Rick Wayne's Blog, page 14

Western Gothic

My parents have been binge-watching the Paramount show Yellowstone, which is not about the infamous National Park but rather is a kind of cowboy Game of Thrones in the modern American West. I can’t stomach it, but the snippets I catch are morbidly fascinating.

I can’t stomach it for the same reason I couldn’t stomach the BBC show Unforgotten, despite that I’m a big fan of mysteries. (I write them.)

But in fact, the two shows are just about polar opposites.

The main characters of Unforgotten, a woman and an Indian man, are so steeped in sensitivity that they leave puddles of it when they walk. They speak softly and regularly repeat key phrases from their sensitivity training. Always patient, never threatening (let alone armed), they are nevertheless dogged in their pursuit of truth — not so much for justice as to bring closure to the victims’ families, whom they counsel like therapists.

The pair lead a team of dedicated investigators who, when they make a mistake, admit it and are forgiven. Behind them all is a benevolent state that almost never interferes in their good work. (The lead detective’s boss rarely makes an appearance except to praise her like a loving parent.) The team apparently has an unlimited budget and spares no expense to solve 70-year-old crimes. Not all of the villains on the show are politically conservative, but all of the conservatives that appear end up villains.

Yellowstone, on the other hand, is an orgy of parochial self-reliance. The state is at least ineffectual if not an outright villain. The same is true of outsiders, who all exhibit Eco’s paradox. On one hand, they’re an existential threat to the cowboy way of life. On the other, they’re all uptight pussies.

In one telling scene, the California land developer trying to build a subdivision on the border of the ranch (heresy!) suffers an unexpected evening out with his adversaries, who really know how to party. When he gets home, his wife tells him he’s never been that much fun. She then pulls off her dress and lays back on the couch, crudely begging him to fuck her, which of course he can’t do, being so cowed by cowboy swagger. (All that scene was missing was a loudly revving engine: a motorcycle or monster truck or something.)

The main character, a wealthy rancher and land owner played by Kevin Costner, is also the state’s livestock commissioner. You would think, being in a position of power, he could be the one state official to uphold the rule of law. But the law, like the state and the courts, is only a hindrance, something to be got round, and the only time his agents do any good is when they break it (and then cover up the infraction).

Early in the show, several hundred of the rancher’s cattle wander onto an Indian reservation — easy to do when your ranch is the size of Rhode Island. Rather than return the cattle, the Indians reverse-appropriate them, leading to a legal battle proctored by the governor.

In the civilized world, such wranglings and political compromises are how people who are very different from each other nevertheless live together peacefully. But since law is corrupt, peace is for pussies. Rather than sully himself with negotiation (or build a fence, apparently), Costner gathers an armed force and tries to take the cattle by incursion onto Indian land. A shootout results in a revenge killing.

Since the shooter is Costner’s war-veteran son, he must be protected, which means evidence of the execution must be destroyed. They do this by burning the medical examiner’s office with the body inside — and the medical examiner.

But it’s okay. They break his neck first so he doesn’t suffer. And that’s okay, too, because he’s an outsider and a pussy. He’s from Chicago, fleeing the loss of his job due to drug addiction. At night, he soaks cigars in embalming fluid and smokes them to numb himself.

In the civilized world, such a man needs help. In the world of Yellowstone, addiction is weakness and the weak are put down, like a lame horse. “I’m not going to negotiate with a junkie!” Costner yells at his lieutenant, who makes it look like the scrawny doctor killed himself.

(The uptight pussy outsiders — “transplants” the son calls them — are always scrawny and sniveling. Seriously, the show has nothing on war-era propaganda for its visual depiction of stereotypes.)

Costner’s actions are constantly offensive, but they’re justified as defensive, either of his family or his land. The California developer can’t be allowed to legally develop his own land lest that encourage more outsiders to come. (So much for property rights.) He’s hung from a tree at the end of the first season.

Costner can take from others in this way, and yet, when a group of Chinese tourists trespass on the ranch — again, the size of Rhode Island — to do nothing other than sight-see, Costner chases them away with a rifle, since they’re too stupid not to take selfies with a bear. (Later, the bear also gets killed.)

There are only three female characters with any agency, including the governor, but all three are in sexual relationships with Costner or one of his sons or ranch hands. No women work with men until an ex-stripper is hired as a ranch hand. She is ogled constantly.

Society is hierarchical, and everyone is in constant competition. No one likes each other as equals. No woman is comfortable with herself and no man is either except for those who regularly (and literally) beat down other men.

The show takes regular breaks from the plot to depict the ranch hands in some new contest, for no other reason than to ritually reiterate the hierarchy, where the same scrawny wrangler, Jimmy, is constantly hazed and verbally abused. He never learns, for that’s his place.

Contrast all of that with something like The Mandalorian, which is also a Western. (It just takes place in outer space.) There, the state is also ineffectual: the Empire has collapsed, so there is no law to enforce, and violence is rampant.

Like the cowboys of Yellowstone, Mando also lives by a code that supersedes the law, which he makes patent with the oft-repeated phrase, “This is the Way.” But rather than a reification of pack-animal behavior, where status is mediated by ritualized violence, the code of the Mandalorians is cooperative and merit-based. Your status derives from your accomplishments in the world, profits from which are always partially reinvested in the community. Mando earns his armor — an outward symbol as well as a defense — but he also gives some of his winnings to feed the younglings, who live precariously in this lawless land.

This is a completely different myth, and one much closer to the classic Westerns of yore, where the violent actions of the hero (the sheriff or noble gunslinger) are justified not because there is too much law but too little.

The classic Western hero was trying to “tame” the frontier, to break its lawlessness and introduce civilization: cooperation, peace, the rule of law, schools, roads, and a chance for a better life.

Yellowstone breaks that for something much more Middle Eastern: clan-based tribal fealties, an end to the state monopoly on violence, contests of strength in place of courts, and so on, where the protagonist is not a scrappy underdog but a ruthless prince, born wealthy.

Costner’s character is the anti-Batman. Rather than using his power to fight the corruptions of modern society, he uses it to crush his rivals and take more for himself — the perfect hero for the Trump era, the new Gilded Age.

There is another genre that has many of the same hallmarks, where the local landed bully squeezes as much as he can from the community to fund his status-squabbles with his neighbors: the Southern Gothic. Yellowstone, then, is a Western Gothic.

Just as the culture of the South in the era of the Southern Gothic novel was declining amid industrialization, so, too, I suspect the emergence of Western Gothic signals the final decrepitude of the parochial way of life.

(Fiction) PermaPuppies

With the new puppy, of course I have to share this chapter from ZERO SIGNAL.

Del was right. Everywhere Nio might want to go was five minutes away. Raffe’s Day and Night, on the other hand, was a further ten outside town. The sky darkened completely on the trip. The last glow in the west faded and stars appeared. Other than the occasional distant car or porch lamp, the twin rows of blinking red lights on the deep core miner’s sails was all Nio could see.

The self-driving sedan was a custom Maybach, a luxury vehicle with plush leather and numerous screens. The on-board computer cheerily announced their ETA every few minutes. It was meant to be helpful. To Nio, it seemed like a countdown. With a final satisfied ding, the vehicle pulled into a crumbling asphalt lot behind a tall windowless bar at the corner of a state highway and a numbered county road. The neon sign on the pole in front was missing several letters.

“Out,” Dalrymple ordered.

Enough salt had been poured onto the nearly-empty lot that little remained of the snow. At the back was a dilapidated fence separating the lot from the cluster of unmarked camping trailers in the field beyond. A four-foot gap between fence poles connected the bar with the trailers. The path between was worn to dirt.

A bouncer in a suit coat and turtleneck came out to greet them. He looked like a parody of himself. He even had slicked-back hair. He opened the door for Nio and held out his hand like she was a celebrity stepping onto the red carpet. Truly walked quickly inside, like she was in a hurry to use the bathroom. More of her skin had changed color.

