The Specters of Tradition: Short Story 1: Adrian Mussorgski

As Adrian drifted off to sleep that night, his thoughts had an opiate senselessness, free from reason, concern or conceptualization, desperate acts that had ruled his life until now. He allowed aimlessness as the minutes passed, feeling Katya’s imaginary gaze. In his dream state, he believed that she, Dmitri’s wife, was standing next to his bed and affectionately craving his redemption.

“It’s not too late,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. Inside him, her tone evoked a mix of timidity, warmth and comfort, an arousing fusion that protected and overpowered him. Her narrow, Russian eyes and wide, dollishly beautiful mouth were delightful.

Adrian Mussorgsky was a retired, hardened war veteran, irritated by virtue. Though he never antagonized anyone, he secretly bore this disdain and saw people as overly emotional, especially Dmitri and his wife, who was pure, simple and clever. A part of him felt her presence even in his total slumber. A dream sometimes flashed through his mind, in which her hands were pale as he saw the lower half of her body, his face partially buried in the pillow. Then he dreamt that he was standing in a wine cellar with brown, filthy and decaying walls, and in front of him was a large, tall and muscular man. In the dim light, his mischievous eyes had a swinish, devilishly charming appearance. They swiveled as if he was surrounded by a spectacle that only he could see. His beard was growing in roughly and awkwardly, and some of his teeth were rotting. His jeans, brown top hat and blazer were ripped and disheveled. He was smoking a cigarette as sat on a stool.

“I know who you are,” he said maliciously.

Speechless, Adrian turned around, opened the door and went up wooden stairs that creaked beneath his feet. When he reached the top, he began walking through a red brick hallway, noticing children pass him every now and then. He felt as if everything moved in slow motion, a sensation he recognized from his various nightmares in the past. It always appeared before a horrid climax at the end, which he presently wished would happen. Each conclusion purged his angst, and brought him to some revelation, mostly regarding his own trite connection with the world.

His heart palpitated when he eventually realized that all the children were were his victims, who he had killed in the war against Ukraine, to pillage all their countless resources twenty years ago: oil, food, money, et cetera. They were boys and girls with the saturninity of mental patients, who had been medicated and tormented. He then saw another flight of wooden stairs that led up to what he felt was the city, since a cool breeze emerged from above. Quickly but attentively, he went upstairs and into the neighborhood, instead feeling purified by the frigid wind. When he saw the moon he became half-awake for a few seconds, and then returned to his dream. He then felt a mob of people grabbing him and furiously screaming, even though no attackers were visible.

“Your time is almost up!” he heard a man shout amongst the crowd.

“HELP!” he screamed repeatedly, but it appeared that no one heard or saw him.

“I CAN CHANGE! I SWEAR!” When he finally awoke he expected to see Katya, but was only met with silence and the scraps of paper pathetically scattered on his bedside table, accompanied by a half-empty wine glass.

The Prison of Philosophy: Part 6

Claudia, Alexander and Dmitri’s mother Katerina then entered, with stern, disbelieving looks that were lost in introspection, in spite of their joy at the sight of Dmitri. Their disorientation was almost as acute as the aftereffects of his drug-induced experience.

“Dmitri, are you okay?! Tell me everything! This is unfathomable! I never would have thought it would come to this! I should have seen this coming! What an idiot I was!” Alexander exclaimed, weeping as they quickly approached him.

“Some of this will sound implausible to you,” said Dmitri feebly. “But I must tell you the truth.” After telling them the story, Claudia said, “Why you saw that woman on the altar is beyond me. Perhaps your seemingly supernatural escape was a hallucination—except that something so outlandish wouldn’t even seem possible under those circumstances. You couldn’t have fabricated that event.”

“I guess it is possible for the cult to channel those entities,” said Dmitri, dreamily and wearily. “But that would be very implausible, especially since the whole point of their endeavors is to block out those types of forces.”

“Even though they are a part of the establishment, they call themselves ‘counterculture’,” said Claudia. “That’s why they’re anti-God, figuratively speaking.” There was a long silence as Alexander and Katerina pondered this ceaseless predicament. What could the root of all this be?

“When I saw that being, one of the men who the cult had created, I felt like he was a part of myself that Peter had pulled out, and I was forced to confront,” said Dmitri. “I don’t mean to say that he was ever a side of my personality—he was a culmination of all my pain and insecurities over these years. I also wondered why he had such a nightmarish appearance, since it was too theatrical and convenient. His physical features fit his inner self perfectly. He could have walked out of a fairy tale.”

“There could have been a reason why he was created that way,” said Claudia, with a melancholy tone. “I always assume these people know exactly what they’re doing when they’re doing it. In this case, their macabre experiments are meant to defy norms, in ways that create shock value. He constantly whines about the rich, upper-class community in the United States, vaguely referring to them as the establishment. Even though you’re not rich, he still clumps your outlook together with these people—God knows why. I remember that a couple years after Peter tried to rape me, I overheard him talking near the monastery as I was walking along the beach. He was mocking your anguish about what happened to me. He said, ‘Dmitri’s just one of those bourgeouis and eccentric people, in love with his own unhappiness while he lies around, and everyone else takes care of him. If only he knew what life was really like—then maybe he would know what suffering or hardship was. But he’s content to float in his fantasyland. He has no empathy, no conscience. But he believes he does, and that no one else does.’”

