I live inside your mirror. Do you resent me for watching? Why? I made it for you. All I ask is that you let me weave in peace. You know I am there. You know I don’t like you looking. Such fearful eyes. What are you afraid of?
Flying wood chips barreled through disparate, fleeing flies. Beetles scattered. Babalon tore through tree bark, prying apart the ash tree from the knothole. Then, when the hollow was wide enough, she slid herself inside.
It was warm. Buzzing. The sweet scent of honey drizzled over piss and soil.
It took no time for the mulch to give way underfoot, pulling Babalon down a current of a coarse, earthy soup. She felt bugs gnawing at her, insect life exploring her body and biting whatever seemed biteable. All in vain, of course.
She wondered whether it might take sharper teeth to pierce her skin. Or a stronger jaw. Perhaps heat. Probably not, she thought. She was made to last. To be eaten from the inside out only.
Huh.
Her fingers tingled. Swarmed with invisible life, she felt a mounting ecstasy. Warmth on her skin, the futile bug bites like kisses. Less love than it was hunger. Yes, hunger. And maybe more. She could almost feel it, something stronger. Worship. The insects all shared a soul, and that soul had found in her an obsession.
Before she knew it, it was over. Her feet touched stone. Cold, cave air filled her nostrils.
Ecstasy? No. Not even close. Disappointment and nothing more. Her eyes glazed over in the dark. What did she expect? What kind of worship could be extracted from a bug?
She looked around. It didn’t matter. She had found the Spinal Catacombs.
Down in the caves there was light. A hazy blue glow from bioluminescent fungus that reflected off the streams of trickling water that lined the rockface. Hugging the walls on either end were two downward sloped paths. Between them lay an endless abyss, a gaping wound that breathed as though the rocks were muscle tissue. Where the two paths connected, there was a cave. And in that cave, The Gray Mirror.
When Aleph had first caught sight out of it, they fell to their knees. Though not Gregor. He ripped the lead mask off his face, and let it fall to the stone floor.
“Get to your knees,” whispered a member of Aleph beside him. “Show some respect.”
“You superstitious bug,” he laughed derisively, amber eyes like melted gold. “You don’t even know who you’re kneeling to.”
Babalon remembered kneeling amongst the others. She had felt herself slide into a trance state as her new family repeated their communal mantra.
She had forgotten all about Gregor until she caught the back of his plaid shirt.
“Worthless,” he whispered to himself, kicking aside any kneeling members as he marched towards the Gray Mirror. His robe had been thrown alongside his mask. Standing on the mount, he briefly turned back and waved, spectral fingers grasping his shoulders, then disappeared behind curls of gray smoke. The chanting stopped. Stone silence.
“Is he…?” The woman who would become Babalon finally said.
“The doors of death only open one way,” said Radigan J. Beets solemnly. She hated the little, know-it-all prick. She hated his fake low voice and fake, auto-fellatious name he insisted be said in full. But most of all she hated that he was short. But still, even a broken clock was right twice a day.
“Returned to the singularity of the creator’s expression,” said Sathyajith, nodding sagely. She hated him too.
They each sat in silence, half-heartedly paying their respects to Gregor to the backdrop of water trickling down stone. They stayed that way for an hour.
Then, as though tearing through a spider’s web, Gregor emerged from the Gray Mirror. Amber eyes beaming, he stood completely nude, a shit-eating grin on a face dripping with with black sludge. In his hand he held an eyeless head, its face shifting uncomfortably as though filled with worms. As he held it up to Aleph, it melted away in the cave air. He stared at his hand in amusement.
“Hey jerkoffs,” he announced. “Listen to me, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen or felt over there. Look at me. Look at my face. Do I look alive? Wouldn’t you like to look alive, too?”
He scrolled through the stunned faces until he caught her eye.
“Well?” he said. “What are you waiting for? Oh, that’s right.”
With that, Gregor returned to the long fingered veil. Hunched shoulders held a disappointment. The woman who would become Babalon looked around. Most continued to kneel completely still, unable to process what had happened. But one had stood up. Corsa stood staring at the door, trembling. She thought he was afraid. Then she noticed the white of his knuckles.