Nio’s clothes were wanded for electronics. The paddlelike device chirped over her boots.

“Take them off,” Dalrymple ordered.

She looked down at the slushy, wet gravel under her feet. “Seriously?”

“Nothing wired,” he told her.

“They’re not powered. It’s just stupid smart clothes. I’ve never connected them to anything.”

“They can store data. Take them off and throw them in the dumpster.” He nodded to the solid steel behemoth resting obliquely in its own wooden cage at the back of the bar. It smelled like a landfill.

On one hand, it was ridiculous. On the other, some kinds of “smart” clothes recorded enough information about their environment that they could be useful for law enforcement. Some sensed ambient temperature, for example, so as to know when to tighten or relax. Others recorded it and sent it to an app where it could be cross-referenced with metabolic data, captured by smart watch or fitness bracelet, as part of a complex health monitoring algorithm—for weight loss or in preparation for pregnancy. Such data, all of which was gathered and sold, could be used to establish a person’s activity or impeach testimony. There was no way to know which articles were potentially incriminating. The simplest rule was to ban them all.

She slipped off her unlaced boots and tossed them one at a time into the dumpster. They resounded off the metal wall. Her socks were soaked instantly. Tiny pebbles poked her feet. She felt so much smaller.

The solid steel double doors were opened and Nio was pushed into a large square storage room weakly lit by fluorescent lamp. The seafoam-colored walls gave everything a sickly look, including the eerie rack of plastic-wrapped sex dolls. Despite that most of their proportions stretched to the ridiculous, some of them looked completely real. Any of the twenty or so leaning figures could’ve been a real body.

The doorway at the end of the room led to a hall paneled in faux wood. The open floor of the club was at the far end. Music thumped. The doorway to the kitchen opened on the left. A large-bosomed waitress dressed like a sexy referee walked out carrying food in a plastic basket. Halfway between the kitchen and the storage room, a staircase broke off to the right, but it was short—not tall enough to reach a second floor. At the top, past the closed door, was a dim, low office overlooking the interior of the high-ceilinged strip club from a wall of tinted, floor-to-ceiling glass. On the right was a large desk facing two chairs. Truly waited in one. Her skin was now completely magenta and her hair was following suit. Both seemed to glow in the UV light from the main stage. Her tail curled under the chair. On the left was a leather sofa and a short hall to a private washroom. By the light under the door, it was occupied.

“Have a seat,” Dalrymple ordered.

His head nearly touched the low ceiling. He seemed perpetually angry, like a sea monster permanently banished to shore. He pushed Nio toward the couch.

The back wall of the office was covered in framed pictures, none more than eight or nine inches across. Most held pictures of smiling patrons, and they recounted the entire 90-year history of the establishment, which used to be called The Day Club, then The Day and Night, now Raffe’s Day and Night. Hanging on the wall behind the desk, occupying the place of honor amid a cluster of recent photos, including several group pictures of all the dancers from a particular year, was a child-sized, bright pink Hello Kitty shotgun. It seemed ridiculous in the dim, masculine room.

“Pheasant,” came a young girl’s voice. It had a deep country accent.

Nio turned. What at first appeared to be a little person with fake boobs and permed blonde hair stepped out of the washroom. She was barely four and a half feet tall. Almost immediately Nio could see she wasn’t a little person at all.

“The shotgun,” she explained in her girl’s voice. “It’s for hunting pheasant. It was a gift from an old client. In my day, we had exactly two industries: Sturgis and the pheasant run. A girl had to make her year working those. I’m Raffela. And you are?”

Nio was too stunned to answer. She had heard about neoteny dilation, but she had never seen it in humans. Neoteny, or the retention of juvenile features into adulthood, had been a fad with pets a decade or so before. Although it was much less popular lately, neotenous pets—PermaPuppies by their trade name—were still available. Breeders knew they could make a fortune selling animals that never stopped looking like puppies or kittens. Since the onset of adulthood is mediated by a sudden rise in hormones, like a biological switch, it was relatively easy to create a cocktail of suppressor proteins that inhibited the cascade. Since PermaPuppies never achieved sexual maturity, they never had to be spayed or neutered, and the company argued they would result in a decrease in the number of animals in shelters. Buying a PermaPuppy, then, was supposed to be morally superior to rescuing because the latter only saved one animal, whereas PermaPuppies, being too adorable to abandon, would solve the problem of unwanted pets. In fact, the reverse happened. Because they never matured—or in some breeds, matured incompletely—neotenous pets were extremely difficult to house train and would often have lapses. Many developed odd psychological habits, what would be called neuroses in humans, including obsessive chewing and outbursts of sheer rage that lasted until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. As a result, a high percentage of people abandoned the animals after a few years and shelters soon found themselves forced to cull.

Amid the furor that followed, there were odd news stories about people who either had or planned to attempt neoteny on themselves, but Nio had never heard of it being successful. Plenty of people dreamed of looking like a teen forever, but the reality was complicated. The process couldn’t stop aging, which meant the inevitable loss of elasticity in the skin and subsequent appearance of wrinkles didn’t occur to a normal adult face but to a juvenile-looking one. The result was patently creepy. Raffela didn’t look like a teenager, although she did have a young girl’s stature. She didn’t look like the kids with premature aging syndrome. She looked like a ghoul, the resurrected body of some dead girl covered heavily in makeup.

“She didn’t have any ID, boss,” Dalrymple said. “Just the phone.” He handed it to the short woman as she passed.

Raffela took it with her to her desk, where she stepped up a custom footstool to her chair.

“Let’s see what we have here.”

She unfolded Nio’s phone and placed it on a small electronic pedestal, like a wireless charger, and waited for the data scrape. The device used the phone’s number to identify its owner and to collect all available information from any number of online data brokers—not just name, address, and vitals, but credit scores, hobbies and interests, sexual orientation, political affiliation, recent movements, social media posts, as well as traits and habits derived from the rest.

But there was no number associated with Nio’s phone, which didn’t access commercial cell towers. It exclusively used Parfait, a voluntary, peer-to-peer anonymizing network.

The pedestal beeped and turned red.

“Interesting . . . It seems you’re a ghost.” She turned to Dalrymple. “Where’s the kid?”

“Downstairs.”

“Get him up here.”

Dalrymple nodded and poked his head out the office door.

Raffela stood elevated behind her desk and shook her head at Truly, who fidgeted in the chair. Her tail twitched like a cat’s.

“Darlin’, we were so worried. Couple more days and we woulda had no choice but to call the police. What were you thinkin’?”

“I don’t know,” she said, nervous.

“You could get into a lot of trouble, holding someone against their will like that. Whatever you two were arguing about, boys or whatever, I guarantee it wasn’t worth it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Truly breathed.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come!” Raffe called.

A teenager in tight jeans entered sheepishly. He was skinny. He looked Southeast Asian. His finely coiffed hair curled over his head like a breaking wave.

“Have a seat,” Raffe said. She waited for him to comply. “Did you know about this?”

The kid looked to Truly like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.

“It’s not his fault,” she said.

“Quiet.” Raffe waited for the kid. “Well?”

“The sequence musta been bad.”

“Where’d you get it?”

He hesitated. “Off the mod boards.”

Raffela made tsk-tsk sounds. “Now Guillermo, why would you do something dangerous like that?”

“I scanned it,” he protested. “I don’t know what happened.”

“What did you use?” Nio asked from the couch.

“Kitkat,” the kid said coolly. “And Base10. And a bunch of custom shit. I was careful. I know what I’m doing.”

“Kitkat and Base10 are good,” she said.

Guillermo raised his hands. “See?”

“But?” Raffela asked her.

