The following excerpt is a chapter from Daniel Beauregard’s unpublished novel Lord of Chaos.

Zone 1:

Imagined Poverty & Likenesses / Apple Sauce & Cancerous Breasts

A blinding whiteness. No, not blinding as such. But insurmountable in its immensity. We are unable to look away from it. Our movement is restricted. It hurts us but there is nothing we can do but look into its brilliance. Days pass, perhaps weeks or months, gazing into the gaping lightness. Wondering if its strength is breaking us apart. Deciding whether or not we are even anything. Trying to move and receiving no response. Perhaps hours pass, or minutes. With great effort we try to look away but it’s of little use, for either there is only this blinding whiteness, or our signals are ignored. Then we notice, slowly at first, but more rapidly in time, the lightness beginning to dim. There is a scraping all around and it dims even more until all that can be seen is a sort of blur behind a white screen, in a white room, by a white bed, housing what we imagine to be a white limb⎯a part of us⎯although we’re still being ignored, our limbs refusing to respond to our signals. But in reality, the room, the glowing orb behind the screen and especially ourselves are more yellow than anything really. Especially our skin: it’s sallow, almost green. Our limb, our arm it is, looks like rotten tree limb stripped of bark. Then, a face looms into our vision. Or what would be a face, had it any recognizable features. Where the eyes should be is covered in skin, the mouth too, although it looks as if the face does indeed have a mouth that’s wide open in an O shape, but that too has been soldered over with light pink flesh. The nasal cavity is but a pixelated blur, an optical illusion, the entire face resembling something just barely out of focus. We are at once fascinated and horrified. The face looming over us begins to speak. It repeats its requests over and over again and eventually recedes from our field of vision, leaving us once again in the sallow glow of wherever we reside. Then, the face returns, but it’s another face entirely. It appears exactly the same⎯the out-of-focus features smoothed over with pink skin⎯but its requests are posed to us in a different timbre, giving away their difference from the previous faceless being. Our range of view tilts jerkily forward, only for a moment. We see in front of us a man we recognize⎯at least by his looks⎯but it is not the man we know. He’s sitting in a chair. Our vision is returned to the way it was before, only slightly elevated from its previous height. The faceless being says other things and then, again, our vision is elevated jerkily. When the faceless being unclasps us, we see in front of us our body in a bed with white linens, the man-thing residing in the distance with a look of feigned concern. Two faceless ones remove first the linen, peppered with excretions and viscera, and throw these soiled pieces in a cart nearby, then remove our clothing. Our sallow yellowed arm, the rest of our frame appears depleted, a poorly constructed effigy. A corpse. There is nothing that can return us. The man- thing in front of us we’ve never known, he’s an imposter. It’s a good likeness, although we’ve never spoken. Yet there it is, refusing to leave our side. Once the caretakers have finished reapplying the formaldehdye that keeps us in this petrified state, it, the man-thing, will leave momentarily, then return, carrying a tray laden with foodstuffs to force down our throat. Taste is an idea long forgotten. However, the imposter, with the help of the caretakers, is persistent in prying our jaw open to funnel a soft, putrid sauce inside us.

When it tires of this task and returns to its seat, then leaves, the glow masked by the screen recedes into darkness, and a series of encounters occur. We find ourselves floating in a room inhabited by a man in white. It’s full of jars containing items we cannot eat. We hover closeby, but never once is the man in white alerted to our prescene; it is a relief, for we know we’re not supposed to witness the event. This room, where the man in white works ceaselesly, is not supposed to exist for us; it’s a scene we’ve somehow infiltrated. Our forrays into the forbidden zone are brief, but when we’re allowed to linger, this is what we see: the man in white, slowly plucking items out of the jars that line every shelf and corner of the room. There is no visible exit, every area is overwhelmed with the preserved parts of different beings, housed in a substance that halts decay and enables them to be reattached⎯fully functional⎯when he deems it necessary. He is a builder itching at perfection, yet failing repeatedly. He arranges the items⎯some familiar, others unwordly⎯into outrageous combinations, sewing each one together, sometimes creating something resembling a human, others, a strange and hideous chimera, but he’s never satisfied with the end result. He casts the creatures out, or takes them apart and rearranges them; some become helpers, others, fodder for the trash heaps from whence they came. During these visits, we’re drawn to understanding his idea of perfection, for it’s well beyond our perception of the word. He’s sculpting new meaning by warping it into a self- contained, entirely new ideal, poised in frame with the ancient bone needle, slowly threading through the sense of things. We know too that somewhere amidst all the jars in some distant corner sits a piece of ourselves⎯our piece⎯and with each failed being he comes closer to extracting it, adding it to a history⎯the one he’ll create with a piece of us⎯illustrating our future and in what realm we’ll spend eternity, for we are part of his perfection.

