BEYOND GOD AND SISYPHUS By W.C. Leadbeater # INFINITE PLASTIC HEAT/NIGHT Heat/night was over in the demon-desert on the planet Lucifer. With Dawn the labors of Sisyphus began anew. Sisyphus was a batman of Lucifer, one of the same alien race as Nekbael; Lucifer was home to both the batmen and the Lizard-people. The red sun of the planet Lucifer rose upon the horizon, shedding red blood as Sisyphus rose with the dawn, began once more to push the boulder to the top of the hill. At first the Stone rose rapidly. The Spirit of Gravity tugged at him, yet the endless quest continued, the quest for Transmutation. Life itself was the quest of Sisyphus. Distance so close, yet infinite... A centimeter, a millimeter... The boulder slid backwards again. With a curse, Sisyphus hefted it forward anew. Again it slid; again, he shoved mightily. He reached the top of the hill. The boulder stayed there. There was no sound of angel trumpets or demon-trombones; Venus did not ride the fiery chariot of a comet to strike him low; Jupiter did not bellow in rage; Kronos merely demanded that the Harlequin repent--but he was always doing that. Kronos in his clockwork robes drew near, he seemed a supple mechanism. Kronos spoke, saying, "You are a free man now, Sisy- phus... slave only to God." "God?" Sisyphus asked. The concept was foreign to him. Kronos said from behind hollow skull-eyes, "There were once many gods--this One ate all the Others." Then the awesome apparition vanished. Sisyphus laid his head by the massive boulder he had finally conquered to catch a morning's nap. He dreamed of a world where I dreamed of him. I am myself Stoned. I am God; at least, I am Becoming God. I behold myself in a Mirror; I am Beautiful and dressed in motley--I behold the Other, the Dragon-lady; she compensates me. # SLAVE TO LOVE I have a license to smoke dope. You buy them legal reefers at the drugstore, you don't have to pay the inflated prices the dope dealers charge. I was using it to heighten my creativity. I write bet- ter when I'm stoned. I was taxing my burned-out brain to the limit, conjuring up images of dread insanity. Sisyphus pushes his boulder to the top of the hill... what happens next? My Roxy Music was cranked, Bryan Ferry singing low and sorrowful of the man who drives the hammer to rock you to the grave. Rachel was on the bed, writhing like a serpent. Rachel was in love with anything that was polymerized. That is how she got her nickname, Plastic. Rachel was browsing through my rough drafts, anxiously, saying, "This is a hot book. I like men who have hot books. Don't you think it would be so much fun to collaborate? Have you ever done anything like this before?" Rachel bogarted the joint. I told her. "Lou Ganziga wants this by Monday. For his Creative Writing class. I have a story to write! This isn't really a science fiction story; this is actually gonzo journalism!" # IRON BUTTERFLY By Rachel Ahura Plastic was a whore, a prostitute in Iron Butterfly's bordello. Out here on the perimeter, there are no laws. She'd been kidnaped by space-pirates, sold into sex slavery--though her spaceship, the Sotuknang, still awaited her return at the spaceport--if it hadn't already been sold for spare parts. Plastic lay on plush velvet listening to Roxy Music. She had a knife. It had been her price for "a little something extra" from a client. But now she was refusing to work; in a moment an indignant and irate Iron Butterfly arrived, wondering why Plastic hadn't started work already this night. Iron Butterfly was topless but for a little bit of fishnet. She wore a tremendous butterfly tattoo across her gaily bouncing breasts. She was an Arn. She was bald, blue, with four boobs. Plastic flung myself upon the Iron Madam. Now Iron Butterfly reached for her laser... Plastic only had one chance now. She hurled the knife. Oh Ellison, my aim is true. The Iron Maiden lay bleeding upon the floor. Quickly, Plastic exited that place of fine, cold sin. It would be a few more minutes before it was noticed that the Iron Madam was dead, so she had at least that long to escape through the back way. A few minutes later found Plastic trodding the plasti-steel rungs of a fire escape, a minute after that she a was running through dark alleyways. Plastic ran through broken barricades. She ran through a city of pellucid crystal, and it contained steel erections. The Nova Conspiracy was hot on her tail--their pulse-pounders ejaculated ions and their jackboot-sprayers