Fiction

On this page you will find my fictional work. As mentioned on my Poetry page, I will be adding to this...from time to time. I now begin my Fiction page with a short story entitled The Empress.

0.
INCEPTION

As usual, John enters his apartment to find his room-mate Michael sitting amidst newspapers, books, papers & a half eaten bowl of oatmeal. John & Michael worked/slaved for little pay -- in two cesspools, fashionably known in New York as health food restaurants. Their wages afforded them two patio chairs, the all important Village Voice each week, oatmeal, peanut butter, bread, an occasional bottle of retsina, & once or twice a week the ability to search out a bar which would suit their essential need of sleazery. John had spent the evening in one he'd found quite by accident while strolling through the East Village & wanted to not only share the news with Michael, but also to recite the horrible poems he'd written there.

Michael looks up at John with gleaming eyes in hopes of a good story, as, since moving to New York, he & John had revelled in sharing the exploits of their days off work. John grabs the bottle of retsina from a box covered by a towel they used as a table & sat in the unoccupied patio chair with a slump. He takes a long draw from the bottle, each one knowing that he is merely building suspense. Michael takes one last drag from the joint he'd been smoking & asks, "Well, Mephistopheles?" Though his name is John, Michael normally called him Mephistopheles -- or simply Meph -- & John would normally call Michael Faustus. The two had never much cared for those silly biblical names. Incidentally, Michael-Faustus is very inclined, shall we say, to Marlowe's telling of the Faust legend, while John-Meph is actually more interested, though quite liking the character of Marlowe's devil, in the Merlin aspect of the Arthurian legend. Meph & Faustus have also, since each was quite young, been students & practitioners of the Occult & Satanism.

"What did you learn today, my good Brother?" continues Faustus.

"Ah," says Meph. "A veritable Babylon this city is. A true & most wonderful Gomorrah. I have found what will, should the Lord -- with perhaps a touch of our voluptuous Lilith's influence -- bless us with the almighty dollar, be home away from this hovel, I say, I say! I do think next week you might want to accompany me to this ideal den of iniquity."

"A true den? Could it be Lord High Lucifer, our guiding Light, has absolved us from the misfortune in the pit of San Fran...."

"Don't say it," interrupts Meph. "I shudder at even the thought. Besides which, you really are not at fault. I am entirely responsible it went amiss. Had I just put the mescal down ten minutes earlier. Asshole!"

"Oh, no. I'm equally to blame, Meph. I'm the one who chose that little shit as help meet. If only she'd been a virgin," Faustus muses.

After taking a long draw from the bottle & handing it to Faustus, "Let's not even talk about it. Too many years have passed in faithful service. The Lord has only put us on hiatus. And do me a favour. When we are put back to work, stop -- repeat stop -- looking for that non-existent virgin! Unless you're willing to fuck a three year old...."

I.
OPERATION

Bathed in sweat, Meph rolls off the woman he'd been led to for the Operation. All had gone well, save the fact his intensity had put the weak subject to sleep immediately the physical part of the Operation ended. He sits up & lifts the glass of Irish whiskey he'd left beside the bed some hours before. He pours some of the whiskey from the glass upon the woman's breasts & Manipura Chakra. "I consecrate you," intones Meph, "in the name of the Lord Most High. Your are now the charge of Lucifer, etc., etc. Amen." Then, as an afterthought, "Don't fuck up." Meph gets up, downs the rest of the whiskey, sets the glass back on the floor, & crosses the room to fetch his notebook & pen. He lights a cigarette & returns to the bed to write the sequence out.

The door to the apartment opens & closes & Meph hears footsteps. Listening closely, he notes that there is only one set. The clock, dimly illuminated by the single black candle burning in the room, shows the time only to be 3.30am. Meph thinks it rather early for Faustus to be home. Peering round the door to the room comes Faustus' devilish smile, candle flame reflecting as sparks from his eyes. "I smell sex!" he says.

"Sorry I can't share, the bitch's now passed out," Meph replies writing vigorously.

"Failure?" asks Faustus leaning against the door jam.

"No, not completely -- though she hasn't the stamina of Gretchen." Meph looks up from his writing, flicks ash from his cigarette & with a reminiscent smile says, "How I do miss Gretchen."

"Yeah, so do I. And I never screwed her."

Changing the subject, "Where's that number this thick & I'd left you with? I was so sure she'd turn out," Meph smirks, "to be your illusive virgin."

"Yeah," says Faustus sloughing off the jibe. "Well, she began to drone on about her need of a stable lifestyle, etc., etc. Those big brown eyes made me feel so sorry for her till, I took hold of my senses & fucked her in the toilet. She may have taken the wrong thing all too seriously. Like Nanette, remember?"

"All too well. But, you know? If we didn't have the Work before us, & she walked up to me & asked me again to go to Poland with her; that we could have that little cottage & teach at the school in the village -- I might just take her up on it."

"You may have loved her, & you may have loved Gretchen. But neither of them are Margaret."

With resignation, "Just as Aleister Crowley & Leila Waddell. A greater love could never be -- & neither would do what was necessary to have the other. Sometimes I really hate them."

"Only because you & Margaret have yet to be."

"What the hell is it about Poland that makes me want, yet can never have?"

"Listen, I said 'yet to be', not 'will never be'."

"Prediction, Brother mine?"

"Just remember, 'Once he got all he ever wanted, he came to find he didn't want it after all.'"

"Whatever would I do without you, Brother?"

II
THE CROSSOVER

Groggily, she asks, "Where are you going?" It wasn't late, Meph notes the clock, shimmering bright red digits by the bed, reads 2.20am. In frustration, he moves toward the desk the other side of the room; a street lamp outside casting a beam of light through the window dimly lighting the way.

"To get a cigarette," he tells her. She detects the definite undertone in Meph's voice.

"Bring me one?" she calls. As he returns to the bed with the cigarettes & ashtray she asks, "What's wrong?"

"What makes you think something's wrong?" he asks, exhaling smoke heavily.

"You've not got up in the middle of the night before."

"I'm usually doing something when I'm awake in the middle of the night, aren't I?" She didn't like his alluding to her decision to no longer have sex; she demanded control at all times in a relationship.

"Damn it," she says. "I'd told you the first night we'd slept together that I don't want a husband. Why the hell do men always want commitment?" she asks with obvious scorn, as she lays out flat on her back.

"Men, hell! As I remember, Margaret, it was you who'd tried to frighten me away by saying you test men. Passing this little test of yours, you tell me you want monogamy. Fine -- I still don't walk away. Then you decide we should live together. All right, that's fine too. I don't mind being tested, I too want monogamy & will live with you. Then, of course, sex is only when & how you want it, followed by continual road blocks which I, being quite innovative, get round with ease -- unnerving you no end. Now, finding myself up to snuff, you become so bloody frightened that I might actually be the man you've been looking for, you do everything you can to get rid of me. Now, no sex. Only you won't be the 'bad guy'. Oh, no! Put me through hell till I'm fed up & walk, so you can feel free of all responsibility, right? How am I to react to finding myself worthy, yet still being put aside? Tell me that, your Highness."

"You're so full of shit. What are you worthy of? Me?! No. You're not even worthy of yourself."

"Oh, thanks. That means so much coming from you," he says as she turns her back to him. Meph dresses & leaves.

III
ENTRANCE

Dragging the limp, drunk body of the unsuspecting, unconcerned trifle of humanity down a quiet, cluttered alleyway; the few sounds of his scuffling echoing from the bricks of the buildings of the narrow passage. "Shit," he says, taking a moment to rest. "Naturally, the only subject you make available weighs a fucking ton." The subject, although unable to rouse himself to full consciousness, begins mumbling & finally belches loudly. Meph, now sitting against one wall next to the drunkard's loathsome form, looks up, laughs & plants his boot against the subject's face. The old man groans & loses consciousness completely. "Christ!" cries Meph, standing again. "Where the fuck is Faustus?"

Meph is hardly in the mood for this -- his attention wandering slightly from the task at hand to his parting scene last night; Margaret's cold eyes, then her back staring at him in the darkness. Standing, he now picks the old man up & hefts him over his shoulder. "Oof! I may get all of twenty feet like this," Meph says quietly to himself as he rounds the darkened corner of a building. From behind a trash bin comes a strong, authoritative voice, "Just what are you doing there?"

Momentarily baffled, Meph assumes this voice must belong to a cop. Then, realising what is to be, Meph stops & slowly -- intensity growing in his eyes -- turns his head in the direction of the voice. In a forced, belligerent whisper, Meph asks simply, "Who calls?" Three rather decrepit, filthy men step from the shadows like undead forms, looking already like ghosts in the half-light. Again the voice, from the right of the alley: "What are you doing?"

Mephistopheles chuckles audibly at this inconvenient insolence. "Four for the price of one." Meph replies.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" asks one of the others from the left.

Turning his malignant smile that direction, Meph says, "I explain thusly." Sloughing off the burden from his shoulders, the old man lands with a groan in an insignificant heap behind him. Meph crosses the fifteen feet separating him from his prey so quickly the three see only that Meph seems to disappear & immediately reappear between the two on the left & the first speaker on the right. As Meph had moved, he had pulled from the folds of his long, black bush coat a straight-razor with a foot-long blade, & now stands between the three, the little light of the alley glinting too brightly from the polished blade.

Startled by the vision before them, the three men stand stunned & staring at the dark figure sensing imminent death. "Sheep to the slaughter,' whispers Meph. Standing with razor angled down before him, feet set wide, watching by peripheral the fools at either side, Meph intones, "Alyssai melosh kintukh." Meph, in swift, balanced movement to his right, cries from deep within his being, "Kelesohn!" The two men, standing wide-eyed & side by side, see only the flash of reflected light as the blade slashes down across their bloated bellies. Each screams in horror as their blood & entrails splatter with a sickening, slopping splash against the concrete floor of the alley. Then, before they fall, to die by the blood's flow, their final thoughts are of the nauseating stench & the fact they no longer have stomachs with which to retch.

Meph immediately turns to the third, the man who'd first spoken. Standing balanced on his right leg, left extended to the ground, left arm out & up across his chest, & the right over his head daintily holding the razor at it's hinge with blade extended out & ominous. Meph grins as a raver -- his teeth gleaming as the blade in the darkness.

"Look," babbles the third. "I didn't see shit." The man's face contorts as the heavy atmosphere overtakes him; he doubles & pukes all over his ragged shoes & trousers, caked with the filth of ages of the other world of homelessness run to vile extreme of intentional putrescence. The man, slipping, moves through the viscous bile in hopes of running to his freedom.

"Oh, no, no," says Meph lowering his blade in serpentine slowness before him & to the left as he shifts his weight to his left leg. "You cannot escape. You have been chosen. Consider yourself elect."

"Elect?" asks the man, looking dumbly up, fascinated by Meph's easy & enticing movements.

In a vehement whisper, still moving about the alley as Shiva, many armed, he calls, "Lucifer!" Shaken, but still watching Meph's dance, fluid & controlled as Scheherazahde, the man falls to his knees & pleads, "Please! I'll never tell, I swear." Meph stops his dance not two feet before the bale-eyed, beseeching waste of life & laughs in a great bellow of seething, crimson desire.

"You have much to account unto the Lord, lest He'd not want your wretched soul. Your time is now." With these words echoing about the passage, Meph sweeps his blade horizontal across the dirt caked throat of his victim. The hot blood sprays forth from the gaping gash, once grimey with grease & sweat stained hair, splattering heavily on Meph's coat. "Damn!" says Meph looking down. "I'd just bought this."

Meph quickly surveys the carnage, admiring the patterns made by the blood & viscera on the walls & floor of the alley. Stepping over the last, Meph hefts his final & crowning victim once more over his shoulder. The man seems much lighter decides Meph, still relishing the surge of inhuman adrenaline through his veins. Meph lowers the man beside the last of the three, blood still flowing & steaming in the cold night.