Prior to being interred in the blinding white room we were situated in a place without doors or windows, with nothing but empty cupboards. It was there we learned to starve, and out of doors was always uncomfortable; raining or snowing, unpleasant and encapsulated in gloom. Before the imposter, there was the man, robotic in his duties. He left everyday, to go somewhere, for that we are certain. But where, and for whom, and to what specific end we’ve altogether forgotten by now, or never knew in the first place; we’ve forgotten that as well. It’s unimportant. Soup stretched into every meal, thinning entirely until becoming nothing more than the idea of itself. Back then we refused to leave the house, adorned in shreds and tattered as it was⎯our frame⎯for lack of new clothes, a single solid jacket with which to hide the filth we were draped in. Of course if you’d have asked anybody else, they’d tell you we was no worse off than the next, some even that we were lucky; liars, all of them. Our troubles began when we were thrown from the train: from that day forward, we began to disappear. It was our hair that went first. Each day we’d rise to find more and more thatches come away in the brush until nothing but a few stubborn patches remained, dry and coarse like straw. But when we were thrown from the train⎯I say we, but really I mean myself ⎯we were damaged. It’s been ever since then, our problems. Spent everything on a cure, but found none. The doctors emptied our pockets and exacerbated our claims by their disingenuous profferings and good cheer, when they easily read our future suffering in the tattered leaves of clothing with which we painted our diminishing frames. They just shook us by the pants till every penny hit the floor, but he was more naïve, so we had quite a time of it. No wonder he was so easily replaced. The thing in front of us now⎯wherever we are⎯was beside us when our teeth began to fall out. There was a day when I suspected something, but was too afraid to say. We had each selected a pair of boots to be boiled, along with the belts we had; that and a few handfuls of grass and some salt begged from neighbors. Shortly afterwards I plucked my teeth out one by one. Most were rotted anyways. But a few, the ones anchored far in the back, were big, white and shiny, like the light reflecting off a serpant’s hide.

Once all the teeth had left us the imposter nestled in. I’d seen him beforehand, roundabout the area. I stayed quiet about it at first, unsure whether it was just a vision, or something that’d pass, like the headaches. But I’d see him sneaking about the shack, disappearing around a corner after I’d just come outside. I’d make chase, but it was always too late. The bugger was quicker than I could account for. I began to think he was messing with us somehow. I’d woke one morning to find half a cord of wood missing. I spoke up about it and my partner said he’d loaned it to our neighbors, who were too elderly to chop their own. I started suspecting then that he’d already been replaced. For safe keeping, I saved our teeth in jars by the windowsill. One day I walked by the window and noticed mine were missing. I suspected something foul and confronted him about it. He said: don’t you remember? Remember what? I asked. You took them out and buried them, he said, to grow a tooth plant in the yard. Can you believe that? The thought of such a thing, and that he had the brass bedposts to suggest I’d come up with it is absurd. Where did I bury them? I shouted. He shrugged and went out and didn’t return until well after dark. He stole my teeth. They hold a sort of power⎯things like that do⎯and he spent the evening working some strange machinations to further our deterioration, or hasten it rather. When he came home I was waiting to confront him. I asked him where he was and what he was doing. It was all too easy to see the mask he wore⎯it tore so easily⎯came away beneath our fingernails without resistance. We were unable to help ourselves. Shrieking, he did his best to cover his face with his hands but the damage was done; that poorly made pink and pockmarked mask couldn’t have convinced a child of its authenticity. If our teeth hadn’t already fallen out we would have bit him once or twice for good measure. He managed to run away and lock himself in the pantry⎯hiding like a frightened rabbit⎯from which he didn’t emerge for several days. I screamed at him through the door, for I was still angry. I didn’t have any regrets, although I have to admit the act was quite convincing. Throughout the duration of his stay in the pantry I remained near the door in case he made an effort to escape. But I lapsed in vigilance one evening and when I awoke, he, or it, was gone. At that point I thought it best to get the law involved and called to make a report, but the imbecilic operator kept placing me on hold, asking to repeat myself. After a few minutes of back and forth we’d given up entirely and simply screamed, our partner has been replaced, then slammed the handset down in fury. Several minutes later a group of men burst through the door. I explained the imposter had fled, but they seemed unable to understand me. It’s out there somewhere, I shouted, gesturing with my hands. It was then I realized, in all the commotion, I’d forgotten to wash: a thick particulate of skin, hair and blood was caked beneath our fingernails. The men didn’t seem interested in what I had to say. I was too weak to put up much of a fight when they fell upon me and wrapped me up into a sort of plastic, then transported me to the death chamber.