squirted poison gas. Yet Plastic eluded them. She ran upon silvery slide-walks, a real sight in her velour and velvet. The only thing she could count on now was speed, but her legs were long and lithe--and fortunately for her, the spaceport was close. A few minutes later, Nova Police right behind her with their sirens wailing, Plastic was at the controls of the Sotuknang. She started the countdown. t-ten, t-nine--the numbers droned on and on-- t-two--and the Nova Conspiracy was firing at the ship. t-one-- t-zero! Plastic blacked out even as her Bender Shaft propelled her into the interstellar Void. # REPTILES ABOUNDING By W.C. Leadbeater I was God. This is a common delusion on the part of the mindstormed; the Hotel Gonzo I'd escaped from had had three Jesus Christs, none of whom could agree on theology and One of whom claimed to be Muslim. I was in a tent on a hot, dry planet, the planet Lucifer. I could see desert through a flap in the tent, moving in the wind, gentle breezes kicking up eddies of sand. And I was waiting for Plastic. Plastic was fated to meet me, here on this alien world of bat-men and snake-men. Plastic was to be part of the liberation of the Feminine Hypostasis of God. Outside the tent was a sign: COSMIC CIRCUS MIND AND COSMOS, PROPRIETORS God was a prisoner of the Cosmic Circus. (And, again, I was God. I was the Bozo King, I could do anything. Except make the Big Top go away.) An alien reptile-woman entered the little tent. I sup- posed she was there to debate philosophy. The denizens of Lucifer were in love with philosophy. So I wasn't surprised when Snake-lady said, "Sisyphus is karma. You must break the cycle of death and rebirth." "Who are you?" I asked. Her forked tongue licked her lips like a long lost demon-lover, like Nekbael. She said, "I am Love. I bet you didn't know that Love is a Lizard. And here you thought that God was Love! Not unless I am you and you are me! As Love Incarnate, I have infinite powers!" "Then make me Plastic!" I cried. God became the Androgynous One--but then, serpentine sleekness was always my weakness. # BEYOND LOVE AND DEATH THE TRUE STORY OF A DEBUTANTE AND A THIEF I perceived to my horror that something had gone wrong as I looked in the Mirror; the Mind-Mirror. I was Death, not Plastic. Unless Plastic was Death and there was something she hadn't been telling me. But if Plastic was Death, she was also capable of transsexual transmutation into Don Johnson. I looked just like Sonny Crockett, I needed a shave real bad. Death was a thief. This distressed Love no end... Love had finally broken up her affair with Body, which had split the perfect couple. It wasn't enough that God wasn't Love, or that God had asked to be changed into Plastic, a transubstantiation that beats bread and wine. Now God was Death. Meanwhile, Love was bitching Death out. "Get a job! Shit, Death, how much longer do you think we can go on with you constantly in prison for holding up liquor stores? For burglarizing apartments and stealing stereos? Your parole officer said that if you were caught one more time it'd be back to the slammer for you for the next 666 years!" "I'll go down to the Unemployment Office and check things out," I said, feeling the agonies of the millions who were slain in the concentration camps; the last breaths of the sick, dying in interminable agony; the wounds of the soldiers on the battlefields and all the dead bodanons piled up in mounds; even those whose spirits Death stole without a fight. I rode the slidewalks down to the Unemployment Office; there they fixed me up with a janitor's job at Roxy's Cat- house. As I, Death, returned, I thought, Love doesn't love me anymore... Then I perceived a leggy wonder with hot boobs to satis- fy the cravings of Death, beyond Love. As I drew closer I perceived that it was Mind. Only seventeen, bet you know the trash I mean. I approached Mind in her green shirt and purple hot pants. It was obvious what the kid was doing--you don't see Clowns wearing costumes like that. Death approached Mind. Mind said, "Want a date? For twenty buckadingdongs I will..." I grabbed Mind and shook her. "Do you know who I am? I'm God! Well, I used to be God, now I'm Death... that doesn't matter... a teenage girl shouldn't be working the streets!" Mind said, "Do you know what Cosmos does to me? He molests me! Last night he..." "I am Death. I can fix Cosmos for you." I waved my scythe. Cosmos croaked from a heart attack at that very