Beelzebub rolled over in bed, his left hoof alight with the
raging fires of hell, his right blue from inadvertently sleeping
funny and cutting off the blood supply. Eyes wide, mouth stretched
as if all the tortured souls in hell were about to scream at
once, he instead let out a strangled yelp. Mary, dreaming by
his side of summer meadows and butterflies, jumped and reached
out to comfort the aching blue hoof. Beelzebub had already shown
her the sins of the flesh, but she wanted to go deeper, from
pleasure into pain and beyond. Now he saw his chance.
He grabbed her wrist and grumbled into the shadows of the
duvet, "If you rub the blue hoof, you'll wake up tomorrow
and believe whatever you want to believe. If you rub the red
hoof, I'll take you right now and show you how deep the rabbit
hole goes."
Biting her lip, still sleepy from lazy bees and butterflies,
she had moments to decide. Apart from the miraculous birth of
her first child, after years of exhaustive IVF, her life had
been pretty much humdrum. She leant forward and Beelzebub said,
"Remember, I am only offering you the truth."
Beelzebub slides down the vortex, hand stretched through the
spinning tunnel, holding tight to Mary, as they switch from
one time and place to another. They hover over the planet, the
serene blue marble hanging majestically before them. Beelzebub
guides her awareness to the distribution of religions. "We're
meant to start with these lesser religions," he says. "But
that's major boring shit." He flips through the options
in his mind while reclining in a thunderous cumulus. "How
about combat training?" Mary looks quizzical. "Islam?
I'm going to learn Islam?"
"Not exactly," says Beelzebub. He takes her by the
hand and they float like angels from heaven, alighting with
a ballerina's flurry on the rocky slopes of Japan. The mists
part revealing the tree lined folds of an epic valley, fresh
with the death-cries of hidden Ninjas blowing poison needles
and garrotting unsuspecting quarry deep in the forest. They
follow a winding track to an abandoned dojo. Inside, Beelzebub
points to the ancient kanji. "This is Zen. It's similar
to Islam in that it has rules. Some of these rules can be bent,
others broken. Now hit me, if you can."
Mary leaps forward delivering a blood-curdling monkey blow.
Beelzebub steps back on a fiery hoof, blocking and jabbing with
clawed fingers at Mary's vulnerable midriff. Sensing the hellish
blow she rolls and flips like a fluid kata. He nods, "Good.
Adaptation, improvisation. But your weakness is not your technique."
Discarding etiquette, Mary flips a leg and pummels the pontificating
demon, but he has fought in the heavens themselves and delights
in the tease. He circles, excitedly jumping back and forth on
his legs in a scissor motion, anticipating another attack. Arms
and legs crack and sweep to a chorus of exploding fists and
feet, flailing like whipping branches from one corner of the
dojo to the other. Mary breaks the deadlock with a sprint to
one of the supporting beams, running up its edge as if the world
had turned on its side, somersaulting back over the horned beast
to take him from behind. But Beelzebub merely smiled, tracking
the graceful arc of Mary as she span overhead, side-stepping
to thrust a powerful sokuto into her belly. Her toes never felt
the reassurance of the floor, never followed through on the
plan to bring Beelzebub down with a deadly pin. Her body jack-knifed
and sailed through the air, limbs following like tentacles from
a limp squid. She cursed herself. She had seen the kick, as
if in slow motion, but her confidence had led to extravagance,
and the beast's iron hoof, executing the most basic of martial
arts moves, had taken advantage.
Her moment of dull reflection was broken by the cracking of
her back. She wanted to lunge forward, but not before her mind
opened up with a sickening white pain. The implacable, tree
sized post within which she had buried herself had given up
its singular purpose of supporting the roof, and the rafters
now groaned as they shifted their weight. Finger size splinters
of wood sank deep into her flesh, jagged like fallen shards
of glass. She collapsed forward, exhausted, her body on fire.
