Corpsewine

The Sorrows Bridge lies before me on my way to work. It gets that name due to sheer amount of suicides that have happened here. These days, no one can jump from it due to high chain link fences and barbwire. It looks like right out from the war. Bits of clothing still hang from them, but I guess some people are just that determined. The bridge crosses one of the many canals that wind their way through the city. Once used to as the main means of transport during the industrial revolution, the canals are a reminder of some of the dark history of this city. For instance, many of these canals manage to end up in the Corpsewine River.

You see the real name for the Corpsewine is the Minerva. Just everybody calls it the Corpsewine. There is a good reason for this, further down the river, there was an old winery. This winery had been run by one family for generations - started up from the hard work of Dutch settlers, the Van Schaafes. They built the whole place from scratch, struggled with poverty, bad seasons and disease to produce a fine wine. Their unique blend made them icons. And for two more generations, they were still reaping the rewards and accolades within the wine industry. This all came to an end, when it was discovered that human remains were found in the wine. The story is that the stress to succeed drove the Van Schaafes mad, and they began to experiment with different ingredients, including using human parts, even entire bodies in the wine, to give it “a full body of flavour”. Much to the anger of the rest of the city, the Van Schaafes were driven out of town, never to be seen again.

Of course, that is just a story. Myth is always more popular than the facts. Chances are that someone had decided to take the plunge off the Sorrows. A good few days of rain will see these canals on the brink of flooding, and their current becomes more rapid. A human body would easily be carried over the course of days right into the river where the winery sits. At this point in the century, the river wasn’t so polluted, so the winery would have easily used water from the river to supplement the production of the wine. Even a small piece of the body could easily contaminate the entire fermentation process. Goodbye wine business. Rumours about the Van Schaafes easily spread and now their descendants live under a different name. And the river would become the Corpsewine. Regardless of the scale of the tragedy that you believe in, if you have a Van Schaafe wine in your cellar, then you’re set for life.

I pass by the ruins of the Matriarch Hotel. No one has built here since the Valentines Day Massacre that happened almost a decade ago. It was the day before the lockdown of the entire city. Everywhere couples young and old killed themselves, each other or died together. They cut themselves open, jumped off buildings, leapt in front of moving vehicles, gassed themselves, shot each other, and countless other tragedies. The body count was astounding. However, the Matriarch Hotel was where a few believe was the “ground zero” of the whole terrible day. This former five star business was a vibrant retreat for lovers, seeking to awaken their desires and explore their fantasies. So Valentines Day comes around, the entire hotel is fully booked and late into the night the entire building is one fire. Every room has been set alight. It looked like a lighthouse from hell. The fire crews came, but they would not go near it. Not because of the heat of the flames, but the fact that the occupants were leaping from the windows, their burnt human wreckage crashing to the ground. Even to this day, the price of the land where the Matriarch used to stand goes down, but no one buys it.

Our city is strange. Born under a bad star and built on corrupted ground, this entire place feels haunted. Everyday, even through summer, is cold, windswept and terminally overcast. Dark clouds with no rain, everything lives under a massive stain in the sky. This city’s nature seeps into our lives. It’s a madness that’s difficult to comprehend and worse to control. When one person does something here, often something terrible, it will spread to another person and they will copy the action. And another person will do it. And another. And more. This viral effect has resulted in a complete lockdown of the city. Private automobiles are prohibited, along with weapons. There is a camera and loudspeaker on every corner. People strive to live alone, renting whatever they can to be by themselves. Nobody is expecting to buy property that would mean an investment and a reason to stay, which no one here has. The police have been given emergency powers and a special branch is dedicated to investigating these events. Regardless, of what we know and what we have seen we are no closer to solving the mystery of this city.

I walk down the main street, joining others in their solemn march to work. Very few cars exist on the roads anymore. Private ownership of vehicles exist on the roads is strictly controlled. The public transport system is also a nightmare, with drivers being on routes no longer than a month to prevent “unwanted stress”. The psychological exam is a nightmare, I’m told. And I don’t feel like revealing every corner of my soul to drive a bus.

I pass over the Overlund Canal, former main artery of this city. Underneath this bridge and in other subterranean tunnels of this massive canal lies the most intricate collection of painted works within the entire city. The art gallery has been closed for years now. the city is a dull grey, a pale reflection of the sky. But beneath the city, lies a strange beauty, where colour meets darkness. I have been down there once. The entire structure is strange and labyrinthine. You can find yourself lost in moments, without light or a guide. Even the police don’t go all the way in. This is where the mad go, when they have escaped the police. I have heard they can paint in complete darkness and then they pray and worship their unseen idol.

The inner city doesn’t look much different from the bleak suburbia. Moulded concrete, steel and dark make up our fair city. There is no aesthetic here, just structure and purpose. One building in particular looms before me, it is one of the few buildings remain that is made out of stone. It’s gothic design reminds me of an old church, it even has stone eagles mounted on the gutters, their keen unblinking eyes staring for prey on the ground. This is the headquarters of the police in the city, the only organisation providing order to this city, which seems to get madder everyday.

There is a man standing on the marble steps of the headquarters. His name is Mandlebrot. He seems to always be smiling. Dark glasses hide eyes which I have never seen. There is only one reason that Mandlebrot waits on the step for me to get to work. Something terrible has happened.