This blinding whiteness consumes us, devouring our individuality. It is insurmountable. Unable to move, our history is slowly usurped. What is a day once passed if you are dead? We remain stationary at all times, in wonder of the light. We haven’t the signals necessary to make our requests heard. These faceless beings make it impossible. There are occasions where it seems we’ve approached some sort of understanding⎯they mutter and walk away, then return, moving our stiff and yellow body this way and that, reapplying the death solution to prevent us from further decay. A plastic doll interred in the house of the infirm. When we leave off conciousness to observe the architect we’re also on display: the living pass through slowly and curiously to catch a small glimpse of the living dead in the room where we’re installed. The glowing orb the only sense of the passing of things. Without it we’d be locked in neverending light or darkness while our face is shoveled with bittersweet slop. Somewhere far back is a recognition that twins us with the memory of taste⎯this taste, the one in the room⎯but it’s too diminished. Only an idea of unpleasantness. How can the dead taste, you ask, to which I can only reply in answer that we haven’t all the answers, solely the story by which we’ve lived and died. There’s a scraping all around us: the orb dims and we’re left with a blur behind the white screen, the color of the room, the same as the pieces of cloth which coat our septic limbs. We remain frozen, sending signals into the ether, the transistor of the dead acting upon its own accord. There is again a looming presence, a featureless face where the features of the face should be. A thin slice of flesh for the mouth, resembling the shape of an O, slightly recessed like the top of a pudding cup, as if one could easily punch it open, or shove their fingers through it to find a pink tongue to grip, two rows of teeth, transistors in great contrast to our rotting limbs, which retain a soft, greenish- yellow hue to play the live bark’s absence. The nasal cavity of the featureless beings nothing more than a pixelated blur, the imagining of form coming slowly into focus, walking in and out of our field of vision before we’re able to adjust to the image completely. The sallow glow of our interrment echoing as the orb recedes, leaving us alone with our imposter, donning a new mask after we shredded the last one they’d given him to bits.

The orb lessens its glow, receding back into its singular reality. We can see the workshop now, even as we speak, or think rather, or whatever the manner in which our thoughts are organized. Surrounded by the pickled members of a thousand species sits the architect of reality, bone needle poised, feverishly composing a new set of coordinates, precisely placing each piece before activation. The area where he is encapsulated thrums with a vibrant greenish glow, jars leave their places on the shelves and float before him, hovering there until, upon closer inspection, he realizes they don’t contain the items he needs and sends them back to their darkened corners. Somewhere on those racks is a piece of us, the only living piece that survives. It was taken to his workshop after being sliced away. In darkness, the architect sends out helpers who scour the human waste of old folks homes and hospitals, extracting parts and specimens before the staff carts them off in secret to the rendering plants. When they cut away my rotten parts they spoke as if doing me a favor, they said they’d found a growth that couldn’t be extracted without removing the entirety of my chest. So one day my partner⎯this was prior to his replacement⎯dragged me to the house of the infirm and they cut off my tits.

We watch as the architect moves closer and closer to our nasty bits. He sorts through each floating member in front of him like it’s a puzzle game on a touch screen, getting closer and closer. The place where our pieces once were has begun to throb, to pulsate beneath our dirty sheets. We remain unable to look down and see for ourselves, but take comfort in the knowledge that soon it will begin to glow and spread, this toxic light emanating from where they cut us up and sewed us back together again. It’s undulating, like a shock in the ocean. We can feel it and it feels good to feel after so long. It’s traveling and powerful. The architect reaches for one jar, taps it with the tip of his finger, sends it back into the noxious green shade of the limb shelves. How does he leave this place, we wonder, as there seems to be no exit. It seems as though he never ceases work, so it’s possible he never leaves. But the beings he constructs and casts aside are sent upon errands in the night, so there must be a way. Our body shakes and judders. We float above his work bench, eyes peeled. The architect twists the cap loose of one of the jars in front of him, letting its contents spill out upon the slick steel operating table. The room in white grows ever blinding as our body sheds its layers. The faceless beings approach and begin force feeding us with the garbage sauce. Upon the architect’s table is a revelation. Amidst the glop and goo that housed the piece is the one they’ve taken from us. We watch as the architect slowly and carefully lifts one, plying its softness, passing it from one hand to the other. He picks up the other piece of us, lying on the table, the slickness of which glints softly in the gaseous light. The architect holds our cancerous breasts in his hands, as the faceless ones ram a feeding tube down our throat and pump gallons of applesauce into our mouth. He stitches the two breasts together, making them whole again, and places them there in a corner of the table. The architect leans back and cracks his oversized knuckles and the faceless beings continue pumping their bittersweet compound deep inside our dead gut. The architect recedes from vision now, leaving us in awe, wondering what he will sew our cancerous breasts onto and how to escape from this raunchy palace of the dead. This light inside us continues to grow, glowing outwards and scorching all of our captors with a sallow brilliance like that of septic child. A thought freezes the faceless being ramming our face full of sauce and a low, guttural scream issues forth from somewhere inside it, growing in frequency until the small flap of flesh covering their O mouth vibrates like an ear drum. The architect pauses for a moment over his work, then continues. The skin covering the O mouth burns away, spreading apart like a single spark igniting a thin strip of film. O the O it’s spreading wider and wider, consuming the faceless features of the One before us until, with a final shuddering and cracking, all we see before us is an Open pOrtal in varying shades of darkness, undulating to match the frequency of our once-cancerous chest while the architect elsewhere fingers and sews Our breasts to something whOlly different. We vibrate violently and can feel Ourselves, pieces, being broken apart, an essence being sucked into the pOrtal in front of us, dissolving atomic particles being filtered from One reality to the next, and in this mOment, Our vision fades and dissolves as our final particulate is cOnsumed and transpOrted into the darkened frontal vOid space.