twenty-sixth night (Deus Ex Machina)

I met him in an alleyway. I was waiting for him. The buildings to each side of me were empty. The alleyway was lined with explosive. In my hand was the detonator switch. One flick and boom.


He appeared at the end of the alleyway. "I can feel it, Sherry," he said. "I can feel it inside me."


"Of course you can," I said to him. "It's always inside you. It is you. But I can make it stop. I can stop the pain for both of us."


I flicked the switch.


Nothing happened.


Perhaps it was the interference of the Golem, some electromagnetic field it radiated, or perhaps the trigger for the explosives was just shoddy and didn't work (I couldn't exactly test it before). But the Golem in my brother walked forward, his legs moving strangely, independently of one another. "Sherry," he said. "I can feel it, Sherry. I can feel it inside me. I can feel it, Sherry. Sherry. Sherry, I can feel it."


I cried. The Golem had taken my brother and now it would take me. I was unafraid of death, but I wanted it to mean something. I wanted to take down the Golem with me. I wanted to martyr myself.


What a stupid idea.


The Golem came forward and grabbed me. I...I do not know what came over me then. I knew I was still crying, but I had gained some conviction, something like a resolve. An anger that boiled over inside me.


I reached into the wound in my brother's chest and grabbed the Golem and I pulled. I pulled it out of his chest, this thing that had been living inside him for months, this hideous monster of metal and bone, and I dashed it against the wall. I dashed it over and over again. It was shredding my hand and yet I did not stop until it was in bits.


At last, I looked down and saw that my brother no longer moved. I knelt by him and took his hand. Perhaps I thought I could bring him back to life with my touch, but he was dead. He had been dead for months. He had just been a wind-up toy and now I had broken him. But now I could bury him.


Behind me, I heard movement. I turned and saw the pieces of the Golem reassembling themselves. They climbed up the side of the wall and I saw it cut away a bit of reality and slip through. It had failed to grow bigger, but it had still gone home. It had gone away.


I had successfully turned the world upside down. I had won.


I disassembled the explosives and packed them away (you never know when you might need them). And then I took my brother's body and I went home.

twenty-fifth night (The Lord of Misrule)

Two days ago, I met my brother again. But it was not my brother. It was the Golem inside him. He had been following me all this time. There must have been some spark in his brain that told him to find me and not even the Golem could change it.


Two days ago was the Twelfth Night of Christmas. I know it's sort of confusing, because the first night was the night before Christmas. So the Twelfth Night is followed by the Twelfth Day - which is followed by the Feast of the Epiphany.


The Twelfth Night - the eve of the Epiphany - was celebrated a long time ago with a party where the world was turned upside down. The king and those on high would become peasants and vice versa. The one who ruled over the Twelfth Night was called the Lord of Misrule.


Two days ago, I was the Lord of Misrule. I declared that the world would turn upside down. That I would no longer run, that I would turn to face my brother. That I would stand up and fight and probably die.


And some part of me did die. The part of me that still believed my brother was alive. The part of me that had hope he could be brought back. Because he can't.


Tomorrow, I will tell you how he died. And how I lived.

twenty-fourth night (Epiphany)

Hello. My name is Cheryl Pierce. My mother used to call me Scheherazade. My brother called me Sherry.


This is the story of my brother. This is the story of how he died and how a monster took his place. I call this monster the Golem, but in other circles it is called the Manufactured Newborn. It is a monster of machinery, a thing of grinding gears and bone and sinew. It appears out of nowhere, usually as a small toy, and then grows. It adds to itself and gets bigger and bigger until it can rip a hole in reality - and then it goes back to its home, the Towering Realm, where its true form lies.


Four months ago, I saw the Golem for the first time. I had an epiphany. A sudden realization. It was not a good day.


Cats had been disappearing from our neighborhood. My brother, Paul, told me not to worry about it, but I did. We had two cats and I doted on them. One day, however, one of them disappeared and I went to find him - and I found the Golem instead. It wasn't big yet - it had added some bicycle parts to itself, some cat bones, but it was about the size of a raccoon.


It chased after me on its needle-like legs. I ran. I ran back inside our home and I ran into our kitchen. It followed. Somehow (I don't quite remember), I was able to push it inside the microwave oven and turned it on high. Perhaps it was the microwaves that did it - it seemed sluggish after that. But it was still alive.


My brother, having heard me yell, took that moment to run inside. The Golem turned and pounced on him. It was sluggish, but strong. It's mouth was a drill and I watched as it drilled into my brother's chest. Perhaps it was seeking more materials to grow, but instead it grew inside him. I watched as he convulsed and collapsed. "I can feel it, Sherry," he said as blood dripped from his mouth. "I can feel it inside me." His last words, now the only thing his mouth can say.