“But . . . off-the-shelf anti-virus apps only compare random snippets from a digital sequence with a library of known threats. And they reduce everything to an algorithmic fingerprint first so home computers can handle the complexity. It’s a good screen. It’ll catch most of your run-of-the-mill malnomes. But RNA isn’t like computer code.”

“I know that,” Guillermo objected. “Raffe, I—”

Raffe raised a small manicured hand and waited for Nio to finish.

“There are very difficult and ingenious ways of hiding malicious seqs. The coding strand can be read in both directions, for example. And there are snip sequences, junk bits removed after translation, that make it hard even to identify what the final coding sequence will be. To be fair to your artist”—she nodded to the kid—“the guy who posted that one is very clever.”

“Friend of yours?” Raffe asked.

Nio hesitated. “Not exactly.”

“Boss, just listen. I—”

Raffela shushed him. “I want you to go back to the ranch and take care of things. Do you understand?”

“But . . .” The kid looked to Truly, who was trembling and trying not to cry.

“We already had a fight in here last week,” Raffe explained. “The last thing we need right now is more trouble. Carl and Jim are at the house. You take care of the problem and they’ll make sure it goes away. Am I clear?”

The kid nodded.

“Good. Now go on.”

Everyone watched him go in silence.

Raffela turned to Truly. “You’re working later, are you not?”

Truly nodded.

“Then you’d better go get cleaned up. You look like a steer’s ass.”

Truly glanced once to Nio, terrified, and hurried out.

Raffe sighed deeply. She stepped back down to the floor and walked to the windows overlooking the club. The two small circular stages at the back, both with poles, were empty. In the corner, a human-sized holographic cylinder rose from a heavy base. It was unplugged and turned sideways. The 3D hologram craze had died almost as quickly as it had exploded. Now the once-expensive machine was junk.

The clubs’ main stage sent a runway into the center of the room. Twirling around the pole at the end was a pale topless woman with engorged breasts who appeared about eight months pregnant.

“Guillermo’s a good boy,” Raffela explained. “His mom is a doctor in town. Came over from the Philippines. Worked real hard. Her son is smart as a whip, like her. Graduated high school early. But he’s all she has and she spoiled him something awful. If he goes off to college or gets a real job, they’ll expect him to work. He’s never had to work. Whereas with me, he gets to be the envy of every teenage boy in the state. But he doesn’t have the stomach to keep with our line. One day he’ll realize that.

“Truly, on the other hand, is a pistol. She’s my Gogo. Real popular last season—after the movie came out. And she looks the part. I have to hand it to her, she went all-in. I admire that kind of commitment. That’s what it takes to make it in this business. Unfortunately, she’s hasn’t been at it a year. She hasn’t learned how fickle the clients can be. The novelty of that character will fade, but it takes the CRISPR, what, three years to completely wear off? I don’t pay for reversals. She’ll have to get the horns taken out herself. Her forehead may never look completely right. But who knows? They’re just soft plastic. Maybe she’ll get lucky.

“Roxie, on the other hand”—Raffela pointed to the stage—“is one of the smart ones. There’s a small but perpetual market for a pregnant dancer. Not everyone likes that kind of thing, but the fellas that do . . .” Raffe shook her head. “Rox realized that after she had her last kid. Made more money then when she had her figure. Guillermo’s really quite clever. He got online and figured out how to use a surgical printer to fit her with a plastic fetus in a saline sac. It even has a fake umbilical cord. As part of her act, she holds a light against the side of her belly so her clients can see the ‘baby’ inside.”

“What happens when they realize she never gives birth?”

“I think maybe you underestimate the power of fantasy. You met Beckham earlier. Stunning girl. She was gonna be my three-breasted angel. Came up from a club in Florida and was all-too happy to change her appearance. My guess, she’s hiding from an ex-boyfriend. Some of my girls don’t have the best taste in men. Not that I blame them. It’s getting harder and harder to tempt the little perverts out of their caves. They’re catered to online—every possible fetish. Our only edge is to offer them something they can’t get digitally. Something they can actually touch. Still, if it wasn’t for the mining platform, I wouldn’t have a business. Men come up from Texas and California for seasonal work and get tired of being stuck in the barracks. I know it isn’t much”—she looked around the room lovingly—“but without this little place, a lot of my girls would get pushed into a seedier trade, if you know what I mean.”

“Isn’t that what the trailers are for?”

Raffe held up her small hands. “Honey, what happens in the private trailers is nunna my business. I merely rent ’em to consenting adults.” She gave Nio the once-over. “So now you know all about me. What brings someone like you all the way out here?”

“No reason. Stopped here heading west.”

“What’s your interest in Beckham Carter?”

“I don’t have one. The girls asked for my help. Whatever the kid injected her with is calcifying her soft tissues.”

Raffe turned and walked around her desk in thought. “And the cysts?”

“Dunno. But whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen in the next few hours.”

“Well, all I can say is that I’m so glad you brought her back to us. I hope you’ll let me give you a small reward.” She opened a side drawer. “How does five thousand sound?”

Nio sat back and the leather couch creaked. “You’re gonna pay me five grand to forget I came?”

“No, I’m gonna give you a reward for helping bring one of my girls back.” Raffe set the crisp stack of bills on the desk. “Just let Mr. Dalrymple know, and he’ll take you wherever you’d like to go.”

“That’s very generous.” Nio stood and walked toward the money. “Thought I’d see the town—since I’m here.”

Raffela covered the cash with a hand. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

“Why, because it’s moving day, of course. Everything will be closed, silly. But we can take you up to Fargo. Lots to see up there.”

“Is that right?” Nio and Raffe looked each other in the eye. “And what’s gonna happen to the girl?”

“Which one?” Raffe asked with a vapid smile.

“Beckham.”

“I promise we will do everything earthly possible to help that poor girl. I really can’t thank you enough for your concern.”

Nio glanced to the money, then to Dalrymple, who stood silently with his hands crossed in front of him. She turned and walked to the windows.

“Only six guys out there,” she said.

“Well, it is a Thursday, you know.”

Nio did the math in her head. Even if they had a hundred times that on Friday and Saturday, at 50% profit, it would still take Raffela six decades to afford the Maybach.

“Cash business,” Nio said. “Not many left.”

Who’s to say how many men showed up that day? Who’s to say whether they dropped a thousand in bills or ten times that much? Big cities had vice squads and forensic accountants, but out there . . .

“How many cops does the county have?” Nio asked.

“What does that matter?”

“How many?”

“Five in the city and 12 with the county sheriff.”

“You know them all by name? Donate to the fraternal order? Renew your liquor license promptly every year?”

“I’m not sure I like what you’re implying.”

“Modding is illegal in South Dakota, isn’t it?”

“It’s illegal to purchase and it’s illegal to provide, but it’s not illegal to possess, as long as you got it elsewhere. Can’t exactly turn our fellow citizens away at the border, can we?”

“In other words, if it came out that you were providing illegal mods, it would give law enforcement a reason to take a hard look at this place.”

Whatever else she was running—prostitution, at least—Raffela was also laundering money. If she got in trouble with the police, her silent partners might start to wonder what she would say to avoid a felony charge. That meant the business with Beckham had to quietly disappear. Raffe had even told Nio how. Beckham was from Florida. Who’s to say she hadn’t returned suddenly? Turnover was high in a job like that. It seemed well known Beckham was running from a violent ex. If she disappeared, he would likely be the first suspect, especially if there was any evidence she had made it back to Florida—say, if her credit card was used at a gas station there.

“You’ll like Florida,” Nio told Dalrymple. “Very pleasant this time of year.”

Another drawer opened. Raffe set a pearl-handled .22 pistol on the desk.

“This doesn’t need to be any more difficult than it already is,” Raffe said softly. “Those two have already made me one helluva mess. Truly is impulsive but she knows how to take care of herself. Guillermo is another story. He’s young, and that makes him cheap and pliable—traits I admire in an employee. But it also means he sometimes thinks with the wrong head, especially around girls that know how to turn it. His momma is my ace. She’ll make sure his name is never attached to anything criminal, which means I don’t have to worry about him either.