Dmitri laughed cynically. “It’s funny how autobiographical some of those statements were.”

“Exactly,” said Claudia, shaking her head. “Ideas are the only way the cult can relate to people. That’s why they don’t understand anyone but themselves.”

“I wonder what would happen if they were forced to talk about anything other than ideas or gossip,” said Katerina, snorting. “They probably wouldn’t know what to with that. They would have an existential crisis.”

“The intelligentsia is completely out of touch with reality, and yet they claim that Dmitri exists in a cotton-wool dreamland,” said Claudia. “They rant about ‘evil capitalists’, but they seem to have no problem with Marcus Griffith’s affluence, since it benefits them. They don’t want to admit what they really are: a bunch of deviants with no concern for the well-being of others. Who knows what they’ll do next? We need to get the police involved now.”

She called the authorities and told them Dmitri’s story. She also gave them her name and included the details about Peter’s crime against her, informing them about the federal officers who had protected the cult from prosecution. Afterwards, the Japanese nurse said, “Dmitri has recovered significantly. I’m surprised, given what he’s been through. I think the best thing for him now, is for him to return home.”

Katerina chuckled through her tears and said, “Yes. I’m sure he’s not the in the mood to think too deeply about anything of these issues now. He deserves to rest and rejuvenate.”

“But he’s clever. I’m sure he’ll get to the bottom these big issues at some point in time,” said Claudia. Dmitri slowly got out of bed and they walked to the door.

“Thank you for all your help,” Dmitri said to the nurse, his voice slightly stronger than it previously was. “There’s something so unreal about my recovery. I’m not the same person anymore.”

With some residual graveness, Alexander said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I hope he feels better soon.”

They left and headed to the main entrance. As they walked home, the sound of carousing sometimes rang throughout the neighborhood. In Dmitri’s imagination it was a cosmic irreverence to the ideologues, hiding behind the curtains of society, unable to feel pleasure or friendship. These sounds virtually celebrated his escape. But a horrible grief spiked inside him from time to time, since he felt that his journey wasn’t complete; he thought he could die at any time. His captors might be hounding after him, and he did not even wish to consider how long it would take before the cult would be incarcerated.

A few hours later, Claudia lay in bed awake, alone in her house and nervously wondering what the future held. But a part of her was optimistic, because she knew that the cult had never succeeded in indoctrinating the United States as a whole. Most people except the cult, were more like Dmitri, though not as absorbed in their own thoughts. But like him, they did not despise the spiritual beauty of the classical ages. Whenever the cult expressed their disdain for the past, people recognized their pathology. Therefore, defeating them could simply be accomplished through legal means, without the need to undo years worth of mind control, imposed upon the population.

Just as Claudia began to center herself, she heard an incredibly loud crash downstairs, and the sounds of footsteps entering the apartment. She quickly got out of bed, and when she left her room she saw five policemen who had broken down the door, and one of them held a crowbar. After a couple seconds, she recognized them as the federal officers who had protected Peter from prosecution. They had worn, conceited and sullen complexions, poorly shaven and cursed with an apish eagerness. As she ran away they grabbed her, and began beating her with their nightsticks. As she screamed for help, her thoughts whirred around in a purposeless desperation, knowing that she wouldn’t survive. Her ears rang as she managed to escape them, grabbing a kitchen knife from the counter. Officer Radcliffe tried to strike her again but she stabbed him in the chest.

In her shock, her mind froze into a numbing ecstasy. She was indifferent to his tremors and stiffening stance, as he staggered backwards and the others came at her. As they beat her, she tried to stab one of them in the chest but faltered; she fell down and the knife slipped out of her hand. Officer Scott picked up the knife and she quickly rolled out of the way. She struggled to her feet as he came at her, and she wrenched his hand, pointing the knife toward his chest. As she stabbed him, he perspired and shook as he gasped for air, his knees giving in. He fell to the floor and she ran out the door, screaming for help again as the three men chased her.

Claudia’s psyche continued to squirm and bend in an unpleasantly familiar fashion, which reminded her of the times when she labored for some epiphany, giving her pain meaning instead of autistic hysteria. But now her fear and misery were pure survival instinct. Minutes passed as she noticed the alarmed expressions of passersby, who stopped in indecisiveness, not knowing whether to interfere. Some anxiously talked amongst each other as they saw this horrid spectacle. Then, she saw two police officers, a man and a woman, running towards them. The three officers chasing her pulled out their guns and fired at them, as she ducked and rolled onto the lawn outside of a mansion. Trembling, she watched them fire at each other in the deserted street, until her attackers were dead. The police approached her, briefly glancing at the dead bodies with an altered state of consciousness, a dark space between remorse and pride.

Speechless, Claudia looked up at them with a childlike dependence.

