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-first night

names are important. some of the names we give our nightmares are bad - they empower the nightmares - but some take power away.

once upon a time, there was a miller who, to improve his status, declared that his daughter could spin straw into gold. the king, having heard this, took the miller's daughter and insisted she spin a roomful of straw into gold for three nights or else she would be killed. instead of revealing that her father was a liar, she instead cried and cried until an imp appeared and offered to spin the straw into gold for her. on the first night, she paid the imp with her necklace. on the second night, she paid him with her ring. on the third night, she had nothing to pay him with, so agreed to give him her first born child. 

and so, after the miller's daughter and the king were wed and she gave birth to a prince, the imp came back and demanded his payment. the queen pleaded with him to spare her child, so the imp gave her another chance: three chances, to be exact, three nights to guess his name and if they could guess, the deal was voided. 

you know how it ends. someone overhears the imp saying his name, the queen tells rumpelstiltskin (because that is his name), and his tears himself in two. his name, when unknown, gave him power. when known, it made him powerless.

do they have names? i call it the golem, because i refuse to acknowledge it was ever a newborn.

ten.

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.

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.

sixth night

the lump of metal that used to be the compass is sitting on my desk. is it still alive? is it still part of the golem machine?

kaang was the creator of the bushman. he created the earth and then he created the moon from an old shoe. his lived in the sky with his wife coti and had two sons, cogaz and gewi. 

in one story, kaang was trapped and killed by carnivorous thorns. his bones were picked clean by ants. yet, he was able to reassemble his skeleton and come back to life. from just his bones, he came back.

the lump of metal has not moved, yet i continue to watch.

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.

fourth night

the compass has not moved. i have a camera trained on it twenty-four hours. it has not moved. was i wrong?

and now a story:

prometheus was a titan who made man from clay and mud. he taught man to hunt and read and heal and finally, in defiance against the gods, stole fire for man. how was he repaid? zeus chained him to a rock and had eagles devour his liver night after night.

when benjamin franklin began to experiment with lightning and electricity, immanuel kant called him a "modern prometheus." stealing fire from the gods. creating something from electricity. a new artificial life.

the golem, resurrected by lightning.

it is much older than we believe. much older.

only now it is not made of clay nor mud, but chrome and steel.

the golem machine.

the compass moved.

third night

i found a compass in my desk drawer today.

there is another story about the golem.

in this story, the golem was created by the gaon r. eliyahu ba'al shem. it was made of matter (golem) and form (tzurah) from the book of creation (sefer yetzirah). but the gaon saw the golem was growing larger and larger and he feared that it would it grow so large as to destroy the universe. so the gaon removed the holy word and the golem crumbled to dust, but not before it scarred the gaon.

i found a compass in my desk drawer today.

i have never owned a compass.

it is here.

second night

my uncle collected wind-up toys. i remember when i stayed with him, i would always rush to the back room, where he kept them, and quickly wind them all up. then i would watch as they would trample each other, with chattering teeth and clicking noises.

here is a story:

once upon a time, in the city of prague, the jews were persecuted, expelled, and killed by the holy roman emperor, rudolf ii. so rabbi loew, the maharal, created a golem, a thing from mud and clay, with the word of life written on its head, and ordered it to protect the jews. and it did its job. but over time, the golem became more and more violent, killing indiscriminately and scaring all who saw it. finally, the emperor begged rabbi loew to stop the golem, so loew found the golem and the word written on its head - emet, truth or reality - and erased one letter to create met, death. and the golem stopped and turned to dust.

i would watch the wind-up toys go out of control as they slowly wound themselves down and then i would wind them up again.

sometimes i think that god does the same to us. just winds us up and lets us go, lets us repeat the same motions as before. perhaps we are all wind-up toys.