LOS CANTOS DEL MINOTAUR BLANCO: "El Tunnel" Part 1

Or, How I Sold My Soul to Satan and Used Comic Sans

Plût au ciel que le lecteur, enhardi et devenu momentanément féroce comme ce qu'il lit, trouve, sans se désorienter, son chemin abrupt et sauvage, à travers les marécages désolés de ces pages sombres et pleines de poison; car, à moins qu'il n'apporte dans sa lecture une logique rigoureuse et une tension d'esprit égale au moins à sa défiance, les émanations mortelles de ce livre imbiberont son âme, comme l'eau le sucre. Il n'est pas bon que tout le monde lise les pages qui vont suivre; quelques-uns seuls savoureront ce fruit amer sans danger. Par conséquent, âme timide, avant de pénétrer plus loin dans de pareilles landes inexplorées, dirige tes talons en arrière et non en avant.

-LAUTRÉAMONT 

You may click on the image to enlarge AT YOUR PERIL

P.S. Satan later called and indicated that though my soul was lost and I was his instrument, I could go ahead and not use Comic Sans.

The Triumph of Secular Humanism

A SINCERE WARNING FOR SENSITIVE READERS


My gentlest readers should be forewarned that the following is not my creation, but rather sketched in burning black sand by the irregular wriggling body of a serpent that appeared outside of your house in a dream. I tried to stop you from picking it up, for I had read its words and knew it was pure poison, but you pressed it to your breast like an old spiritual to be memorized. You fell down, quite dead. 


With such an omen blazing before my sleeping closed eyes, I can only beg you not to read the following, or at least to take much caution, as I myself find it unusually disturbing, violent and obscene and feel it wholly necessary to sincerely warn you of its execrable and truly evil nature -yes, even you who danced with me at the Hexensabbat -to tell you that in addition to blasphemy, it contains extreme sexual violence. In so doing I hope to warn and protect you as I failed in my dream, as I feel I so often fail you.


Take care, gentle readers. And accept the sincere unfeigned warnings of your friend about the evil in the weeks to come, who knows well what it is and what it can do to a man.


VC

We weren't really supposed to ride on the back of the tank, but as the Holy City lay in ruins, its million pious spires burnt, snapped and snuffed out like birthday candles, everything was permitted. It was a fine day to lay on one's back, looking up at heaven wounded with great blotches of black smoke. Dan was talking about the first things he would do when he got back home, who he would rape and kill: everybody he knew, it sounded like. Dan was simple, naïve and sweet that way. His eyes twinkled with innocent cruelty and sadism as he described in run-on sing song speech the obscenities he would inflict on friend and foe with equal asperity, many of which were quite unrealistic in their complexity. My pedantic side wanted to disillusion Dan, but a motherly tugging at my nipples made me want to nurse him and his illusions like an asp at my breast.

I don't know what happened next. There was the loudest sound and the brightest flash. I felt a horrible unwanted love that burned stickily to my heart and heard a sound as if every star in the universe sung out “amen” at once. When I opened my eyes it was at first hard to say what the irregular and screaming shapes were that I was looking at. It was the tank and crew, sundered and scalded by a thunderbolt. I felt around myself. I was damp, but unscathed. Divine weapons were strange and rather inscrutable like that.

Dan ran over and covered me, asking if I was alright. He dragged me to cover. I felt sick dizzy, and wet, like I had spent a week in a washer and dryer on roller coaster. My eyes didn't quite focus. I was aware of Dan and the rest of the squad hunkered down and firing at some white rubble. The popping sounds seemed distant and fuzzy over a general ringing. I reached for my rifle and scooted up, but Dan dragged me down at looked at me. He went back to firing.

This went on long enough for the ringing to become an ambient constant and to realize I'd shit and pissed myself. I cleaned myself up with some nearby Bible pages. They were everywhere up here along with the down of bloody feathers, blowing around like beautiful burnt leaves.

