Crowley

September 1st 1931 – Berlin, Germany

The ghost is on his knees in the foot-space of a mahogany desk. At the desk, a man sits, trousers round his ankles, cock in hand. His other hand holds a fountain pen, and onto the top sheet of a large stack of paper he writes with an almost religious fervor. The ghost takes the cock into his mouth and the man returns both his hands to the table. He is old and bald, the toll of a life spent seeking the answers to questions others fear to ask. In the city that surrounds him, Hitler continues to gain popularity. People across the country are kneeling like the ghost and allowing fascism to wash over them. The comfort of co-operation is putting velvet between their bones. But the man is not interested in these trifling things. He is interested in the amalgamation of religion and science. The very devil himself. He has spent the day writing. People call it blasphemous, but he has been working hard, and as he puts the pen back in the ink pot and turns the sheet of paper face down, he moans slightly and releases himself into the young boy settled between his legs.

The devil man’s semen tastes like equations lost at sea. The ghost has been in Berlin with the man for just three weeks now but has served him well. The man has written many books on the occult, books on drugs, Satan and the secret cabals that run the world. The man has whispered some of these secrets late at night, when the ghost rests his face on the devil mans bare chest. The ghost is in love, with the idea of knowledge, with this man who claims to know things. There are other boys. Other slick pockets for the devil man to explode into. But the ghost knows he is the only one that the man shows the light to. The light that he can bring forth with words. The light that curls like smoke around their naked bodies, that refracts like whispers in the sweat on his forehead. The man tells the ghost about infinity. He says if you made a bird take every single grain of sand on every single beach to the moon and back again one at a time, that infinity would just be starting. Sometimes at night the devil man cries and tells the ghost that death terrifies him. He says he cannot face the idea of being alone for eternity. Of knowing that you are dead but still being conscious. He says when he was younger one of his friends died for a while after falling into a river as he played with his brother. The devil man says when they brought his friend back round, he screamed and screamed until he spat blood. The devil man says his friend told the doctors that he had been in agony the whole time. That there had been a great white hall and he had watched everyone he ever loved turn themselves inside out. The devil man said his friend never slept again, because he knew what was waiting for him.

Now his face pushed up against the glass of the devil mans window. His head being crushed by powerful hands, and a light behind the devil man’s eyes.  On the floor burnt candles and a pentagram drawn from the blood of the landladies cat. On the floor, the ghosts clothes. The devil man throws the ghost onto the bed and places his thumbs over the boys eyes. He tells the boy that he has seen too much and that he must be blinded. The boy is happy for this to happen. He is young and whatever the situation, he is in love. The devil man slowly moves his thumbs in rounds over the boys eyes, feeling the egg waiting to give at the first sign of pressure. A crushing, like a fruit under a leather boot. Then, the boy is crying thick, viscous tears, like jelly. The ghost starts to tremble, his body fracturing under the weight of knowledge.