No one followed him in. Nor did anyone wait for him to return. They went back to the compound. On the way she noticed a lot of exaggerated walks. A fake swaggering. Longer strides. The air thick with excuses left unsaid.
When Gregor did return, no one dared ask about his metal teeth. They had had the opportunity to explore themselves, but did not. To hear from someone who had would have been intolerable.
It was that night that Gregor snuck into her room with a teapot and a couple of small, ornate cups. He told her tea was his greatest vice. She knew he was lying but humored him anyway. He told her about wanting to try the Babalon working.
“Look at you,” he said, tracing the contours of her ribs. “You were made to be worshiped.”
He paused, lost in thought. She could swear she saw discoloration bloom where his eye met the wall.
“It’s always failed,” she said. Even then she was cold. “The Babalon worm always rejects the human host.”
“That’s because it was always meant to be you. You saw what I did today. Don’t you trust me? When I know, I know. And I know you were meant to be divine.”
“And now I am,” thought Babalon. She stood upon the mount before the Gray Mirror, strands of ghostly smoke tickling her face like spider’s legs. “You got what you wanted. And now you’re too dead to see it.”
That would be her offer. She would drag Gregor back to the living in exchange for the eradication of the Babalon parasite. It was possible. She did not believe Corsa would lie about that. He would never lie about anything that made Gregor look capable.
Had she gotten what she wanted? Was she tricked? She confessed, she had not known what she wanted. But she wanted something. And the Babalon working seemed as good of a something as anything else. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t hers. Her own desire lay dormant, hidden in some dusty corner. Evidently the last piece the parasite would suck clean from her soul.
Gray fingers of smoke called out to Babalon. One step. That was all she needed to take. She listened to the muffled voice behind the gray mirror. Finally, she would hear what it had to say.
She took her step.
Her body began to melt away. Caught in a snow flurry. No, she was the snow flurry, whipping about wildly as white light in a kaleidoscopic tunnel. Spinning faster and faster, spiraling denser and tighter to a knife point. Every inch of her screaming.
And then it stopped. There was ground beneath her feet. It felt like skin. She looked at her hand. Whole again.
Swept as though by wind, the tunnel left her vision, leaving behind a bright, tinsel city. Large buildings loomed before her, dazzling behemoths of light and mirror. Shimmering webs hung between them. A multitude of multi-coloured neon lights were strapped to the buildings, reflected endlessly against each other. The sky was pitch black, a vast abyss desperately drinking in the light.
Babalon looked to her feet. Wherever she stepped, circuit grids lit up and pulsed beneath a tight, translucent membrane. It really was like skin.
Nearing the first building, the lights began to take a different shape. Some looked like spider’s eyes. Others distinctly human. Both streaming artificial light. They blinked when she got too close, as though scared she might poke them.
Peeking at her from behind a building, she witnessed something human, or at least human-adjacent. Noticing her, its eyeless face rearranged itself nervously: thin, wide, narrow, hollow-cheeked, chubby. Its skin was a disco ball of indiscernible neon. It fled as she took a step towards it.
As she traversed the neon city, the buildings seemed to get tighter. Suspicious, she looked back.
Of course. The way she came was blocked. The city itself moved as its people did. She was being led somewhere.
An alleyway corralled her into an open city center where several rearranging bodies lay prostrate inside a frayed copper circle. When they noticed her, they began to call out.
“Help me,” said one. “I am sick and comfortable. I am with mother.”
“Then leave,” said Babalon.
“I am too unhappy to leave.”
Its face turned towards her, and when it did Babalon saw a flash of images. A sordid scene of a man sitting at a desk with slack face. Bright light from the screen washed the color from his face. Half empty pill bottles next to countless crushed cans. Lethargy lined his face. How could he kill himself? He wasn’t even alive.
“She takes care of us,” said another. “She warned us about you. Don’t take my home from me. This is all I have left.”
