Read Online Bedlam and Other Stories by John Domini - Free Book Online

writhing, or clawing at their eyes and hair, or biting themselves in a mad frenzy, as they had done earlier, and so we had to investigate. It was upsetting to walk among them—so near, so repugnant and so fascinating at once. Could we possibly understand them? How did we ever hope to know what caused them pain? Would they never speak ? But then Miplip and I discovered they were weeping. Open, unchecked; it had been millenia at least since we had seen such weeping. We looked closely, making sure, because as devils we lacked the physiological tools necessary for crying. When we saw their puffed, blinking, quivering eyelids, and their wet cheeks and lips and chins, we rejoiced. Their silence was not free from pain.
    We took to punishing our audience immediately after each show, as a vivid reminder—made more vivid by what they had just seen—of where they were and where they would stay (on the negative side, this did seem to stop their weeping; they did not weep as we beat them). Then we added music to our charades. The single earthly tune Miplip could recall was a mere jingle, something he said he once heard a boy singing to a girl, but he sang it nonetheless. Assuming the form of a sweet-looking girl, on a swing perhaps, or sometimes even in the form of both children, wrapped in each other’s arms, Miplip would then screech out, malevolently, in his harsh and lowdown devil’s voice:
    Kookaberry sitting in the old gum tree:
    Merry, merry king of the bush is he.
    Laugh Kookaberry, laugh Kookaberry,
    Gay your life must be.
    With all these new cooperative ventures, the relationship between Miplip and myself changed. I say it changed, but I cannot define that change with any real precision. We never became friendly, exactly. My overseer never once accepted any of my proposals for our shows, not without first altering it enough to call the proposal his own, and I continued to slip away by myself and try to speak in a human voice, so that I might hear once again that forgotten sound, echoing among the stony retreats of my world. Yet the relationship did change. I do believe that the ferocity of his insults declined, and the number of them as well, but that is only a feeling. And so the one concrete proof of our changed relationship that I can offer—if indeed it is concrete proof, if indeed it was a changed relationship—is the fact that Miplip and I became lovers.
    By accident, during an unusually lengthy show, I discovered that if my designs were done with proper force they would remain as they were for a good long while, without my attention. I began joining Miplip onstage, after that. At first, having nothing better to do, we depicted the story of that man who had passed through unscathed. Miplip played him and his guide (they were reporters of some kind, investigators, we had learned by then), linked at the hands, while I did my best to represent the many fearsome torments of Hell. Our goal was to stir up jealousy and despair in our audience, but it just seemed unrealistic to expect only jealousy and despair—that is, jealousy and despair unmixed with a sense of human triumph—and so that show was dropped. Our next idea was to parody the human sexual act.
    Most of our charges had been rendered impotent, in their post-Judgment bodies, and the others had been condemned to insatiable lust. Therefore sex was the perfect subject for a show, dividing our audiences into mutually antagonistic extremes. We would pit some picture of innocence, such as Miplip’s girl on a swing, against my febrile approach, and the effect on our guilt-ridden spectators, all of whom had at one time or another allowed their own good natures to be usurped by evil, was immensely gratifying. Even those that did not leap upon their fellows in a paroxysm of need were nonetheless overwhelmed: they wept, waving their arms, clapping their hands, flopping about, and they silently shouted and shouted. During one such