instant. I said, "Go home, Mind... Cosmos is dead. The Cosmic Circus belongs to you now!" Mind said, "You still want a date? I can pay you back!" She bent forward so I got a shot of Mind's titanic breasts. Mind was built! I thought about it a little while. "I'm trying to turn into Plastic," I said, escorting Mind along the moving bands of flex-metal. "Ooooooh! Ecccch! Like are you queer or what?" Mind asked, nonetheless indulging in hot nasties which were real porno show and cannot be reproduced here. I looked in a Mirror (and the Mirror was alive) and saw that all the good love when we were all alone had somehow failed. I was a woman now, but I was Mind and not Plastic. # BOY MEETS GIRL WHERE THE BEAT GOES ON At night, I parked my car, staked my spot in the singles bar. Mind was cruising for love, not knowing that Love had finally made up with Death. Gosh wow I'm proud--Death is a janitor! But Mind was only seventeen and running the entire Cosmic Circus was a great responsibility. Though taking on the responsibilities of Cosmos was rapidly maturing Mind--and I was Mind--but I still needed to screw around, like any teenage girl. "You got an ID?" the bouncer asked. I reached into my purse, pulled out my big sister's ID; we looked enough like each other for me to get into Gan- dolph's any time. The ID said: COMPUTER 05/03/2001 Benny the Bouncer flipped the ID back to me casually, saying, "You don't look like a robot-android operated by opto-electronic micro-chips!" "I had plastic surgery," I said. Love was the drug and I had to score. The strange logic of this alternate dimension was becoming clear. Sex was the key to Transmutation. But it only worked once with the same person. Death had screwed Mind and become Mind. Now it was up to Mind to get laid so that Mind might become Plastic. Mind flirted with Body. Body was a construction worker; he was 40 years old, divorced and had two kids, both of whom were about my age now--he looked like just the type to do it with a seventeen-year old nubile nymphet who owned a Circus. Not to mention the entire Cosmos. Though in these strange days and stranger nights I was also beginning to glimmer that Mind was much older than she looked, that she was Ancient of Days, that she had children older than the nubile bodanon which presented itself to me--Mind had discovered the Elixir Vitae, the Elixir of Life, the secret of the alchemists. And here all along I'd been thinking that Mind was just another dippy blond. "Hi, I'm Mind and I'm trying to turn into Plastic." Body ate his olive out of his martini and bought me a Mountain Fresh beer, explaining, "The way transmutation works on Lucifer, you have to have sex with someone if you want to turn into them. So that would be a little queer. There's a gay bar up the street." I said, "I'm not trying to be queer. It's just that I'm a stoned Leadbeater--W.C. Leadbeater, my friends call me Lead--I'm stoned right now, and I'm trying to be transmuted." Body was very understanding when he heard that. Body was a great science fiction fan and didn't like to see stories which meander aimlessly about while the author des- perately tries to think of ways to turn into Plastic, short of having a sex-change operation and cosmetic surgery to look like a lizard--so Mind and Body did it in the back seat of his Mazda. There was a blaze of white light/white heat. There was the sudden violence of Nova. I was Plastic; stoned and alone on the barren wastes of the planet Lucifer; the only thing that was beyond me was God--and the only thing that was beyond God was Sisyphus. # THEOSAURUS As evening cast her blood-wine across the land, I (as Plastic) confronted a multi-segmented reptilian thing crawling across the dunes toward me. I hefted my Bender Shaft, which I'd pulled from the wrecked hyperspace drive. I told the creature, "I have a weapon--curl-up. Stop, or I'll be forced to regress you into a primordial bacteria." The lizard-thing said, "I have come from the future in a spaceship propelled by teleology. I have a mission for you, a mission to the east. "For when the horse of Pharaoh went in with his horsemen into the sea and the Children of Light went on dry land in the midst of the sea, Sophia, the Prophetess, took a timbrel in her hand; all the women went out after her with timbrels and drums. And when the Lord parted the Red Sea from his flying saucer he beamed the waters up to Lucifer; where they created the Suf Sea, the only oasis on this desert