I'm afraid I wasn't strong enough then to end his pain. I did not have the conviction to burn him.


I do now.

twenty-third night

twelve.

it is the twelfth night. tomorrow is the epiphany, january 6.

tonight, i turn and face my fears.

come on, big brother. let's have a family reunion.

twentieth night

four more nights until the feast of the epiphany.

epiphany is often called theophany, "vision of god." a divine appearance of a god to a mortal. the burning bush. the pillar of cloud and fire by night.  

one tale of theophany concerns semele, a priestess of zeus, who slaughtered bulls for him. one day, zeus looked and saw her swimming in the river to clean the blood from her body and fell in love with her. he appeared to her as an eagle and impregnated her. the ever-jealous hera convinced semele that it might not have been zeus, though, so semele requested a boon from him. zeus stood on the river styx and declared that he would give anything to her - so she requested to see his true form. zeus was forced to reveal himself and the thunder and lightning of his body incinerated her when she looked. 

and we celebrate the appearance of god. the vision of god. something so incomprehensible that if we were to see its true appearance, we would burn away.

during the time of dying cats, when my brother was still my brother, i saw the golem when it was small. it was growing bigger and it managed to open a small tear to babel. it was too small to go through, but i could still see it: the true form of the golem, the vision of god.

i did not burn away. i saw it and did not burn. perhaps i did not see all of it, but it was enough for me to now how small i was. but i did not burn. i hope that means something.

nine.

nineteenth night

every time i look into the mirror, i see her. why am i remembering her now? i can't remember, not with him following me.

once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess trapped in a tower. and then a prince came along and rescued her. but they did not live happily ever after. no, they had two children, a boy and a girl, and they tried to live as best they could, one day at a time. they both worked jobs they did not care for to feed their children, until one day the handsome prince could not take it anymore and left. 

and the beautiful princess was once again trapped in the tower, but this time it was with her son and daughter, so she did not mind. she told them stories every single night until they slept and then she would go to work all night and morning and then it would start over again. until the day a sickness crept into her and she could tell no more stories to her children and the tower crumbled around her.

he is coming and i am busy remembering. but the past will not be lost. it will be made into stories and told to children. perhaps someday someone will make my life into a story.

i hope it will end before my death.

eight.

eighteenth night

i saw him. i saw him once before i ran. his skin had patches on it. patches were i could see muscle and sinew intertwined with the dull gray of metal.

once upon a time, a king sent a huntsman into a forest to kill a monster. but the huntsman never returned. so the king sent another and another, but none ever returned from the forest. finally, wandering explorer and his dog came and declared that they would discover the fates of the disappeared huntsmen. so they entered the forest. 

inside, they came upon a lake. a monstrous hand came out of the lake and grabbed the wanderer's dog, but the wanderer himself escape. he returned the next day with men to empty the lake. once it was drained, they found a monstrous looking man with iron skin chained to the bottom. they captured him and locked him in a cage and declared that it should never be unlocked. 

of course, years later, there was a boy prince who was playing with his ball and accidentally rolled it into the cage of the iron monster. and the iron monster told the boy prince that if he unlocked the cage, he would return his ball. so the boy took the key from his mother's room and unlocked the cage, where the iron monster, called iron jon, gave him back his ball and then led him into the forest and showed him his well which could turn things into gold. iron jon set the boy prince to guard the well, but the prince accidentally dipped his hair in it and it turned to gold. disappointed with him, iron jon banished the boy, but told him he could call on him by just saying 'iron jon' three times. 

years later, the boy prince went to war and called iron jon's name and was gifted with many iron soldiers who fought beside him. eventually, the prince with the golden hair was able to marry a princess and iron jon was revealed to have been under enchantment to look like a monster and everyone lived happily ever after. 

happily ever after. three words that have been used so much and meant so little. happily ever after just means you have ended the story before other bad things happen. because bad things keep happening. 

let's revise that story, shall we? the boy prince sets the iron monster free and to reward him, iron jon tosses him into the well and drags him underwater and keeps him forever. or the boy prince is smarter than the iron monster and tricks him into falling into the well and turning into gold forever. or the wanderer doesn't capture the iron monster, he kills him. 

but none of these endings are true. not even the real ending is true. the true ending is that of the storyteller closing the book and turning out the light because her children have fallen asleep.

why am i just remembering her now?

seven.

seventeenth night

today is the sixth night of christmas. and i am still running. i have not stopped and he has not stopped chasing. in any case, by the twelfth night, it will be over.