“You, on the other hand, are a conundrum. No driver’s license. No credit card. No public data file.” She picked up Nio’s phone. “I see from the little icon here that you’re running Parfait. Maybe you didn’t think us country bumpkins knew what a layered encrypted communications network was. It’s interestin’, though, for what it tells me. This little icon tells me you thought it’d work out here. But since it doesn’t—probably not since Sioux City, I’d guess—that tells me there’s not a soul on God’s green earth that knows where you are right now. Ain’t that right?”

Dalrymple stepped forward and put a hand on Nio’s shoulder.

“Get rid of her. Make sure there’s nothing left.”

Read the novel here for a limited time.

cover image by Mack Sztaba.

(Art) The Heavy Metal Dragons of Brock Grossman

This blog’s been a little quiet lately. Unfortunately, I had to say goodbye to my best friend last Friday. In a cruel twist of fate, that was less than 24 hours before we were scheduled to pick up the puppy we put a deposit on last July. It’s been a week of joy and heartbreak.

Today we have a short post with work by Canadian concept artist Brock Grossman, whose heavy metal dragons (both biological and mechanical) are stunning and deadly.

Find more by the artist on his ArtStation page.

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The Burden of Insight

As my mother, a counselor and clinical social worker of 30+ years, often notes: Most people are not burdened with insight. I love that observation and have quoted it often, but of course it’s a little more complicated than that.

It’s not that there are two groups: insightful and not. That’s probably true for the handful of people at the thin tails of the distribution. The rest of us find insight at odd times, which is why we all suspect we’re insightful, even though that can’t be true.

Because we’ve had the experience of being insightful, and because we recognize the lack of it in others, it seems to us like we have it. But unlike other subjective states, insight is a classic “unknown-unknown.” If I don’t have love, I know I don’t have it, whereas if I don’t have insight, I can still think I do–or at least be completely unaware that I don’t.

This is a really dangerous condition for a species that defines its reality socially. If there exists something as simple as a barrier to insight, then that means it can not only be shared but celebrated between people. We can live uninsightfully together in codependent stupor.

It’s easy to recognize that in others — again, giving us that false sense. I had occasion to see it in myself recently, and I would rather be punched in the gut. You feel like a melon having its seeds scooped out. Slap whatever character-building platitudes you want on it, it hurts.

But if it happens enough, believe it or not, you start to get hungry for it. I’ve often said that serious writers want the sting of critical feedback, not because we’re masochists but because we know it’s the ONLY way to get better. It’s the same kind of thing.

I’m told that, paradoxically, you end up more confident in yourself while less sure that anything you do is all that great. That is, you’re proud of what you are or what you create for itself rather than for how much it’s celebrated by others. I hope to get there.

(Fiction) Mosque of the Jinn

The weak yellow light from the headlights flickered slightly as the car idled, but they shone bright enough to reveal the small placard near the door: SERPENT MOUND PARK.

“What is this place?”

I stopped when I saw the marking at the top of the shed door. A minotaur’s head had been etched into the frame: the sign of the labyrinth. It was old and the paint around it was heavily scuffed, but it was unmistakable.

“Is this a joke?” I asked, risking a shocked turn to my captor, who simply waited grimly, as if hiding behind me.

“Get ready to run,” she said.

“Run?” I scowled. “You realize I’m not wearing any shoes.”

“You’ll think of something.”

There was a loud click, and the handle of the shed door turned slowly.

“You’re early,” came a voice from the dark. By its sound, I could tell that the man who owned it had his face covered, and that was standing in a large, hard-walled room and not the long utility shed that held the door.

He stepped from the dark into the feeble light and let the door close behind him. He was dressed in crisp, dark business attire. His face was covered in etched gold.

“That’s far enough,” my captor said from behind the safety of my body as shield. “Where’s my brother?”

The young warlock opened his hands. “They said you were the best tracker in the business. To be honest, I wasn’t sure you would be able to hold up your end of the bargain. Are those the remains?” He nodded to the imitation Fendi in my hands.

The warlock took a step and my captor raised her revolver to my neck. He stopped.

“You wanted her alive, right? Well, she’s alive. Now, where is my brother, you piece of shit?”

“You misunderstand,” the warlock said calmly, strolling forward once again.

“No, you misunderstand.” She pointed the gun at the warlock and he stopped again. “Juju and I are twins.” I could hear her voice shaking next to my ear. “We’ve been connected since birth. You think I don’t know what happened?”

“It was an accident,” the young man asked.

I snorted involuntarily. I couldn’t help it. “You’re not very bright,” I said, “are you?”

My kidnapper opened fire. Three loud shots rang in quick succession. The warlock turned slightly, as if he’d just smelled a terrible scent. Then I smelled it as well: brimstone, like a potent cross of rotten eggs and mineral ash. He seemed annoyed by it. But other than that, he was unperturbed. He tugged on the side of his white shirt and three round wrinkles disappeared from his chest.

“Tsk, tsk,” he said.

It was then that I was aware there were two more warlocks behind us, one on each side. My captor turned, obviously surprised.For a moment, no one moved. Then she was knocked to the ground.

I chose not to fight, even as Benjamin was pulled from my hands. I had discerned something the young seekers of the dark, in their arrogance, had not.

“Casting darkness,” I said to them. “I thought the spell had been forgotten.”

“Take her to the Stone Table,” the gold-faced warlock ordered.

His companions’ masks were made of black acrylic, which made their heads seem like voids in the dark. One of them took me by the arm while the other produced a key. I froze when I saw it. I recognized it immediately.

“Where did you get that?” I demanded.

I hadn’t seen it in decades. But I knew it well. It was a Master key, an antique, with an ornate loop for gripping at the end of a long stock. At the other end were its teeth. Lion’s teeth. It was Beltran’s key.

“Where?” I repeated.

“That’s no concern of yours,” I was told in a woman’s voice as I was dragged toward the door.

Without shoes, I was in no position to struggle.

“That belongs to my ex-husband,” I said. “Where did you get it?”

The gold-faced warlock was leaning over the prone body of my captor, chanting softly. I couldn’t repeat the spell, but I recognized the intonation. He was taking her magic. She was breathing hard and apparently bleeding, or so the glisten on her high cheekbones told me. Then she smiled and started laughing. It was just a giggle at first, but it grew rapidly into a full belly roar as the snake uncoiled from around her arm and wrapped itself like a python around the warlock’s neck, both choking off his incantation and binding him to his target, who held him in embrace. He struggled against as the woman on the ground released another tattoo with a wave of her hand—a starburst behind her left shoulder erupted into the night and disappeared.

Then nothing.

I dropped and covered just before the blast ripped out of the car. It wasn’t very strong, as explosions go, but it was enough to shatter the windows and release burning antimony into the air. Whatever her shortcomings, my captor had done her homework. She’d found an obscure but effective weapon, one unlikely to bound in the warlock’s wards of protection: Hessian fire, an alchemical invention used to fight witches and warlocks in 16th-century Germany. Unfortunately, despite its effectiveness in breaching the dark ones’ defenses, it was also quite toxic to normal people, which meant it was never widely employed during the war.

I glanced, briefly, to the woman on the ground. Both her and the gold-faced warlock appeared to be dead. The car was on fire. The second warlock, the one with the key, ran to his leader while the other held onto me, coughing, but I pulled free in the confusion and bolted past the door and around the corner of the shed. The third warlock yelled and immediately gave chase, but it was dark in the unlit park, especially with the half-moon hidden behind the trees. Once outside the range of the headlights, it was difficult to see more than a few yards. A branch had fallen and I tripped over it. But before I could rise, I saw a specter standing before me. It was Anya, still wearing the brown dress we buried her in. She looked down to the branch. I did as well. Then she was gone. I grabbed the heavy stick and tossed it into the trees, where it rolled down the brush-covered slope. My pursuer took the bait. He didn’t bother turning the corner but bounded straight ahead through the dark grove, swatting branches or breaking them and generally making so much noise that no one heard me creep, barefoot, back around to the front.