Standing, legs apart & arms high over his head, Meph looks to the slit of star-strewn sky above him & says, "Four reduced to none, unto the ages. Phase one completed in blood, the climax unrelenting. I now perform the final sacrament unto You. Lucifer, Light Bringer, Lord Most High -- to You!" Meph bends & places the razor in the hand of the man, now mumbling again. "Mumble your last," whispers Meph as he plunges the blade deep into the man's second chakra & draws it slowly up to the third & across to the left below the ribs, rupturing the stomach. Meph then, leaving the blade hanging from the man's side, gleaming grotesquely the red of the night's work, removes his coat, wipes the blood as best he can from his hands & his finger prints from the exposed portion of the razor. Meph drops his coat & steps to a small garbage bin. Looking intently into the trash he mumbles, "Olemekh, Ontur," & steps back. Flames explode from the bin & sparks dance in all directions. Grabbing his coat, Meph hears footsteps coming from the entrance to the alley through which he'd entered with the human refuse.

Calmly, Meph turns to the bin; the flames have now died down. The footsteps are now heard turning the corner as Meph slowly lowers the coat into the flames. He stands warming his hands, & a voice beside him says, "We've been rather busy tonight."

Meph, looking into the fire replies, "Ninety dollars. I'm not likely to recoup that here." Turning to the voice, Meph asks, "And where the hell have you been?" And to soften the accusation Meph concludes, "Up some virgin, I should hope."

IV.
VISION

Hoarsely, "Sorry I'd missed all the fun," says Faustus as the two step from the alley to the street. "Don't you ever rest?"

Not knowing by Faust's tone if this were really a question or a disguised order he says wistfully, "To much to do, me Brother. Speaking of which, have you come by any of our little 'tools of Art'?"

Walking quickly up the street, Faustus puffs, "Of course. Where the fuck are we? You know I don't know Tribeca well -- slow down, damn it!"

Not slowing, Meph calls through the echoing darkness in a theatrical tone, "Come along, young Faustus. We've time yet for a couple of pints before the bars close."

Lagging slightly behind, "Pints?! In this dim cesspool quarter of the city? We don't have that much time." Faust stops to pull his watch from his pocket. "It's already after two." When Faustus looks up from his watch, where Meph had only been halfway up the block, Faust sees only building rubble lining the sidewalk & newspaper pages, New York Dolls leaflets & the like being lifted & blown about by the wind. "Hey," he cries & quickly moves through the gloom toward the dull glimmer at the end of the block. A large rat climbs from a crack in a building's shattered foundation & looks up at Faustus. Stopping with slight electric-like sensations dancing round his spine & over his head, Faustus says sarcastically, "Lovely!" Then, "Meph! Where fuck are you?"

"Jesus, Faustus, if you're hungry, you can get some chips at Buffy's," says Meph from an alley just behind Faustus. "Got a short-cut here. Coming?" concludes Meph grabbing Faustus by the back of his coat & dragging him backward into the darkness between two buildings.

As they walk down the center of the wide passage, homeless can be discerned in the half-light lying or sitting on mouldering mattresses, flattened cardboard boxes or on the hard, greasy concrete floor. "Gotta couple hundred bucks you could spare, mister?" asks a formless voice from nowhere in the darkness. "That's all right, guys. We'll just split up what you've got." A silhouetted figure steps forth blocking Meph's & Faustus' path. The Brothers stop, look smiling toward each other, then back to the man before them.

"Only good work brings good money," says Meph, with a mocking smile.

"Bullshit," says the man. "If you want outta this alley alive, you'll give me your money now. Only the nameless & homeless know where to dump bodies."

This statement, considering the scene Meph & Faust have just left, effects the two with fitful laughter. "Perhaps," says Meph to Faustus, "we should have dropped a few of those sheets before we'd started our walk."

"No time like the present," counters Faustus pulling a sheet of LSD blotter from the pocket of his overcoat. He tears the sheet in half & hands one piece to Meph. Each tear their halves into smaller pieces & put the shreds into their mouths & begin to chew.

Confused by Meph & Faust's lack of concern, & that each has just taken what appears to be lethal doses of acid, the man says, "You guys are fucking crazy."

Faustus turns to Meph & asks, "Shall I?"

Please do," replies Meph.

Faustus steps forward toward the man & with no warning performs a blindingly fast roundhouse kick to the man's head. He stumbles & falls to the ground whimpering & bleeding from the ear. As the man attempts to get up Faustus throws an effortless drop kick, forcing the sole of his boot hard into the man's fat face, sending him flying to the wall with a broken nose, blood streaming from his nostrils.

The population of the alley, like a pack of scavenging, skittish, yet loyal wolves begin to close slowly on Meph & Faustus. Meph, with laughter showing in his eyes, lifts his hands above his head & cries, "Olimekh, Khaasender, Olementon!" His hands ignite in flame, & he begins dancing & asks in carnival-barker tone, "Ladies & gentlemen, are-we-ready?" Only the flicker of the flames licking Meph's hands respond to his question as the acid begins to make its presence known in Meph's brain. "Well, well, well," continues Meph, wheeling about to be sure he has indeed caught the attention of all. "Before the eyes of one & all, I now perform the stylish, the stupendous, the ser-in-dip-i-tous consummation of fond, felicitous flame. Behold!"

Returning to his dance, Meph begins, with exaggerated gestures, to flick flames in every direction. The balls of flame explode upon impact with every object in their silent paths.

Chaos erupts the mass of spectators, as they see flame devouring the few comforts they've managed to retain or collect. The ensuing melee, concerning themselves only with their miserable lives, trample down the alley to the street. Meph turns to Faustus, whose eyes also indicate the magic of the LSD, & in a mocking fashion in contrast to the terror of the homeless simply blows out the flames clinging in azure & gold to his hands. The two begin coughing in fits of hilarity & finally Faustus asks, "Shall we go, good comrade, we've still a little time for those pints, after all."

"Indeed," replies Meph. "But, first...." Meph steps round a burning crate, feeling quite warm now surrounded by flames reaching nearly twenty feet up the building walls & drags the unconscious man Faustus had kicked to the wall earlier, out to a relatively safe space in the center of the alley.

"Have we," mocks Faustus looking on, "suddenly developed some odd form of compassion, Brother?"

Meph neither liking the accusation, nor understanding his compulsion to pull the man away from the flames, says only "Time to go." He dumps the man to the floor of the alley & begins to move deeper into the holocaust of flame ridden passage, Faustus following, with an amused smile, behind.

Meph & Faustus step through the narrow double doors of Buffy's bar. As Meph remembered, Buffy's is rather sedate, decorated loosely like a small saloon of the Depression-era with average, semi-yuppie, neighbourhood clientele. At the far end of the bar sits the familiar face of a man each know from Downtown Beirut, Nigel Foy. Nigel, though not very anarchistic, is one of the more amusing lost souls of First Avenue whom both Meph & Faust, had, somewhat, befriended, simply because Nigel could not fully overcome his definite fearful manner, displayed as caution, round Meph.

Nigel was talking to a young, beautiful wisp of a woman, who'd looked directly into Meph's eyes when he & Faustus took up their surveying positions. "Shall we ruin Nigel's chances by joining him?" Playfully asks Faustus, clearly audible over the too quiet, contemporary folk music & chatter. "We already have," counters Meph, not taking his eyes from the woman. Nigel, following her hungry gaze, looks up to see Meph & Faustus & displays an obviously false smile.

"Go on. I've got to wash up," says Meph & walks right past Nigel & the woman to the men's room. Before stepping through the door, Meph smiles while Faustus & Nigel greet each other, exchanges a glance with the woman & then enters the men's room.

Upon his return, Meph sees Faustus & Nigel in conversation & the woman gone. Turning to Meph, Nigel asks where his coat is, "'Tis colder 'n a witches tit out there," Nigel says in mediocre Scottish brogue.

"Aye, 'tis," replies Meph in Irish accent, not bothering to point out the fallacy of witches possessing cold breasts. "Where's your friend?" asks Meph, taking the pint Faust has ordered for him.

Looking at Meph's hand, Nigel asks, "What's that red stuff on you?" Meph lifts his right hand up beside the pint in his left & says without concern, "Oh, just a little dried blood."

"Oh, sure! It looks more like you've been working with bricks or wet, red clay."

"Perhaps. Yes, that must be it," concludes Meph after emptying his pint & motioning to the bartender for another. Again Meph asks Nigel, "So, where is your friend?"

"Oh, Athena? She had to go. I've only just met her, actually."

"Athena," says Faustus contemplating his own pint. "Many throned, many-minded, many-willed daughter of Zeus."

"Well, I hardly thinks so," says Nigel.

"And I," contributes Meph, "as Michael has apparently taken little notice; hardly think her virgin."

"Quite," says Faustus, lifting his hat & slightly bowing.

"Quite," replies Meph bowing in return.

"Jesus, you two are whacked," snorts Nigel.

"As well," says Faustus, "as stoned to the gills."

"You two are tripping again," whispers Nigel, chuckling in disbelief. "It's weird how you guys seem like anyone else when you're on something. I never know till you tell me."

"Last call," whispers the bartender, leaning over the bar, as if he doesn't want to disturb the three.

"How 'bout I buy us a round, to be begun by shots of Irish, Nigel?" asks Meph.

"I think I can stand -- for the moment, that is -- for that," says Nigel.

As the bartender steps away to get the drinks & Faustus & Nigel down the remainders of their own, Meph asks, "Don't suppose you've any plans to see Athena again?"

"Well, no," says Nigel, insecurity manifesting in his voice. "I was just getting to that when you two walked in, & after I'd introduced her to Mike, here, she looked toward the men's room & said she had to go take care of something."

"And like magic," pipes Faustus, handing out the shots the bartender had just delivered, Meph handing over a fifty, "a taxi pulls up as she touches the door to the bar & whisks her from our sights. Cheers," he says & downs the whiskey.

V.
LESSON

Unavoidably, as Faustus felt "utterly exhausted" by the night's escapades, Meph leaves him & Nigel outside Buffy's to walk up to Hiro's, an all night bar-cafe near Beirut. Meph felt annoyed & confused, but had no idea why this growing frustration, manifesting now as a difficulty to comprehend why most humans -- particularly women -- not only get a great deal more sleep than he, yet incessantly complain of how little they do. Worse -- they take every opportunity to get more. And Faustus! Have they no drive? Have they no wit to set to work to fulfill even their fleeting & trivial, suburbanite dreams?

"Am I truly more than human?" asks Meph out loud, deep in his fruitless analysis, as he rounds a corner onto Mott Street. As Meph nears Canal Street, he finds a growing congestion on the street. Middle aged Chinese men & woman going to or opening their businesses, chattering in Mandarin or Cantonese, as the scents of raw fish, poultry & that of burning wood & cardboard mingle into a nauseating, miasmic, foetid, pestiferous stench. The cold of the pre-dawn hour & the black clothing either render Meph near invisible, or the people here simply have no concern that a crazy white man with no coat has come to watch the morning movements of Chinatown.

Meph stops & leans against a building between two windows & admires the work of a man outside a fish market. In spite of the cold & that the man looks as though he sleeps as little as Meph, the man stands in clothes & apron shiny from the scales of the fish he deftly trims of scale, head & tail. "It is these," says Meph to himself, "the people of the East, & those, to a slightly lesser degree, of the once East Block nations, who are truly the masters of life. And, as I do more & sleep less than others, am I then Chinese?"

Meph snorts at his stupid philosophic sophistries & begins to move again up Mott Street. Two short blocks ahead, standing in the drawing light of the coming dawn, a full head above the crowd of black hair, Meph sees her. She stands tall & erect as a dancer, as she waits for the traffic light to change that she can cross. She turns her head & idly looks down Mott Street. Her eyes come to rest on Meph &, immediately recognizing him, she throws him a sly & knowing smile.