there is a fairy tale from greece about the kallikantzaros. the kallikantzaros is a mean, mischievous race of creatures, like goblins or trolls. the difference is that the kallikantzaros is dedicated to sawing down the world tree, the tree that holds up all of existence. all of the kallikantzaros saw at the bottom of the tree, underground, away from all light, until december 25, christmas day. on christmas day, it is said that when the kallikantzaros finally start to saw the final part of the world tree, they realize that they can go to the surface now. something about christmas means that they can come up to the surface and play their tricks on mortals. they live on the surface for twelve nights - until the night of the feast of epiphany, when they are forced to go underground again and find that the world tree has healed itself in their absence. and so they go back to sawing, again and again and again, year after year after year, never tearing the world down from its anchor. 

there is a pattern. the golem has a pattern. it appears as a small toy. perhaps a doll or a globe or even a compass. but it is none of those things. it is a golem. and it will grow bigger. it absorbs other things into it. metal. meat. bone. it grows and grows until it is bigger than we are. and then it rips the sky apart and travels back to babel. 

perhaps it is adding to itself, trying to saw down the world tree, but it can't. it can't grow forever. it always returns to its tower, its babel. 

why hasn't he returned?

six.

fifteenth night

do you remember your first tragedy? the first tragedy you read? it was probably hamlet. everyone dies. that's how most things end in real life: everyone dies eventually.

yesterday, the story ended in a deus ex machina. a god out of the machine. let's look at that some more, shall we? 

the deus ex machina came about from ancient greek plays where the "gods" were often lowered onto the stage via an apparatus. a literal god from a literal machine. but over time, it has come to mean anything that appears out of nowhere at the end of a story to resolve it. in the euripedes play iphigeneia, iphigeneia finally accepts her role to be sacrified...and is replaced at the last minute with a pig. in the threepenny opera, just as macheath is about to be hanged, the queen's messenger appears to pardon and knight macheath. in the bad seed, rhonda gets away with murder, only to be struck by lightning. 

this is not only bad writing, it's completely unrealistic. lightning does not just hit murderers. innocent men get executed (although, if we're being technical here, macheath is not innocent and is, in fact, a murderer). and people die. that is the way of life. 

i remember the first tragedy i read. it was king lear. everybody died. even the main characters, even cordelia, whom i identified with, died. i cried so hard. "howl, howl, howl, howl! o! you are men of stones: / had i your tongues and eyes, i'd use them so / that heaven's vaults should crack. -- she's gone for ever! -- / i know when one is dead, and when one lives; / she's dead as earth."

"i know when one is dead, and when one lives." my brother is dead. i live.

but this is a tragedy. in a tragedy, everyone dies.

four.

fourteenth night

i was always good at running. i was on the track team in high school. my brother used to come and cheer me on during races. "run, sherry!" he would yell. in my mind, he is still yelling that, even as the monster he has become chases after me.

once upon a time, there was a fox that could never be caught. the teumessian fox was one of the four children of echidna and nobody could catch it, no man nor beast, as it preyed upon the children of thebes. the regent of thebes, creon, set famed theben general amphitryon the impossible task of destroying the fox. and so amphitryon came upon an ingenious solution: he would use the magical dog laelaps, who could always catch whatever it hunted. 

a fox that could never be caught and a dog that could catch anything. a shield that no spear could pierce and a spear that could pierce any shield. an immovable object and an unstoppable force. what do you think happened? 

well, faced with this paradox, zeus took both dog and fox and turned them into stars, so that they could chase one another around the sky forever. this is called a deus ex machina. 

a god from the machine.

three.

thirteenth night

it stopped raining. i can no longer here the pitter patter of the raindrops on the thin roof overhead. i can hear, however, the couple next door. the walls are thin and they are loud.

once upon a time, there was a ship commanded by the great hero theseus. the ship of theseus was eventually acquired by a museum, but parts of it had rotted and fallen off. so the curator of the museum decided to have those parts replaced, still considering the entire ship to be the ship of theseus. over the years, other parts of the ship rotted and were replaced until every single piece of the ship had, bit by bit, been replaced. so was it still the ship of theseus? or was it a different ship altogether?

is he still my brother? my brother is dead. but death is not always the end. perhaps the golem brought him back. but it still is inside him, replacing parts of him with itself. can it still be him when it is also the golem?

two.

twelfth night

still raining here.

i call it the "twelfth night" but it is, in fact, the first night. the first night of christmas. the twelfth night shall be on january sixth (with the night of epiphany following). the twelfth night of christmas, the last night, is the night of reversals, the night of upheavals, the night that everything becomes upside-down.  