There was a chorus of covering fire: our squad had moved up. Dan showed me through his scope. The angels were holed up in another burning church. Of course, they were all churches and they were all angels, or seraphim or whatever. We shot them all the same. Some of the seraphim were like officers and had defected early on. That's how we got a foothold.

The angels were uniformly beautiful and pure, like models. Just looking at them through the scope it was hard not to masturbate.

It was quite bold and tactically foolhardy for the angels to take us on as they did. They had a thoroughly honorable and deontic sense of battle protocol that often was, on the balance, quite catastrophic for them,

We had no trouble shutting them down in the church.

Dan again asked how I was. My mouth was real dry, but I answered him. He nodded and we popped up and ran into the smoldering church.

If you've seen one church, you've seen them all. They were all divine, they were all magnificent and every brick, every brush stroke, every inscription sung the praises of the divine creator. They were as alike as Hyatt hotel lobbies. They had the same supreme beatific perfection as the perfect cheekbones of the angels. Like the faces of angels, it was almost a bore mutilating them. Almost.

The surviving angels were up on the altar. The squad was taking turns. Angels had no genitalia or anus. This had not stopped innovations by so-minded individuals. It was an ugly scene, but not any worse than a Cannibal Corpse album cover.

In a lot of ways, angels were the perfect victims. Beautiful, androgynous, willing victims that never stopped singing hosannas or praises to god, even as you rubbed feces over their lips.

I really wasn't in the mood, but as the unit's chaplain, it was my duty to deliver the coup de grâce. I made it quick, though I was sure to deprive it of any mercy or dignity. I made the sign of the Pentagon and stuffed some shit-stained pages of On the Origin of Species and The Satanic Verses in its mouth before blowing its halo clean off.

That was always satisfying. There was no need to deny this. There was no reason to deny anything anymore. The sooty, burning atmosphere of this burning church was the cleanest, freest air I had ever tasted.

For it was a good day, despite the tank crew getting smored. We were all short-timers now. We were just mopping up a few die hards and dead enders who refused to accept the divine truth: beyond our sector, just some miles down the road, God lay dead in heaven, his throne toppled. Jesus was probably dead in some cave somewhere. Experts were unsure of the exactly whereabouts of the Holy Spirit, but then again, they always had been.

It didn't matter. Liberation had finally been achieved. What happened next, no one knew, but it was a great time to be young, young and alive.

The Insults that Made a Man Out of Mac

Silently, we see the action of the above comic, up to the FIFTH PANEL.

We can see as MAC flexes in the mirror, MAC has gained some muscle. However, his progress is more realistic.

MAC sees BETTY with BIG BULLY and other girls, laughing at the beach. It is clear that BIG BULLY has equal contempt for all the girls around him, particularly BETTY. MAC challenges BIG BULLY. BIG BULLY easily trounces MAC and humiliates him, pulling down his trunks, in front of the laughing girls.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

Of course, I could not transform overnight. I had a lot to learn.

We follow MAC as MAC goes up to BETTY and BIG BULLY again,who is sitting with a group of girls in an ice cream parlor. MAC challenges BIG BULLY to a fight. During the fight, MAC whips out a knife he has strapped to his wrist. He cuts BIG BULLY. There is blood. This makes BIG BULLY furious and he beats MAC quite badly.

The girls watch, horrified.

MAC, in bandages, is interviewed and charged by the POLICE.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

I had to learn that your friends are not your friends. That the “good” guys aren't good.

MAC is berated by his parents.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

That you could trust no one. You were alone.

Shut alone in his room, MAC turns out the light. Injured MAC begins, quite painfully, to do push-ups from his knees.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

You had to count on yourself.

MAC sees BETTY and BIG BULLY. BETTY is actually telling BIG BULLY she is pregnant, but MAC does not see this.

MAC goes to an ARMY recruitment office. They laugh at him.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

Neither God nor country could help you.