"Athena," Meph breathes & tries, with great difficulty, to get through the newly manifested mass of people to the curb that he can cross the street to meet her on the opposite corner. As the traffic is entirely too loud, Meph doesn't bother calling her name, as she steps into the street to cross.

Athena has nearly reached the other side when Meph finally reaches the curb. He begins to run up the street, zigzagging round others who are crossing while the traffic is stilled. Athena's head disappears round the corner ahead as Meph passes between the bumpers of the waiting cars. Running along the gutter, Meph is confronted by a young Chinese man on a bicycle. The man, in Mandarin & very poor, very broken English, begins demanding passage. As there is no space between the man & the cars, or the man & the crates lining the curb, Meph emphatically cries out, "Kaiyei, kaiyei!" The man, shocked to hear this from a white man & grumbling in Mandarin, obeys & backs his bicycle enough that Meph can get round the crates. As Meph passes, the man takes him by the shirt sleeve & spits a stream of Mandarin & thickly accented obscenities in English. "Oh, fuck this," says Meph, yanking himself free & continuing, with difficulty, through the crowd, hearing the man's on-going harangue over the sound of the now moving cars & trucks on the street.

Reaching the corner of Canal Street, Meph scans the sea of low moving heads. The sun, having broken over the horizon, illuminates the street clearly, but the smoke of a trash bin fire clouds Meph's vision. He moves, rubbing one eye, than the other that he can continue looking along the street; he moves with the flow the short distance to the next corner. Meph finds few people on Elizabeth Street, yet none is she. He turns to pass through the on-coming pedestrians, paying no heed to the shoving & complaining, sleepy-eyed throng as he moves, to step onto the pavement of Canal Street & looks in all directions.

"Damn you, Lucifer. Damn, damn, damn," says Meph to himself. "You tease me with glimpses of the vision -- her shapely form, her fluid movements & her wanton smile. Damn you!" Fists clenched & adrenaline still coursing through his veins, Meph takes one more look round him knowing it leads only to failure. Dejectedly, he turns, crosses Canal & moves slowly up Elizabeth; he sorely feels the need for coffee, as the night's work's exhaustion begins to set in upon his body.

Meph sits at the counter of Hiro's, an empty plate & refilled coffee cup before him, reading a copy of Propaganda magazine. As the East Village has little morning traffic, the bar maid has no concern that Meph sits over his third cup of coffee giving no sign of departure. She moves down the counter &, as an excuse for her moving near him, the girl removes the empty plate & wipes the counter before him, her many pieces of jewelry tinkling, "Would you like more coffee?" she asks Meph.

As Meph had not yet taken a sip & remembering the girl's playful eyes when he'd ordered his sausage & home-fries, he knew she sought to feel him out; to pursue a possible liaison. Meph lowers his magazine & looks into her blue eyes. Meph draws from his cigarette as he looks her over without taking his eyes from hers. Her clingy, mid-length, dirty black dress reveals small, pert breasts, a small waist, flat stomach & small, but discernible hips. She wore over her rather pale skinny legs, sheer black tights under torn fish-net stockings. The girl had a tough, Teutonic beauty to her face -- quite a strong bone structure contrasting her lithe & brittle looking frame.

Meph smiles & says, "Whether here or your place, now or later, you choose."

"My, my. Forward, yet polite."

"Tell me your off soon."

"I'm off soon."

"Does she speak truth, or does she mock?"

"Your choice."

"I choose truth -- & you?"

"And I."

"How soon is soon?"

"You & I are not so relative," she says & leans over the counter & takes Meph's cigarette to take a drag.

"Ha! all right," says Meph, looking to the clock on the back wall & then to her through the corners of his eyes. Cocking his head back to the clock, "By that then?"

Exaggerating, as to an insistent child, "When the big hand points to the twelve." She exhales smoke & hands the cigarette back to Meph.

Slowly caressing her fingers as he takes the cigarette, "Ah, so playful of you," he says.

Enthralled & resolute, "You ain't seen nothin' yet. Prepare over your coffee. You may learn something new." She lingers a moment, the two exchanging anticipatory, wry smiles, then moves back down the counter to begin cleaning for shift change. Meph lights another cigarette from the tip of the last & returns to his magazine.

"How much do you pay for this closet?" unconcernedly asks Meph looking over lesbian romance novels on a small bookshelf under the single window in the apartment, as she sets water to boil for instant coffee in the kitchenette recess. The small room is dominated by a bulky, wood framed, unmade canopy bed with a lurid, blood red, velvet spread. Make-up, woman's magazines, curlers, lingerie, CD's, video & audio cassettes, empty, but oddly clean, Chinese & fast food containers, half read books, dresses, skirts, blouses & trousers, various sized & coloured address books are strewn everywhere. The walls, showing little evidence of solidity, are covered in a collage of photos, posters, newspaper & magazine clippings, colorful theatrical masks & Rubens & Botticelli lithographs.

"Excuse the mess," she says from across the great expanse of ten cluttered feet, as she leans against her kitchen sink drinking orange juice from a half gallon container.

"What mess?" asks Meph picking up a Hustler magazine from under some clothing on the only chair in the room, realising, but not caring, that they've exchanged no names. The sound of the kettle whistling interrupts her from replying and she pours the water over the grounds she'd put in dirty cups. She then, spilling as she walks, carries the coffee over, sits on the bed & handing a cup toward Meph, she says, "I like it strong."

Meph drops the magazine to the floor, takes both cups & puts them on the window sill. He sits next to her & begins running his finger nail up her thigh, forcing her dress as his finger climbs. "You're not talking about coffee," he says as he playfully runs the tip of his tongue up her neck to her ear lobe.

"Mmm," she responds stroking the growing bulge in Meph's trousers, her bracelet tinkling again. "Has it been a while, or are you always immediately responsive?" Instead of speaking, Meph gently pushes her down on the bed & kisses her deeply as his fingers, now all the way up, tease her vagina through her tights.

Breaking from his fevered lips, she says, "I can't stand it." She stands & reaches up under her dress to unhook her garter-belt & quickly pulls garter-belt, stockings & tights down & off. Leaving her dress on, she kneels before Meph & removes his boots. Then, in a long, slow caress, smiling intently, she moves her hands up Meph's legs, lingering over his straining bulge & painfully, slowly undoes his belt & unzips his jeans. Reaching up on either side & taking hold of Meph's trousers & shorts, the girl roughly yanks them off him.

"Oh, yeah," the girl breathes looking down & savoring the vision of Meph's hardened penis. Meph lies back on the velvet spread, knocking things off to land thudding on the bare concrete surrounding the bed. "It's beautiful," she exclaims, as she begins caressing it with her hands. "I've never seen a shaven dick & balls before."

Enjoying the feel of the girl's calloused fingers, Meph says nothing. She then lowers her tongue to the base of Meph's penis, runs her tongue up & engulfs it. She begins coaxing him to turn on the bed, penis in her mouth, that she can kneel over him. The girl, after getting positioned, then lifts her head & crawls up Meph's body & taking aim, smiling down into his eyes, she lowers herself slowly down, enveloping Meph's penis with the warm, wet folds of her pussy.

As she eases slowly up & down on the shaft, Meph reaches up & cups her breasts through her dress. He slowly moves his hands down her as they move. She removes Meph's hands from the dress & pulls it in one movement over head & throws it across the room to disappear among the clutter. As they look at each other, she stops moving just long enough to allow Meph to remove his shirt. Once gone, she continues to grind while Meph's hands move to caress the small, round cheeks of her ass. The sensations of her vagina's touch force Meph to close his eyes to enjoy.

As Meph lay, thinking only of the warmth of the woman on top of him, his mind suddenly attacks him with visions of Athena. As Meph shakes his head & snaps open his eyes, he feel his penis softening. The girl, noting the change, shifts her position, leaning lower upon Meph to produce more angle, begins to buck on the deflating dick with hard downward & easy upward strokes. Meph takes the girl's left nipple in his mouth in hopes of hardening in the act, but, as he still looks at this girl's flesh & drawing his forces to concentrate on her, he cannot dispel the vision of Athena, or the feeling that he should not be in this apartment with this girl.

Giving up on the now flaccid penis, the girl climbs off Meph & lies close beside him. They kiss & she says, "You must be over-tired -- you look it. When did you last sleep?"

Meph laughs & says, "Over-tired. Yes. That must be it. It's been what...a few days, now?"

"A few days? No wonder it won't stay up! It's OK, though, I have some experience with this. Which is why I have more sex with woman, or rather, more with myself, than I do with men. Don't worry, though, I'm tired too. We'll sleep a little & try again later. OK?" But before Meph can form a reply, he is asleep.

VI.
DETERIORATION

"Zarathustra, Zosimos, Zoroaster," Meph thinks he hears & opens his eyes. He looks up to see a stranger with blond hair & blue eyes wearing a stretched out & torn charcoal coloured sweater & black leggings sitting next to him on a bed in a very messy, unfamiliar small room. "Hi," says the woman, as the memory of the past few nights thunders into consciousness.

"Hi," replies Meph groggily. "What time is it?"

"Nine-thirty. Get dressed. I have to go to work soon." Meph, painfully, moves from the bed to dress. The girl, suddenly appears beside him & he thinks how much older she now looks. She extends a scrap of folded paper & asks, "Call me?" Meph smiles &, picking up his shirt, slips the paper into the pocket.

"May I use the toilet?"

Smiling slightly, she says, "Of course." Meph picks up his shoulder bag left, strangely, he thinks, exactly as & where he'd put it that morning. Passing the girl, who stands with her right arm across her chest & left turned up chewing a fingernail. He looks, standing motionless, into her eyes. She looks back at him in the insecure silence. Not knowing if her attitude is that of wanting him out of her life or not wanting him ever to leave, Meph leans over & kisses her deciding it more the former than the latter & moves to the bathroom.

Stepping in, Meph finds, as in the other room, clutter everywhere; make-up, skin lotion, skin toner, soap, shampoo & clothing lay in heaps on every flat surface but the toilet seat. Meph laughs to himself, lowers the lid & puts his bag down. Looking into the dirty mirror, Meph sees the blurred image of his tired face. "Is this what it's all about?" thinks Meph. "Impotence in a stranger's apartment. Christ, what a joke," laughs Meph again at the silliness of it all.

Meph opens his bag & removes the toothbrush & paste he'd got into the habit of carrying & brushes his teeth. After drying his face on a stiff, dry cloth on the counter, he stands to find the girl in the doorway with a dirty glass of orange juice & a cigarette. She hands Meph the glass & takes up her nail biting position again. Meph sips at the glass as they stand staring at each other through the smoke rising between them. Meph takes the cigarette & takes a drag. As he exhales, the girl turns without a word & returns to the other room.

Grabbing his things & dropping the cigarette into the toilet, Meph steps back into the room to find the girl standing at the window, still with her fingers at her teeth. Not finding any room in the sink overflowed with dirty dishes, he leaves the half filled glass of orange juice on top of an old one-cup automatic drip coffee maker & moves to the bed to put on his boots. Tying the laces, Meph looks at her profile as she continues staring out at the blackness behind her building. Without lowering her fingers from her lips she says, "My name is Grace."

Pulling on his shirt, Meph says light-heartedly, "Very pleased to meet you, Grace. My name is John."

"I really meant it," says Grace turning from the window to face him. "I do want you to call -- you can look at my phone & see the number matches what I wrote on the paper."

"I believe you, Grace."

"Promise you'll call," she demands, both knowing he'll lie to her.

"Tomorrow."

Meph steps out of the small foyer of Grace's building onto a dimly lit, East Village street. Assuming, by the burned out cars & heaps of trash scattered from burned or simply vacant, crumbling buildings from one side of the street to the other, that he must be somewhere in Alphabet City. Hoping that he stands on the south side of a cross street, Meph turns left & makes his way among the piles of rubble & trash the city won't bother removing till some unscrupulous, uncaring developer turns character into plastic. The rats, scurrying from one pile to another, stop to watch Meph as he passes.