“Don’t worry. We’re going to get the paramedics,” said the policewoman. Her voice had a youthful, clear and down-to-earth nature, which consoled Claudia as she returned to her senses, stabilizing the cacophony inside her. Even though she was now safe, her fight-or-flight instincts were still thawing away. They had become enveloped in her blood, and now she found them peculiarly pleasurable, as they coursed through her system. There was no real danger; she could just experience them as isolated feelings, no different than excitement or the surge of creativity. She knew that since these federal officers were dead, the intelligentsia could be imprisoned without any delays.

After the paramedics arrived and she was taken to the hospital, she discovered two days later, that the cult had been arrested at the monastery the day after Dmitri had been kidnapped. While they were placed in holding cells, the androgynous beings were sent back to the laboratories within Ghost Muse Corporation, the place where the cult had created them. Scientists were demanded by the court to remove the toxins built into the entities’ bodies, which had made the drug-induced experiences. The court also hoped that this physiological change would change the creatures’ psychology as well, replacing their violent impulses with more intelligent, and less ideological behavior.

The most mysterious aspect of this physiological process, was that their androgyny slowly disappeared, and they seemed increasingly human. Their testosterone levels also increased, allowing them the possibility for reproduction. In addition, they became more and more rational, and less suggestible. During the experimentation, scientists periodically asked them questions about their belief systems in relation to the cult. The most common questions were, “Do you believe that the cult was necessary for your growth and development?” and, “Were they truly against the establishment, or were they for it?” Each time, the beings expressed more and more dissent, and hatred for the philosophy that had been imposed upon them; they felt that they had been cheated. When the experimentation was over, they were released back into society again, as fully human men. No androgyny was left, and their minds had reached equilibrium. When the trial was over after two months, the intelligentsia went to federal prison, with no desire for redemption. Now that their religion had been stripped away, their savagery was the only thing left.

The Prison of Philosophy: Part 5

She said nothing as a growing fatigue clouded his thoughts, and yet his mind raced. His joy about his escape felt eerily false, since his frustration made his feat seem useless, serving no greater good. Another part of him wished he had stayed in Griffith Monastery, and found some clever way to murder his captors, and the rest of the cult as well. But his solace was delicious and addictive, gripping him with a bloodthirsty persistence. He kept slipping in and out of sleep, his fortitude growing through a deep osmosis as his mind disassociated.

This process was interrupted by a vivid dream, in which he lay in pitch darkness. The bed was softer than the one in the hospital, and he was covered in a thick blanket. He heard a droplet repeatedly hit the floor, and he felt the presence of a young woman lying next to him.

“You have all been betrayed,” she said quietly. Dmitri then heard a deep, raspy voice near the bed, “Don’t listen to her. She’s not going to get away with her nonsense this time around.”

“Who are you?” Dmitri asked.

Before the stranger replied, he awoke and saw two nurses. One was the nurse from before, and the other was a woman who looked about thirty, with whitish blond hair and a shy demeanor. The bottom of his shirt was raised in the same fashion as before, and she poured two drops of the clear medicine on his stomach. His titillation was masked with a stoic air, as she gave him a vermillion, spherical tablet. After he swallowed it with water, he had a fleeting flashback of his experience in the monastery, accompanied by the purging feelings he had earlier: the energy and soothing respite. The flashback seemed to vomit the toxins from within him, both physical and psychological.

The Prison of Philosophy: Part 4

When he awoke he was lying in a hospital bed, and the nurse was looking down at him. She was a Japanese woman who was probably thirty-seven or so.

For reasons Dmitri presumed were medical, the bottom of his shirt was raised to just below his chest, from back to front. His coat and sweater had also been removed. He felt the crystalline passion one would have after physical exertion, rather than the sickness he expected. He felt a soothing sensation in his bare stomach, as if he had drunk a potion spiced with an exotic consistency. In the nurse’s presence this sensation was erotic, complementing his partial bareness. He imagined her as a female mystic like the many he had studied, whose feminine powers had cured him; her essence had resided in an elixir she used. In his freedom and solace, her beautiful hands seemed surreal.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I feel entirely back to normal.” Dmitri’s furrowed brow was fierce with ecstasy.

“That means I have progressed much faster than I thought. The drug significantly damaged various parts of your body, which I’ve been attending to.”             Dmitri noticed her holding an open bottle, containing clear liquid. Once she poured a few drops on his forehead, he recognized the liquid as the chemical and nanotechnological substance that could detect and erase toxins inside the body. One of its known properties was its immediate absorption in the skin, without leaving wetness. On the same side of his bed as the nurse, stood a life-sized hologram of Dmitri, which revealed the liquid’s activity inside his body. The hologram was projected from the floor, which contained an algorithmic power grid underneath. It read inner bodily functions, without the need to hook him up to medical equipment. The drug with which Peter had poisoned him, represented itself as an amorphous yellow that spread throughout the hologram’s entrails, most prevalent in his brain, belly and intestines. The medicine represented itself as a formless green that intermingled with the poison. All else was silver and phantasmal, the pulsing brain reminiscent of the sound he heard in the monastery.

“You seem to be in good shape, so you are free to leave in a couple hours. Your parents will be here soon,” the nurse said, as she watched the hologram. “But it might take another couple days for you to fully recover.” Dmitri glanced at the clock above the hologram, which said it was one am.

