Agent Cybele Reporting, Part 6

Life is a gift, and the greatest of gifts is true friendship; not to get paranoid but . . .


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
Cybele closed her little book. The collage of orange and scarlet leaves appeared fresh beneath
the laminated cover as if picked today from a living autumn tree, not the Hong Kong tree of memory of
a year ago, which seemed many lifetimes past and pissed away. Cybele kissed the book, placing it in
the drawer and locking it shut with a special swivel-toothed key of Round Table manufacture. One of a
kind, she thought. How proud and special they feel, and I felt it too, for being invisible behind the
scenes, running things, playing chess with nations, with souls, smugly separate in their sick machin-
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ations, but fearing so much the potentiality--they even have a statistics department gauging the proba-
bility--of the hundredth monkey, the heightening of awareness, the anarchic crash as the current halts
then changes, reversing their entropy games, reversing the flow of the river from death to life, render-
ing their very secret existence moot, revealing the priestly sham for what it is: Temporary!
Cybele showered long, turning up the heat as hot as she could stand, and then a notch hotter.
Her slim body was still taut and nimble at thirty-seven. Brown goosebumps tingled the lengths of her
limbs. Not hot enough, she thought. Clean for Matthew. So much accumulated dirt of a dirty life, a
life I renounce for him, and renounce for me for whatever time I have left. This is my true birth-day.
I stand now: finally, a woman clean. Finally, a human being. She thought of an old Dylan song and
sang in soulful soprano into the steam. I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more! . . . She patted
her petite golden breasts dry with a warm, thick beach towel. She dressed in her favorite olive dress.
Simple and cotton and loose against her skin, letting the air in. I will sweat tonight. Might as well
sweat comfortably. Telling the truth to Matthew, she thought while slipping into her sandals, is my
running of the gauntlet. I can do this. I did not agree to my devil's deal. I can break it. Yes, I can.
Crickets chirp-fucking hymns at dusk in the beer garden as Matthew glances westward over
the rooftop at the burgandy slices of cloud while sipping beer, and wondering how to answer Cybele's
latest string of personal revelations. He leaned his head back, surveying the purple zenith for the first
star, Vega, and upon spotting it, dim behind the airline haze, blew his own chemtrail of noxious smoke
in its direction. "So," Matthew began, "you've been a blood-drinker too? Upon moving to Portland,
Cybele, I promised myself I'd never again fall for a girl with issues, but yours are so bizarre and over-
the-top I--" Matthew grinds out his smoke into the ashtray. "Why not? It's nuts, but I love you! Let's
roll!" Matthew shoved his plastic chair back, rose from the table, and grabbed Cybele's hand.
"Uh, where?" she said.
Matthew patted his front pocket for the jingle of his keys, then patted his back pocket for the
thud of his wallet. He dug into the inside compartment of his over-the-shoulder bag, finger-counting by
touch the five floppy disks which constituted his life's work in writing. He felt, in the main compartment,
the latest spiral-bound notebook. Good enough, he thought. Numbers and addresses of contacts in
twenty-three American cities. "Where would you like to go, Cybele? Detroit? Chicago? New Orleans?
Seattle? St. Louis? San Francisco? Boston? Bangor, Maine? Those are but a few places embedded with
nests of resistance. All would provide us with instant refuge. You decide."
"Are you serious, Matthew? Free-thinkers exist in all those places? Lord Zorac says--"
"I know, Cybele. You already told me, but your lord lizard-blood is sadly mistaken. The resis-
tance just in last two years has spread everywhere. Knocking me off couldn't possibly stop our momen-
tum. We have no leaders because everyone's a leader." Matthew tapped his bag and smiled. "We're on
the cusp of revolution, Cybele. We were going to wait another week or two, but now that I know we're
being targeted for extermination one phone call is all it would take to kick this paradigm shift into high
gear. We have the numbers, Cybele. The masses are finally fed up and ready. We'll take over in a day,
and then begins the decades-long work of dismantling all this and building a new foundation. The world
will look quite different in just a single generation. We'll grow old in Eden. Do you believe me?"
"I-I believe you, Matthew, but we gotta get--"
The door squeaked open, allowing a swath of red neon bar-light to fall upon their surprised
faces. A man's familiar face peered in: equine, spectacled, witch-haired, winking, smugly smiling.
