Mister B. Gone (3 page)

Like any prisoner locked up in solitary confinement I still manage to get news. Not much. But enough to keep me sane.

I’m the real thing, you see. Unlike the impostors who pass themselves off as darkness incarnate,
I am that darkness
. And if I had a chance to escape this paper prison I would cause such anguish and shed such seas of blood the name Jakabok Botch would have stood as the very epitome of evil.

I was—no, I am—the sworn enemy of mankind. And I take that enmity very seriously. When I was free I did all that I could to cause pain, without regard to the innocence or guilt of the human soul I was damning. The things I did! It would take another book for me to list the atrocities I was happily responsible for. The violations of holy places, and more often than not the accompanying violation of whomever was taking care of the place.

Often these poor deluded devotees, thinking the image of their Savior
in extremis
possessed the power to drive me away, would advance upon me, wielding a crucifix and telling me to be gone.

It never worked, of course. And oh, how they would scream and beg as I pulled them into my embrace. I am, needless to say, a creature of marvelous ugliness. The front of my body from the top of my head to those precious parts between my legs had been seared so badly in the fire into which I had fallen—and where Pappy Gatmuss had left me to burn for a minute or two while he slapped my mother around—that my reptilian appearance had become a mass of keloid tissue, shiny and seared.

My face was—still is—a chaos of bubbles, little hard red domes of flesh where I’d fried in my own fat. My eyes are two holes, without lashes or brows. So is my nose. All of them, eyeholes and nostrils, constantly run with grey-green mucus so that there isn’t a moment, day or night, when I don’t have rivulets of foul fluids running down my cheeks.

As to my mouth—of all my features, I wish I could possess my mouth again, just as it had been before the fire. I had my mother’s lips, generous below and above, and what kissing I had practiced, mainly on my hand or on a lonely pig, had convinced me that my lips would be the source of my good fortune. I would kiss with them, and lie with them; I would make victims and willing slaves of anyone my eyes desired, simply by talking a little, and following the talk with kisses, and the kisses with demands. And they’d melt into compliance, every one of them, happy to perform the most demeaning acts as long as I was there to reward them with a long, tongue-tied kiss when they were done.

But the fire didn’t spare my lips. It took them too, erasing them utterly. My mouth is now just a slot that I can barely open an inch because the scarred flesh around it is too solid.

Is it any wonder that I’m tired of my life? That I want it erased by fire? You’d want the same thing. So, in the name of empathy, burn this book. Do it for compassion’s sake, if you have the heart, or because you share my anger. There’s no saving me. I’m a lost cause, trapped forever between the covers of this book. So finish me.

Why the hesitation? I’ve done as I promised, haven’t I?

I’ve told you something about myself. Not everything, of course. Who could tell everything? But I have told you enough that I’m surely more than just words on a page, ordering you about. Oh yes, while I think of it, please allow me to apologize for that brutish, bullying way I started out. It’s something I inherited from Pappy G. and I’m not proud of it. It’s just that I’m impatient to have the flame licking these pages and burning up this book as soon as possible. I didn’t take account of your very human curiosity. But I hope I’ve satisfied that now.

So it remains only for you to find a flame and get this wretched business over with. I’m certain that will be a great relief to you and I assure you an even greater relief to me. The hard part’s over. All we need now is that little fire.

Come on, friend. I’ve unburdened myself; my confession is made. It’s over to you.

I’m waiting. Doing my best to be patient.

Indeed, I will go so far as to say that I’m being more patient right now than I’ve ever been in my life. Here we are on page 18 and I’ve trusted you with some of the most painful confessions I have ever made to anyone, simply so that you would know this wasn’t some fancy trick. It was a real and true account of what happened to me, which, were you ever to have seen me in the flesh, would be instantly verified. I am burned. Oh, how I am burned.

It’s a sign of your mercy that I’m really waiting for. And your courage, which I’ve somehow sensed from the beginning was like your mercy, a quality you possessed. It does take courage to set a flame to your first book, to defy the sickly wisdom of your elders and preserve words as though they were in some way precious.

Think of the absurdity of that! Is there anything in your world or mine, Above or Below, that is so available as words?

If the preciousness of things is bound in some measure to their rarity, then how precious can the sounds we make, waking or sleeping, in infancy or senility, sane, mad, or simply trying on hats, be? There’s a surfeit of them. They spew from tongues and pens in their countless billions every day. Think of all that words express: the seductions, threats, demands, entreaties, prayers, curses, omens, proclamations, diagnoses, accusations, insinuations, testaments, judgments, reprieves, betrayals, laws, lies, and liberties. And so on, and on, words without end. Only when the last syllable has been spoken, whether it’s a joyous hallelujah or someone complaining about their bowels, only then is it that I think we can reasonably assume the world will have ended. Created with a word, and—who knows?—maybe destroyed by one. I know about destruction, friend. More than I care to tell. I’ve seen such things, such foul and unspeakable things . . .

Never mind. Just the flame, please.

What’s the delay? Oh wait. It isn’t that remark I made back there about knowing destruction that’s got you twitchy, is it? It is. You want to know what I’ve seen.

Why in Demonation can’t you be satisfied with what you’ve been given? Why do you always have to know
more
?

We had an agreement. At least I thought we did. I thought all you needed was a simple confession and in return you’d cremate me: ink, paper, and glue consumed in one merciful blaze.

But that’s not going to happen yet, is it?

Damn me for a fool. I shouldn’t have said anything about my knowledge of destruction. As soon as you heard that word your blood started to quicken.