“Tell me what happened. Who did this to you?” she asked.

Dmitri told her the story and she said, “This is exactly what I feared. I knew those people were up to something. We’ll get the police involved very soon. ”

Dmitri desperately got out of bed, disappointed by the slight dizziness that followed.

“You should stay—“

“Some of the law is on their side. I hope the process to incarcerate them, doesn’t go on for years. They need to disappear!”

“I don’t know how much longer this will go on for,” she said, “But for now, you need to lie down.”

Shivering, Dmitri lay down and turned a yellow, sickly hue. In spite of his desperation, the rational part of him knew she could not answer these questions.

The Prison of Philosophy: Part Three

A pulsing sound filled the room, accompanied by the scent of that unusual perfume. For a moment, Dmitri thought he was hallucinating until he noticed their inquisitive looks, and Peter said, “I’ve smelled that scent before. What is that? And where is that sound coming from?”

There was silence and the being quietly replied, “Look over there.”

Peter and Dmitri turned their heads and the sound disappeared, as they saw a young, pale-blue naked woman standing on the altar, her eyes enflamed with a mental presence that startled and disoriented them. Her beauty and thick black hair triggered one of Dmitri’s memories. When he was six, five months after Peter’s crime against Claudia, he saw a photograph of this woman during his passionate studies of mysticism. In the image she was standing next to a road at night, and to her left were a few large, tall trees. She was Nadya, a divine spirit otherwise known as a nymph who wandered the Earth. When Dmitri turned twelve, he perceived nymphs as angelic counterparts to the cult’s demented creations. The creatures were toxic, countercultural mutations of Nature, reeking with perversion.

The moment the being saw her he looked tormented, as a dog would smell danger with uncanny acuity.

“What do you want? What brings you here?” he asked her disdainfully.

Dmitri’s malaise mysteriously dissipated and he approached her, taking her hand as if she would somehow free him. The entity ran over to them and wrenched Dmitri’s hand away. A hot and cold then enveloped Dmitri’s body, and a sharp pain penetrated the middle of his forehead as he grimaced under the being’s grip. He then heard a loud white noise in his ears, as the being weakened and faltered. A second later, Dmitri found himself standing at the shoreline of the beach, and it was still night. Before entirely processing his experience, he began running towards the city, blinking in shock. His delirium waxed and waned, and he was plagued with a frequent, fleeting hallucination of the smiling, nose-less visage an inch away from his.

Dmitri heard the clock tower in the distance, as he gushed with a sublime joy that seemed conceited, sinful and undeserved. His twisted sense of obligation to his captors, still lingered. But the city ahead of him, in its wealth and glamour, was a temple of sanity to cure his inner chaos. Little did the cult know that they had their own form of decadence, in spite of their austere principles, because of their primitive sadism that shunned the light. The farther Dmitri ran from Griffith Monastery, the more he could see this repulsive hypocrisy. It reminded him of a passage from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, “It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us.”

His delirium eventually caused him to stumble, and created a falling sensation. He became broodingly self-conscious as he entered the city on the boardwalk of the harbor front, drinking in the sounds of passersby as he wearily glanced into the park beside him. On the other side of the boardwalk was the beach, which was beginning to becoming crowded at this late hour. But the park was surprisingly empty, with only the occasional children wandering about. Their silhouettes were calming, and he could only imagine how odd and sickly he must have appeared to them. His intensity shone through his gauze of malaise, and he felt heavier and heavier as he monstrously limped, his expression contorted in determination.

When he left the park he was surrounded by mansions as he was before he was kidnapped, complete with serenity and seriousness, beyond the nonsense of lust and deception. He wished he could hold onto this feeling forever but he knew that some day, realism would sink in and ruin his simple optimism. He would begin to question the value of baseless happiness, which existed for its own sake. This would be the price of adulthood, ensnaring his psyche and polluting his critical faculties. A small part of him envied this capacity, since it rebelled against the passions with which he was familiar. Anything new and unexplored was far more appealing, even if it might lead him astray.

In his growing dizziness and exhaustion, Dmitri stopped running. Snow began to fall as he staggered along the sidewalk, charmed by the merriment of the wealthy youth. In his bliss he craved the brainless and spontaneous, the absence of contemplation. Epicure seemed far more spiritual than philosophy, the cult’s eternal prison. But then he fainted before his joy could climax.

The Prison of Philosophy: Part Two

He imagined Dmitri’s sycophantic expression, whenever he was in Claudia’s presence. The traits he admired most about her, a woman of thirty years, were her dark-brown hair and oval face that always seemed preoccupied, her mind partially elsewhere. She was Russian like Dmitri and his parents, who had moved to Ocean City, Maryland from St. Petersburg when he was three, the same year she had moved here. All four lived in this very affluent, stately neighborhood.

Her sensuality stirred her perpetrator, whenever he saw her in the city. He bemusedly glanced at her and felt a piercing nostalgia that he could not root in any memory, a sensation he could not explain. He could only feel disgust moments after, since she had all the traits that worked against him, which he derided as insolence in his mind. Claudia often pondered the cult’s secrets, as his cruel, dreadful monotone flashed through her head, calling her a deranged woman. Would he bring about her downfall in another more barbaric form?

