Part 30 (2/2)

”You touched me. Your hands lingered,” Susie reminds the porcine woman.

”All I did was to perform my duty as a nurse.”

”You kept staring at my nakedness.””Your belly-skin had tattoos, symbols in strange colors, scurrying around like beetles. Especially near the sutures. And someone put furry boots on your legs. They looked like goat-feet.”

Susie stared at the ceiling, warding off realizations. ”Is my body changing?” she wonders.

”By the time the ether wore off . . . by the time you stopped vomiting, the tattoos vanished. I don't know how you got rid of the boots. Maybe it was some sort of trick. Anyhow,” huffs the nurse, ”I was just performing my duty as a nurse.”

As evidence the porcine woman points at her uniform, which is starched, unnaturally white, overbright in the sunlight slicing through the bars of the sanatorium windows. Silicated Silicated, decides the efficiency that is fused with Susie. ”When you washed the hostbody, your hands lingered,” avers the pluralized Susie. ”You caressed the host-body.”

”Lookie, Missus. I don't never touch the Host except when the priest places it on my tongue.”

”You touched this this flesh.” Susie, unable to move, gestures with her chin. ”The flesh of flesh.” Susie, unable to move, gestures with her chin. ”The flesh of this this body.” body.”

Abruptly the nurse throws open the curtains, muttering, ”G.o.dless and raving sick in a madhouse, and I'm justifying myself to her.”

Shanty-Irish sow. The human insult, a regional construction, flits through Susie's overmind. Communication is futile, a distraction. As the dying body lurches there is a sense of gauze tightening on wrists. This is because hands and ankles are bound to the hospital bed. Two thrashes confirm constraint. Her slender fingers clench the sheets. Suddenly she comprehends that the host-body is wracked with pain from the surgery. Just for a second the steely intention in front of Susie's mind unclamps. The human insult, a regional construction, flits through Susie's overmind. Communication is futile, a distraction. As the dying body lurches there is a sense of gauze tightening on wrists. This is because hands and ankles are bound to the hospital bed. Two thrashes confirm constraint. Her slender fingers clench the sheets. Suddenly she comprehends that the host-body is wracked with pain from the surgery. Just for a second the steely intention in front of Susie's mind unclamps. ”This husk is in agony,” ”This husk is in agony,” she gasps. she gasps. ”Help me!” ”Help me!”

*he hospital bed is equipped with a rubber pad to protect the mattress. Nonporous, the pad repels moisture, spew, discharges, fluids. By preventing evaporation the unyielding rubber pad promotes perspiration. This is why Susie's sheets are sweat-damp, her gown sweat-sodden. Her temperature climbs. Delirium convinces her that the pad and length of her body form a human-skinned flying carpet. Over Providence she soars, lying on a mesh of discontinued selves. Surcease is a formula etched on the aethers, magically descriptive, nebular, galactic in implication. Her many-selved mind aches with pluralized yearnings. How many selves crouch and hide in the swirling formulae?

Ideations, viscid geometries, larval letterforms.

Strands of her consort are woven into this carpet of dreams. Winfield, animalistic whiskers sprouting from his upper lip. His Winfield, animalistic whiskers sprouting from his upper lip. His illness was the illness of this accursed planet, which crawls with absurd cavalcades, husk armies, ritualized and valueless sp.a.w.nings . . . while her Thousand Unborn swirl in the aethers like the spindrift of Eternity. illness was the illness of this accursed planet, which crawls with absurd cavalcades, husk armies, ritualized and valueless sp.a.w.nings . . . while her Thousand Unborn swirl in the aethers like the spindrift of Eternity.

In the midnight hospital room the dying ent.i.ty jolts awake. The plight of her Unborn Brood knifes into her. Her helplessness is unbearable. To open time she summons a tangible ideation of her consort and bleats Ia! Ia! Ia! Ia! Ia! Ia! without uttering its truest name. without uttering its truest name.

Proceeding into the room is a crowd-sized tangle, mostly Winfield, partly the Butler Hospital room in which he died, partly the unnamable efficiency. Fully aroused, the avatar mounts her, thrusts, groans, boasts, its mind maggoty with spirochetes. Ia!

Between her thighs Susie feels the potent fecundating seed of death.

*n bed, Susie jackknifes awake. The plight of her only child jolts into her. Scant minutes away from the asylum lives her only child-no longer larval-languis.h.i.+ng, dreaming, cadav erously slim and pale. She envisions him costumed in the antique clothes of his dead father. Hideous by any standard, earthly or otherwise.

In a midnight hospital room Susie forms a tangible ideation of her child (”a poet of the highest order”). poet of the highest order”). Because she's fatally depleted the phantasm is runt-sized. It drifts near the ceiling fan. Sliced into wisps by the slow rotation of blades, it recombines but loses volume, substance, lacks luminosity. Willed to do so, it alights onto a wall calendar, budging a leaf (May 24, 1921). Then it alights on her wrist. By any earthly standard its expression is hideous, the ch.o.r.eatic tic p.r.o.nounced. Tiny as it is, the lanternjaws manage to chew through the gauze, freeing one hand. Susie unknots the other wrist, but not before an avalanche of pain engulfs the right upper quadrant of her torso. There, the phantasm suckles, drawing nutrient ooze from the partially unst.i.tched wound. Then and there she expects discontinuation, as the brown ratlike minikin cleaves and burrows into her flesh. Pain is everything. Yet everything is nothing compared to the plight of the Thousand Unborn, whose fate must devolve on her beloved, sublimely gifted, weakling invalid useless child. Because she's fatally depleted the phantasm is runt-sized. It drifts near the ceiling fan. Sliced into wisps by the slow rotation of blades, it recombines but loses volume, substance, lacks luminosity. Willed to do so, it alights onto a wall calendar, budging a leaf (May 24, 1921). Then it alights on her wrist. By any earthly standard its expression is hideous, the ch.o.r.eatic tic p.r.o.nounced. Tiny as it is, the lanternjaws manage to chew through the gauze, freeing one hand. Susie unknots the other wrist, but not before an avalanche of pain engulfs the right upper quadrant of her torso. There, the phantasm suckles, drawing nutrient ooze from the partially unst.i.tched wound. Then and there she expects discontinuation, as the brown ratlike minikin cleaves and burrows into her flesh. Pain is everything. Yet everything is nothing compared to the plight of the Thousand Unborn, whose fate must devolve on her beloved, sublimely gifted, weakling invalid useless child.

*is involvement is essential: belatedly, Susie realizes this. Suddenly the undermind bursts through. What do you expect from my child? What do you expect from my child? demands Sarah Susan. demands Sarah Susan.

”He must tend to his mission,” answers the usurper in a goatish bleat. ”He must . . . he must devote his energies to the Thousand Unborn. And usher in the Dawn of the Thousand Young.”

He is too frail, he will collapse.

Susie feels the ideation of her son brush against her cheek, licking teardrops. It is odorless, breath-textured. Inexplicably, it smiles as it slithers through the bars of the window, a slow silvery comet staining the air with a trail of luminous symbols, viscid geometries, larval letterforms.

Breathing is no longer necessary: Susie realizes this belatedly. When her body is discovered her mouth is open. In repose she appears to be glancing out the window. At midnight the sky of Providence is tinctured with hues of the morgue and the stars. To the eyes of the dead this is a scroll of endless night . . . with symbols and the language of Time etched on the aethers, magically descriptive, cosmic in implication.

<script>