The second warlock was frantically dragging the still body of his leader toward the door. It wasn’t until I had retrieved the bag, left on the ground, that he turned. But I was already swinging it, and I knocked him hard across the face and chest. He fell back and I grabbed the key. He grabbed my leg in return, and I fell, and we both scrambled to our feet. Unfortunately, the heavy bag slowed me down, and I barely had time to frantically turn the key in the lock before I was grabbed again from behind. I didn’t know where we were going. I had simply turned at random. As it happens, luck or magic was with me, and we both fell forward as the door opened.

Like so much of The Masters’ fallen empire, the ancient temple that had once held the doorway we exited had collapsed. With it spells of protection gone, the bulk of it had been carried over the edge of a high cliff long ago by an avalanche. All that remained was some exposed stonework attached by mortar to the wall of a jagged crook. The door swung wide over a great empty expanse. Benjamin’s bag hung from my elbow as I grabbed the handles, one on each side, and hung from them, leaving the warlock nowhere to step. The weight of his own falling body was too much for his one-handed grasp, and it slipped free of me as he fell down the snow-swept cliff. His scream faded as I nearly lost my own grip and reached out with a foot to grab the door frame and pull myself back.

Unfortunately, the gold-faced warlock was not dead. He moaned as he stirred. He heard the door slam shut and sat up. I spun and inserted the key again, turning it at random. Warm air hit as the door opened upon the high-arched vestibule of the Kaaba in Mecca. I couldn’t see the famous black cube outside the high, arched hall, but neither did I have time to look. I stepped through and tried to slam the door shut, but the warlock was right behind me. And he was stronger than I. The door was pushed back and I ran. All around, men bent in prayer rose in angry chant. Nor could I blame them. Not only was a nonbeliever running barefoot through the holiest place in the Muslim faith, my head uncovered, I was barely clothed. Hands grasped at my shoulders and ankles as I fled. But I was in front, which meant I could stay just ahead of the crowd’s reaction. My pursuers, on the other hand—there were two now, the third warlock having realized he was tricked—had to contend the angry mob I had awakened. Amid the noise, I heard the sounds of a spell being cast, but in the shadow of the great holy stone, it fell flat and I was free to continue my escape. I pulled my ankle from the hand of a prostrate Syrian and ran through a high arch, down the staircase that encircled the enormous structure, and out into the crowded square. Alarms blared as rising shouts warned me that the warlocks, while harried, were fighting their way through the faithful.

Guards appeared in the open corridor ahead of me. I turned and threw Benjamin over a metal-bar security fence before scaling it myself. It was not the first time my brief but lively career as a circus tumbler had payed its dividend. My feet landed on hot asphalt, and I grimaced as I picked up the bag and took off again, leaving the heavy guards to slam their palms against the bars in frustration.

It was not my first time in Mecca. I had been there once before in the 1930s in the company of a scholar-spy named Hank Hunter, whose voice immediately rose in my head amid the foreign and yet distantly familiar sights and smells of the city.

“She’s the perfect spy,” I heard him tell Master Crowley, who only ever looked on me with a Devil’s bargain of disgust and desire.

“Not likely,” I whispered as I ran.

Heads and eyes turned as I passed. People shouted and pointed. One fellow tried to stop me and got my knee in his crotch instead. I was now being chased by both police and warlocks. There was little chance of hiding. Dressed in nothing but green surgical scrubs, I would stand out wherever I went. And then there was the fact that the sun-baked concrete was painfully hot on my bare soles. But then, Mecca was one of the most important cities in the world, and the Kaaba one of the most important relics, which meant there was another door nearby—in the Mosque of the Jinn, where, according to the Quran, a group of jinn had once gathered to hear the holy Recitation, after which they pledged their allegiance to the Prophet.

Of course, everything I remembered about Mecca was almost a century old, and when I emerged from the outer colonnade of the Masjid al-Haram, I was greeted not by throngs of tent-pole stalls, which occupied my memory, but the wide hotel towers of a major 21st-century metropolis, packed one against the next. Nor were all of those rooms enough. Construction cranes arced across the sky in every direction, sometimes straddling their half-finished steel lattices in triplicate.

“Shit.”

A commotion behind me propelled me forward. A white-robed man on a moped passed on the street, and I struck him down with another swing of the heavy, bone-filled bag. Passersby were too shocked at first to stop me, which gave me just enough time to straddle the slim motorized bike and take off between the traffic-stalled cars. I turned my head once to see several dark-uniformed policemen helping the prone man to his feet and speaking into their hand radios. The Saudis took their stewardship of the holy city very seriously. It wouldn’t be long before I was surrounded.

The Mosque of the Jinn was to the north, I remembered, and I banked left at a stoplight amid the honking and screeching of cars. The moped’s little engine sputtered like an exhausted bee as I ran over the curb and onto the sidewalk, dodging more stopped traffic. As I emerged from under an overpass, pedestrians dodging me unexpectedly, I caught sight of a drone, high in the air. I was being tracked. Already sirens approached in the distance.

I slammed on the brake. In my distraction, I had passed my destination. So choked and modern was the street around me, with high-rise hotels in every direction, that I failed to notice the little mosque, whose ancient structure was now covered in a modern concrete exterior. After struggling for a moment to turn the half-fallen moped, I gave up and ran in bare feet, pushing through the men, and occasional dark-robed woman, to hop a turnstile and enter the ancient site, where a state guard waited inside the vestibule. We were under the modern structure but still outside the sandy-stone walls of the tiny, ancient mosque it protected, one of the oldest in the city. The state guard had a gun, which he drew as he shouted at me in Arabic.

I raised my hands calmly, taking the moment to catch my breath.

“As-salamu alaykum,” I said, repeating the simple Arabic greeting I had learned.

I looked at the gun in his hand—a tool of violence, not of peace.

He looked at it as well.

“Wa ‘a laykumu s-salam,” he said softly in response, lowering the weapon.

He wasn’t letting me go. In fact, he reached immediately for his radio. He knew there was only one exit from the mosque, and he saw no reason to shoot me, especially at its doorstep. He simply had to make sure I couldn’t leave.

It was quiet inside and smelled of centuries. I felt instantly at home. Despite that I had not the time, I prostrated myself and gave thanks to the Creator and asked forgiveness for the intrusion. I have never been a religious woman, but in the circumstances it seemed the proper thing to do. My destination, a low and heavy wood door, sat under a block-stone arch in the side wall. Visual representations being forbidden, the head of the bull was absent from the apex of the door frame. In its place was a stylized, interlocking design reminiscent of a labyrinth. I stood and walked to it. I thought for sure I had enough time to do something as simple as open and close a door. But I was wrong. Somehow, my warlock pursuers had found me ahead of the authorities.

The state guard who, in letting me pass, had given me one of the simplest and greatest courtesies of my life now screamed as something horrible was done to him, and two dark-suited men stepped into the small sacred space, still wearing their masks.

“This is holy ground,” I said.

Not that they cared.

I bolted to the door, almost forgetting Benjamin in my haste. I leaned back to grab the imitation Fendi, which now sported a broken strap, and made it to the squat door under the arch just in time to turn the key and be shot from behind with the guard’s gun. I stumbled forward and collapsed on damp dirt. The air was cool. I was in a small outdoor fish market, or so my nose told me. But luck was again with me. I was in Siberia. I could tell instantly, not just from the cracked and faded signs in my native language, but from the people—their faces, their dress.