on that night, the kings and queens became the peasants and the peasants became the royalty. the entire party was called the feast of fools (a holdover from the old saturnalia celebrations) and it was ruled over by the Lord of Misrule. it ended at the strike of midnight, though most of the time the party-goers ignored that and celebrated throughout the night, unaware that the world was no longer upside-down, that it had righted itself while they had made fools of themselves.  

i shall count down these days and nights until the twelfth night. and on the twelfth night, i shall turn and confront my fears. i shall see my brother again when the world is upside-down, on the twelfth night, when i am the Lord of Misrule.

one.

eleventh night

the coldest night. a night to spend on the run, in a strange motel. a night without hope.

once upon a time, there was a jolly old fat man who gave presents to good little boys and girls on christmas. 

but not every boy and girl was good. some were bad and some were very, very bad. so far them, what? coal? no. not coal. the krampus. 

father christmas would arrive at the dead of night, the krampus in tow, and visit a house. if the children were good and nice, he would leave presents (the krampus devouring the milk and cookies, it was so hungry). if the children were not nice, if they were mean little children, well then, santa would wake them up and the krampus would stuff them in its bag and bring them back to its lair and eat them all up. 

christmas is not a nice holiday.

i miss him. even though he's dead, even though he's a monster, i still miss him. especially on a night like this.

tenth night

he follows me. he has the golem inside. he should be dead. he is dead. he should have gone back to babel. decomposed into the tower. and yet he follows me.

once upon a time, there was a young man who didn't know what fear was. his mother recommended he stay at a local graveyard, so he did. there, a hand grabbed him, but he merely kicked it away. he went to the gallows, where seven men swung in the wind. he went to a haunted house, but he told all the voices there to be quiet. he went to the place where death held sway and was not afraid. he did not know fear. 

but then a sickness came upon the city where he lived and around him the bodies piled higher. and one day, his mother caught the sickness and she perished and he was left with no one. and as he coughed and waited for death to take him into the cold night, he realized that fear was not a ghostly hand or scratchy voices in darkened corridors. fear was not dead men or black cats or graveyards in moonlight. 

fear was waiting. and as he sat there and slowly died, he felt fear for the first and last time.

once more on the run. go go go.

ninth night

i'm in a motel somewhere in oregon. it's raining outside. wonderful. i drove until i ran out of gas, then bought more gas, then drove some more. i didn't even stop to eat.

the compass was a beacon, to find me. he wanted to find me. why? he's not my brother. not anymore.

once upon a time, there was a young girl named sherry and her big brother. one day, a golem appeared and started to grow bigger and bigger. sherry was worried, so she hit the golem and broke it, so it couldn't get bigger. it was stuck. but then it attacked sherry's brother, pushing its way into his body, drilling into him with its little needle legs. "i can feel it, sherry," he said. "i can feel it inside me."

he's not my brother anymore. he's part of the golem. just like it uses blood and bone and sinew, it's using him.

why does it want me? is it because i broke it?

i have to go.

eighth night

there was a knock on the door. "sherry," my brother called out, his voice raspy and unnatural. "sherry, i can feel it. i can feel it, sherry. it's inside me."

once upon a time, prometheus brought fire to man. and for that he was punished. he was chained to a rock and eagles ate his liver every night and every day it would regrow. until he was freed by herakles. 

but herakles doesn't exist. there are no heroes in this world. the eagles will continue to eat your liver over and over again and no one can stop them.

there was a knock on the door. but i was already going out the window. i had everything packed and ready to go. all i left was the lump of metal.

whatever knocked on the door wasn't my brother.

fifth night

i've incinerated the compass. i couldn't risk it getting bigger. i couldn't let it get back to babel.

i still remember my brother. "sherry," he would call my name, "you're just being paranoid. so a few cats around the neighborhood have gone missing. that doesn't mean there's some serial killing bastard around." he was right.

a story. a story to keep me sane.

talos was a man made of bronze that protected the isle of crete. he was made by hephaestus, god of the forge, but to bring him to life he had to be instilled with ichor, the blood of the gods. he had one vein that ran from ankel to neck, bound shut by one bronze nail. he protected crete, throwing rocks at any ship who drew near its shore. when the argo tried to go to crete, talos prevented them. so the sorceress medea, wife of jason, deceived talos into removing the nail, saying that it would make him immortal. when he did, the ichor ran out like blood and talos died.

my brother was right. it wasn't some serial killing bastard.

the golem machine isn't just chrome and steel and iron.

it's flesh and blood and bone. taken from living things. the ichor it needs to run.