Later that night, Dmitri strolled through the neighborhood with a pained countenance. The fog was dissipating and the sounds of footsteps lulled his concerns ever so slightly. But he still felt there was a barrier between himself and the pedestrians who surrounded him. Relative to his sharp, merciless terror, they all looked zombified. Ever since he was six, fear was the only force that made him feel alive, and people seemed increasingly alien as the years wore on.

Dmitri suddenly felt that he was being followed. Ignoring the sensation, he began walking through the alleyway. He then heard footsteps behind him, coming closer and closer. Before he could turn around, he felt someone grasp his left shoulder and inject a needle into the right side of his neck, and he went unconscious. When he awoke his body was in inexplicable agony and nausea, and he was sitting on the floor of a large, gray stone room, its walls and floor frigid like the bitter air, as he leaned against one of them. Across from him was a gray stone altar, a block with two red candles on top, one on each side that lit the darkness.

In front of him stood Peter Rawson, looking at him pensively and contemptuously. Beside him was one of the androgynous beings, with a slender, nose-less and grinning face. His head was somewhat tilted to the side, and his eyes had the same emptiness as Peter’s sometimes had, whenever he was idle or spoke about trivial matters. Dmitri felt as if the being was a hanged man, watching him writhe and perspire.

The being was hairless except for thin and finely trimmed eyebrows, seemingly cabaret. It was hard to distinguish whether his teeth were false, since they were purely white and impeccably shaped. By the looks of his attire, he was a doctor but this seemed so dark, obscure and ludicrous. For what purpose would he fulfill such an occupation? He wore a white coat with two small bloodstains on the right side of his chest, black pants and shoes.

Dmitri deliriously tried to get up, but Peter punched him in the face and he fell to the floor.

“It’s about time you come to terms with yourself Dmitri,” said Peter blankly. “You’ve lived in an illusion your whole life.”

“W-What do you mean?” said Dmitri, horrified and confused.

“You know exactly what I mean.” Peter paused. “You’ve wanted to know about our rituals for quite some time—well, you’ll have to learn the hard way now. You’ll discover their meaning in minutes, and maybe then you’ll emerge from your self-absorption. But as you can see, the process is excruciating, as personal transformation always is.”

“What will it be? What’s going to happen?”

“The process has already begun. The drug I put in that needle also creates spiritual awakenings, which force people to self-reflect, transform and join the intelligentsia. The entities we created secrete this substance from the pores of their hands, as well as many other drugs that we use in various rituals apart from this. This practice is fundamental because it requires that, like every other subject, you unite your soul with the being you see before you. He has been assigned to be your primary guide from now on.”

“What is all this pain that I feel?”

“That is one of the drug’s effects. Agony and sickness are a part of this rite of passage.” Then Dmitri felt an unforeseen sadness and remorse, as moments from his life flashed through his mind: Claudia’s frivolous, delightful laugh, contrasted with his fits of despair about his gnawing suspicions. He suddenly felt that his whole existence had been a practical joke, posing as a blanket to soothe and secure him as he wallowed in his doubts. For a few seconds, his skin crawled as he felt a grim veneration for his tormentors. Once this ceased he screamed, “PLEASE STOP! I’VE DONE YOU NO HARM! SET ME FREE! WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?!”

The Specters of Tradition: Short Story 2: Prequel: The Prison of Philosophy: Part One

12/1/3033

With a sad, righteous smile Peter gazed out the window, standing at the stairwell that led to the basement of Griffith Monastery. The fog was growing denser as it gauzed the distant city lights of the stone churches, restaurants and mansions. They were reminiscent of the eighteenth century with their spiraling towers, arched windows and cherub statues with faded eyes. In the fog, the beach resembled a Nether Region, seemingly thousands of miles away from the city, even though it was right beside it. For a moment, he smelled an exotic perfume with an unrecognizable scent. He felt thick hair brush past the side of his neck, but no one was visible. He looked around and still saw nothing.

Peter went downstairs and entered the room with his usual, subtle leer that frequently appeared. He greeted his clan, the only ones who did not despise or fear his countenance, unlike others throughout his adulthood. Outside his circle everyone was unsettled. His look was so discrete that they cluelessly pondered their unease. In reverence, they invalidated their strange feelings, given his authoritative air. He was thirty-five, with round silver glasses, blond hair and a triangular visage.

Now, he failed to notice his friends’ pretentious thoughtfulness, without true desire for human connection. Marcus Griffith’s long, square and sunken face expressed this most intensely. He was like a proud, brooding skeleton; his agedness and evil contrasted his jauntiness, a mix so grotesque that he seemed otherworldly, full of deadly prowess. The room bore the sensation of an insane asylum, with the peeling paint on its white walls and ceiling, and the strange, claustrophobic atmosphere that was inconsistent with its contents. In spite of its spaciousness, it even produced this feeling when one was alone. It was like being strangled and suffocated, as if the room was imprinted by their hollow lives.