MAC looks in the window of a jewelry shop.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

To get what you want you must smash all barriers, eliminate all hesitation. It is hesitation that defeats you.

MAC goes away.

MAC comes back with a rock and smashes the window.

POLICE ring at MAC's house. MAC'S MOM answers the door.

MAC is in his room making a rather unrealistic diorama with the stolen ring in it when the POLICE bust in on him.

MAC is escorted by POLICE out of his house.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

Everything that happens, happens for a reason.

MAC in court.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

It was all part of my destiny.

MAC's attorney is emphatically trying to explain something to MAC. MAC ignores hum. The JUDGE looks at MAC very sympathetically. The JUDGE motions MAC to rise.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

I could beg like a coward, but it would still be the same. If I did it, then it was me. Why let someone take that away from me?

MAC gives his sentencing JUDGE the finger.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

So I chose to stand up like a man.

The JUDGE looks shocked and disappointed. The JUDGE sentences MAC to the maximum penalty and slams his gavel. MAC'S MOM weeps.

MAC goes to prison.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

I had to go deep inside myself to find out what was wrong.

MAC is forced to strip out of his civilian clothes.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

I had to lose everything that defined me as a loser.

MAC in his cell. It's lights out. As before, MAC starts doing push-ups in the dark.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

I had to work on myself. Rip myself apart from the inside out.

MAC working out in the yard.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

I had to destroy all weakness inside myself, cut away everything that was rotten, diseased and sick.

MAC in the prison dining hall.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

I had embraced fear and weakness. I allowed others to insult and disrespect me.

SPITTING CONVICT spits in MAC's food.

MAC in a prison common area.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

The only way to be sane, be healthy, was to expel it at all costs.

[MAC deliberately gets in a violent fight with much bigger prisoners]

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

The old god was mercy and pity and disgusting weakness. The old god hated and feared strength.

The new god was pain. It asked nothing.

MAC in another fight.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

It gave without end.

MAC corners SPITTING CONVICT

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

And when you embraced this new god, you got up off your knees.

MAC drops SPITTING CONVICT to his knees and beats him.

MAC looks down at SPITTING CONVICT

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

And you became him.

MAC unzips his fly.

Sound of SPITTING CONVICT screaming.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

When you worship pain, you become pain.

MAC in the yard, massive, tattooed, fearsome.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

And it's beautiful, because it's a fire that never goes out.

MAC before his PAROLE BOARD.

MAC[VOICE-OVER]

They asked if me I was ready to rejoin society. I was. I knew I was.

INT- BETTY and BIG BULLY'S SUBURBAN HOME – BEDROOM -NIGHT

There is the sound of muffled struggle. BETTY stands up in bed and turns on the light.

MAC is in bed with BETTY and BIG BULLY. MAC has his arm around BIG BULLY'S neck. MAC wears a mask, but is otherwise naked.

MAC

Don’t scream. Don’t move.

BETTY

Ohmigod who are you?

MAC

You know who this is.

BETTY

Mac, please, it’s been years now. We have kids.

BIG BULLY

Please man, leave her out of this. Just let her go.

MAC

No, I want her to see. I want your kids to see what a tough guy their daddy is.

KIDS

Mommy, daddy! What’s happening?

MAC

Here's something I owe you...

Outside the house, the strobing flash of police cars. A SWAT TEAM is there. Tear gas canisters are shot through the windows as the door is rammed by the SWAT TEAM

Flashes of gunfire are seen through the windows.

A multiply cuffed MAC is carried out of the house by a phalanx of SWAT officers, who have difficulty controlling him. MAC is covered in blood.

MAC [VOICE OVER]

And so you might ask me, is it worth it?

Stretchers exit the house: One adult body and two smaller forms, sheets over heads.

BETTY sits in an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, beyond tears and shock.

MAC as BETTY [VOICE-OVER]

[BETTY touches her breast beneath her shirt]

Oh Mac, you are a real man. After all.