Unfinished aftermath

§

Now, humans begin to live longer in the olden days, because the dinosaurs provide us with good cheer. So, after sixty-nine millennia pass, Eve develops a reputation for being a virtuous queen, although she still rules Paradise and is not to be held responsible for her actions. 

At about this time, my adult cadaver Ialdabaoth grows enamored with Nan the Nona. She’s the goddess of chastity. So that, too, sux. He gets a job at her gym and writes admiring letters to her, saying “I honor you because you are so chaste. You are like a hard limit to the aspect of my being that wants to get up and dance.” Ialdabaoth vows eternal virginity, swearing that he will never love or marry anyone or anything. 

This prudish behavior of the long-deceased Ialdabaoth offends the Head Manager of Heaven, Madame Lilith, who is the goddess of titillation. So, in hopes of stirring up trouble, she takes a series of naked photos of herself and scans these pics into her Desktop Computer; then uses a hyper-advanced Art Program to superimpose images of her body onto still-life portraits of Ialdabaoth that she clipped from the newspaper. So, if you didn’t just watch her manipulate these erotic works of art, you would swear that they were photographic evidence of Ialdabaoth enjoying Lilith’s charms. The two appear in every imaginable position, and the scenes are all extremely well lit. It’s difficult not to become bothered by them.

So Lilith gives these collaged masterpieces to her best friend Eve, who is also her favorite lover, and the two giggle over them and make love in the afternoon. — But then something strange occurs, which has never happened very much before: Eve begins to have feelings for Ialdabaoth. “It’s probably because of the suggestive nature of those pictures that Lilith showed me earlier this morning,” Eve reasons to herself; “cuz otherwise Ialdabaoth is like: yuck.”

Thus Ialdabaoth’s stepmother Eve has fallen madly in love with him. Eve confesses this to Lilith, and Lilith is pleased with the revelation: she encourages it. Then Eve walks to the hut of Ialdabaoth and knocks on the mud.

“Wut,” Ialdabaoth huffs.

“It’s me, Eve,” sez Eve. “I’m unclad, waiting outside for you to take me carnally. Please do so, forthwith.”

Ialdabaoth answers in anger from inside his hut: “I am trying to flip thru an album of fully clothed portraits of my exemplar, Nan the Nona, whom I dare not even dream of touching the hand of. Leave now, before I wave my wand.” (For, back in the day, all the residents of paradise possessed weird wands, which, when waved, would cast a ray that left its target holy.)

So Eve teases Ialdabaoth: she steps a few paces away from his abode but keeps announcing what she’s doing: “OK, have it your way; I guess I’ll just have to perform everything independently, and please myself by caressing here… and here…” tho instead of the word “here” she actually gives a detailed verbal description of all these zones that she’s self-groping — I’m just trying to relay the gist of what she said while not ascending to her level of sublimity — and she speaks in a loud voice so that Ialdabaoth can hear her. Also she moans loudly and articulates the sensations that she’s savoring, during her pleasures. 

This enrages Ialdabaoth, so, without daring to look, he thrusts his wand out of the entryway of the hut and fires voodoo rays Eve-ward. Simultaneously Lilith, who is hiding nearby, espying and eavesdropping, arises and vibrates forth copious rays from her own wand as well. (For she’s the goddess of not only titillation but also requital.) So Eve gets caught in the crossfire between Ialdabaoth and Lilith. This she finds immensely satisfying.

§

Now I expressly forbid anyone from interpreting these magic wands as phallic symbols and their voodoo rays as stand-ins for life-seed — I, the author, do hereby declare that my intention was obviously otherwise. Study groups who read this book together should NOT grow aroused by any passage. This is serious business. You don’t want to end up like Eve, immensely satisfied. So, dear readership, keep your hands off the Devil’s Workbench.

And, to any college students who have been assigned my books to skim for their literature course, I’m not against you employing a hunting knife to stab your own roving fancy. (Make sure that it’s resting on the surface of a thick, wooden table, however, when you do this.) And shout the word “Evil!” to make this wayward aspect of your intellect ashamed.

§

Now, back to the story. Eve falls asleep and dreams of becoming distraught and depressed about her longings for the revenant Ialdabaoth. Eventually, unable to tolerate the burden of her suffering in silence, she confides in her nurse and shares her feelings towards the resurrected zombie. And, you guessed it, the character of the nurse, in Eve’s dream, is played by Lilith. (Just to flash forward, when the dream finally ends, Eve awakens and laughs herself silly — so none of this is important: it’s just a prophetic intervention from the gods.)

In her dream, Eve is able to float near the ceiling of Ialdabaoth’s hut and watch the melodrama unfold; so she observes as Nurse Lilith enters the abode and delivers her lines: 

“I am concerned about the health of our mistress Eve; for she is in love with thee, O thou reanimated Demiurge, because thou art a control freak who shows little interest in presiding over HER. What seems to be the problem — dost thou not find that she is the most attractive creature in all of paradise?” 

Ialdabaoth reluctantly admits that he is in love with Eve; but “I am bound by my oath of abstinence — therefore I must reject the advances of my stepmother.” 

Now Eve, hovering in ecstasy above this exchange, upon learning of the nurse’s unquenchable lust (for there is glyph that appears above each character in the dream which officially symbolizes that character’s inmost thoughts, and Lilith plays the nurse with passion), ceases to fear the consequences of her immoral desires and plans to commit the dire act of awakening, so that she can leave this dream-world and go make love to Lilith. (The actual goddess, not the nurse inside the dream.) But before doing so, she writes a letter to her husband Bryan, the author of no novels, not even one, accusing Ialdabaoth of attempting to seduce her — this is a thinly veiled attempt to clear her name and protect her future kids from misfortune. (She’s thinking here about offspring she might either beget upon or bear for Lilith.) 

