Now to 'Tortures of that Inward.' Those first few paragraphs here have been a dead give-away, haven't they? Okay, I'm not spilling too many beans if I admit this story of Tom Piccirilli's is about the end of the world. But it's the way that premonition -- that great and terrible premonition of global destruction -- which appears to be imprinted into our very genes is handled that is sublime. You know what
you
like about Tom Piccirilli's work. For me, his lean prose is in perfect balance with a poetic aesthetic. Sentences resonate in a way that renders them both beautiful and horrific. Take one line from this story and read it aloud. You'll see what I mean. For example:
They were becoming golden, as if touched by a molten blanketing of the sun, before it turned to a sackcloth of ashes.
One day a publisher will have an even smarter idea. They'll issue an audio collection of Tom's stories read by a pro actor. Imagine sitting in the dark listening to this tale's succession of vividly wrought images on headphones. That's when the power of his work will zap you all over again with the power of a lightning strike. Having said that, Tom's work as it appears on the printed page is wickedly good. And, of course, there's nothing to stop you asking a friend/spouse/lover to read it aloud to you, is there?
I know you'll enjoy this darkly witty story as much as I did. I'm delighted, therefore, and honored to invite you to read on -- to experience the 'Tortures of That Inward.' And if you should wake up in the morning and find your dog talking to you, well…
–Simon Clark, author of
STRANGER
and
IN THIS SKIN
W
atching the blood of his neighbors seeping beneath the door into his apartment, Wynne took another swig of 151 Rum and continued to argue with his dead dog, Gomez.
Gomez said, "It's time.
You have a purpose to fulfill."
Wynne figured he already knew his mission in the world and held the bottle to his forehead, rolling it across his brow the way his old man used to do on the really bad nights.
Screams erupted all over the building, high-pitched caterwauls and low rolling moans nearly in harmony.
Pain and terror turned everyone into one vast choir for the ages, and for your sins you could do nothing but listen.
They were killing themselves or each other, none of this silent suicide in the bathtub shit. Gunshots echoed through the hallways–a .38, a .45, an eleven gauge.
You could hear the slap of bone and brain yolk against the walls, the contented sighs as bodies slid to the floor and toppled over.
Christ, even now you could make out the sounds of the
kinksters
making one last go of it in bed.
In the apartment above him were a couple of swingers who liked the
dom
/sub clubs.
They'd throw leather and latex parties and invite him as a joke.
Bless their
pervie
asses, they were gonna go out in the saddle if they had to go at all.
Peals of ringing glass were followed by the enormous crashes and crying children.
Wynne stood at his window and watched the city going mad in the streets.
The plague of heaven was upon them, the promise of God fulfilling itself hour by hour.
"There's no escape," Gomez the Chihuahua told him with a slight Mexican accent.
"But you can still redeem yourself."
"How about if you give it a rest?"
"No.
God no longer waits.
His patience is at an end."
It's happening, Wynne thought, knowing the awful truth in his gut.
This is the end they always warned us about.
When the graves of the earth open up and the corpses rise, and the sky cracks open and the sun turns black.
Or maybe he was still only crazy.
Amazing what you could wish for depending on the circumstances.
He slammed the rum down on his kitchen table and moved to the shelves of his bookcases, hunting for a Bible.
He had one around here someplace.
Someone in the apartment next door started shrieking and butting his head against the wall.
Wynne's books shifted and fell over and tumbled to the floor.
He looked for a while longer but still couldn't find the Bible, the one with his mother's handwritten notations in it, his father's family medical history in front.
The guy next door continued smashing his own skull in.
"The window," Gomez said.
"Look there."
"I don't need to.
I know what's going on," Wynne told him.
"Angels circling wide across the clouds.
The dead rising from the dirt.
Demons boiling up from the subways."
If he was only nuts the doctors would be tripping over themselves to write up this turn in his case study.
A major psychotic snap.
Wynne remembered the little blue tabs they'd put on the manila file folders of such patients.
The religious schizoids who'd talk to Moses between Lithium shots.
On ward six, Wynne had met two Mother
Marys
, two
Jesuses
, one Mary
Magdalenes
who'd masturbate right there in the
rec
room with her hand halfway up her snatch.
One Roman soldier who'd stabbed Christ in the side, and three guilt-ridden
yutzes
who thought they were Judas.
They used to play cards a lot together, sit at the same table during the arts and crafts class, the three Judases weaving baskets side by side
A couple of the religious jobs had a thing for nails.
They'd pry wood furniture apart, force the nails free, and drive them through their hands and feet, bleeding all over the ward.
One of them, he did such a good job of spiking himself to the floor that it took the attendants about an hour to get him loose.
