Rhapsody of the Beast
I read the rhapsody of the Beast (as I'm calling 'Kids These Days') to Aunt Tudi last night. She did not like it, saying it was too politically motivated. Well, why not? I am politically motivated in many ways and this was an opportunity to express my opinion regarding war and the behaviour of some soldiers during war. These soulless individuals should be trained to understand that war does not mean rampant cruelty and inhumane practices. And, if they continue such behaviour, it may certainly return in supernatural karmic force to literally bite them in the arse.
So here it is, Kids These Days. Rebekah rocks. That is all.
CHAPTER 7
KIDS THESE DAYS
Waiting, working up an appetite, the crows among the corpses, all panaceas out of sight. The cannibals we know are always sorry till the next time. ~ Shriekback “Big Sharp Teeth”
They enjoyed the barracks so much more in the days of the First Great War. The blood and piss and the heady sense of apocalyptic paranoia and psychotic breaks. Men broke like kewpie dolls from the inside out but, when their insides were ripped out by rusty bayonettes, Rebekah was always a little disappointed fine porcelain didn’t spill out instead. Barracks these days were office jobs for the most part and the men were pre-medicated so they’d leave the war addicted to the high of the medication instead of addicted to any perversion that would keep him from screaming out into the inky night because he’d just been visisted by his eviscerated buddy from last year’s tour of duty in Germany.
Or take Vietnam for instance, when mankind first began to really explore the connection between physical and mental horror and the complete meltdown that so often happened when the two were intermingled. Only a handful of men weren’t diagnosed with PTSD after having their spirits pissed on by their “great leaders.” These men were great men indeed, for they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to have no soul whatsoever. They could say, do, or have to done to them anything and they may show physical distress or a certain distaste for the occasional activity, but they slept like babes swaddled in granny’s knit blanket every night without one bit of issue taken with the activities of the day.
These were the men and women that easily embraced the Way of the Beast. Sought it out, they did, having heard in back alleys of the shithole town in which they were stationed or sitting in the galley eating the swill afforded them by the what was told to them was the greatest nation on Earth. And these were the men and women Rebekah and her beautiful mate Mephistopheles hunted, tortured, ate alive, and left for dead on an almost nightly basis. It was a shame that the Muslims were being blamed for a spat of gruesome murders throughout the war-torn desert streets of Iraq but no… Rebekah and Mephistopheles are gorging on the blood of the soulless and enjoyed the fact that they were actually saving more lives than they were taking.
They found four of the Soulless alone in their rec room joking about the days of Abu Ghraib and the games they played with the bodies stretched too far and the sacrilege they made these unfortunate people suffer. “And what’s so funny,” one of the soulless said. “He had no idea of what was going on. He just wanted to find his wife and son. Well bow to the East 22.5 times, take this broom stick up your arse and proclaim yourself a Catholic priest, and I’ll putcha out of your misery.”
The room rang with laughter, the kind that makes you want to make it the cackling of the damned. And so Rebekah did. With Mephistopheles, they entered the rec room and opened each throat before anyone could even really move. Drinking the blood they needed, they then opened the viscera to play a kind of ring-a-round the rosie with the jar-head’s bowels. They left the room bloody, happy, and pleased with the fact that the four marines still had a few more minutes of sentience to realise that their bowels were tied in a knot in the middle of the room and they were slowly bleeding out after having been visited by what the locals called Jinn.
The more blood there was, the more justice. At least Rebekah thought so. Mephistopheles had to say he agreed. He adored his beloved Rebekah and made it a habit to agree with her on matters, especially important matters of the blood. It was her idea to transform artistes ~ musicians, painters, clowns ~ those proficient in the arts of the world. She wanted the Way of the Beast to be enacted tastefully and, perhaps, with a certain sly message behind the carnage. In Orphaeus, her vision was made manifest so beautifully, Meph and found Rebekeh weep and come close to introducing herself after all these years. But that was a rule they would not break. They left the artiste to his or her art after they transformed the child. What came after would be a message to the world someday. There is death and horror in everything we do. If you eat you are propagating the horror of the plant or animal into which you bit. Do you have any purpose other than hunger?
Is it wrong to want to make preying on one another art?
Rebekah walked out into the hot desert night and shook herself with glee at the vision of those four soulless goobs taking their last breaths. It was indeed a beautiful message their commander would surely find amusing even if he buried the image deep inside his psyche wrapped in a kind of ghastly mirth.
“Meph why can’t all our children be like us? Why are some of them so very clumsy with their bloodbaths whereas others just refuse to succumb to what should be their natural inclination?”
“Why do you ask, Rebekeh?”
“I had this dream this morning about that fellow in the tacky spats, the one we did during the Great Depression?”
“Faust?”