Stopping at the corner, assured of where he is by the street sign above his head reading East 3rd & Avenue B, Meph lights a cigarette & idly looks round thinking of Athena. "How?" he asks himself. "How can one woman with whom I've not even spoken, have such power over me?" Turning right, Meph decides to look for Faustus & moves up the avenue toward Tompkins Square. Plotting his search, Meph decides, as he's on Avenue B, to start with Vasack's, then over to the Wah-Wah, the Pyramid, & finally Beirut & the Idiot.

Stepping into Vasac's, Meph is greeted by the eyes of too many rednecks -- Vasack's being an enigma of the scenes, the crowds change from hour to hour. Rednecks one hour, then yuppies or skin-heads the next. There's always a mix, but a definite majority reigns supreme as each hour passes.

Meph moves on & finds neither Faustus nor familiar face at the Wah-Wah or the Pyramid, although this being drag night, which means little, as transvestites are seen at the Pyramid most nights, a rather attractive & make-up capable TV tries to persuade Meph to buy her a drink by fawning over his "lovely long hair." Meph momentarily flashes on the though of whether he could manage under her delusion, but instead, just kisses her on the cheek & turns to leave to the sound of male/female cat-calls.

Before turning up First Avenue, Meph grabs a falafel from a vendor on St. Marks & heads off to Beirut. Stepping through the door, he is, as each time, immediately assaulted by the feeling his last acid trip has not ended. The walls of Downtown Beirut are painted flat black & are, along with a strip of mirror lining the walls behind & across from the bar, strewn with phosphorescent graffiti. Slogans as "My bent life," "PIL," & "Pogues" stand bright in the dim light & the Christmas tree lights strung behind the bar, being reflected back & forth in the mirrors & the hard core music blaring from the juke-box in the back corner of the small narrow bar produce that, though artificial, effect on the senses.

As the crowd is thin, Meph finds Faustus at the front of the bar against the wall talking with a woman dressed rather conservatively. Meph has never seen her, as she turns in profile to drink from her beer, before -- an all too familiar scene at Beirut; aside from the regulars, there are often quite a lot of trashy Long Island & Uptown creeps just slumming.

The bar maid, having seen Meph come in, has come down the bar, sadly, with a Heineken -- the only thing palatable or not watered down at Beirut -- for him. "Wish I had something better," she says -- as so often -- to Meph when he steps up to the bar.

"Perhaps one night you will," quips Meph in her ear, each leaning over the bar to be heard over the music. Meph concludes with, "And perhaps one night you'll show me the rest of your web," referring to the spider web tattoo which can be seen either side of the wide strap of her cut sweatshirt.

"Perhaps I'll even show you the spider," she says with a smile & moves to the other end of the bar to take another order. Meph puts some cash on the bar &, taking his falafel & beer round the woman with whom Faustus talks, he sits near them on the wide window sill, placing his feet under him cross-legged on the radiator.

"Hey," says Faustus, as Meph draws from his beer. "Hey," he replies & removes the falafel from it's bag.

"I guess you two know each other?" asks Faustus' new friend.

"Yes," says Meph without looking at her. Then looking up at Faustus, "Seen Liam B. tonight?"

"Of course. He'll be back. Looking for some candy?" asks Faustus.

"Who's Liam Bea?" asks the girl.

Attempting some vague semblance of manners, Meph swallows a bite of falafel & says, "A friend." Reaching again for his beer, he says to Faustus, "Wanna play?"

"Bad night?"

"Something like that," responds Meph from under his brow.

Sitting quietly, thinking over the exchange, the girl looks up & asks Meph, "You're planning to buy some grass? Why wait for this Liam guy when you can get it on the corner? There're some guys selling it. He offered me some when I came over."

Meph & Faustus exchange amused glances. As Meph steps round the girl to get another beer, Faustus explains to her that what is being sold on the corner isn't even drugs, let alone grass, & that when Meph is in these moods, he has to move more deeply into them, turning a simple mild sadness into a deep, black morass of depression. "Otherwise he won't be able to exercise it for weeks. He needs downs -- the stronger the better -- & a sofa. It's just his way," Meph hears Faustus say.

"And you're going to do this with him?" asks the girl accusingly.

"No. I prefer hallucinogens. I don't mess with downers; too depressing. John was actually asking if I wanted to join him in a buy, each of us buying what we want, then we separate."

As Meph turns back from the bar with his beer, he hears the metal door of the bar slam loudly over the sound from the juke-box. In walks Liam B. with his long, braided hair & red-tinted glasses smiling, as a typical salesman, in recognition of two of his customers. "Johnny," he says extending a fist for his favoured greeting of tapping his to the fist of his mark. "Haven't seen you in a while. How the hell are you?" A good salesman knows his customers on sight & what each one buys & when. Liam hopes Meph is sad tonight.

"As you'd expect. Can you set me up?" asks Meph.

"That's what I like about you, Johnny, straight to business. Your fields are a bit dry lately; though I could get a little Morph, if you'd like to mix sensations. But I don't expect you would."

"You know I don't think much of Morphine, Liam. What else?"

"The best I can get on short notice are 'ludes, man. But knowing your tastes, you'll have to buy quite a lot, won't you?"

"Yeah," says Meph & takes a drink of beer. "When?"

Liam steps to the bar to order a beer & says without looking at Meph, "Well, that might take a while. I suppose we could meet later, say around eight in the morning?"

"Look, Liam," says Meph taking the stool between Liam & the girl. "Don't yank me -- I'm no powder freak. Either we go get these 'ludes, or you make no sale. What do you say?"

Meph could not understand Liam's hesitation. Worse, why, when Liam wouldn't handle heroin -- "Don't touch no powders," he'd say -- was he suggesting the scenario of a heroin buy: the offer of a later meet, to which the dealer is habitually late, making the addict wait indefinitely over coffee tasting only of sugar & eating as many pastries as his or her stomach can manage. "Okay, okay," says Liam. "Let me make a call."

"What's with Liam?" asks Faustus as he & Meph wait in the alley off East 66th Street. The girl, having ducked out on moral grounds, had remained at Beirut to no one's disappointment & Faustus dad scored some common blotter & had extracted the promise of Ecstasy, mushrooms & peyote, at some obscure future date, from Liam in the cab they'd taken Uptown. Meph & Faustus wait for Liam to return with the 'ludes.

Exhaling from his cigarette, "Weird, isn't it?" replies Meph looking in the direction of the silhouette which is Faustus.

"Christ, he's always cautious, but he really seems nervous tonight," says Faustus.

"Thinking what I am?"

Meph & Faustus each step at the same moment toward the front of the alley. Suddenly police officers, flashlights casting beams in all directions, appear at the entrance & footsteps are heard coming from behind. Lights explode on the faces of Meph & Faustus. "Gimme some ID," says a voice from before the two.

VII
MASK

Calmly, Meph & Faustus wait for the cops to take up their positions round them. Faustus, slowly lifting his right hand in the air & the left to the lapel of his jacket, says "I believe you gentlemen look for these." As Faustus slowly opens his jacket, the policemen ready their hands on their guns. From the breast pocket Faustus produces a handful of blotter sheets & holds them, Captain America in a series facing the cops, before him. As one of the cops moves toward Faustus to take the acid, Faustus raises his left index finger & gestures "no-no" to the cop. Turning slightly to his left, he asks Meph, "Would you do the honours?"

"Naturally," he replies. In the manner of a stage magician, Meph mimes the movements indicating, "Nothing up my sleeves...," & in exaggerated movement, flips his right hand in the direction of the sheets Faustus extends. As Faustus lets go of the acid, the sheets burst into flame & glide as leaves to the ground, reduced to smoldering ash. Bowing slightly, Faustus says to Meph, "Thanks, much."

Meph, also bowing, replies, "A pleasure."

The cops stand gaping at each other, wondering how Meph & Faustus have done this, then laughter starts with one, then all begin laughing, while Meph & Faustus stand, arms crossed over their chests with mocking expressions on their faces.

One of the cops stops laughing, yet still smiling, says, "Look, the drugs were only an excuse, guys."

"Don't tell me," offers Meph. "You've remembered my birthday!" Turning to Faustus again, he says, "And you said they didn't care."

"How silly of me," says Faustus in reply. Then, extending a hand, "Many happy returns."

Shaking Faustus' hand, "Thank you so, Brother." Turning back to the cops, "Well gentlemen," as Meph & Faustus attempt to move round the team of officers, "It's been a lovely affair, but we truly must be off. Thank you for coming. Good night all."

"Right," says the team's spokesman, blocking their escape. "You're under arrest. We know all about that scam you pulled in California. And there's still the question of what happened at St. Patrick's which left the high altar in ashes."

Faustus turns to Meph, "He's talking about that night with Carolyn, you know."

"Yes," reminisces Meph with a smile. "She truly is a wicked one."

"So hot, you two burn the altar to a crisp!"

"She'd wanted me," Meph says with a smile, "to screw her on the cross -- something about Jesus' face up her ass -- but they've fucking padlocked it to the wall like some motel television set. Imagine that -- Jesus in chains."

"Bound & beautiful." The two double over in hysterics, as the cops stand round wondering why they're still in the alley & not back at the precinct house booking these comedians. As the laughter dies out, the spokesman steps forward & begins his Miranda Rights monologue. Meph & Faustus, still snickering, bow their heads & extend their hands before them in parody of the condemned man, awaiting the handcuffs.

Wandering through the Village, Meph drifts in & out of concentration. Having been booked, questioned & left in a cell over night did not help his black mood -- & his silly replies to the sillier questions the cop had asked him, had simply tired him out. Either Satan would get him & Faustus off, or they would need some damn powerful magic to confuse the issues. "Well," decides Meph. "At least the court date's after the Evocation."

As Meph nears the corner of 6th Street & First Avenue, he looks up to see an old, battered, dark blue Rambler with scarlet, cap-less wheels, coughing out a steady stream of blue-white exhaust. Normally, Meph would pay little attention to another rather standard sight in the city, but he realised the driver's horn honking was to get his attention. Looking to the face of the driver, Meph sees a garish Mardi Gras skull staring at him. Being that New York City as a whole -- & Greenwich Village in particular -- is the psyche ward of Bellevue Hospital, this sight too is not wholly out of the ordinary, & having no effect upon Meph, he continues walking toward the corner with no change in his stride.

Meph stops some five feet from the car awaiting the inevitable life rending bullet to shatter his late confusion of all he was doing in his life. But, instead of the driver producing a gun, to leave Meph another New York drive-by statistic, a metallic, muffled laughter comes from the mask, & the driver, putting a gloved hand on the steering wheel, floors the accelerator to chug, smoke billowing behind him, up the street.

"Typical," says Meph looking round from the disappearing car to the people on the street. "No dick, no jail & no blood. Satan's pet, my ass,&" says Meph, then laughs over the connotations of this statement.

Meph continues up the avenue; he's decided he must replace his coat from the night in the alley, as he sees no reason to sleep; his dreams would only continue the torment he's experiencing while awake. Before turning a corner, Meph sees the Rambler cruise slowly past, the driver looking directly at him. Meph smiles & turns the corner.

In a shop, Meph fingers the bush coats, looking for one his size. Only two sales people, near the cash register, occupy the shop with Meph -- they babble of current events.

"Well, after the fire department puts out the fire," says one, "They found these four old men all cut up on another alley a few blocks away."

"Jesus, this city," responds the other. "Do the cops really think they're connected? I mean, come on. A slasher in one alley & a malicious pyro in another. Sounds pretty stupid to me."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. But they say those guys were cut up just before those two guys burned down that homeless city."

"Coincidence. Or even a screw up on the time of death."

Meph, concerned little with this conversation, pulls a coat from the rack to try it on. As he slips an arm through a sleeve, he sees out the large display window that the Rambler is very slowly passing outside, & the driver, the smile of the skull mask appearing as a ghastly parody of a raver, is looking at him. Meph watches expressionlessly, as he slips his other arm into the coat & wonders what reason this wacko could possibly have to stalk him this way, as such could only be a coincidence of the nature of the two scenes with the homeless the other night.