“Cossacks!” I shouted in Russian as the well-dressed warlocks appeared in the door. “Cossacks!” I repeated as I shuffled across the dirt, trying to escape.

My pursuers were smug at first. They strolled up to me, letting the door close behind, and stood on either side. They were enjoying seeing me suffer. I collapsed on my back and looked up at them. I was bleeding from my side, which was then so tight from pain that it was very difficult to breathe.

“At least I’m in the motherland,” I exhaled in my native tongue.

“That was a good run,” the first warlock said. “They said you were clever.”

He was about to say something equally clever when his companion tapped his jacket. A crowd had gathered—not just fisherman and grandmothers gathering dinner, but mechanics and oil men. Many had their heads shaved. Some had prison tattoos. They encircled us slowly. A moment later, a car pulled to a stop on the wet-dirt road and the crowd parted. Men got out. Big men.

Westerners might not think to find the Russian mob in such a deep and remote place as the wilds of Siberia. But I knew better. Beluga caviar, the roe of the sturgeon, is literally worth its weight in gold. But since the fish is critically endangered and trade restricted, catching it is illegal, and that means gangsters, and lots of them, even in the gulag. It didn’t matter that I was a stranger. I was Russian. The warlocks were not. And no mafia on earth lets outsiders break their monopoly on violence.

A dark SUV pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the road and several more men got out. These didn’t just have prison tattoos. They had sigils and wards branded into their skin. It would be a fight, even for a pair of well-trained warlocks.

“We have a treaty,” the lead warlock explained in English.

“Does it cover incursions into their territory?” I asked, marshaling a deep Russian accent, despite that I had shed it decades ago.

The second warlock took a step back toward the door, but they had let it close. And I had the key.

“She’s taken what doesn’t belong to her,” the first declared loudly.

“It doesn’t belong to you either,” I said with a sneer. I coughed once and grimaced. “Looks like you’re going to have to walk.”

After a few wary glances around the encircling crowd, the warlocks stepped away.

“This isn’t over,” the first man said.

As they departed, the heavies closed in. They weren’t going to let outsiders kill me. But neither were they just going to let me go, not if there was a chance I was valuable in trade.

“A moment,” I said, holding up a hand. “Water,” I called. “Water.”

An old woman came with a cup and I was helped to my feet and set on a bench near the door, whose faded aquamarine paint was flaking and badly chipped. I had no idea why there would be a door in that place, nor how it had survived for so long, but I was thankful.

I was alive but bleeding badly. I wouldn’t last long without medical attention. But neither could I risk dying in Siberia, where I would be quickly found. I had to retreat somewhere further still, somewhere secret. But with only hours to live, at best, I couldn’t risk a random turn of the key.

I closed my eyes and thought back some 35 years to my first meeting with Etude, when my peaceful exile was interrupted and I was detained by the Winter Bureau. I had seen the key used. I repeated the pattern of turns, like a combination, in my mind.

Darting for the door, I hoped my memory was faithful.

from the conclusion of my epic urban fantasy FEAST OF SHADOWS.

cover image: Iron Door by Keith Spangle

(Art) The Enduring Mystique of Qistina Khalidah

A few of these paintings have appeared on this blog before, especially as cover images to snippets from my urban fantasy novel, and for good reason. The works of Malaysian cover artist Qistina Khalidah, AKA Qissus, are incomparable, especially her muted use of color. Note the distinct palette of each image.

You can find more by the artist in her DeviantArt page.

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(Fiction) Viper & Serpent

I awoke from death, as I had so many times, shivering on a slab. For once, I had not been murdered. This time, I had taken my own life. The body bag that encased me was meant to contain stench rather than heat, and it was frigid. It also reeked of bile, and I was happy finally to work my shivering pinky into the tiny gap of the zipper and slide it several inches down. The handwriting on the white exterior label read: DOE, JANE 8W756-D. I stopped and listened carefully for a reaction. Hearing nothing but the rumble of the refrigeration units, I unzipped the bag and sat up. The small room was crowded. Opioids had seen to that. It reminded me of the casualty transports I had the unfortunate occasion to ride during the war. Bodies in bags were stacked everywhere—except on each other. Most were in the rack against the back wall, three spaces high and four long. The rest, like myself, were on metal gurneys, some of which carried a second body on a lower shelf near the wheels. All of them were packed so tightly there was very little room to walk.

My first problem was that I was naked. I should’ve stepped outside and seen to it first. Instead, I stepped to the floor in bare feet and began immediately searching for Benjamin’s bones. I found them quickly enough. His was the flattest bag in the room. But since it rested on a lower shelf, I had to push hard against the chain of wheeled gurneys to make enough space to squat. They rattled against each other, and I paused to listen for a response to the noise. It was hard to tell over the sounds of the coolers, one of which rattled noisily, but it seemed as though I was alone. I slowly pulled the body bag’s zipper over the bump of the skull, but rather than a pile of bones, I discovered the corpse of a small child. There were deep red burns marks across this face and neck, but other than that he appeared to be normal. Sleeping. He couldn’t have been more than four. Heartbroken, I found myself unable to look away. He had a wide forehead that reminded me of Jakub, a boy I had raised as my own nearly two centuries before. I never knew what had became of him, I recalled. He was 16 the last time I saw him, testifying against me at the trial that saw me hanged for witchcraft.

I replaced the zipper and, finding no other suitably flat bags that might contain the remains of my friend, turned for the door. On the other side was a long, open medical examination room with several identical stations, each clustered around a single, long table. Two were occupied: one by a bag and one by a collection of bones.

“There you are,” I whispered.

It was dim in the room—only the under-counter lights shone—but then, according to the clock on the wall, it was approaching three in the morning. At least it was warm. I shut the door behind me and stepped closer to examine the skeletal remains, but all I could see of Benjamin was what I already knew: he had been burned. His bones were black. Most had bits of oily charcoal attached. Whatever had killed him had been extremely hot. What I did not know was how he had ended up inside an elementary school in Adams County, Ohio—a place that, as far as I knew, neither of us had never been. I had hoped the medical examiner’s file, which rested in a slot near the cabinet, would help solve the mystery, but there was nothing of note except for an order from the medical examiner that the bones be kept separate from the other dead since they were slightly radioactive. There was no danger, it said. The radioactivity was slight. The coroner simply didn’t want to contaminate the others out of respect.

I replaced the file and turned to the nearby computer, which was when I saw the large viper slither out slowly from behind it. I froze as it undulated unnervingly down the cabinet to the floor. It was big—too big, really. Fat, like a python. As it moved relentlessly toward me, holding my attention rapt, I had no choice but to step back. I heard the cock of a revolver a moment before the barrel was pressed to the back of my head. I raised my hands slowly as the unnaturally large viper slithered between my legs.

“This move was clever,” a woman said, “but predictable, given your talents.”

She had some kind of accent—African maybe.

A leather bag with large loop handles dropped near my feet.

“Fendi,” I said. “Fake.”

“Fill it.”

I understood her meaning. She wanted me to put Benjamin’s bones inside. I set the bag on the table, glancing back as I donned a pair of latex gloves from a nearby box. I caught the last of the viper’s tail as it faded into the woman’s brown skin, completing a tattoo that spiraled around her right arm up to her neck. Several other tattoos adorned her shoulders, arms, and back. She was in a white tank top and army pants. Her hair was wild.

I began to lift the bones one at a time and place them inside. “You left them in the school. So it would make the news and I would come.”

“I knew one of you would show.”

“Where did you find them?” I asked hesitantly as I went about my task. I saved the skull till last.

“Does it matter?” Her tone invited no argument.

“You’re mizzen,” I accused.

“What makes you say that?” she challenged in return. “The tattoos? Or the color of my skin?”

“Neither. You’re using a gun.”

Seeing I had finished, she motioned with the barrel toward the back.

