯corner of the room is a square of concrete and on this we edge into another world. We sharpen and hone the tip of our finger until it can easily pierce our flesh and partake in our own true essence. It is heavy, like lead, and sweet, and does much to soothe us, opening our eyes to let our pupils wet their skin in darkness. Even a moment seems a century condensed into an offering the size of a teardrop: this is everything. A part of survival. The men in white enter on occasion to taunt us with their vulnerability. Their weak, sallow layer of skin protecting nothing. We can see through⎯in its translucence⎯all the way to their active vital parts. Each time they bathe and feed us, we grow excited to watch them pump. Our tongue is so dry these days each moment in the presence of their flesh is unbearable. The drops at night do little to parse our thirst; they’re more of a way to escape for a few seconds, perhaps a minute at most. During the off-hours, while our captors are busy feigning work and sleeping or fucking in the storeroom we grow, our blood, leadened, its dream of darkness. Soon, the only white will be the frozen ice of another world where men are scarce and terrified. The end and the beginning.
*
The cold bristles at the back of our neck as we scrape and scrape the roughneck bark until the edges are honed. We fit just barely in the space where the bedposts meet the wall. Here, a small shadow from an oblong post allows us a chance respite from the searching rays of whitened madness. Our greyish fingertips an evidence of what awaits. It often seems so purposefully vague, a banal testament to the enduring spirit of the unknown. The channel of powerful forces yet to come. The doctor told us today we’re never getting out of here. He made sure to say it just like that, so we know that not a single one of us is ever getting out of here.
*
Often, we pass the hours by shielding our eyes and counting the number of oblong posts protruding from the bed, our only place of respite in this white hell. As there exist only four posts, we multiply them, making a game out of how many products we can derive. We make it into the millions before being interrupted by daydreams rising upwards from another place, floating to us like a drum beating to the discontinuous tempo of unresolved memories. When all is truly said and done, it’s about Transformation, really. You can only imagine but a glimpse of what’s to come and nevertheless powerlessly salivate. It makes us choke at times, but now we know that all of this is skin placed lightly on the top of things is just a mirage to further serve the hierophant. Which could be the doctor, we’re not sure.
*
Like the hierophant, this world too is full of secrets. Even our immediate surroundings, in all their blazing banality leave something to be studied. We’ve spent the last several days—perhaps more, we’re uncertain—watching the hair bristle out of our forearms. As first it was almost imperceptible but the more of blood we managed to drink, the closer into the depths of ourselves we could see. It was terrifying at the outset. We awoke from a fitful slumber to a noise that sounded like someone loosely dragging a stick through wet sand. Since then it’s only become more pronounced. We thought we were growing deaf but realized the sound grew closer when we drew our forearms toward our face or waved them by our ears. It was only a matter of hours before we began to perceive a sense of movement. Now the hair is growing rapidly without abandon and when we prick ourselves each night with needlelike fingers to suck the blood from our wounds we see right down to the marrow.
*
Last night we dreamed of the cave by the sea, the Poet there before us, writing the same word over and over again. We watched intently and at one point, realized we were rooted there, unable to move or look away as he traced the same lines, contours strange but familiar to us, winding to form a mantra of their own in our mind. Suddenly, he extinguished the candle and stood up and began to dress himself in animal skins and furs. We watched as his breath rose into the air in great tufts of steam. We were then mobile again and followed him outside where before him, the sea stood silent, completely frozen. He looked up to the sky as large, wet snowflakes began to fall.
*
We first only imagined the new growth was itching, but whether we imagined it into truly itching or it become more pronounced matters little now, for it itches and burns and the noise has grown to near deafening proportions due to the heightened senses we’ve acquired. Another necessary—albeit excruciating—component of the Transformation. Each new phase reveals a history we’ve yet to understand. It is a swarm preparing to burst forth from beneath our skin. But what will then become of ourselves when, spewing forth in darkened chunks, we impregnate the thoughts of others? A thousand candles being extinguished simultaneously as the old man finds the sea. A thousand suicides, a thousand souls frozen into the hardened crust of the fabric of reality.
*
The doctor has paid us a visit. We think he’s going to watch his cohorts strip and wash us. Surprisingly, he speaks. In proclamation, he crosses his arms and belches: since you want to pretend you’re an animal, we shall have to treat you like one. Did we hear him correctly? In our confusion, they pull us back into the corner and strap us down onto the bed. The men go quickly out into the hallway, returning with hair clippers. They begin shaving every inch of our body. The pain is unbearable. Between our bewildered screams we pass in and out of consciousness, flitting back and forth between the peopled darkness and the bright white room. We watch as the orderlies cut away layer and layer of the mantle we’ve built. Each bristling tuft of hair—rather than falling to the floor like it should—stops an inch from the ground, hovering in place momentarily before slowly rising upwards into the air. We watch as they disperse into tiny needles, entering the flesh of the orderlies, absorbed through the pores. They seem completely unaware. The doctor looks quite pleased. It is a long process but eventually they manage. We’re all pleased it seems. This pleases us even more so than them.