Exhaustion overtaking Meph, he pays for the coat & leaves. He decides it time for coffee & food, & turns back the direction he'd come to go to Teresa's, a Polish restaurant on First Avenue. As Meph turns the corner onto First, he hears, barley audible over the sounds of the early evening traffic, from across the street, "John. John!" He steps & turns to see Margaret waving frantically on the opposite corner. Meph steps to the curb to wait for the traffic to stop that he can cross. Margaret though, decides to dodge the on-coming cabs to get to Meph. Then, recognizing the sound from earlier, Meph hears the chug of the Rambler. "Margaret!" cries Meph & steps off the curb to the insistent protest of a car horn & looking, Meph sees no passage through the line of speeding cars in the lane before him.

Powerless in the tight grip of Fate, Meph watches what he knows is coming with an expression of resentment on his face, as the Rambler bears down on Margaret & hits her. Her body, oddly stiffened, flies first overhead into the Rambler's windshield, her head exploding into a thousand fragments of flesh & bone -- blood splashing over the whole of the windshield & car top. Then, the body tumbling grotesquely through the air, & lands rolling on the uptown sidewalk, splattering the running pedestrians with the remainder of Margaret's streaming blood.

Meph, dumbstruck, stands in the gutter looking at the crumpled body of a woman he'd once loved, noting the sound of the Rambler's tires screeching to a halt up the avenue, & that of the car chugging back to the corner. The driver stops by Meph, two lanes away in the now empty street. Turning his enraged gaze to the driver; Meph looks into the sunken, blood-shot eyes needing the warrior's need of blood for blood. The driver slowly pulls away, the tinny, muffled laughter trailing behind him as he goes.

VIII.
HARLEQUIN

Tense & morose, Meph sits in the dark of the far end of the bar at Beirut fingering an empty shot glass, waiting on another. The bartender, although not knowing Meph well, as Meph had rarely been in Beirut before eleven o'clock, had asked if anything was wrong, as he set Meph's third shot before him. The door slams then, & Meph looks up to the bartender & says "I'll be fine -- my counselor's just arrived."

"It's a good thing the Lord's given us all this money," says Faustus sitting on the stool next to Meph. "Else I couldn't be at your beck & call, Master." Meph turns a sharp look at Faustus. "Sorry, Meph. Better let me get a drink first."

Faustus orders a Heineken & after he pays & the bartender has moved to the other end of the bar, Meph downs his shot & says, "Margaret's dead."

Meph offers a cigarette to Faustus, takes one for himself, lights both. "I think," whispers Meph, "Satan."

"Right," replies Faustus. "Why should Satan care who we do or do not screw, so long as we stay on schedule?"

"Satan, because my attachment to Margaret could, conceivably, distract me from the Work."

"Point. And has, or rather, had she?"

"Maybe," says Meph, looking out the window at the other end of the bar, exhaling smoke.

"You don't sound convinced."

"I'm not."

"Someone else?" asks Faustus, lifting his bottle again.

"Remote though the possibility is, there is one other who might want Margaret out of my life."

Faustus sits staring now at the ashtray between them. Flicking ash from his cigarette, he asks, "Who, save me, knows you two were seeing each other? Or do you suspect me?"

"Of course not. Look, I was being dogged by some wacko wearing a skull mask in a Rambler all over the Village after the cops let us go. This character knew where to find me on each street even after the time it had taken him -- or her -- to circle the blocks. Then comes Margaret's voice from across First Avenue. As she steps onto the avenue to cross through the traffic to me, I hear the Rambler's engine. After the Rambler scatters her brains all over the car & the street, this jackass backs up, stares at me, then pulls away laughing. What would you make of this?"

Faustus realizes both the premeditated nature of the crime & the fact that magic had had to be used on many levels for this act to succeed. His mind reeling at the implications. Faustus whispers incredulously, "Some one's working against us?"

"Not against us, Faustus. But perhaps one who seeks more than the ultimate Reign of Our Lord."

"Okay," says Faustus, putting out his cigarette & taking another from Meph's packet on the bar between them. "You imply a Practitioner -- a female Practitioner, at that -- is also involved in the Work, but she also wants you; so she eliminates both your distraction in the Work & her adversary in love's desire." Faustus pauses to light his cigarette while Meph orders a beer from the hovering bartender.

After the bartender takes Meph's money, he leaves to take orders from some new, unknown slumming yuppie arrivals & Meph lights a cigarette for himself. Faustus continues. "Wait. As the witches & Thelemites we know believe Satan as big a joke as Jesus or Jehovah, & the Chaos Magick Practitioners we've met are all male, who the fuck are you talking about?"

Meph looks disdainfully into Faustus' eyes. "Think back, Brother mine. The many-throned, many-minded & many-wiled."

Faustus stops the bottle he was moving to his lips in mid-sweep & smiles, "You've had encounters with the non-virgin!"

"Not precisely," says Meph & takes a drink from his own bottle. "But I've seen her. She's teasing me now, but she wills to have me."

"Cool," says Faustus. "If she's been Chosen of Satan, you may finally have a woman with whom you can freely communicate. But this brings us back to your first theory."

"Yes. Satan certainly is pulling a lot of strings, which implies he swells in power."

"A toast," says Faustus, lifting his beer toward Meph. "To the Light of Lucifer."

"Yeah. Cheers," replies Meph knocking his beer against Faustus'.

In the corner of their eyes, Meph & Faustus see white flashes of light outside the bar through the now unobscured view out the window. They turn as one to see a tall, light haired woman in a long, dark coloured, flowing wool dress with broad sword dancing in circles on the sidewalk before Beirut's window. She stops her intricate kicking & turning to face the bar, breathing heavily through her excited smile, sword extended flat directly at Meph.

"Why," says Faustus, "if it isn't Athena!"

Realising she now has Meph's full attention, she sheaths her sword &, cocking a finger, she indicates through the window that she wants Meph to follow & moves south down First Avenue out of sight.

Without a word, Meph throws his cigarette in the ashtray & runs out of the bar to see past the accumulated spectators, Athena standing at the corner of 9th Street, with obvious excitement in her eyes, waiting. Once seen, she raises her eyebrows, seen clearly under the corner street lamp, & turns running down the street toward Tompkins Square.

With similar difficulty to the previous morning's chase, Meph forces his way through the amused crowd on the walk to follow Athena. Out of breath, Meph stands on the corner previously occupied by the illusive, alluding woman seeing only a few people walking in the shadows on the sidewalks either side of the street; Meph not hearing Faustus' calls from outside the bar behind him.

Barley discernible in the darkness of the distant park at the end of the block, Meph notices the white flashes of Athena's sword, as she has taken up again her dance. Meph runs frantically down the street toward the flashes. As he nears the place where he sees the flashes, he calls, "Athena!"

Meph sees, some distance yet away, Athena has stopped dancing & stands in an unkempt dirt expanse, strewn with rocks, with her sword held high & straight overhead. Deciding to hurdle, instead of taking the time to go round, a line of benches along the path Meph runs, he takes his final leaping step. Meph realists too late that his exhaustion, complicated by the alcohol, has not been compensated by his excitement, & feels his trailing foot catch on the top of the bench, sending him sprawling, head first to the rocky surface beyond. Feeling like an ass, Meph slams down, his head racked with pain, & tumbles unconscious over the ground.

IX.
RESTORATION

Yielding to the sound of his name being called as from a great distance, pain thundering with each beat of his heart through his head, Meph slowly opens his eyes to see Faustus leaning over him in the dark.

Sitting up with a start, Meph calls, "Athena!" Meph regrets his too quick movement, as he is hit with a sharp jolt of pain. "Oh, shit," he moans & lays back to the hard ground.

Taking a piece of discarded paper from the ground nearby, Faustus puts it up against the gash on Meph's forehead & sits back saying, "You're bleeding." After a pause, Faustus says wistfully, "Ah, the things we do for love."

"Where is she?" asks Meph quietly & asks if Faustus brought the cigarettes.

Faustus lights one, & handing it to Meph says, "She wasn't here when I found you. It's been about an hour since you'd left Beirut." "Damn it," says Meph, this time slowly sitting up holding the near worthless piece of paper to his forehead with one hand & raising the cigarette Faustus had given him to his lips with the other.

"We've got to get that blood off your face," says Faustus lighting another cigarette for himself. "Got the strength to walk over to the Wha-Wha?"

"I will," Meph replies through the exhaled smoke. "This woman's driving me up the wall, man."

"And I don't think you've slept in days. Perhaps a short Magical Retirement's in order."

"You're right. Fuck the Wha-Wha. Let's get a cab -- I'm going home."

Meph falls, upon entering his bedroom, into his bed without bothering to wash the now dried blood from his hair & face, & slips immediately into sleep.

"It's not as easy as that," Meph hears, He sits up in bed & raises his left hand to his forehead. There is no encrusted blood, no scab, no bruise.

Another voice from outside his room replies, "But we certainly can refer his actions in the girl's apartment to Freud: His need to assert his childish sense of manhood; his mind on one woman while involved in the act with another; the inevitable loss of erection, symbolizing a subconscious realisation of the boy's inability to function in a man's world -- classic. Classic!"

"But his reaction," says the first voice, as Meph slips from the bed forgetting that he no longer has any sign of wound on his head & puts on a pair of jeans. "His reaction, comical, perhaps, had, to no small degree, the elements, truly, of the man."

"Hm, responds the second voice.

Meph opens his bedroom door &, confused, looks back into the room. There are no doors &, he notices but doesn't particularly care, that where there should be two windows in the wall behind him, he sees only wall. Turning back to the doorway, Meph notes that the pseudo-psychologists' voices have gone & are now replaced by bird-song & that of wind blowing high above through the tops of the thickly grown pine trees before him. Missing the forests of the Sierras of his childhood since having to move at thirteen, Meph eagerly crosses the threshold to re-enter the one aspect of Nature forever willing to receive him.

As Meph crosses the small meadow, the grass & plants heavy with late morning dew, to immerse himself in the cool darkness of the trees ahead, he finds his jeans replaced my a hooded, thick, wool, foot-length grey cloak, The scents of the soil & trees entice him & draw him deeper & deeper into the forest. Meph senses that his somehow knows exactly where his is going, & as libation, he drinks deeply of the forest giving him a joy, a rapture of drunkenness as the feeling, long lost, of that to which we refer as "home" envelopes him.

Coming to a small, raised pool of crystal clear water fed by a trickling spring jutting from the low lying rise across from him, Meph walks along the edge of the pool widdershins to take up his asana at the foot of the rise overlooking the pool.

"Yo, dude. Wake up," says Faustus from somewhere. Groaning to himself -- the pain in his head, no longer throbbing, has become a constant, dull presence. Meph opens his eyes to see Faustus, drawing from a water-pipe, sitting bright-eyed on the food of the bed looking like some oddly familiar depiction of an emaciated, laughing Boddhisattva.

"How long?" asks Meph, referring to the time he's bee unconscious, & takes the pipe Faustus offers.

"Only," exhaling smoke heavily, "a couple of days."

Meph sits up & takes a long hard hit from the pipe & hands it back to Faustus. He reaches up to find instead of dried blood, his head cleaned & a bandage over a large bruised area. Looking up to Faustus, "You?"

"Of course," Faustus replies, & adds, "I owed you for that time Mongo & I'd danced with the bouncers at the World. Besides, you looked so fucking ugly when I'd gotten in, I had to do something between pulse checks -- just to be sure you weren't yet dead."

"Thanks," says Meph, not sure whether his tone conveyed gratitude or sarcasm, & not really caring which.

Breaking the silence which had ensued in the room after Meph's scrambling with a cigarette & lighting it, Faustus asks, "Did you go to the pool?"