Another image. Stringy hair and bare legs latticed with cuts. Sitting in a bathtub. Dirty, black-and-white striped socks. The smell of stale shit. Several lap dogs yapping; a perpetual backdrop. She hated them with all her heart. Overgrown rats. It would be a relief when they died. But then she would be lonely. Yes, she would buy another.
The image faded. Babalon stood in shock.
“You’re not dead,” she whispered in disbelief. She saw the orgy of amorphous beings in a new light. “None of you are dead.”
One of them heard her and replied.
“I can’t be. I don’t want my mother to deal with the cleanup.”
A different image flowered before Babalon. A woman laying catatonic on a couch. In another room, petrified remains of a stillborn lay in what would have been its crib.
“But it’s okay. I’ll stay here instead. Nothing is real here. My mother isn’t here.”
There was a rumbling from above. The rearranging human shrunk down, beginning to resemble a meek and corpulent child.
“My real mother.” It said meekly.
Limp, a giant spider’s leg dipped down from the abyss and nuzzled the baby blob by its chin. Then, like a great hook it pierced the gelatinous body and fished it up into the sky. Babalon heard a gurgle, then the wet noise of gathering foam. To her surprise, she understood it.
“There is no other,” it said. “I am real.”
Staring up into the abyss where the Great Spider nested, Babalon felt a visceral disgust. The hatred of a blood enemy.
“Who are you?” She called. “Show yourself.”
In response, silence. The other rearranging humans quivered inside the copper circle. They would no longer have the courage to turn to Babalon.
You won’t draw her out that way, said a deep, monotone voice behind her. She does not respect you. You are her shadow.
Babalon turned. Facing her was neither a man nor spider, but a goat-legged creature with leg hair like black tassels and long black fingers like nets. A blank, eggshell mask hid its face. It wore an oversized, plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Babalon’s face softened. There was something charming about the creature. And eager, like a dog sidling up to a stranger. His leg was shackled, with a dark chain that dangled down from the abyss.
“And who are you?” she asked softly.
I am Abel.
“Are you trapped here, Abel?”
Abel scratched his head with the tip of a long, black finger.
I am?
“There’s a chain on your leg.”
Yes. I cannot leave Mother. We are linked.
“Is it the same as what’s at the end of that spider’s leg?”
Yes.
Babalon’s eyes flashed.
“How do I kill it?”
Remove my chain. You will find out.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
Babalon…Why are you here?
She still winced each time a stranger addressed her by her new name. But he was right. She was forgetting her true business.
“Someone carried a dead human body into this realm. I want it back.”
Yes, yes. The body of Gregor.
Her eyes glanced towards the plaid shirt.
I know where it is. I am the one who carried him.
“You are chained.”
It is a long chain, Babalon.
“A lot of people claim to know me. Are you one of them?”
I have known you, Lady Babalon. But this is the first time I have met you. This is why I am excited.
“What do you mean?”
This is the first time. The creature paused, humming to himself. In…time…?
“You know your future.”
I think so, said the creature scratching his head. And my past. But these are your words. It is all the same to me. Or it was…will…be? But when you are around, things become fuzzy. Future becomes slippery. Furniture is moved, and I no longer recognize my home.
She stared at the hunched creature.
“If I remove your chain, will you take me to Gregor?”
I have already done it…
Abel titled his head.
Will…do?
“Very well,” Babalon said haughtily. She bent down and grabbed the chain with both hands and began to pull. “I have nothing to lose.”
This chain belongs to Mother. But you, you are anti-mother. Anti-nature. Made to undo all that is natural, all that is creation.
“So I’ve heard.”
Despite her strength, the chain held firm. She held it loose between her hands, letting it fall to the floor so she could try and stomp the links loose. Failing that, she pulled at the chain, though it seemed endless. It coiled in a circle at her feet, still dangling from the abyss.
This will not work. It is not about strength, but ownership. You have not yet put your mark on me.
Babalon turned to Abel.
“What?”
He pointed a long black finger to his mask.
Put your mark on me. Make me a face.