“Can I at least have something to wear?” I nodded to a glass-doored cabinet at the back, inside which were stacks of folded green scrubs.

“Hurry,” she ordered.

I stepped bare foot across the cool floor and dressed as quickly as I could. The pair of scrubs I donned were too big, but they would have to do.

“I suppose shoes are out of the question,” I said.

She motioned toward the door with the barrel. “No time.”

“Are we in a hurry?”

“Move,” she ordered, “or I’ll shoot you in the head and drag you out of here.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“They wanted you alive, if possible. Dead, if necessary.”

“Don’t want to wait, then. Must be in a hurry.” I started walking. “Can I at least know where we’re going?”

“You’ll see. Don’t forget the bag.”

I had deliberately walked past. I lifted it by the handles and walked across the long room to the door, which led to a dark and silent office.

“Left,” she ordered from behind.

There was an emergency exit. A red sign warned that opening the door would sound an alarm, but given there was a battered sedan waiting for us on the other side, I suspected she didn’t care. We’d be long gone before the police arrived.

“Drive,” she ordered.

I pushed against the exit and the alarm beeped for several seconds before blaring in earnest. The car was open. The keys were waiting in the ignition. I set Benjamin on the seat next to me as our kidnapper got in the back.

“Take a left out of the parking lot.”

“Am I running red lights or not?” I asked as I started the engine.

“Just drive.”

Once we were several blocks from the morgue, she seemed to relax. “So, it’s really true?”

“What is?”

“You’re immortal?”

“It would seem so.”

She made a clicking sound. “What’s it like?”

“It’s not any different. I’m just like you. I eat. I sleep. I go to the bathroom.”

“No. I meant death.”

“I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong person. As we previously established, I don’t die.”

“Take the next right.”

I did and joined a country road leading out of the small town.

“So there’s nothing?” She put her gun to my head. “If I shoot you now, what? You just wake up. Is that it?”

“If you shoot me now, I’ll crash the car and one of us won’t wake up at all.”

I briefly considered running into one of the many trees we passed. But given that I wouldn’t rise until the third day, my enemies would have ample time to find me.

“So it’s like sleep,” she said.

“No.” I hesitated. “Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“Does it matter?”

“I wanna know,” she said, grabbing the shoulder of the seat.

I glanced at her in the rear view mirror. There was an odd look on her face. “Worried about death?” I asked.

“Most people are.”

I watched the road in silence. It was dark out, and the ancient car’s headlights did little to illuminate the road.

“I re-experience my life,” I said finally. “Or parts of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. It doesn’t start at the beginning. And it rarely makes it to the end.”

“A dream.”

“No,” I insisted. “Not a dream.” I paused. “A punishment.”

“Punishment?”

“I suspect someone wanted to make sure I had ample time to review my mistakes before sending me out to try again.”

“Here,” she said. “Pull in here.”

We’d barely gone five miles. It appeared to be some kind of park. I turned slowly, and the weak headlights shone across the simple bar gate to a groundskeepers lot, which had been left open on one side. After a short run down a gravel slope, the car stopped before a long shed. It was completely dark. Not a single exterior light shone. I suspect that wasn’t an accident.

“Get out. Leave the engine on.”

“It won’t take the police long to find us,” I said as I opened the door. “There were cameras.”

“That’s not gonna matter. Now move.”

I grabbed Benjamin and stepped out of the car. I paused immediately. There were no crickets. I looked around but saw only shadows amid the dense silhouette of trees.

“Where are we?”

“Move.” She pushed me toward the shed with the barrel of the gun.

The weak yellow light from the headlights flickered slightly as the car idled, but there was enough to make out the small placard near the door: SERPENT MOUND PARK.

“What is this place?”

I stopped when I saw the marking at the top of the shed door. A minotaur’s head had been etched into the frame: the sign of the labyrinth. It was old and the paint around it was heavily scuffed, but it was unmistakable.

“It can’t be . . .” I breathed, risking a shocked turn to my captor, who simply waited grimly.

We both dew breath when we heard the click. We listened as the door handle turned slowly and opened.

from the conclusion of my epic urban fantasy FEAST OF SHADOWS.

cover image by Zoe Keller

(Art) The Eternal Dusk of Maéna Paillet

Through illustration and photo manipulation, French artist Maena Paillet creates a magical realm of permanent dusk that is as peaceful as it is sinister.

Find more by the artist on her ArtStation page.

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II. The Unending Task

Yesterday I wrote about Orwell’s 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” where nationalism meant a manner of thinking that could attach itself to more than just a state. Orwell says he chose the word because it was “the nearest existing equivalent” to the phenomenon he wanted to describe.

Fifty years later, in 1995, famed Italian author and literary theorist Umberto Eco wrote his own reflections on the same kind of thinking, or a variant of it, that he called Ur-Fascism, in which he asked “Is there a ghost stalking Europe (and other parts of the world)?“

Although focusing on a specific cluster of beliefs, Eco understood it partook of that wider mode of thinking to which Orwell referred.

Even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives.

He starts with a question.

It is worth asking why not only the Resistance but the Second World War was generally defined throughout the world as a struggle against fascism. If you reread Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls you will discover that Robert Jordan identifies his enemies with Fascists, even when he thinks of the Spanish Falangists. And for FDR, “The victory of the American people and their allies will be a victory against fascism and the dead hand of despotism it represents.” Why was an expression like fascist pig used by American radicals thirty years later to refer to a cop who did not approve of their smoking habits? Why didn’t they say: Cagoulard pig, Falangist pig, Ustashe pig, Quisling pig, Nazi pig?

He answers in typical erudite fashion, and it’s worth reading the bulk of the essay.

Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound.

Eco goes on to identify 14 characteristics of Ur-Fascism.

I should be clear at this point that I am employing Eco’s words in support of a thesis he did not make. As an Italian who grew up under Mussolini, he was interested in the genus fascism as distinct from its various species, whereas I am interested, as Orwell was, in the entire family of thought of which fascism is a genus.

From our historical standpoint, it’s clear that the various and diverse species of authoritarian thought are rather like weeds. Some of them look very different from one another, and no matter how many times you pull them, they keep growing back — which is why I am comfortable excising from Eco’s essay those characteristics that apply to the family as a whole rather than fascism in particular. (Not every genus has the Right’s emphasis on machismo, for example.)

The first of course is Appeal to Social Frustration. These movements do not rise in a vacuum but rather at times of economic or political uncertainty, when the middle and working classes feel eviscerated or powerless. This signals a failure of democracy, and so the solution, to double-down on democratic reforms, strikes people as counterintuitive.

Amid disillusionment (with democracy and politics more generally), there arises an urge for Action Over Reflection. Because this kind of thinking doesn’t resist scrutiny, it is quite hostile to critical thought, while at the same time borrowing criticism’s cloak. It criticizes everything and everyone, in fact — except itself.

To keep its adherent from sinking into reflection, it agitates them continuously. What it does, it does in groups, and what it does is primarily attack anyone who disagrees, for Disagreement Is Treason. They are never that blunt. Rather, it is argued that any step away from the consensus is a step back, thereby enabling the enemy to step forward, with the result that every single issue a purity test and every nuanced disagreement a betrayal.

This applies broadly. A feminist can’t read Bukowksi, except to mock or criticize him. So, too, a conservative the Koran. I once knew of a church back in Oklahoma that was deeply suspicious of musicals. (I never could figure that one out.)

Since everyone who is not with us is against us, there is an immediate Obsession With Plots. Saboteurs, both foreign and domestic, are hiding in every bush, and every enemy act, particularly if its successful, is prima facie evidence of a plot: Russian interference, a secret cabal of pedophiles, Syrian terrorists, whatever.