"Mm-hm," says Meph looking at the end of his cigarette, "I didn't know I could get there without willing it."

"You've always told me you cling to the forest as you do a woman."

"And forever find them not only one, but also the illusive, the unattainable, the unpossessible."

"Yeah. Like Death."

"Quite."

"Quite."

X.
HEAVEN/HELL

Kinked, but feeling immensely better, only feeling a small pressure where the bruise lay, the gash barley noticeable on his forehead, he still decided to sit on a bench, watching the late afternoon of Washington Square Park progress for a while. He sat listening to two rather scruffy guitarists improvise an acoustic cover of Bowie?s "Kingdom Com". Suddenly, a voice beside him asks, "Surprised to see me?" Meph turns &, for an instant, believes he looks into a mirror, but realising at whom he looks, he says, looking out toward the people surrounding the empty & dry fountain in the center of the park -- once graveyard, "Wondered when you'd finally show yourself -- to me that is."

"It was you who?d sent me forth to draw experiences you could not."

"Forgive me," says Meph.

"We're all forgiven," the Double replies in exact Who tone from the TOMMY soundtrack.

"So," begins Meph. "What brings you now?"

"Things you should know, of course."

"But this would be the first time you communicate them in person -- so to speak."

"You choose your words so beautifully."

"Just speak, or be gone. I'm none too pleased with the idiots stopping me in the street or on the train to continue some inane conversation, mistaking me for you."

"That's hardly my fault," replies Meph's doppelganger, playfully. Meph grows weary of the pointlessness of this & takes a moment to light a cigarette.

"You won't even offer me a cigarette?" pouts the Other.

"You can hardly smoke one of these in my presence," replies Meph looking again to the fountain & leaning his elbows against his knees.

"True. Well, I have some of my own. Don't fret."

"Get on with it, please." Meph did not feel as frustrated as he sounded. To the contrary, having his Other so near felt good, as the experiences of the Other, as by osmosis, floods Meph's psyche.

"It's difficult, you know," says the Double, smiling back at the faces of passers-by assuming they look at twins. "There never are words for such. But I can say that you're about to enter another phase -- so to speak," mocks the Other.

"Of the Work?" asks Meph, ignoring the mimic.

"Yes, but not precisely the one to which you refer."

"What Work, then?"

"Which would you suspect?"

"I see. And how does this manifest?"

"Oh," chuckles the Other. "It already has."

Meph throws his cigarette to the walkway &, sitting up says, "First you tell me I'm about to enter a new phase, then you tell me it's already begun. Talk straight, damn it!"

"Silly boy," responds the Other. "But I do talk straight. Go now, wander. Kill a few hours. When you've finally tired of your wandering, you'll find yourself before the door." Clapping his hands, the Other disappears, leaving his words & the image of his parting, playful smile ringing through Meph's head.

At about half past two in the morning, annoyed that he has found not the slightest sign to indicate anything the Other had told him, Meph, in frustration steps off the north side of Bleeker Street to enter a bar a few steps below street level. Meph had only been to the Peculier Pub long months -- years? -- ago after having seen some now forgotten film across the street at the Bleeker Street Cinema, but in spite of the comforting darkness & the fact the only men, save the owner, working there stayed mostly in the kitchen, he'd not felt the desire to return.

As he stepped through the door, he was immediately assaulted by the energy of the sexually pent customers & the juke box blaring Zeppelin's "Trampled Under Food". Meph, invigorated, steps past the tables either side & inside the door to the bar. Taking a stool along the rear of the bar, running at a cross angle to the rest of it, at the waitress station, he looks through the smoke emanating from an incense burner under the television set, into the eyes of a Chinese woman sitting on a stool behind the bar. "Hello," she says to Meph.

"Hello," replies Meph just over the music taking out his cigarettes.

"You wanna beer?" asks the woman.

"Sure," says Meph looking down the taps. "What imports have you?"

The woman smiles, gets up from her stool & reaches under the bar to produce a large sheet of paper with rather small print. "More than two hundred," she says still smiling laying the beer list before Meph on the bar. Meph doesn't remember this from his previous visit & decides he must have been high at the time. Laughing to himself, he lights his cigarette & leans over to read the list.

Meph looks up & asks the woman for a bottle of Harp -- chosen simply out of memory of Merlin having been a harper. The woman returns & sets the beer down. Now looking down at the bar, she steps back & takes her perch on her stool. Finally, she looks up & says gravely, "You know Tao."

Meph draws from his cigarette & laughs, to himself, that he won't appear impertinent or impolite, asks simply, "But who can truly know Tao?"

Then, sweeping in from the opening, to the left, of the bar, comes, now with short hair, the radiant face & shining eyes of Athena. Meph's smile widens with obvious joy, as she says, "So, you've finally found me."

XI.
IT

Livid with intent, Meph follows Athena through the door of her E 5th Street apartment to find it rather larger than any he's yet seen in the Village. A kitchen, two bedrooms, bath & sitting room, whereas the others were either studios or one bedroom apartments, yet each felt to him as oppressive as the interiors described in Well's 1984. Meph could not understand why so many in New York City would pay so much for so fucking little when more for less, in less "cool" neighbourhoods was readily available.

After the metal bar of the police lock was slid into place locking the door, Athena turns & wraps her arms round Meph's neck. The two begin to sway to a music their own, staring into each other's eyes. Athena brushes Meph's lips with hers & Meph, wrapping his arms more tightly round her waist, draws her lithe form to him, then, swiftly, he kisses her heatedly. As their breathing begins to flow heavily through their nostrils, Athena slips her hands behind her to remove Meph's from round her & begins backing away, lips still locked, from Meph. Leaning into the lingering kiss, Athena now breaks it, twines her fingers with Meph's & playfully, looking again into his eyes asks, "Wine?"

"You intoxicate me," says Meph moving toward her.

Athena reaches up with her right hand & puts her index finger against Meph's lips. Exaggerating the effect, Meph contorts his face wrapping his lips round each side of the vertical finger. Athena smiles up into Meph's eyes & this time quietly orders, "Wine."

Conceding as they turn -- Athena to the kitchen & Meph to sitting room -- Meph echoes, "Wine." Noticing, as he turns, that the apartment, though definitely loved in for some years by Athena, that it is wonderfully clean. He hands his coat on a wooden coat rack & drops his bag at its foot. Stepping into the sitting room, Meph sees first a computer displaying what appears at a glance to be a biorhythm, sitting on a desk with opened books on other opened books & papers lying in stacks of varying thickness. What had held Meph's attention, & to which he now crossed, what a large bookcase lining most of the far wall. As he approached, he noted numerous books on witchcraft & the occult; more than one long shelf devoted to Aleister Crowley. Approving, Meph finds the complete absence of A.E. Waite. On the rest of the shelves were subjects of science, biochemistry -- to astrophysics; psychology; philosophy; religion; ten books concerning the Arthurian legend; theater; film; history; myth & law. The fiction, numerous books unfamiliar to Meph, included Kafka, Baudelaire, Poe, Robert Nye, Salmon Rushdie, Alasdair Gray, Michael J. Cullen, Philip K. Dick & William Gibson.

Meph now turns smiling at his finding of -- or being found by -- this woman, to look over the room. There was little else: a sofa under the window with coffee & end tables arrayed with differing genre magazines, a stereo next to the desk opposite the bookcase, a television & VCR, telephone & answering machine on an antique sideboard along the kitchen wall. The Asian rug beneath his feet blended well with the room.

Athena enters the room with two glasses & an open bottle of red wine, the colorful label unfamiliar to Meph. As she passes the stereo, Athena turns it on & presses the CD player's ON button & the room becomes filled with the quiet, sensuous coos of Kate Bush singing her "Feel It". After putting the glasses & bottle on the coffee table, she turns off the lamp her end of the sofa, sits, & looking to Meph, pats the cushion beside her.

Meph grabs his cigarettes from his bag & crosses back to the sofa. Athens, having sat watching Meph's fluid movements as he crossed, sitting, throwing the cigarette packet on the table & pouring the wine, says, as she takes the glass Meph offers, "You move beautifully. Are you a dancer?"

Looking into her eyes, Meph takes a sip to find the wine bears a strong, heady favour & playfully says, "I think you already know a great deal about me. But no, I'm not a dancer."

"Then," ignoring Meph's accusation, "you've practiced Martial Arts for a long time."

"I suppose," says Meph & asks "And you?"

Athena looks slyly over her wine at Meph & says only, "Perhaps." Changing the subject as he offers her one of his cigarette, which she declines producing one of her own & dangling it to be lit. Meph lights it & says "I love what you've done with your hair."

"Thank you," Athena says. "I like it short, but it's a little weird right now."

"Like the other night," says Meph exhaling & reaching for his glass.

As Meph looks across the room & leans back on the sofa, Athena leans over, putting a hand on Meph's thigh, "I'm really sorry. I didn't want to leave." And as Meph turns to look at Athena, she concludes, "I sat by your side an hour waiting for Faustus to come."

Noting that she knows Michael's nickname & assuming she somehow knows his as well, Meph says nothing & leans over to Athena & kisses her lightly on the lips. Remaining inches apart, seething intent growing, they move together again in a fevered kiss. As the position is too awkward, holding cigarettes & wine glasses, Athena backs from Meph, takes the cigarettes & glasses, "Take off those boots," she orders & puts the glasses on the table, drops the cigarettes in the ashtray & turns back to Meph with fire in her eyes.

Not taking her eyes from Meph, as he drops the last boot to the floor, she reaches & begins opening Meph's quickly tightening jeans. Without a word, Athena pulls his penis free, leans over & begins licking it. The two shift on the sofa, Meph moving back to rest his head on the armrest behind him & Athena to lie nearly flat along the sofa. Athena's lips ring the head of Meph's penis & she slowly begins to bob her head up & down over much of the penis's length. Meph begins a quiet moan of delight, languoring over the silky, wet warmth of Athena's mouth & listening to her heated sighs & slurps, drawing him near -- too near, to quick -- to the edge of orgasm.

Athena, sensing how close Meph is, tightens her hand's grip & begins moving her head faster over Meph's straining erection. As Meph spews like a serpent, it's hot venom into Athena's enhungered mouth, his moan of glee shifts to a prolonged gasp of delicious, climatic bliss. After squeezing the last drops of semen from Meph's still erect penis, Athena slithers up Meph's body & smiling leans over & kisses him long & hard.

XII.
OATHBOUND

Moving back against the pillows, "I've never known a man who could get hard so quickly, so often after coming," says Athena, then slides back to nuzzle Meph's shoulder in the dimness of her bedroom.

"I've never known a woman so very eager," offers Meph noticing that light has begun to enflame the curtains of the window. "How about a cigarette?" asks Athena, not moving from her semi-foetal position at Meph's side.

"I'll get them," he says slipping reluctantly from the bed. Meph stops in his path to use the toilet. Again, though more organized, he is confronted with the usual feminine paraphernalia ubiquitously lying & standing on every flat surface.

Slipping back into bed with cigarettes & a glass of orange juice he'd taken from the fridge, Meph lies back against the headboard, lights up & hands the glass & cigarette to Athena. She sits up to lean against Meph, pleased & musing that he'd thought to bring something to drink & reaches over for the ashtray from the bedside table.

From the silence Meph hears Athena say, "I'm really sorry." Turning to look at her, Meph finds her pensively staring down at the ashtray in the bundled sheet in her lap. He reaches up & caresses her cheek with the back of his finger & asks, "Of what, love?"

As Athena says nothing, still staring down, Meph lowers his finger & takes a drag from his cigarette waiting. Again from the silence Meph hears, "About Margaret." Meph exhales heavily & looks off to the wall opposite the bed. "I didn't do it," she continues. "Really. I wanted her out of your life, but I had nothing to do with -- that."