world. "But when Sophia walked upon the parted waters of the Red Sea she found there Zarathustra, the Old Magician. The angry storm clouds beat their kettle-bellies and thundered while Sophia fought against the evil Prophet. But with a spell conjured up with the aid of the beast from the Abyss, Zarathustra transmuted Sophia into a Pearl, the One Pearl. "Now I will tell you still further secrets. This Pearl is actually a cryonics chamber, imprisoning a Power, the Spiritual Eve, that is to Woman what Superman is to Man: what comes after Man. "She was perfected in the past to be liberated in this great future as the Androgyne. You must use your Bender Shaft on the cryonic chamber so that the Wisdom-goddess of old may effect the salvation of Lucifer." My answer was quick, sprang from my mouth like daggers of ice... "I refuse--I serve only myself, no gods--or demons--" And with my refusal the landscape changed. I wandered through a maze of mirrors like a zombie, little living creatures in wooden frames on little legs with hands that moved like little trees. The Living Mirrors were Thought-Control Devices. As I looked into an infinity of reflections, and reflections of reflections, without end, I was completely brainwashed into obeying the strange cartoon creature, cosmicomic and laughing as his mind-magic did its sinister work. I emerged from the Maze of Mirrors, and I was singing, "Tra-la for the Mystery Cults!" # MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE CIRCUS Day was over; infinite Plastic/fantastic heat/night was here once more. Night, the dusky whore-mother, was teasing my Leaden-self with her sequins which are stars. But in spite of all this, I could still remember the dorm and my fantastic lover, Plastic, as though in a dream. And I walked a road of changing horizons trying to escape from the Cosmic Circus. But like a dream, the tents went on forever; when the Circus finally met the desert sand I was stopped by a Lady Dream. She was androgynous in her dark uniform, black velvet. "You'd better get back to the Big Top--the show starts in five minutes!" I decked her. I knocked her flat on her ass. I had the element of surprise with me. If I truly was God I could have broken free of this prison-world, eater-of-corpses, much easier; but under the Dream Cop's pulse-pounder I became myself an eaten thing. Lady Black dragged me struggling back into the big top, where she forced me out on the high-wire... under the threat of death. The death of God. A nihilistic nightmare on a world named after the Devil. Slowly, balancing on a long pole, I crept outwards on my little unicycle. I soon found that I had some hidden talent for the high wire; I jumped, leaped, soared; all Creation was my Dance. The Dance of Maya. A tightrope dancer emerged behind me, balancing on a long pole. "See God on his unicycle? Traversing the infin- ite? I would go beyond God to the All, go beyond myself to Myself. I am what comes after Man; I am Superman." Superman prepared to leap, a dangerous leap. He could kill himself. There was no net below. If he struck me in his titanic efforts to go beyond I would fall too... the Death of God would be swift on the Ground below. The Ground of Being, which the All comes from and which it attains to. But God was not dead yet. And in the pit below, Snake-lady prayed, for she was fond of God. She did not know that I was impotent as long as I was trapped by Mind. Superman fell, tiny dancer missing the wire, landed on the Ground. But it was not Gravity that killed the Man beyond Man. Lucifer was lurking in the shadows; he drove a nail through the heart of God as though vandalizing a Church door. A Kryptonite nail. # THE SHELTERING SKY My fantastic Plastic alter-ego made her way under strange constellations, Lucifer's chthonic sky. She came to a lake, a pool. Certainly green vinyl went well with the reptilian sleekness of her smooth, hairless, lizard breast, she thought, as she admired her reflection in the smooth surface of the water. She shed her black vinyl boots and waded. She beheld a reflection, but it was not her face. The apparition spoke, saying, "I am Tantalus." Tantalus attacked Plastic. There was savage dread in his eyes as he tried to rape the slimchick. But she defended herself with savage blows to his head, piercing fingers darting at his eyes. The monster fled into darkness and distance. Only a short ways away Tantalus encountered Sisyphus. "Son?" "Father?" This was Sisyphus' sin: to kill his father and marry his mother. He thought of Ennoia, her hot legs, her sleek body, soft machine the softest he had ever known. Now he reenacted his crime--the crime for which he had been banished to his boulder. The eternal struggle. The trauma of birth. With no rebirth. With his flaming sword he cut the heart out of Tantalus. A few minutes later Sisyphus approached Roxy's bordello. Just on the other side of it was the Suf Sea, where God had flushed the toilet in his flying saucer over Lucifer after beaming up the Red Sea. But what Sisyphus didn't notice was that Death was the new janitor in Roxy's Cathouse. A job which I in my infinite wisdom had gotten him, mostly because God had been Death when Death had filled out his job applica- tion and God can do anything. Except escape from Mind. (Cosmos is dead.) Death was infinitely curious when he saw Sisyphus walk past. He left his broom and mop to spy on Ennoia and Sisy- phus as the real-porno show proceeded. "Mind!" Sisyphus called out the English translation of Ennoia, his Mother's Greek name. "I've never known a woman so... fast and bulbous!" And Mind did not reply, because she was herself caught up in savage delectabilities and strange delights. Death knew that Sisyphus had some Grand Design behind this incest. When the day of Savages had passed Mind said, "The One Pearl is here in Niman, invisible in the midst of the Circus. If we steal the Pearl we can enslave Sophia and thereby gain control of the entire Cosmos!" Not only did the Luciferites read too much gnostic philosophy, they read too much science fiction. Yet even as they spoke Death, the ancient Smiler, was listening in on the conversation. Death leaped into the boudoir with a broadsword. He ravaged Mind, while Sisyphus screamed at the abuse of his mother, not considering for a minute that incest was just as big an abuse. Death and Sisy- phus fought, love forgotten in violence. Oedipus entered, but found he had the wrong room and walked on down the hall with Electra. I would get into more savage orgulousities with Oedipus and Electra, but we've already got too many characters in this story the way it is. Sisyphus drove home his flaming sword. In a moment the heart of Death blazed on an altar like some serpent, while Mind chanted ritual prayers to some obscene god. Sisyphus drank the blood of Death like some wino at some blasphemous communion. Death was dead. Now, Mind now took her draught of the cup of Death's blood. Mind smiled a sinister smile--she would stab Sisyphus in the back and remarry a resurrected Tantalus. The dead were rising with Death dead. It was a good day to rise from the dead. # THE HISSING SERPENT Plastic approached the Suf Sea. Around it the snorting serpent curled, guarding the cryonic unit which contained the Female Hypostasis of God. The serpent rose from the sea in savage fury, confronting her with deadly basilisk beams. And Plastic was hypnotized. She was surrounded by an incredible light. The serpent writhed and undulated, whispering promises in the dark to Plastic. Obscene promises. Plastic fired off her mighty Shaft. The Bender Shaft made a vorkling noise, then a screaming flew across night sky under twin moons in eclipse. Mutilated, mangled, the snorting serpent lay dead at Plastic's feet. Under the potent neg-entropy of the Shaft ontogeny recapitulated phylogeny. The immense lizard-thing shriveled into an amphibian, a fish, became some soft of horny invertebrate, then shriveled still further to amoebic impotence. Plastic used her Shaft upon the One Pearl. There was a tremendous glittering, as though of a rainbow. God the Mother was free in the Cosmos once more. The Mother had left the Pearl behind; immense, it hulked by the claws of the dead dragon, still beautiful. And Sisyphus still lusted for the Pearl. Now as I saw myself reflected in the surface of that shiny white beauty like Narcissus tied to a flower (this story already has too many characters), Sisyphus stabbed me in the back. Plastic was dead. Which is a lot better than the death of God, no matter what Nietzsche may tell you. Sisyphus slipped away with the One Pearl, which was growing, became monstrous, became yet more monstrous as Sisyphus labored. From within the dream that is death I saw Sisyphus tirelessly pushing the Pearl on up the dunes with resistless force. He needed to move it far from Love and Death. The Pearl slipped away, bounced downhill. The Titan labored to catch it. He finally