“Yeah. He came to me in a dream, all holier than thou in a way, telling me that my other kid Orphaeus would be needing our help. It was so real.”
“Did you ever think it might be real?”
Rebekeh shifted her head and her abundant black Semitic hair weighed on the left side of her alabaster face.
“He didn’t come out too well, helping all those retarded little Tomb huggers and never drinking until the Bloodlust took him.”
“Well he did come out as a Darkblood, not one of us, if you remember correctly.”
“He’s not even alive anymore, is he?”
Meph wrapped a beautifully-sculpted arm around his lover of two thousand years. “No, Becca, I’m afraid not. He ran afoul of the demon seed Cadmus Pariah a few decades ago.”
“Then why am I dreaming about him?”
“Maybe he’s dreaming you. Maybe he’s still hanging around in some weird way. The sun will be up soon. It’s time to go spin ourselves some desert hammocks and sleep the day away. Maybe he’ll come back and say what he wants to both of us.”
“Kids these days, Meph… That one was a real disappointment. It was like an ancient great Truth was presented to Charles Chaplin and the Little Tramp decided to trample it under his oversized feet instead of bringing out the absurdity of existence. I swear, if I could have, I would have killed Faust myself for being such a…sweetheart.”
Rebekeh rolled her eyes and walked with Mephistopheles into the desert, wondering what dreams would come.
They spun into the mealy desert sand, making cradles of protection from the uncharitable Arabic sun. Almost immediately the dream began, this time for both of them.
“Hello muddah, Hello faddah,” Faust began singing, his face cocking to the right in a sidewise smile. “I asked Cadmus Pariah about the two of you. He told me very little before he tortured and killed me. Just thought you should know that. I’d like to get to know you better soon.”
“Uh…how…?” Rebekeh said, her hands splayed in a kind of impatience.
“Come to New York. This war will be going on for a while so I’m sure you can get back to your Great Work after you tend one of your own. I’m asking as your son to be there. I’ll need you more than I ever thought I would once I caught my stride as a Vampire.”
“And if we don’t come?”
“I’ll keep asking in the dreams and messing with your psyche with my endless collection of bad jokes from the 1930s. It’s your choice.”
“We’ll be there in three days time, wherever there is.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll know. Love you guys. The four corners bloodbath back there…uh hum…just brill.”
They didn’t wake until the sun went down. When Rebekah climbed out of her protective sand pod, she looked at Mephistopheles.
“What was I saying earlier about kids these days? Even when they’re dead, they find a way to make your life a misery. Am I right Meph?”
“Rebekah, you are always right, lover. Always. Let’s go to New York City and see what sort of trouble we can cause.”
So here it is, Kids These Days. Rebekah rocks. That is all.
CHAPTER 7
KIDS THESE DAYS
Waiting, working up an appetite, the crows among the corpses, all panaceas out of sight. The cannibals we know are always sorry till the next time. ~ Shriekback “Big Sharp Teeth”
They enjoyed the barracks so much more in the days of the First Great War. The blood and piss and the heady sense of apocalyptic paranoia and psychotic breaks. Men broke like kewpie dolls from the inside out but, when their insides were ripped out by rusty bayonettes, Rebekah was always a little disappointed fine porcelain didn’t spill out instead. Barracks these days were office jobs for the most part and the men were pre-medicated so they’d leave the war addicted to the high of the medication instead of addicted to any perversion that would keep him from screaming out into the inky night because he’d just been visisted by his eviscerated buddy from last year’s tour of duty in Germany.
Or take Vietnam for instance, when mankind first began to really explore the connection between physical and mental horror and the complete meltdown that so often happened when the two were intermingled. Only a handful of men weren’t diagnosed with PTSD after having their spirits pissed on by their “great leaders.” These men were great men indeed, for they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to have no soul whatsoever. They could say, do, or have to done to them anything and they may show physical distress or a certain distaste for the occasional activity, but they slept like babes swaddled in granny’s knit blanket every night without one bit of issue taken with the activities of the day.
These were the men and women that easily embraced the Way of the Beast. Sought it out, they did, having heard in back alleys of the shithole town in which they were stationed or sitting in the galley eating the swill afforded them by the what was told to them was the greatest nation on Earth. And these were the men and women Rebekah and her beautiful mate Mephistopheles hunted, tortured, ate alive, and left for dead on an almost nightly basis. It was a shame that the Muslims were being blamed for a spat of gruesome murders throughout the war-torn desert streets of Iraq but no… Rebekah and Mephistopheles are gorging on the blood of the soulless and enjoyed the fact that they were actually saving more lives than they were taking.