Not having been plagued by the image of Margaret's head slamming into the Rambler's windshield & of her form tumbling along the sidewalk, Meph, seeing these images now, is not pleased. But as the morning light outside has illuminated the room clearly enough, Meph notices across where he'd been looking a low vanity table lined at the back with books on divination & a five card Thoth tarot lay-out on the table's surface. Meph climbs from the bed to examine the lay-out more closely. He sees: The 2 of Cups, the Empress, the Devil, the Knight of Wands & the Aeon. "I see now how you have come to know so much about me," she says -- not mentioning the meaning of the sequence before him. He turns to look into Athena's eyes.

"You don't hate me, do you?" she asks.

"Of course not," he replies moving back to the bed. Sitting next to Athena again & flicking cigarette ash into the tray, he looks back into her eyes & asks, "Satan?"

Indicating that Satan is the responsible party in Margaret's death with a not of her head, she asks hesitantly, "You didn't really believe I drove that car?"

"I didn't know what to believe," confesses Meph & takes a last drag before putting the cigarette out. He moves his hand from the ashtray up & under the sheet to lightly caress Athena's thighs.

Taking his hand out & holding it in her lap with an apologetic smile, Athena says, "We have to talk business."

Leaving his hand in hers, Meph lies out flat on the bed & says with a sigh, "Yes. The Evocation. What's to talk about? As it's not exactly traditional, all we need do is slightly alter the Operation to include a third."

"Not quite. Look, aside from our easy attraction to one another?."

"Let us not neglect," interrupts Meph, kissing Athena's shoulder, "how very well we perform together."

"That too," smiles Athena, squeezing Meph's hand. "But," returning to business, "you & Faustus, possessing even the great powers each of you do, simply can't do it alone."

"Enter Athena."

"Not to burst your bubble, my sweet. But I'd been chosen before you."

"And you wait this long before revealing yourself to me?"

"Well, I'll make a little confession. I knew we were meant for each other about the time you'd arrived in San Francisco. I know I shouldn't have teased you so. I guess my confidence got the better of me."

"The black widow in the web of her weaving."

"Satan's weaving, perhaps. Or the Fates."

"Or the Furies," jests Meph.

Athena hits Meph with her fist on his chest, meant only as a light chiding for his remark. Meph leaps up with a gasps, holding his chest. Putting a hand on his shoulder, Athena asks, "What is it?"

Regaining his composure, Meph says, "Nothing. Really." Meph turns a smile to Athena to answer her worried expression as he lies back, "A fight -- years ago. The rib never set properly." Meph takes her hand & kisses it.

"I never saw that," says Athena curling again into Meph's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"There's just so little time. Damn it," says Athena. "I almost wish we could just run off to the forest now & forget all this."

"We'll have so much time after, love."

"I know. Okay," says Athena sitting up. She leans over & kisses Meph lightly with a smile & continues, "Back to business."

"Wait," says Meph sitting up as well. "You've already indicated that all this -- you, me, Faustus, the Evocation, everything -- was destined long ago. So again I ask: What's the point in going over it? All we need do is rewrite the procedure for ternary as opposed to binary. Twenty minutes tops. No problem."

"That's not what we're talking about," says Athena taking Meph's hand again. With a touch of trepidation in her voice, "you're still distracted," she concludes.

XIII.
Confession

Nervous, Meph had climbed from the bed & was now pacing, smoking another cigarette, back & forth at the foot of the bed. He felt torn between two extremes. He felt equally his jaded philosophy on women by the pain endured of his previous relationships; & love & desire for Athena. He wanted to tell her everything -- the things she couldn't possibly know about him no matter how good her divinitory prowess, the things no other woman he'd ever met could understand. He wanted that complete union, the dissolution Aleister Crowley has repeatedly harped upon in his works. But how, Meph did not know. Finally, he stops & takes a last drag from his cigarette & snuffs it out in an ashtray on the vanity. He turns to see Athena smiling from the pillows of the bed. "Something amuse you?" he asks.

"I've never seen a naked man pacing at the foot of my bed before. I like it." After a pause, Athena says, "You're wonderfully intense."

Meph performs an exaggerated bow & continues his pacing.

"Talk to me," Meph hears from the bed. "I need to know."

Meph, reluctantly, begins to recite a litany of pain, not looking at Athena. As he gains confidence, his momentum manifesting slowly becomes relatively controlled rage. "?The women in my past not wanting me, but merely something I possess; human's arrogant laziness; the Church's crimes against individuality -- all organized religion's ignorance of Truth; the wanton greed of the mighty causing war & famine -- the cultivation of drug addiction -- to line their already bulging wallets; Big Business rewarding morons with high salaries, while the more capable without a silly piece of paper from a college slave away for barely enough to make very modest or sub-standard means co-operate; then the unscrupulous draw more money for nothing from a less scrupulous government. I'm sick; sick. I'm so fucking sick of this." Spent, Meph falls silent & slumps at the end of the bed hands at either side of his head.

Not knowing exactly how to respond, Athena moves across the bed & leans against Meph's back. She then wraps her arms round him & wonders why she'd waited so long to be with him. Finally, as the silence, broken only by Meph's excited breathing, grows tedious Athena asks, "How do you feel about our being together now, after?" Athena falters.

"Margaret," says Meph standing again. He returns to his pacing, "Okay," he begins. "I loved Margaret, but I knew," looking to Athena, "I knew deep down from the start we were doomed. I hate myself for loving her. Another woman wanting only something I can provide. Because I was interested in her & know magic, she took me. Any interested man possessing what she wanted would do."

"And her death?" asks Athena.

Meph looks down into her eyes & sensing that only Athena could understand says, " I think mostly, I feel?relieved. Jesus!" he says turning in anguish. "I loved her in spite of her using me, & feel relieved as of a burden." Meph moves slowly away from Athena to the wall by the door with his hands clinched at his sides.

"Quietly, meekly Athena asks, "And me?"

In a tight whisper, Meph says "I love you."

Feeling Meph agony, Athena leaps from the bed & wraps her arms round him leaning her head against his shoulder, as Meph shakes with uncontrollable sobs.

Meph, feeling done in, awakes to find himself alone in Athena's bed. Reaching for his cigarettes, Meph sees Athena had taped a note to the packet. He takes them up & reads: "Had some things to do. My place is yours (I mean that). He back soon. A."

"Not much of a writer," chuckles Meph to himself, as he removes a cigarette & lights it. He steps out of bed, pulls on his jeans & steps round the end of the bed to go use the toilet. He lingers, though, over the vanity table pondering the wonder of the Tarot lay-out.

In the kitchen, he finds another note taped to the coffee maker reading: "Wanna feel real good? Press my button." Smiling that he probably doesn't deserve Athena, he reaches up & follows her direction. While waiting for the coffee to drip through, Meph returns to the sitting room to choose a book. Taking one of the physics texts by Feynman, he returns to the kitchen, pours himself a cup of coffee & loses himself in science.

A few chapters later, Meph hears a key turn in the lock on the door. He stands as Athena steps through, arms filled with bags of groceries. Meph rushes over & takes the bags, Athena kissing him in the process. After putting them on the kitchen counter, Meph turns & he & Athena sweep together. Leaning out of the kiss, Athena says, "I think I over did it."

"Is this your way of asking me to move in with you?" The smile at each other & Athena, looking at the closed book on the table says, "Pretty heavy stuff for just waking up."

Meph shrugs & leans, crossing his arms over his chest, against the counter. "Hungry?" asks Athena.

As Meph learned the futility of telling a woman who want to eat how little food means to him, he says the other truth instead: "Famished."

"Good," she says. "You do like lamb, don't you?" she asks & moves to the bags & begins removing things. Flashing on the night in the alley, Meph whispers, "Sheep to the slaughter."

"What?" asks Athena looking up from her bag.

Brushing it off, "Just a little anti-Christian humour," he replies & begins helping Athena remove groceries. Setting a package of lamb chops on the counter before him, Meph stares down at the flesh, glaring grotesquely red in it's shiny wrapped plastic. His head flares with pain & reaching to his forehead he hears sharp, then fading -- "Meph!"

As Meph opens his eyes, he finds himself lying on Athena's sofa with a cold, wet cloth on his forehead. Athena leans over & kisses him. Lifting her head, she says, "I should have called an ambulance for you the other night."

Meph smiles up at Athena, the pain gone now, & says, "You minister better care."

"You were bleeding again."

"I'll be fine, love."

After a pause, "The alley?"

Not terribly surprised Athena knows about that too, the says, "Uh-huh."

"You know," taking the cloth & caressing Meph's forehead. "As pleased as I am you don't relish your grisly acts that night, I'm sure you can understand my concern -- which, incidentally, touches upon more than one level."

Deciding how to respond, Meph looks into Athena's set gaze & says simply, "The Work will not be effected."

"I hope not." Drawing her hand down to Meph's cheek, Athena concludes, "For all our sakes."

XIV.
Merging

Sitting at a table at the Peculier amidst papers & beers, Meph & Faustus talk.  The two cryptically debate the fine points of the Evocation's changes; Athena looking on from the waitress station at the bar.

"Oh, no, NO!  If we add that there, we'll have to had an entire stanza at the beginning, or it won't work," demands Faustus.

Lifting his stout, Meph eyes Faustus & says through NYU student chatter & Jim Morrison from the juke-box singing, "This is the end?."

"Not," says Meph, taking a drink from his bottle, setting it down & reaching into his bag, "...if we start off with..." & producing a bound set of photo-copies, "...this."

Faustus looks at the heading on the top sheet, a smile growing slowly to his lips.  Taking the sheets from Meph, he says, "Crowley's Hymn to Pan.  Of course!  This will relieve us all that."  Lifting his beer, "To you, me Brother.  Your creativity by having owned Volkswagen's precedes you."

"Thank you," Meph says as they clink their bottles together.

Athena, passing with drink orders, looks to the Brothers silently basking in the completion of the sequencing of the Ritual, & asks, "So, do we have it?"

Looking up with a triumphant smile, Meph says, "Success!"

"Good," says Athena.  "Drinks are on me."  She gives Meph a peck on the cheek & moves to serve her customers.

"She might just be the best thing that's ever happened to you.  Or maybe more - the better part of you. I just can't decide," says Faustus.

"Oh, thanks much," replies Meph.

"Don't mention it."

A waitress steps up & putting a couple of bottles on the table says, "Athena tells me you two are working on a kind of play.  What's it about?"

"Some might call it a comedy," says Faustus.

"Others, a definite tragedy," says Meph.

"Cool," says the waitress.  Looking back to Faustus with a sly smile, "Got a part for me?"

Smiling in return, "We might arrange a reading.  Have any plans after work?"

"Not till now."

"Good.  Till then."

And as the song enters its final, chaotic riffs, the waitress smiles at each & goes off to take orders. Once out of ear-shot, Meph looks to Faustus & says, "You dog!"

"Once bitten?," replies Faustus.

After a moment, lighting cigarettes, collecting papers & thoughts, Meph asks, "And the location?"

"All set.  Got a warehouse in Soho & have already covered the windows.  Don't want some idiot security guard watching from another building."

"The tools?"

"Most are still in the crates.  I'll get the rest & set up tomorrow."

Looking at the waitress as she passes back to the bar with drink orders, Meph says, "Judging by her form, I can't imagine your having much time for prep.  Shall Athena & I come by?"

"Not to worry, I've got speed."

"Nuff said.  Just don't over do it.  Don' need no jittery Operator on the floor."

"No problem, Meph.  Nooo problem."

Having got the address & a set of keys to the warehouse, Meph says to Faustus as they stand on the sidewalk outside the pub waiting for Athena & the waitress, "I'll leave your copy in plain sight - that is, if you manage to tear yourself away from your subject."

Grasping the implication, Faustus replies, "I'll be ready at the appointed hour.  You just worry about tearing yourself away from Athena in time."

"Just want to get it over with -- without a hitch," says Meph crushing out his cigarette, Faustus looking on with concern.  As he is about to voice this concern, Athena & the waitress appear from the door of the pub ready to go.  "See you," says Meph to Faustus, & the four split into pairs & move up Bleeker Street in opposite directions.