retrieved it from the depths of the Abyss; pushed it upwards anew--it slid from his hands yet another time. Sisyphus gave chase. Sisyphus had been returned to his labors and God was a Spirit once more: with the death of Plastic, I'd been liberated from the corpse-thing I'd become on Lucifer, was back in Heaven, where I belonged. And heaven is a place on Earth. # THE DREAD CURLYIZATION OF THE BRAIN By W.C. Leadbeater I was a woman no longer. I was no longer Plastic, no matter how much kinky lizards may have been one of my weaknesses. Stoned and alone in the heart of Night City in a Clown suit, I was God. Rachel--and Rachel was plush--looked at the story I had written; yawning with the lateness of the hour; complaining that she had to get up and go to work tomorrow, she couldn't stay up all night again partying, even if I did have a license to smoke dope. She looked at me the way a Mirror looks at you. She saw into my private Cosmos, saw that I was God. Creator and not Creature. The cute nurse said, "Being God is a fairly common delusion on the part of schizophrenics... which would explain the story you've written. You're obviously barbled, you're tearing symbols straight from the heart of the subconscious. I'm obviously Plastic, but I'm not certain I like being compared to a lizard." "Schizophrenia," I said. "The burning of the brain." She handed me a card. "Look... here's the address of my psychiatrist... Dr. Curly... I suggest you see him first thing in the morning... (yawn!)... hell, it is almost morning... the sun is rising over the ocean. Come on, I'll give you a ride." A few minutes later we were in her Mazda. The license plates read: AHURA It was some private joke. In a few minutes we were at Mt. Sinai Hospital and I rushed into Dr. Curly's office. I stormed past the receptionist, not even bothering to tease and to flirt. I had been transmuted into God. Being God was an overwhelming responsibility. Besides, if you believe the Bible, God doesn't have sex. Though somehow, in spite of that, he'd gotten a virgin pregnant. I pushed through heavy oak doors into the psychiatrist's office. Curly was picking his nose with a pliers and scribbling in his notebook, saying, "Hot damn, prescriptions! I love writing prescriptions!" "Curly, Curly!" I cried. "You've got to save me! I've turned into God." Curly just sat there grinning while Moe said, "Can't you read, kid? The sign says, Do Not Disturb!" Dr. Curly said, "Nyuck, nyuck, I'm a brain surgeon. Why don't you wait until I can get rid of these clowns and then I'll write up some prescriptions for you?" I told him my sad story. "...and now I'm a Clown. A Harlequin. Did you know that the world-famous science fiction author, Harley Davison, wrote a whole bunch of books about Harlequin Ellis? Harley Davison got turned into an advanced attack motorcycle with enough armament to sink a battleship." The Doctor interrupted: "And your ophthalmologist... he really thinks you need ten joints a day to keep your pres- sures down? Even without the sinister psionic force of VADIS to contend with, I think the average schlemiel would find this a bit much to grapple with." I showed him my license to smoke dope. "Yeah, the prescription says at least ten joints a day," Curly grudgingly admitted. "It looks like I'm going to have to put you on haldol cuz the dope is obviously making you crazy. Hot damn, prescriptions!" Curly went to fetch his PDR, tripped on the carpet, bumped his shin, dropped the weighty tome, retrieved it from under the desk and banged his noggin on the open drawer. He handed me a prescription. I walked across the street to the Horny Bird Drugstore to get it filled. The lady gave me donuts of death: hollow inside, and green. Haldol. But at least Sisyphus was still pushing boulders. And Death had died. Rachel was waiting in her Mazda. Ahura Mazda. She was a lizard-thing. She was still a lizard-thing. In spite of the fact that I'd just ODed on major tranquilizers. Serpentine sleekness was always my weakness like a broken-hearted Melanie and I wondered what sort of wife she'd make now that the haldol was in my blood. Cuz when the tranks begin to flow I really don't care anymore... She handed me a magazine, saying, "Look here--someone is soliciting manuscripts for an anthology to be called Abortion Stories: pro-life, pro-choice, doesn't matter--why don't you submit a manuscript?" I thought about it. "I'll go back to the Cosmic Circus." She smiled wanly, as we flew