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.

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.