Meph & Athena, drenched in sweat -- Meph still on & in Athena, lie noiselessly, save for their heavy breathing in each other's ears.  As Meph lifts his head, Athena tightens her grip round his back to keep him from moving off her.  She kisses him & says, "You must be feeling better.  First your very co-operative tongue, then your penis.  This thing just gets better & better."

Not knowing whether Athena refers to his penis or their seemingly growing relationship, Meph says, looking into her half seen eyes in the darkness surrounding them, "I've never felt so good."  Meph then slips from Athena & as they lie holding each other, Meph inserts two fingers into her vagina &, removing some the mingled fluids, he says, "And now, the body of Christ."  Athena pushes herself up on an elbow & the two hungrily lick his fingers clean, then move into a long, hot kiss.

As Meph's penis has hardened again, he lifts her right leg over his hips & re-enters her pussy.  Their excitement of each other quickly turns to frenzy, & first one, then the other, as they increase the vehemence of their movements, begins to cry out in orgasmic joy.

The two separate & lie on their backs breathing more heavily than before.  As their breaths calm, Athena exclaims, "What was that?"  Knowing the only reply to this question in this context, Meph rolls over & kisses Athena long & hard.  Then, eye-lids low & grins spread across their faces, Athena, nuzzling Meph's shoulder 7 taking up her semi-foetal says, "You treat me so well."  She kisses Meph's shoulder & he runs his fingers through her short hair.

"You're the best," replies Meph.

After a pause, "I have a surprise for you," says Athena playfully.  "But you'll have to wait till after the Evocation."

"Tease.  How am I to wait?"

"Draw from your Taoist center.  Did I tell you that?" asks Athena, changing the subject.  "Lili, the owners wife, told me you're the only American she's ever met who 'has' Tao.  Can you believe it?  She thinks we're perfect for each other, by the way."

"Does she?"

"Yeah.  She says we need each other."

"Do you need me?" asks Meph playfully.

"For more than you know -- & don't worry.  I also want you more than you know."

"For?"

"Years."

"Oh, you say the sweetest things."

Meph lights a couple of cigarettes, then suddenly Athena asks, "Will Faustus have everything set up in time?"

"Of course," says Meph handing Athena a cigarette.

"And what about our parts?  When do we go over them?"

"Not to worry, love.  The additions he & I have made don't require a run-through.  And, as you're a practiced & proper Priestess, I'm sure you'll pick up your lines & blocking easily."

"You may be able to direct me - we do work awfully well together - but you don't know if I'm very well practices or not."

"Pre-production jitters?" asks Meph & draws from his cigarette.

"Maybe."

"Satan has the power now, I think, to manifest without us.  More, He's not stupid; He likely has other Operators scattered all over the planet preparing, just as we, to perform the Evocation at the same moment.  I'm not the least worried of failure." Kissing Meph with confidence, "Couldn't happen."

"Wouldn't," he concludes &, as his penis is hardening again, he shifts Athena on top of him.

"You are confident, aren't you?" asks Athena slipping down Meph's penis.

XV.
EVOCATION

On the cobble-stoned Soho street, Meph & Athena stand silhouettes. Taking her hand, Meph walks Athena to the door & upon opening it, Athena asks, "Mmm. What's that -- myrrh?"

"Ah, Sister," Meph says. "I have brought Him myrrh. Shadow black & sinister shall His name bring to the race."

"Stop it," Athena says laughing & lightly hits him on the shoulder. "I smell something else, too."

"Yes. It'll be much stronger upstairs," says Meph closing the door through which they've just walked & reaching for the elevator call button. "Back in San Francisco, I'd finally hit upon just the right combination of musk, myrrh, galbanum, dragon's blood, indigo & Siamese benzoin. Powerful & thick, but not altogether unpleasant."

The elevator, coming into view through the open-worked brass gate, fills the entryway with the pungent smell of the incense & reveals the floor of the elevator covered in a thick blanket of smoke clinging like dry-ice. Looking up to Meph, as he opens the gate to enter the now waiting lift, Athena says, "That's beautiful."

As the third floor of the warehouse comes into view through the elevator door, Meph & Athena see in the light dimmed by the thick bluish-red smoke, Faustus standing at an altar at the far end of the floor looking through a folder of papers. As the two step onto the floor, smoke swirling violently at their feet, Faustus turns a smile in their direction from under his lifted brow -- his eyes burning with the speed in his system.

Beyond the altar where Faustus stands is a large, black, glass-eyed, horned goat upon a black, daised throne with streams of smoke trilling from it's nostrils & sitting like a gross parody, right hoof up & left down, of Gautama Buddha. Between the long, sweeping spiral of the goat's horns is a thick, bright yellow candle dripping wax down it's forehead. Meph laughs to himself that the pattern of the wax appropriately resembles an Uraeus serpent.

Meph & Athena quickly remove their clothing & don the black silk robes Faustus had hung for them by the elevator. Wrapping a chain belt with ritual knife dangling round him & taking up a long staff, Meph takes Athena's hand & they walk to the center of the room & stand beside a large gong. Upon the floor, through the wisps of smoke, can be seen the lines of a large equal-armed triangle painted in red. As the three stand beneath the single light, hanging somewhere in the smoke above the center of the triangle, Athena asks, "Are we ready?" Faustus smiles again & produces from the folds of his robe, a small electronic remote control unit & nods his head.

The three immediately move to the points of the triangle, Meph by the gong, facing in. Meph turns, & holding his staff like a javelin, lunges forward, striking the gong with the end of the staff. The reverberation, so close to the gong, strikes Meph's body like one large fist, but, bathed in the racking sound, he holds his position. Upon striking the gong, Faustus aims his remote at the unseen stereo; & as the ring of the gong slowly fades, the sound of Road Kill's song "Bleeding Dreams" begins to rise. Meph strikes upon the gong again & again. Upon the sixth pounding, Meph turns again to the others. As the final note of the gong fades into oblivion, Faustus aims again at the stereo & lowers the volume of the song to a workable level.

Raising her arms above her head, Athena cries out, "Thrill with lissom lust?" as she begins the Hymn.

"Come careering out of the night?" says Meph.

"On a milk-white ass?" cries Faustus.

Upon ending the Hymn, shouts of "pan, Io Pan, Io Pan, Pan," echo about the chamber. Meph, as silence returns -- the stereo off -- pulls the knife from it's ruby-studded sheath, raises it to his left forearm, strikes resolutely, returns the knife to it's sheath & stands, dripping his blood round his point in the triangle. Raising both arms above his head then lowers his left at a vertical angle, right foot before left, says "Lord Set fighting." Changing position in a fluid movement, he places his left foot slightly ahead of his crossed right & spreads his hands out from the center of his chest saying, "I render the Veil." Moving again, Meph stands now with his arms stretched wide as on a cross, "Osiris slain," he says & quickly drawing his arms up into a "V" cries, "Typhon victorious!"

Faustus now raises the remote to bring the music to a feverish pitch. The three, chanting various Satanic names & titles begin dancing in spirals Deosil round the triangle till Athena stops & shouts over the music, "Look." Meph & Faustus each stop to see Athena pointing at the enthroned goat to find where there were once only thin streams, now coming from it's nostrils are huge, thick plumes of dark bluish-black smoke. Turning back to the triangle the three stare as the thick layer of smoke on the floor rises slowly within the triangle's lines to the ceiling, obscuring the already dim light.

The stereo volume begins to rise beyond the amperage capacity of the speakers & the room begins to shake violently. As the three are thrown to the floor, the speakers begin to tear & rip, sparks exploding in showers of sparks. Other sounds begin to be heard over the din of electric crackling & objects round the room falling to the floor. Wailing cries of intense orgasm, gurgling & screams of madness fill the room, & the goat topples down from it's dais. Suddenly, as the smoke breaks from the confines of the triangle, all stops & the only sound is the occasional crackle of electricity from the now demolished stereo.

The smoke quickly disappears & through the fog, the three see a tall, thin, pale-faced man in black, double-breasted jacket, black tee-shirt, black trousers & black sneakers. Brushing some lint from a lapel, He asks of no one in particular, "Well, then?" Then looking about the room, "Quite a mess you've got here."

Athena & Faustus move to kneel before Satan, while Meph simply stands, Satan turns His gaze from the two on the floor & looks Meph in the eye. "Come my Mephisto," He says with intensity. "We will have words." Satan & Meph disappear in swirls of smoke. Athena & Faustus exchange frightened looks.

XVI.
TEASE

Panting in the heat, Meph finds himself lying in the sand surrounded by high dunes. Sensing his danger, he quickly grabs his staff lying nearby, scrambles to his feet & digs, with the end of it, three concentric circles in the hot sand round him, mumbling incantations. A voice from everywhere in the little valley asks playfully, "Do you really think such piddlings can save you now?"

As Meph finishes the inner circle, he looks up to see Satan smiling at him from outside the circles with His hands in the pockets of His jacket. Meph turns from Him & sits in semi-lotus position in the center, placing the staff before him, pleased that although his robe is black, it has a hood & now raises it over his head to protect it from the sun's harsh rays.

Satan begins walking slowly round Meph's left. When He appears again on the right, Meph notes that Satan wears the face & form of Faustus. Stepping in front of Meph, Satan, in Faustus' voice says, "Jesus, Meph! We finally get Satan here, & you cower in a circle like some wannabe magician."

Walking again to the left, next on the right is seen Athena who stops before Meph & says, "Oh, Meph. Please come out. I love you," she says falling to her knees & beseeching "Come out. I'll protect you -- I really will."

As Meph makes neither movement, nor response, Athena begins to cry, gets up & walks to the left. Upon the right comes Margaret, restored to her remembered self. "You really are a stupid, little shit, John. I don't know why I'd bothered. All you had to do was teach me what you know, & we could have been screwing all night, the way we had, all this time. Now you grovel, & I'm being -- finally satisfied -- by Satan, not to mention learning magic from the source. Do what you will. I never loved you anyway."

With difficulty, as Meph's rage at Satan mounts, Meph remains sitting, without a word, in the circle. Deep in concentration, Meph hadn't noticed the change. Before him now stands the transvestite he'd kissed at the Pyramid wearing a bustier, panties & stockings. Her/his penis stands straight up out of the panties, straining against her/his belly in the bright light.

"Come on, baby. Take it in your mouth," says the TV. "I really need it. Won't you come out? I'll make you feel sooo good." Realising that Meph isn't stirred, she/he moves off to the left.

Next manifests before him a feminine form he does not recognise, standing naked with her back to him. The woman, her tight blond curls glinting in the sun-light, turns her head round toward Meph. "Hi, she says & turns to face him. Straining in his concentration, Meph sees this vision is neither man, nor woman -- but hermaphrodite. She smiles & begins to dance, her hardened penis bouncing revealing the pink lips of her hairless vagina below. "That transvestite can't do what I can for you, Meph. Come out," she purrs, "and let me show you all the things life has to offer."

Meph looks down at the sand before him with intent, the fascination passing. Time passes; there are no more visions, only silence, & Meph's shadow slowly moves into view. Finally, Meph sees the Devil, again in black, standing before him outside the circle.

"You may indeed look upon me now, Mephisto. I shan't taunt you with any more visions." Meph lifts his gaze. Satan produces a straight-backed, wooden armchair & sits with one leg crossed, elbows on the armrests & hands together as praying; He regards Meph with a cold, hard stare.

Then, smiling slightly, Satan says, "I'd not realised just how powerful you've become. Look," He says, lowering His right hand & gesturing imploringly. "Your very fragile psychological state has, of late, caused you to draw some very fallacious conclusions. Worse, your all too human attachment to the women in your life distract you not only from your Work, but also...," shifting in His chair & resting His elbows now on His knees, "...from the very truth of things."

As the Devil continues, Meph listens clos