“I have nothing to paint with. Blood, maybe. But that’s not so simple. I do not cut easily.”
A touch of sadism painted her own face. “Perhaps your own?”
No need, said Abel. He pointed to a wall, where several bright eyes stood watching. Hand me one. I cannot get near. Mother will pull back the chain.
She walked towards a wall. The eyes bolted themselves shut themselves with heavy concrete lids. She tried to pry one out, but there was nothing to grab.
“They don’t want me near them,” she said.
They are afraid of you.
“So what can I use? I have no grip.”
What can you use? said Abel loudly. You are Babalon. They are eyes. Seduce them.
Babalon scoffed, “You want me to show them my tits?”
Is that all you have?
“No,” she said. “I suppose not.”
She felt the worm growl pleasantly inside her, whispering to her what she was and would be. The vision she would show the world.
For the first time, Babalon listened. She did not fight back. And so she grew large and terrible, arms sprouting from her back and grasping the air, eyes bursting above her brows. She lifted a leg, then began to move.
Fire rose behind her as she danced, red flames cutting away at the neon light of the world, overpowering it, eating away at the artifice. She wanted to destroy, to devour, to take what was hers to take. Everything.
She danced in a fit of violent rage. She would find the end of life itself and hold it in her hands. To dance with God. To cut off its head, so that where there was one, there would be two.
And in a fleeting moment, a ruby red eye cracked open to watch. She pounced and swiftly plucked it from the wall. The fire died down. Bathed once more in neon light, she had got what she wanted. The worm would not devour her yet.
In her hand, the eye once again coiled behind a ball of concrete.
Hand it to me, said Abel.
She did as he asked. It opened brightly at his touch, washing him in a dull red light.
“These eyes are horrible.”
You see them as eyes, nodded Abel. To me, they are eggs.
He cocked his head then crushed it between his palm. Black sludge oozed down his finger. There came a rumbling from the abyss above.
“She didn’t like that.”
No, she did not, said Abel, holding out his dripping hand. Here. Take.
Babalon held out her palm to catch the sludge.
“What’s this inside them?”
Garrote.
Babalon nodded. She knew of garrote, the substance given off by the living. Emotions expelled from the body to then be processed and eaten by spirits.
This place. It was a farm.
“It smells rotten.”
Yes, it is not the kind of garrote you like. You are anti-life, and so that is what you take. Mother is life, and so that is what she eats.
Babalon nodded, rubbing the viscous liquid between her fingers. Overtop Abel’s eggshell mask she smeared a simple pair of dots and a long line for a mouth, slightly curved at one end.
“There,” she said.
Abel turned to look over his shoulder. The chain around his leg had begun to disintegrate. He turned back to Babalon.
I like my new face. It is…very human. Yes. The mark of Abel.
“Do you like humans?”
He scratched his head.
Yes. Sometimes to eat. Sometimes to help.
She eyed him suspiciously, “I am not human.”
Sometimes you are.
Before she could respond, the buildings began to shift violently, sweeping aside the city center and pushing the writhing mass of figures out from view.
“What is happening?” asked Babalon.
Mother is creating a maze. She means to trap you here.
Babalon’s eyes widened. She heard voices chanting behind the walls.
“Can’t go back,” they repeated. “Can’t return. Live in our web. Live with mother.”
No matter.
Shuffling to the nearest building, Abel reached down and began to pluck out eye after eye. After each picking, he squeezed the eye until it burst with oozing garrote. Babalon was reminded of an old memory, a human memory of a pet raccoon who would steal into the fridge every night and throw every egg onto the kitchen floor. With tiny steps he moved swiftly from wall to wall. A dimming of light following in his wake. The ground began to rumble.
Once more, the spider’s leg reached down from the abyss like a giant hook. Its motion was no longer smooth, instead shaking with fury as it aimed to impale Abel.
Seeing her chance, Babalon sprinted towards the leg, grabbing it tightly before its razor tip could pierce her new companion. To her surprise, it was quite soft. She could feel the flesh start to give way under her fingernails. And so she began to climb.