Eve only does this to further the plot, in case anyone else picks up this vision where she left off dreaming it. She really couldn’t care less.

So I Bryan the author receive and carefully read Eve’s letter, which I had her write to me. Thus I learn all about my dead son Ialdabaoth’s supposed sins. I look very cross as I mouth out and half-whisper the letter’s contents to myself, in a close-up shot. 

Therefore I, even I, Bryan Ray, the author of not only the dream but also the tale that encompasses it, now crumple the script and get down on my knees, which fit in the well-worn grooves of the wooden floor of my log cabin (these grooves were formed in the boards by my continual kneeling in supplication of the deity over all the years I’ve lived here: for I’m a very pious man), and I weep out a prayer asking the Almighty to tell my second wife the Virgin Mary to ask the deer who granted me those three wishes near the beginning of this current myth’s earlier chapter to chase down my son and slay him again. 

“You want to use Wish Two of Three to grant your son the sweet release into Second Death?” the deer asks from its prayer-portal. “Are you sure? For then you’ll only have one single wish remaining. Cuz you used your first wish to have me, Bambo-Zedek the Magic Deer, murder your son in the previous chapter: remember when I summoned that Giant Clam to rise up out of the sand on the beach at exactly the moment when Ialdabaoth was sun-tanning with all of his clothes on, and this scared the horses that pull his golden coach (which he stole from YOU); thus they dragged him to his death?”

But I confirm my request to have Ialdabaoth eliminated, for the fellow is a nuisance. I’m also still angry with him for what he did with Moses. (He buried the old man in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but I haven’t yet been able to find his sepulchre: this pisses me off; cuz I’d like to display Mr. Moses’ skeleton in my Creation Science Museum, and use some clippings of his hair for magic spells.) So Bambo-Zedek summons a Huge Bull to scare the same six white horses of Ialdabaoth into a wild frenzy that kills his corpse again. However, this time around, my dead son’s ghost is barred from resurrecting in three days: we trapped it in Sheol like a fly in a jar. For, as part of my second wish, the Magic Deer helps me roll a boulder to block the door to the meat freezer where what remains of Ialdabaoth is kept for scientific study. Bambo-Zedek takes pity on me, assuming I’m wasting my wishes; hence the extra service — but what this deer doesn’t know is that I have a master plan to squeeze as much B-movie material from this myth as the law will allow.

Now Nan the Nona feels bonus sadness from the re-loss of my son, her devout follower Ialdabaoth the twice-dead immortal; thus she reveals the truth to me about Lilith and the curse that she placed on my hot wife Eve. The story ends with me grieving over the fact that still some faint hint of my memory of Ialdabaoth remains and isn’t altogether obliterated; but then I learn from a local radio play (they’ve already made a play about this — that’s how late I am to the party) that my wife is having an affair with Lilith and her stepsister-lover Sophia, so I pick myself up by my bootstraps and arise from the earth, do a reverse backflip, wash my mane, and anoint myself with sacred oil in mid-air twice; then change my apparel and fly out of my house wearing my best black cape — the one that flaps even when there’s no breeze: 

When I arrive at the room where Lilith, Eve and Sophia are shooting their love scene, I sit down politely at the table and begin to drink blood while watching them. (The pitcher that I keep pouring from is actually filled with rum that has a thickening agent added so that it’s viscosity resembles that of hemoglobin when filmed in monochrome — this is far preferable to drinking chocolate syrup, which is what vampyre movie-stars of the past were compelled to do.)

When the women stop moaning long enough to concentrate on their lines, Lilith sez:

“Wait — Eve, aren’t you married to our author Bryan Ray? I think your husband is at the table watching us. He is getting drunk on blood.”

“I left Bryan after he abandoned my sister here,” Eve explains. “Stepsister, that is. But if he’s here, he should join us on this bed.”

So, as I approach, Eve falls back in love with me, and Sophia redoubles her love for me. 

“Ialdabaoth is gone forever,” I stretch the truth; “he’s now 100% fodder for Earth Science.”

“Hey, where is Mary,” sez Eve, “and Teresa, her daughter — did they return to Ialdabaoth? Shouldn’t we warn them of the…”

Nobody cares about anything, at this point, not even Nan the Nona; so let’s just have our editor cut to a montage of volcanoes exploding, and we’ll say that it’s the New Age. That way, we can escape this current farce and move on to the next, which presumably will not start with us having painted ourselves into a corner. But we can refer to both as reality. I’ll even add a few more text blobs at the end here, to sorta begin the next section prematurely…

§

I wonder what the future of writing will be. Watching a screen is nowhere near as dreamy as reading; and listening to music is sometimes too dreamy (like psychedelic drugs, the experience is often solipsistic and thus unable to be articulated objectively) — only the experience of reading text contains the right amount of dream, which allows itself to be translated by way of commonly accepted symbols. It allows one to sleep for zillions of years.

But reading sux too, I admit: some writers compose very dull and tedious adventures. Don’t end with your hero being crucified — at least imagine something better for the young American. At least give him a job with the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), so that he can serve God as a tax collector like his other author, Saint Matthew. 

Also it’s weird that the bad scripture gets so much more attention than the truly holy scripture. Am I wrong? Look at the bestseller list:

Sorry, I was gonna copy some titles here, to see how you react to them; but now I realize that the paper on which the list was scribbled I apparently left in my other robe. I changed robes yesterday, yet forgot to transfer the contents of their pockets. So, just believe me when I tell you that… 

[The remainder of this manuscript is lost, due to its having been dragged slightly longer than academia considers advisable behind a menagerie of tame horses.]