They found four of the Soulless alone in their rec room joking about the days of Abu Ghraib and the games they played with the bodies stretched too far and the sacrilege they made these unfortunate people suffer. “And what’s so funny,” one of the soulless said. “He had no idea of what was going on. He just wanted to find his wife and son. Well bow to the East 22.5 times, take this broom stick up your arse and proclaim yourself a Catholic priest, and I’ll putcha out of your misery.”
The room rang with laughter, the kind that makes you want to make it the cackling of the damned. And so Rebekah did. With Mephistopheles, they entered the rec room and opened each throat before anyone could even really move. Drinking the blood they needed, they then opened the viscera to play a kind of ring-a-round the rosie with the jar-head’s bowels. They left the room bloody, happy, and pleased with the fact that the four marines still had a few more minutes of sentience to realise that their bowels were tied in a knot in the middle of the room and they were slowly bleeding out after having been visited by what the locals called Jinn.
The more blood there was, the more justice. At least Rebekah thought so. Mephistopheles had to say he agreed. He adored his beloved Rebekah and made it a habit to agree with her on matters, especially important matters of the blood. It was her idea to transform artistes ~ musicians, painters, clowns ~ those proficient in the arts of the world. She wanted the Way of the Beast to be enacted tastefully and, perhaps, with a certain sly message behind the carnage. In Orphaeus, her vision was made manifest so beautifully, Meph and found Rebekeh weep and come close to introducing herself after all these years. But that was a rule they would not break. They left the artiste to his or her art after they transformed the child. What came after would be a message to the world someday. There is death and horror in everything we do. If you eat you are propagating the horror of the plant or animal into which you bit. Do you have any purpose other than hunger?
Is it wrong to want to make preying on one another art?
Rebekah walked out into the hot desert night and shook herself with glee at the vision of those four soulless goobs taking their last breaths. It was indeed a beautiful message their commander would surely find amusing even if he buried the image deep inside his psyche wrapped in a kind of ghastly mirth.
“Meph why can’t all our children be like us? Why are some of them so very clumsy with their bloodbaths whereas others just refuse to succumb to what should be their natural inclination?”
“Why do you ask, Rebekeh?”
“I had this dream this morning about that fellow in the tacky spats, the one we did during the Great Depression?”
“Faust?”
“Yeah. He came to me in a dream, all holier than thou in a way, telling me that my other kid Orphaeus would be needing our help. It was so real.”
“Did you ever think it might be real?”
Rebekeh shifted her head and her abundant black Semitic hair weighed on the left side of her alabaster face.
“He didn’t come out too well, helping all those retarded little Tomb huggers and never drinking until the Bloodlust took him.”
“Well he did come out as a Darkblood, not one of us, if you remember correctly.”
“He’s not even alive anymore, is he?”
Meph wrapped a beautifully-sculpted arm around his lover of two thousand years. “No, Becca, I’m afraid not. He ran afoul of the demon seed Cadmus Pariah a few decades ago.”
“Then why am I dreaming about him?”
“Maybe he’s dreaming you. Maybe he’s still hanging around in some weird way. The sun will be up soon. It’s time to go spin ourselves some desert hammocks and sleep the day away. Maybe he’ll come back and say what he wants to both of us.”
“Kids these days, Meph… That one was a real disappointment. It was like an ancient great Truth was presented to Charles Chaplin and the Little Tramp decided to trample it under his oversized feet instead of bringing out the absurdity of existence. I swear, if I could have, I would have killed Faust myself for being such a…sweetheart.”
Rebekeh rolled her eyes and walked with Mephistopheles into the desert, wondering what dreams would come.
They spun into the mealy desert sand, making cradles of protection from the uncharitable Arabic sun. Almost immediately the dream began, this time for both of them.
“Hello muddah, Hello faddah,” Faust began singing, his face cocking to the right in a sidewise smile. “I asked Cadmus Pariah about the two of you. He told me very little before he tortured and killed me. Just thought you should know that. I’d like to get to know you better soon.”
“Uh…how…?” Rebekeh said, her hands splayed in a kind of impatience.
“Come to New York. This war will be going on for a while so I’m sure you can get back to your Great Work after you tend one of your own. I’m asking as your son to be there. I’ll need you more than I ever thought I would once I caught my stride as a Vampire.”
“And if we don’t come?”
“I’ll keep asking in the dreams and messing with your psyche with my endless collection of bad jokes from the 1930s. It’s your choice.”
“We’ll be there in three days time, wherever there is.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll know. Love you guys. The four corners bloodbath back there…uh hum…just brill.”
They didn’t wake until the sun went down. When Rebekah climbed out of her protective sand pod, she looked at Mephistopheles.
“What was I saying earlier about kids these days? Even when they’re dead, they find a way to make your life a misery. Am I right Meph?”
“Rebekah, you are always right, lover. Always. Let’s go to New York City and see what sort of trouble we can cause.”