This Enemy is Both Strong and Weak. On the one hand, it represents an existential threat. On the other, it’s doomed to fail. I remember seeing this clearly for the first time under the Presidency of George W. Bush, whom the New York Times assured me was such an idiot that he couldn’t speak English properly (more on the obsession with language in a minute), and yet he was somehow masterminding a global oil-based autocracy.

Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter both assured conservatives that liberals weren’t even worth talking to, thus insisting on a Popular Elitism while at the same time arguing that one of the principle reasons the enemy wasn’t worth talking to was because they were elites. The message was clear. “You should only listen to us.”

If you do, you can become a hero, because Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero. After some inculcation process — if it’s not a century-old treatise by a dead economist, then it’s White Fragility — you’ll not only see the enemy everywhere, you’ll see that they are literally out to destroy us. And that makes you the hero, because we can’t win without you.

Finally, Newspeak — a characteristic that probably deserves its own post. Since we reason in language, the way to control reason is to control language. Hence, all of these movements display an inordinate obsession with controlling what can be said. Words like Nazi and Marxist are redefined so as to create false associations or otherwise grease the mental machinery and make it easier to think in absolutes.

On the Left, words and meanings are often proliferated so as to water down their value and turn all thought into a kind of porridge. On the Right, it’s a stricture. On defense of purity, words and meanings are often restricted, neologisms especially, and there is usually some canon upon which we are to stand upright.

We might roll our eyes today at authoritarian Left demanding “sensitivity” edits, such as removing the N-word from Huckleberry Finn, but there is a very long history on the authoritarian Right of, for example, blocking “salacious” content from comic books or popular music.

Eco ends as Orwell did.

On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties. The message celebrated the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom: freedom of speech, of press, of political association. These words, “freedom,” “dictatorship,” “liberty,”—I now read them for the first time in my life.

We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances… Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

I. The Emotion I Am Speaking

If you haven’t read Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism,” it is a classic and a chief example of why he is a writer of the first class.

The title is unfortunate, which he admits in the opening.

There is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen that I am not using it in the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.

Obviously, such thinking has not declined since he wrote the essay 75 years ago. That is important. In fact, the essay’s age may be more important than its contents. We are told that so much of what is wrong with the world is unique to our era, and while that will always be true in part, it is never true in the main for the simple reason that the people at all times in history have been human.

I would like to take you briefly through the essay to prove it.

To start, almost all of what you read in newspapers and all but the most accidental comment on cable news will be incorrect, despite seeming true, because it was written to appeal below the level of reason. Orwell explains:

Which of the three great allies, the U.S.S.R., Britain and the U.S.A., has contributed most to the defeat of Germany? In theory it should be possible to give a reasoned and perhaps even a conclusive answer to this question. In practice, however, the necessary calculations cannot be made, because anyone likely to bother his head about such a question would start by deciding in favour of Russia, Britain or America as the case might be, and only after this would begin searching for arguments that seemed to support his case… Hence, partly, the remarkable failure in our time of political and military prediction. It is curious to reflect that out of all the ‘experts’ of all the schools, there was not a single one who was able to foresee so likely an event as the Russo-German Pact of 1939. And when news of the Pact broke, the most wildly divergent explanations were of it were given, and predictions were made which were falsified almost immediately, being based in nearly every case not on a study of probabilities but on a desire to make the U.S.S.R. seem good or bad, strong or weak. Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.

Thus, the same people who assured us that Benghazi was the crime of the decade, or that the president was unelectable, have never lost their jobs, despite being repeatedly, demonstrably wrong, for the very simple reason that they are listened to, not because they speak truth, but because they speak what we want to be true.

And it isn’t that the people who read those articles and watch those programs don’t know this. Quite the contrary. It’s because they know it that they tell themselves it’s safe to keep watching.

You might think, given its prevalence, that this kind of thinking is hard to recognize in the self, but it is not. Orwell identifies several clear markers:

Obsession. As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own unit. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can only relieve by making some retort… Nomenclature plays a very important part in nationalist thought. All nationalists consider it a duty to spread their own language to the detriment of rival languages.

One immediately thinks of the various specialty jargons: the Left’s strange insistence that everyone memorize a litany of pronouns or the Right’s odd redefinition of liberty to include the desire to discriminate. Orwell continues:

Instability. The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable. A country or other unit which has been worshipped for years may suddenly become detestable, and some other object of affection may take its place with almost no interval.

Contemporary examples of this are legion. The FBI was the paragon of law and order when it was urging civil rights leaders to commit suicide or wiretapping socialists. Comparisons to the KGB, such as by the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, were laughed off as anti-American. Of course, once its perceived allegiance shifted, almost overnight it became the pointy end of the villainous Deep State. If the FBI were to seriously crack down on the protests in Seattle, it would just as quickly become a darling again.

The same was true of the NYPD. In 2001, the Times and others couldn’t praise them enough for their heroism in the face of national tragedy. By 2005, they were again the minority-killing villains they had been since the 60s.

Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. In 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek boiled hundreds of Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the Communists ‘didn’t count.’

When President Trump separated immigrant children from their parents — or did the Obama administration do it first? — it was decried as a crime against humanity. And yet, in his final year in office, President Obama dropped a precision-guided smart bomb roughly once every 30 minutes. The army was expressly told not even to attempt a tally of the number of civilians killed, especially children. The bombing, as well as the whitewash, was considered an unfortunate necessity — by everyone.

Those now rolling their eyes at how the president is blamed for everything, right down to the weather, forget that just a few years ago, they were so utterly guilty of the same that it became a meme. (Gee, thanks, Obama…)

Orwell even covered fake news, long before it was in vogue:

Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. The calamities that are constantly being reported – battles, massacres, famines, revolutions – tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied.

We might axiomatize this as: For every QAnon, there’s a Russiagate.

You might think that, although this form of thinking is perpetually common, surely the content must be new. Alas.

Almost any English intellectual would be scandalized by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it.

I continue to suspect the major reason why so many people enjoin you to vote is not because it actually matters in any real sense. In America, only a handful of states are remotely competitive. Demanding the rest go vote is demanding they participate in a pageant. And that is the real reason. Non-participants must be evil. If they had a point — even a misinterpreted one — then the fourth wall would break, the sham would be revealed, and so all efforts have to be spent demonizing the drop-outs as worse than the enemy. After 2016, we were told the reason Donald Trump was elected was not because certain people voted for him, which is how elections work, but because certain other people didn’t vote at all.

It matters.

When one has admitted that there are still people whose judgements are not at the mercy of their desires, the fact does remain that the pressing problems – India, Palestine, the Moscow trials, the American Negroes or what have you – cannot be, or at least never are, discussed upon a reasonable level.

Orwell concludes with a very important point. Despite what you may think of them, or how I have seemed to characterize them here, most people do, at some point, ask themselves if they are fools. The answer is always no.

It isn’t that they aren’t fools. It’s that they aren’t fools all the time.

This kind of thinking is not a result of stupidity. It is a result of intelligence. Whenever I spend time with children, I am reminded they can make the most incisive observations, not because they’re sophisticated or wise beyond their years but because they lack the capacity for self-deception. They haven’t yet learned they’re not supposed to say the emperor has no clothes, certainly not out loud.

One has no right to assume that everyone, or even every intellectual, is infected by nationalism. Nationalism can be intermittent and limited. An intelligent man may half-succumb to a belief which attracts him but which he knows to be absurd, reverting to it in moments of anger or sentimentality. A nationalistic creed may be adopted in good faith from non-nationalistic motives. Several kinds of nationalism, even kinds that cancel out, can co-exist in the same person.

That person can be you. One always takes that threat seriously. One rarely acts on it. It is enough to believe that it is taken seriously. As Orwell concludes, this kind of thinking is not something that can be got round. But it can be struggled against, and that struggle is primarily a moral one. It takes far more wisdom to see one’s own mistakes, and far more courage to admit them, than it does to call out someone else’s.

You can read the full essay for free on The Orwell Foundation website.