Peter Rawson, one of the strangest charlatans in the United States, was part of a group across between a cult and an intelligentsia. It comprised scholars, monks and high priests, who were all scientists. Peter was a scholar, and his catchphrase was, “Ideology is sustenance,” always accompanied by a cold, vacant expression. Given this criteria, they often philosophized and accomplished little, undoubtedly oblivious to their own idleness. The usual poverty, violence and debasement continued, as they talked in lifeless abstractions irrelevant to the everyman’s life. To justify their meaningless nonsense, they claimed that they were contributing to society, and that anyone who found them obstruse and ignorant, were simply not looking hard enough.

They frequently discussed their other main principle, which claimed that suppressing the unconscious was the only mean to virtue. They perceived the unconscious as the source of sin, fraught with unrefined instincts that weakened one’s reason and will power. Consequently, led austere, ascetic lives while preaching against wealth, decadence or pleasure. Only Marcus Griffith, the head of the cult, was extremely wealthy to sustain their status and influence over the United States. Their most common strategy was internet surveillance, in case of any opinions that challenged their beliefs. Though many of them were married, they believed that lust was a vice in the context of their spiritual practices; therefore, the cult excluded women.

They engaged in New Age, countercultural practices aided by androgynous male creatures, whom the cult had created by nanotechnological, cellular means. (Biological and technological creations of all sorts, were still quite rare and phenomenal in this era). But the specific nature of these practices, were kept secret. No one knew the roles of these androgynous beings, in the cult’s functions and rituals. Whenever people asked them about the roles of these creatures and the details of the New Age rituals, they told them these things were confidential. Many were disturbed by these mysteries.

As more of Griffith’s group congregated, the androgynous entities were absent. They aloofly wandered the city, and from time to time they smelled the same scent as Peter had, accompanied by a pulsing sound. As he sat down for dinner at the long wooden table, he said, “I have something in mind, which has been weighing on me for quite some time.”

“It’s Dmitri, isn’t it?” Marcus asked, stifling a devious smile.

“Y-Yes,” said Peter with a feigned timidity.

“Well, what’s the verdict?” The rest were sitting down as their chatter faded.

“He’s always been an interesting boy,” said Peter pedantically. “I’m getting tired of all his antics. He’s twelve years old, impressionable enough. I think he should become one of us. His father Alexander is a buffoon, a horrible influence on him. He’s raising him to be one of those shallow and simple people, telling him that we are perverted, soulless and untrustworthy. There’s also Claudia, that sick woman I’ve told you about, the one I tried to rape many years ago when Dmitri was six—“

“She’s the friend of the family, isn’t she?” James asked, with a boorish edge to his voice. He was the large, pudgy and balding man, whose pallor and pettiness would nauseate the average viewer, outside of the cult’s delusion.

“Yes,” Peter replied, taking a bite of his potato soup. “She’s the one who Dmitri, even at his young age, is intensely attracted to—all because she’s bourgeouis and selfish like him. When I tried to violate her that night, after creeping through her window, I had this funny feeling of despair. As she resisted, I looked her straight in the eyes and saw that she was never going to change. Simultaneously, I was sexually aroused by her tortured expression. I could see she was too narcissistic to transform; she lacks the sensitivity she needs in the modern world. Her head is as empty as those cartoon nymphs that Dmitri likes to draw. Just like Alexander, she thinks we’re trying to destroy the country. Just when I thought I was going bring her down, her husband Eric came running in after hearing her cries, and pulled me off of her.

“But anyways, I’ll get back to my original story: these days, Claudia’s always encouraging Dmitri to get rich like his father, and to become an artist of any kind because of his supposedly intelligent, articulate nature. To be frank, I think he is quite ignorant, emotionally stunted and impulsive like his parents. To top all this nonsense, there’s this other woman who he calls his muse, and he often runs to her in the evenings for comfort, because of his gnawing suspicion of us—“

“I guess he’s developed a little too soon,” said James, with a chilling smirk. “He is like those typical young male artists nowadays; they’re always infatuated with women at a very ripe age. They’re also insane and dangerous, which is something you find out as you get to know them, as you dig deeper and get past their disguises. They always seem like smart, dreamy and irreproachable beings on the surface, and then you discover that they’re defiant as hell. This kid really thinks he’s somebody. It’s about time we teach him a lesson. What reason does he have to be suspicious of us anyways?”

“The internet surveillance is what he can’t let go of,” said Marcus. “He also knows that we are part of one of the most powerful corporations in the country, and their bizarre experimentations with biology and technology. He’s particularly obsessed with the fact that we keep so many of our activities secret from everyone, including our own corporation. After what Peter did to Claudia, he’s been acting like more and more like a paranoid little prick, in spite of the fact that there’s nothing that his family can do, and he knows it. We’ve even got some of the law on our side; we’ve got all the federal officers we need to back us up if we ever need them—“ He looked at Peter—“which is why you never faced any repercussions for your crime, and you never will.”

“And since Dmitri is still subjected to his family’s psychosis, I will have to forcibly remove him from their influence,” Peter said with a robotic, distant tone.