Gasping for breath, she looked up into the towering face of
Beelzebub, who examined his palm as if discovering the secrets
of the universe. "How did I beat you?"
Slumped, Mary lost all self-worth. Beelzebub decided on a walk
through the forest, dispatching the occasional Ninja who leapt
from the tangle of vines and vegetation with a well placed hoof.
Mary's head was down, oblivious to the shaken Beelzebub knocked
aside with the flip of a horn, or the spitting needles he caught
between knarled finger and thumb inches from her throat. Behind
them, broken bodies marked their passage like breadcrumbs.
They opened onto a river, the banks crumbling under the pounding
of water. It seemed to be widening before their eyes. Since
a child, she had felt curiously weak at the thought of so much
water. Bobbing in an ocean, waiting for death, toes flapping
madly like a hand placed into the lair of some unseen creature.
Her belly would quiver, suddenly breathless, afraid of these
strange feelings, conjured at the mere thought of a small figure,
lost atop an ungodly expanse. It wasn't the thought of mishapen
beasts with open jaws that scared her, just the more threatening
image of deep, dark, crushing ocean depths, with unseen currents
stretching upwards, waiting for her to tire, grow limp and sink.
Beelzebub's thin red lips were moving and she suddenly noticed
he was speaking. This prattling demon was getting on her nerves.
"You've got to let it all go. Free your mind." With
that he was off, sailing through the air in a terrific leap,
landing in a splatter of mud on the far bank.
She imagined being sucked by the powerful river currents, grabbed
around the ankles and smashed against rocks, her head peeling
like a ripe melon and her body lacerated, dragged downstream.
She turned to consider the forest, but standing behind her on
tippy-toes was a Ninja. He smiled, his pose frozen. He was donned
in black, wearing dark shades to hide his true identity. As
if about to speak, to finish the warm greeting, only his arm
moved, flying to unsheath the glinting katana sword. In her
periphery, two more flashes.
Buddha consciousness exploded in her mind and she emptied her
fears into its calm embrace. Her mind breathed, expanding into
the present. As death approached she opened her arms. Content,
she saw the shape of the future, like a timid animal raising
its head, and she dropped to her knees, observing the contorted
lines in the Ninja's face as the warm, sticky organs of his
lower belly greeted her spear hand. Her fingers wrapped around
the tubes of viscera, squeezing the half-digested juices and
yanked the flailing figure into the path of the two shaken,
or death stars, which thudded into his arching back.
Two Ninja's jumped from the forest, hands drawn back to throw
again. Mary sprung to her feet, disentangling herself from the
gurgling Ninja. She span on the ball of her left foot, took
one, two strides towards the river and with a scream leapt after
the demon. Two shards of metal were spotted, but outpaced they
struck only the skin of the rumbling waters. Like two colossal
wings, Mary soared, a great javelin from the hand of Apollo.
The eviscerated Ninja, a small bloody spot on the shore of the
great river, dropped to his haunches, clawing at his belly.
"That's impossible," he said, his whisper lost on
the winds.
The demon stood impassive but intent. He saw the slight shift
in weight before it registered in her eyes. Her arms, noble
as a celebrated trapeze artist on his final night, flapped aimlessly
as an imbecile. Now the bird dropped, its tilt sending it down
into the onslaught of the water, between rocks and flotsam,
sinking deep to the gritty, choked bottom.
As we walked and talked we'd occasionally finish
a sentence with a line from the film, completely by surprise,
but totally on topic. The effect was happy days, film-fueled
laughter and poignant memories of a couple of young guys, discovering
the world, connected by their love of the Matrix.
We've had a few "neverending stories"
on Wicked Moon before. This one is the first of many that will
be in a new section called Pulp Fiction. Email
me your additions to the Matrix story and I will pick the
best. If none are good enough I will continue to make up my
own.
PS. Of course, I am only talking about the first
film.
R.I.P.
2003
The Wachowski Brother's Reputation