aerial traffic lanes, deposited me back at the Scoreland. I plugged in, turned on, booted up. # RU-486 IN THE COSMIC CIRCUS By W.C. Leadbeater [Author's note: the following story appeared, in dif- ferent form, as RUI-486 IN THE COSMIC CIRCUS, in Abortion Stories, ed. Rick Lawler.] The sky was dark. The wind was cold. Sophie Prunikos wrapped her cloak more tightly about herself, as she approached the Limit. On the planet Lucifer, where the Cosmic Circus was; its strange denizens wandering these same hot desert sands: Demon-desert. Beyond the Limit was the Void. The awareness of the Void was like satin seduction, Satan seduction: The upper and the lower, male and female, good and evil, life and death, are brother and sister to one another. Therefore neither are the good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life a real life, nor death, death. The World had not been created yet--the Fall was before the Creation, and took place within the Godhead itself. And Sophie was the Fallen One. She was a brazen prostitute, a creature of cold night-sin. You see them in the vaudeville, the peep-show girls, early morning Madonnas in the twilight. They wear their bangles of star-jewels like diamonds cast against a sable field of sky. Horos was the Limit. Without Horos, there'd be no Void, and without the Void, Kronos would still be devouring his children, because the Void is Death, Abyss, Chaos, and without the Void, he would've risen from the dead. They say Christ rose from the dead, but God had not yet become incarnate (if that was even possible), and the resur- rection was merely a symbol. And besides, God was a Clown: every evening he'd ride his little unicycle over the tight- wire for the amusement of Mind and Body, who were having an affair. But Cosmos himself was also cheating on his wife, Mind. He was having an affair with Love and Life, who were twins. Cute blondes, blue eyes, white jackets and dark gloves and boots. Shiny boots of leather. While Sophie received whiplashes in the dark, from Death, her boy-fiend: just as delicious a demon as she was. A he-man demon. Sophie thought, I've got the very best lover: Death. But if we ever make love--he'll die! Because I'm a Ladytron; sex with me causes death: the Orgasm Death. I really don't wanna get pregnant--if I ever do, I'm having an abortion! But what does Cosmos see in Love and Life? Letting those hos vorkle him? I'm a good whore, and I'm cheap! I think I'll look in on him--if Mind is gone, I'll try and seduce him. They say Cosmos is a swinger, but he only likes high-class whores. And so, Sophie pulled back the curtains of Cosmos' tent. Love and Life were engaged in lesbian love. Ugh! Can't get into that--guess I'm stuck with Death. When Sophie found Death, he was being crucifixated. Like the Rose of Mysterious Union, Death bled. Rose blood. Redemption. "Soph-kid!" He cried, with infinite yearning. "Your blow jobs are real atomic! Give me another, before Death is finally banished from the Pleroma!" The Pleroma: almost Heaven, the Fullness of the Godhead, something of indescribable beauty. Sophie climbed up on the cross, and gave him sweet succor, Ooga-Chugga Religion for a religious icon. Though she couldn't slip it in sideways, she gave him a sloe screw: sloe gin and orange juice. Spiritual Semen flowed--the impregnating power of the Holy Spirit. Like Christ, the Spirit is a Dyer. When Death died, Sophie found herself suddenly trans- ported to a scene of revelry: the Corner Bar. Which was a good place for any self-respecting whore to pick up johns. "I like your mother-of-pearl earrings," the voice of a vorkler said from behind her. She turned. It was Sisyphus. She told him, angrily, "I may be a whore, but at least I'm not into incest. You killed your father and married your mother. Why don't you go fuck Love and Life?" Sisyphus said, "Life has strayed beyond the Limit." With the anger of any true hypostasis, Sophie immediate- ly marched out of the bar, and ran to the Limit. She prostituted herself with the outer darkness, and conceived a child. She did not know she'd become pregnant when she returned from the Limit, but she feared and dreaded it: she hadn't used a yubbie, to protect against the Death-seed. So she pissed in a bottle, home pregnancy test. The plus symbol appeared: pregnancy, positive. She took an RU-486. In a minute, it kicked in, and the child was aborted. Life and Light are alien to the Cosmos. And the world is Sophie's abortion! #