He stepped across the threshold, closing the door behind him. In his pressed lips a hand-rolled cigar-
ette smoldered. In his left hand he held a little book. He opened it by pressing his thumb into the bind-
ing's middle, and raised it high enough for Matthew and Cybele to see. The moon, now risen over
the courtyard wall, ghost-lit the book's cover of orange and scarlet leaves. Cybele took Matthew's hand.
Her clammy fingers trembled. Matthew searched her eyes for understanding, then turned to the intruder.
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"Oh hey, Marcus. This isn't a good time. Cybele and I need a little pri--"
"Shut up, faggot!" Matthew recoiled at the shock of Marcus's venom. "It's a good time
for me. Sucks for you and Cybele though." Marcus's bellowing laughter ignited an explosion of
flapping blackbird wings out of the trees lining the courtyard. Cybele's face whitened. She squeezed
Matthew's hand. Matthew turned to her. She was crying.
"What's the matter, darling?" Matthew said.
"We gotta go, Matthew! Mar-mar-mar Marcus is--"
"That's Agent Marcus to you, Cybele. I'm so heartbroken. You turned me down for a night
of consorting with the enemy? Well you fucked up now, and now you're fuckin' fired!"
"Now Matthew!" cried Cybele, yanking her man by the hand and darting cat-like toward the
courtyard's far wall. Marcus cackled, hurling the book at them. Cybele reached the wall first, letting
go of Matthew's hand, and lept with arms raised towards the eight-foot-high apex. She caught
hold, and stuggled to lift herself up.
"Darling, look out!" Matthew screamed. Cybele fell backwards into his arms. Standing atop
the wall, having pounced out of the darkness from the other side, leered an old man with a white, blood-
drained face. Bedecked in black vestments, flapping in sinister rhythm, the ghastly ancient beheld the
quivering couple for a moment before floating down like a crow and landing softly into the courtyard.
Marcus sauntered over, and bowed to the man.
"Your timing, as always, Lord Zorac, is preternatually perfect."
"Good work, Agent Marcus. You promotion is assured." Matthew's arms jellied, and Cybele
slid to the ground. Matthew looked on in helpless paralysis as Lord Zorac lifted Cybele by the throat.
"How disappointing, little one. Your wish is granted. You are dismissed from your duties." Bones
crackled. Marcus's hand muffled Matthew's howl. Cybele's head smacked against the cement, her life-
less eyes meeting Matthew's a final time, and trickling tears of blood. Lord Zorac approached Matthew,
leaned into his ear and whispered.
"Sorry your little date had to be cut short. My apologies. I'm just here to collect a few things."
Matthew was unable to squirm in Marcus's vice-grip, watching helplessly as Lord Zorac dug his
bony fingers into the bag, procuring the notebook and the floppy disks. "You should be proud of your-
self, Mr. Primeau," Lord Zorac said in a soft, fatherly tone. "You were the single greatest threat we've
ever encountered, and because of that, we're not going to kill you. Instead, your brain will be recondi-
tioned, and you'll be released into the world, an assimilated soul. Instead of striving to shut this toilet
down, Mr. Primeau, your new thoughts will be fixed to cleaning toilets. You will only remember that:
that you are Matthew, and you love to clean toilets. We already have a job lined up for you. You start
tomorrow morning at the police station. How ironic. For the rest of your life you'll be cleaning up the
piss and shit of the pigs you've always hated. Ah, what a night! By the end of it every trembling flame
of open-mindedness will be snuffed from the gust of us. There can be no hundredth monkey if there are
no monkeys. You should feel grateful. Being a messiah must be a torturous burden. You're about to be
released from that. You will be a simpleton. You will watch a shit-load of television. You will be a good
citizen. And you will be happy. A happy example to the others."
Matthew, horror-numbed, felt the release of Marcus's grip from his mouth, but instantly
again on his chest. His final thought was "Cybele, I'm sorry," as he slumped against Marcus,
victim of a sleeper-hold. Lord Zorac reached into his robe and pulled out a special set of headphones,
and an activating device, made of crystal, glowing with hieroglyphically-labelled dials and buttons.
"May I have the pleasure of fucking up the King of the Kooks, my lord?" asked Marcus.
Lord Zorac grinned. Moonlight glittered off black fangs. "Fuck him up good, my son."