Chapter Two Beginning

Daniel heard humming in his ears, while he shifted uneasily in his chair. The tremulous melody in the minor key, echoed the eeriness he had always seen in women’s hands, especially when they made any contact with him. Their authoritative elegance seemed mysterious when at rest, and intrusive in motion. Katya Mussorgski, Adrian’s wife, was performing Marita, a Russian lute aria titled after its narrator. Katya was a renowned classical soprano, and one of Dmitri’s sable-haired, exclusively female models who posed as ghosts in some of his paintings. The deceased associated with the muses and shared their recurrent characteristics: oval faces and or thick black hair with bottom curvature. Miriam was an obvious candidate who posed in some of these images. Both women were mystic protestors and renowned sopranos, who performed classical pieces about supernatural figures.

She mellowly repeated the introductory lyrics,

Rowe hungrily studied me.

Where appetite reigned,

A surgeon-like precision dwelled,

And sealed my alienation.

The aria was about Marita’s encounter with Adam Rowe, the only nonfictional character in the song. He was one of Griffith’s elites, who was known to be androgynous in voice, manner and appearance. This was a commonality among these men, which the masses gauged as a kind of countercultural symbol, an obscure clue about the clan’s principles. Due to some unknown condition, Adam was nose-less and hairless except for thin, finely trimmed eyebrows. His slender face was seemingly carnivalesque, and sometimes, Dmitri heard his voice in the lounge. It was muffled by the crowds but starkly recognizable. Only that bright, epicene sound could express such cruelty.

Katya’s smallness adorably spiced her gravitas, and her performance even won Daniel’s slothful gaze. Her hair was in a bun with a yellow elastic band, and she wore a cotton, vermillion suit with a skirt, and mocha-brown, leather high-heels. Daniel was hypnotized by her hand on the strings, in spite of its unpleasantness. The wondrous width of her mouth, and her finesse cured the lost souls of adolescents watching her, who had cynically grown weary of Griffith Alliance. In the minor key, she seemed to prey on his foibles with ceremonial demands for repentance. Minutiae was glamorized by his intoxication, and his dazed expression attracted amused looks from passersby, who couldn’t distinguish him as pensive or thoughtless. His eyes were quietly brazen, reluctantly welcoming a bit of glory to subdue him.

A few feet away from the entrance, she was standing on a bright-green, marble stage at the lounge’s corner. The white walls and ceiling had a tint of pinkness from the stage-light, and the stage’s four steps down to the polished, brown wooden floor. Daniel was sitting at the same side of the bar as the stage, but on the opposite side of the entrance nearby. Dmitri and Miriam sat down at the other end of the bar, avoiding confrontation with Igor while Adrian approached Daniel, sitting down and greeting him cordially.

Many of Dmitri’s models were scattered throughout the crowd, some Nordic and others Korean. The Nordics had light-blond hair and playfully haughty expressions, affectations that built funny rapport with others.

Katya continued,

I had fallen before my destiny,

With the rage of compromise

And self-derision of martyrdom.

Daniel’s Hatred for Idealism

“He’s a hardcore rationalist and realist,” said Miriam, shaking her head. “And so he has this bullshit belief that all art that is either religious or has any parallels with religion, is fascist propaganda. He sees Dmitri’s work in particular, as airy fairy.”

Dmitri chuckled. “And what does he think I’m trying to do to people?”

“He thinks you’re trying to force them to adopt theism, in some form or another, and use any higher power or powers as their moral guide,” Miriam replied, exasperatedly sighing.

In the image, a Russian Blue cat was reflected on the fireplace’s glass door, which had a black metal handle at its right, extending from top to bottom. On the antique, brown wooden floor, it stood halfway between the man and the specter, looking up at Anastassya. Its reflection revealed its round eyes and pupils, which expressed a mysterious recognition of her. It had short, dense silver fur, and its fearlessness comically contrasted its owner.

“Everything’s fascism to him,” said Samuel, smirking. “Watch, next he’ll be saying that Barney The Purple Dinosaur is a fascist symbol. The funny thing is: he’s a total Nazi himself, and a coward too. If you look closely, you can see that whenever he’s about to have a violent outburst, he is a little nervous, as if he’s being cornered. He’s always the victim. And the rest of the time, he’s rude, selfish and obnoxious. He sarcastically calls Dmitri a ‘radical’ and a ‘revolutionary.’”

In the specter’s face, Miriam noticed a faint sensuality, as if in her mind, she somehow saw her confessor.

“Don’t forget, he’s also clinically insane,” she said. “He sometimes has the feeling that he’s being watched, followed or both.”

“Well, his life’s been Hell,” said Samuel, severely. “It’s not surprising. When he and his sister Rose were six, she was kidnapped and murdered. One morning, Daniel and his parents noticed that that she hadn’t come out of her bedroom for a while, so when her parents went to wake her up, they saw that she was gone. They looked all around the apartment and couldn’t find her. They looked outside and around this neighborhood, and still, nothing. After calling the police, and a year of searching, the police found her body in the ocean a few miles away from the harbor front, so pale that it was startling. Later on, during the investigation, they discovered that she had been drowned by a man named Richard Abignail, who was found noosed in his bedroom. They believe that he committed suicide.