The leg shook as she climbed, twisting every which way to throw her off. Babalon clung like a viper, inching her way forward up the long and hairy leg. At its peak, she found herself atop a soft body, inside a wide abyss. A multitude of beady eyes twinkled in the distance.
You want to know who I am? said the spider. I am Nature. I am Night. I am Mother.
“You are a parasite,” said Babalon. Her voice flared with anger. “I have seen your realm. And it is anything but natural. The souls here are hardly alive. They are hardly people.”
They are my little bugs, said the spider. And yet I love them all the same. And they love me and sustain me, and so I take care of them. I am their mother.
“I don’t know who you are. But I know you are weak. ”
Babalon leant down and poked at the doughly, black spider flesh she stood on.
“Is there anything in you but water? Garrote? No wonder you’re weak. No power of your own. You’re not even real. You are a thing born of dreams.”
Better to be born of dreams than the vile cunt of a human mother, the spider gurgled. You don’t know me? I know who you are. I birthed you. I watched the last of your kind burn like kindling in my city.
With that, Babalon tore a fist through the floor of the abyss. A geyser of garrote erupted from the spider’s body, falling to the ground like black rain.
You cannot kill me, gurgled the spider. Its legs began to fall away at the joints as its garrote fueled flesh melted away. I have spun my webs since the stars were formed. The threads of fate are final.
“I am an abomination,” roared Babalon. “I grab fate by the hair and fuck her in half!”
The spider’s body no longer able to support her, Babalon fell in a flood of garrote. Inside the enveloping stench, she felt the essence of those from whom it had been harvested. For a brief moment, she knew what it felt to be the people within the circle. And they too briefly knew what it was like to be Babalon.
Somewhere out there, a man woke from a daze. Though he hadn’t slept in days, it felt as though he had just woken up from a dream. He looked at his pill bottles and in a rage threw them out the window.
Fuck this, he thought. He would go live in the jungle. Buy the ticket now, sweat through withdrawals on the plane. Why not? The fuck else did he have to live for? He hated everyone he knew. Yeah. Fight jungle cats. Fuck jungle pussy. And if he failed, at least he wouldn’t be miserable. Just dead. He smiled.
Somewhere else, a woman rose from her couch. Taking her shriveled unborn baby from its crib, she led it into the forest where she burned it in the name of Babalon. She would call her mother. It had been a while since they talked.
For others it was too late to start again. They had gone too far. Police would find the body of Quinn Hollis weeks after a neighbor complained about the smell. The body half devoured by lap dogs, there was little left but a mess of fecal matter, rotten flesh and a pair of black-and-white striped socks.
Babalon felt a familiar tingle in her limbs. People were beginning to notice her. Not just in dreams. From their devotion, a strength began to build inside her, though she was unsure whether it belonged to the worm or to her.
Did she know the difference?
She looked around, only a little surprised by the crimson sky that greeted her. The night sky of the city realm had not been real. Only the body of a spider. The ground she lay on was the dirt of a cracked, arid desert. The city had disintegrated into dust, as had the rearranging bodies that filled its mazes. Whatever was left of them blew gently in the wind.
Abel shuffled up to her side.
She looked up at him. The spider’s final words echoed in her head.
“Did I kill her?”
A mirror image.
“What now?”
You have taken away my chain. I wish to return the favor. I made you a promise. I will bring you to the body of Gregor.
Babalon raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not looking for a corpse.”
You think I intend to fool you. I do not. The soul of Gregor is inside the body of Gregor. He is sentimental you see.
Abel removed his plaid shirt and began to mop up the garrote coating Babalon’s face and hair.
“Thank you, Abel.”
You are welcome, he said, gathering the shirt underneath his mask to slurp up the black sludge. He then put it back on. It was still a little wet.
Babalon rose to her feet. A vast expanse of desert stretched endlessly. Abel looked at his palm, where he held a small pool of garrote. He then clasped his hands together and rolled it around until he produced a shiny, gold coin.
“What is that?”
For the boatman.