They're working away with the claw-ends of hammers and this
schizo
, he's just praying over them, doing crosses in the air, forgiving their sins, pulling down his blue
jammies
and saying, "Look at my seven inch St. Peter."
Putting on a show for the rest of the ward.
Wynne remembered laughing so hard that they had to sedate him.
"It's real," Gomez said.
"But you can't completely accept it.
There's still a portion of you that believes it's all in your sick head."
"And you?" Wynne asked.
Downstairs, somebody was working away on her kids with a butcher knife, trying to save them from the rapture.
You'd think it might be time for people to start acting a little nice.
"I'm real, and I've come back to speak with you.
But this only muddies the issue."
Okay, now maybe they were getting somewhere. Wynne reached for the bottle again and took another deep pull. It made him hiss and grunt as the heat dropped through his stomach.
He'd taken his first drink of hard liquor at fourteen and now he was thirty-nine.
He'd knocked back thousands of gallons over the last twenty-five years and he still hated the fucking taste of it.
"And what is the issue?"
"Your soul, of course."
"Not my mind?"
"Your mind is lost, but your soul may yet be saved."
Well, when the tiny bastard put it like that, so long as you overlooked the obvious fact that you were crazy, things almost sounded a bit hopeful.
"How'd you get so smart, Gomez?
When you were alive you were the stupidest dog I ever saw.
You
shit
on the floor for nine years.
I could walk you in the park for five hours straight, and the minute you stepped in the door you'd drop a
turd
on the rug."
Gomez sort of smiled at that, like he enjoyed the aggravation he'd put Wynne through.
"I am not your dog.
I am the essence of Raphael the Archangel, one of the seven who stand before the throne of God.
Patron saint of ambulance drivers, artists, the dying, knights, mariners, paramedics, paratroopers, police officers, sailors, soldiers,
swordsmiths
, and the mentally ill."
"I was wondering where I fit into all that."
Wynne heard a weird sound coming out of the Chihuahua and thought it might be snickering.
"Returned to the world in these final days of reckoning," his dead dog said.
He eyed Gomez closely.
"Why are you laughing?"
"The very fact that you're willing to believe me proves you're insane."
You couldn't argue with logic, so you had to just let it go and start back from square one.
Still, Wynne could feel the rising fear inside him, the ache of his sins coming back to lash at him again.
His imagination alive and blazing and sending him into fits of rage and want.
He doubled over and chewed at his tongue until blood flooded his mouth.
He swallowed it knowing he was only swallowing himself, the way he'd been doing since he was a kid.
He couldn't place the blame of his noisy mind on any single trauma.
No great scene of horror from his childhood.
It was simply the petty torments added one on top of the other that had driven him into the psychologists' offices, the high school counselors' offices, the analysts' offices, the mental hospital.
"So Judgment Day is here."
Doing a little dance, the way he used to do when he wanted to be fed pork belly leftovers, Gomez stood on his hind legs.
"Yes.
That's what we've been discussing."
"Why've you come in the form of my dead dog, Raphael?"
"It is the will of the Lord, and I do not challenge it."
Wynne went for the bottle again and saw that people were floating past his window, smiling with arms raised, a new luminescence to their flesh.
They were becoming golden, as if touched by a molten blanketing of the sun, before it had turned to a sackcloth of ashes.
Some giggled, some were praying quietly, others singing songs that sounded like hymns Wynne had never heard before.
He let out a whimper of reverence.
The sky grew heavy with bodies and still they continued to rise into the clouds and beyond.
His door shook as blows struck it, the blood so thick under the door that it was actually lapping, gurgling.
Sobbing shrieks, cries, and pleading whines reverberated down the corridors of the building.
They were up on the roof jumping, trying to fly.
"What's happening out there?"
"The damned are being taken to hell.
Others are joining Satan's hordes."
"That sounded like Mrs.
Rhyerson
."
"It is."
"The nice old lady in 3C?
She volunteers at hospitals.
Food shelters."
Gomez let out a sigh as ancient as creation, full of endless disappointment.
"She murdered her husband and newborn son almost sixty years ago.
She never felt remorse in her heart, and so she cannot be forgiven."
Archangel Raphael, inside the body of a dog buried in Central Park three days ago, turned those fiery eyes on him, and inside them Wynne saw no absolution or rescue.
But neither did he sense hatred or anger.
Only a vague puzzlement.
"So why am I still sitting here talking to you?" Wynne asked.
"Why aren't I being sent to hell, or branded with the mark of the Beast, or rising to paradise?"
He could still remember some of his Sunday School teachings, back when he sat in front of the nuns and trembled before the paintings and statues showing agony.
"You pose a problem for God," Gomez said.
"Me?"
You knew you'd caused plenty of troubles for a lot of people, but for the Creator of everything?
"You and those like you."