*
After putting their tools away, they stand at the far end of the room. The doctor admires us and approaches, placing a hand atop our head. It disgusts us. His hand follows the path of our body, down our shoulders, our arm, resting at the fingertips momentarily before it’s removed. He steps away from us and nods. One of the orderlies leaves the room again, returning a moment later pushing a stainless-steel medical cart. We try raising our head to look, but, bound to the bed as we are, can only discern their feet and the wheels of the cart. But we can hear items rattling upon its sterile surface. What will you do to us next? we think we say out loud, but perhaps are only speaking silently in our mind. It seems almost like we’re calling out to ourselves from the other place, shrouded by the darkness like a cold, familiar cloak. A second later we greet another familiar feeling upon our skin: the prick of a needle. We feel the syringe sink deep into our arm and rattle our veins. Something is speaking in our blood, but the language doesn’t match. Our thoughts slow to a halt. We try to swallow—to evacuate the saliva that’s pocketed in the right of our cheek—our reflexes unresponsive. The doctor speaks. We watch a large string of drool fall from between our lips onto the floor below. You are a wild animal, he snarls in a voice so near its hot breath bleeds upon our neck. We’ve injected you with a paralyzing agent. But although unresponsive, your senses remain intact. For how can you train an animal without cracking the whip? He runs his fingers across our bald pate. It delivers chills that sweep across our body in deep, tremulous waves. The doctor loosens the latches that bind our head to the mattress and jostles us about for a moment, then tilts our head up so we have a clear view of our lower extremities. The tools are also now within our range of vision. We begin choking on our spit and the doctor shifts our head slightly to the left, allowing the drool to continue flowing out of our mouth, down our chin, neck, onto the white linen upon which we rest. It gathers there, spreading out into a deep pool. The tools are much cruder than we’d imagined. The doctor wheels the table up next to us and we see upon it a rusty scalpel, a ball of twine, and an ancient looking pair of pliers. The doctor takes our left hand and begins massaging our palms with his fingers, easing open our clenched fist until the fingers are splayed flat upon the bedside. He does the same with the other one. He does this so slowly, it seems to take a lifetime. He picks up the tools, displaying them to both us and the orderlies stationed along the wall. One of the men chuckles. The other shuffles his feet nervously again and again.
*
The befouled varnish of the instruments glints crudely in the light. The doctor handles the scalpel, then the pliers, then picks up the scalpel again and approaches us. We watch his every move. He takes the first finger of our right hand and brings the scalpel down, making a small incision along the base of the nail. A garbled grunt is all we manage, but the pain is there. He then begins working on us with the pliers; now the pain is blinding, almost illuminating. We watch in horror as he mutilates our cherished corpse for the second time that day, grunting along himself as he works the pliers back and forth, dislodging the nail away from our fingertip. The blood, like spit, runs down upon the bedspread, blooming beautifully. The doctor is laughing as he pulls us apart. A piece of ourselves builds up in our chest preparing to shoot forth out of the darkness. But then the pressure dissipates. He holds up his prize in front of us. One fingernail sharpened like an arrow, a hardened piece of slate. It is both this, as well as simply a normal part of our body. He places it down upon the tray with a clunk that no fingernail should make then gets to work again. We close our eyes this time, thinking the pain perhaps will be less intense without the vision of our mutilation. It’s no less intense but the darkness covers us completely. We feel the pressure and the ball building up again. This time, once our fingernail is extracted, the building pressure doesn’t dissipate but remains within our chest cavity. We hear the clunk, open our eyes and see yet another slate arrowhead resting upon the stainless-steel cart. The doctor can’t help but grin. Smiling wildly, he approaches us yet again but stops in his tracks. There’s a slow rumbling, we feel it in our chest and within the room itself. As it grows in intensity, the tools on the cart begin to vibrate, clattering loudly. A denser noise threaded throughout of stone and gravel. The doctor looks at the orderlies, still out of our line of vision. A moment later, with great effort, we raise ourselves, propping ourselves up with our elbows. Across the room, along the wall, the orderlies stand frozen in place, deep red blood oozing from their pores, running down their faces, their arms and legs, staining the scrubs like a slow spreading flame and pooling at their feet. The doctor has traded his grin for a look of confusion and horror. He rushes over to the orderlies along the wall and slips in the blood at their feet, sprawling onto the ground on his back and struggling to get up again. As he fights to regain his balance, we focus on the stainless-steel table and the building pressure in our chest. The room within ourselves becomes a bubble, multi-colored and expanding. We watch it slowly grow as the orderlies scream and the doctor struggles in the corner. The bubble expands from our chest, enveloping first our entire body, then the bed and most of the rest of the surrounding room. As soon as it reaches the cart with the instruments and our razorslate fingertips, they and the tools begin rising into the air. The orderlies now lie on the floor in crumpled heaps and large puddles of blood as if weightless, resting in place like oil upon the surface of water. The doctor has yet to move from his corner of the room. But once he notices the tools and our fingernails in the air, he begins to run toward the door. He fumbles with his keys to unlock it. The resonating tremor rises to a deafening pitch then ceases. The scalpel and pliers drop out of the air onto the floor with a clatter. Now only our slatelike nails hover in the air. The doctor continues, trying key after key, none the right one. He’s screaming. We watch as the pieces of slate, our sharpened fingernails, float towards the door into the doctor’s shattered space. He rises, brushing the gray and greasy hair out of his eyes unsuccessfully. We too are screaming now. The room echoes in an uproar as the two fingernails hovering in front of the doctor’s face plunge deep into his eye sockets. The bubble in the surrounding room bursts and the bright white lights flicker and shatter, leaving only darkness. The silence picks us up and cradles us in its arms. There is that dripping again, like the cave but thicker, more precise. The echoing of the hierophant.