“As you can imagine, he has been quite an enigma for most of Daniel’s life. Nobody knows any details about him, and what specifically had led to these events. Right after the discovery of Rose’s death, Daniel was withdrawn for many years until he was eleven, slowly developing psychosis, which intensified over time. Unlike nowadays, it constantly gave him the feeling that you just described.”

Perturbed, Dmitri glanced at the gold crucifix leaning against the wall, on top of the fireplace within the image. Near the cross, the woman seemed like Christ’s anima. It was the size of her hand, and at its center was a red gem.

Samuel shut the book and said, “We should go inside, before it gets too late.” He put the book into his bag, slightly delirious. The image had been a dark undertone to their conversation, as if it had eavesdropped and sadly smiled at every clever phrase.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wandering Conscience

Miriam, Dmitri and Samuel were extremely wealthy and cultured friends, equal to Daniel in these merits. Their metropolitan neighborhood was quite affluent and stately, comprising mansions, restaurants, bars, et cetera. It inspired much of Dmitri’s work, with which Miriam could empathize during her weekly strolls through the neighborhood in the evenings. She thought that the place was suitable to portray mysticism.

Miriam was twenty-seven years old, and she had an oval face with high cheekbones. As it always was, her blond hair was in a bun. Samuel was fifty-seven, and had traces of the purity in Dmitri’s work: a no-nonsense disposition that made him a famous, ingenious social critic. He wrote hilarious essays and books, about the corruption and hypocrisies in society and the government. He was balding and somewhat corpulent, with some reddish-brown hair.

Amusedly, Samuel snorted and said, “Daniel’s one of those strange sociopaths. You know how he talks—like everyone else is a joke, and he’s ready to expose them. He’s a spoiled, self-entitled pig! Why does he believe he’s the only sane person in the world?” Samuel pulled out a hardcover book from his backpack, containing Dmitri’s paintings. It was titled NYMPHS and right below this it said The Dionysian Specters, followed by Dmitri Sokolov at the bottom of the cover. These were all in silver, and the cover was a black-and-white photograph of Dmitri. His eyes were naturally somewhat slit, and he wore a polyester suit and a silk tie. He was walking through a stone hallway lit by lanterns, and with a rounded ceiling that curved upwards. Two doors were on his right, one beside him and the other in the background. His perplexed, furrowed brow poignantly unmasked his personal life, causing Samuel to briefly ponder the possible source of Dmitri’s work. He began to browse through the book, continuing to complain about Daniel, “He’s an alcoholic too, which helps with his cynicism—“ Samuel dazedly paused, as he came across a painting of a nymph standing barefooted in a dark room. She appeared to be in her late twenties, and her composure mirrored a schoolmistress. Beside the image, on the page with the painting’s explanation, it was titled Anastassya The Wandering Conscience. Below the name was the phrase, ‘Anastassya giggles at each sinner’s insolence, as she wanders the Earth. Other times she is stoic.’

“He takes this drug, which I don’t know much about. All I do know is that it’s a fine white powder, that when inhaled or swallowed, turns him into a violent, lecherous lunatic, which brings out more of who he already is. When my friend Alastor, Miriam and I were here last night, and we were standing at the counter in the lounge, he drunkenly staggered up behind her and put his hand down her skirt. Then, my friend said, ‘What a lowlife! What is society coming to nowadays?’, as he pulled Daniel off. Then Daniel punched him in the face and started attacking him, and security had to drag him out.”

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Dmitri exclaimed, “He’s extremely unstable, and yet he always sounds suspicious of others.”

“Well, those two things go hand in hand,” said Samuel.

Dmitri laughed wryly as he lit a cigarette, while viewing the painting. The room’s ceiling and two walls were turquoise, and the girl was beside a rough, red-brick fireplace. Its smoke and embers revealed that it had just been extinguished. The image was angled at its left, and she was on the right. She was facing a young man across from her, who viewed her with a quiet blend of euphoria and agitation.

What a strange sanctity she had! Her closed eyes were almost the size of her palm, and she had black, voluminous hair. She wore a white, eighteenth-century French nightgown with a ruffled collar and sleeves. On its ruffles was a grapevine pattern, and the nightgown almost reached her ankles. Her collar was laced together, and the lower half of her large ponytail was curved inward, protruding at the bottom. It beautifully mixed with her attire, and in the shadows, its green elastic complemented its richness, vigorous and obsidian. She was an obscure caricature of womanliness.

“He’s always been a pleasure-seeker, which I can’t say I hate,” said Dmitri, grinning with a soft, gallant dignity. “But he’s obviously dug a hole for himself, and he’s out of control.”

“Yeah, and to justify all that shit, he boasts, ‘I’m an individual’, as if that’s supposed to explain being an idiot,” said Samuel. With a sentimental expression, he shifted his focus back to the painting. He was entranced by the man who witnessed Anastassya, because he appeared as if he was about to confess something. He had red hair and a pale, remorseful visage, with the tired, bewildered look, of someone who had just been awoken by a horrible noise. He was probably twenty, and he wore blue-and-yellow, checkered pajamas, their shirt buttoned up. Each golden, wooden button had a slightly rounded surface.

“I can’t believe Daniel thinks your work is naïve,” said Samuel. “There’s so much spirit here, so much experience.”