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Rockstar Orpheus

They tore him apart like that Rockstar Orpheus. His fans usually mobbed at him, attempting to surge through the ever-increasing security, just to touch him. That’s the way he liked it after all. His books, mostly collections of visceral and shocking short stories, had a strange power over the people that read them. You would see them on the subway, dark-eyed, drowsy looks, before the morning triple shots of exspresso had taken hold. They constantly clutch a well-thumbed copy of one his books, always keeping them on hand, like amnesiac’s trying to hold on to an old memory. And when they wear them out, they go straight out and buy a fresh one to keep reading. His words were always strangely addictive, alluring passages that would draw you towards something horrible. There was no turning back. You would read on knowing that the characters would be irreversibly changed, so you were hedging bets about what body parts they kept at the end of the story. There was Domestic, a revenge story of sorts, where everyday household products horribly maim the characters, including a hair-straightener, drain cleaner, and a sandwich-maker. Hospitality was about six interconnecting stories about “deconstructive” surgeons that were competing to produce the best work of art. The graphic detail of the book, caused six people to faint during public readings and was subsequently banned in several countries.

He was a shock-writer, through and through. Shocking material not only got his attention and but allowed him to attentions of others. His work won awards, after all in its own strange way, it was beautiful. Others were pastiches of other stories, such as Tenement, which was a soap opera about a building complex inhabited by serial killers. However, it was his cult following, a legion of fans, literary addicts of the worst kind, that really earned him notoriety. Some of them adored his work, others loved him and the worst of the lot considered him a god, a strange and dark being that that “deserved it’s place on a throne made of the bodies of his devoted followers, each of whom would be glad to sacrifice themselves so that their Lord could have a comfortable seat”, as written by one of the very fans involved in the writer's death.

These fans slowly became worse, constantly trying to prove their devotion to him. It began with innocent fan mail, then turned to desperate cries for attention, and then “gifts” of various nature, but the details were to say the least, macabre. Five people committed suicide outside the gates of his sprawling estate. He received more than 100 videos in a variety of formats, which he refused to watch, as he claimed, “it's beginning to be like snuff on acid.” There were thousands of unopened packages, cards and letters, all thoroughly checked by the Police following the writer’s death for biological and other threats. “One package must have been must have been there for weeks,” said one cop, who preferred to remain unnamed, “It’s smelled real bad, worse than rotting seafood. We opened it up and it was a congealed eyeball. We found the owner halfway across the country. Popped it out with a desert spoon.” He made a jerking motion with his hand in imitation.

When he decided to take a tour of writing conventions, his friends and family (at least the ones that still talked to him) feared for his safety. His agents had arranged everything, right down to the number of minutes that could be set aside for questions and answers. He was always accompanied by at least one guard at all times, to prevent personal harassment. Two bodyguards watched over him (and each other) while he slept, just to make sure.

For the most part, the convention circuit was fairly tame, the majority of his fans were well behaved and the visible presence of security, turned out to be a good deterrent. Though in the background of the conventions, the rumour mill was working away. Many of the rumours were unconfirmed, even laughable. They included stories that he was going to move onto children’s literature and fairy tales. He laughed at this one, saying that he already wrote fairy tales for people who had woken in the nightmare that was their world. Another rumour, was that he was going to try his hand at poetry, something he actually personally loathed. Hundreds spilled out onto internet forums, blogs and the gossip between those riding the convention circuit. Soon the real clincher began to take hold: that he was going to quit writing.

Numerous imaginary escape plans were hatched from the minds of his fans. That he was going to scar his face with acid and then purchase an island in Indonesia or French Polynesia. Or he was going to get plastic surgery in Switzerland, then join a whaling crew in Norway. Then there was the one where he would receive a very convincing sex change and then become the much sought after diva at the Japanese BDSM club, Kajira.

Regardless of the nitty-gritty details, the one fact remained in circulation. He was giving up writing. No more books. No more strange tales. No more horrifying endings. The End. Some might be relieved at this. Going out on top instead of “Jumping the Shark” as many professionals do. However, the hardcore of his fans could not handle this. This was their life. They included the collectors who attempted to complete entire edition runs of a single publication. They included lovers who met each other at the bookshelves and fucked while the book-on-tape played in the background. They were people that tattooed and branded themselves with selected passages from their favourite works. They wrote him praise and would do anything he had asked. The idea of him quitting was unthinkable to them.

All of this came to a head at the last convention of the circuit. It was the end of a sweltering 36 degree Celsius day, a full moon was on the rise and it’s was Q and A time. The auditorium was packed. The air conditioning was beginning to collapse and die, meaning the heat of the day and the combined body-heat of every attendant would soon be felt. It was five minutes until the end, and finally someone had stood up and asked the question that was on everyone’s mind: “Was he going to quit?”.

He took a sip of water, and then said those fateful words: “Yes, I am”. There was a shocked silence and then suddenly a mob formed and surged to the stage. The security staff were overwhelmed. The crowd charged at him, seemingly insane they all grabbed onto him, trashing, beating and tearing. They were not so much individuals wanting their own retribution, but a single mass working as one. The police soon arrived on the scene, but it was too late. He had been torn to pieces.

In the following months, the hunt began for his killers. Bite marks found on the body led to several arrests nation-wide. The attempts to sell the writer’s body parts online were the first of many stories to be splashed across the news networks. They arrested the man who had stolen his head, as he was attempting to convert the skull into a drinking cup or bowl, as if to consume his very genius. Some were found with the parts still half digested within them, most of which eaten as law enforcement attempted to make their arrests. One man, the same who “donated” his eye as a gift to the writer, was found in a local hospital from a severe infection, as he replaced the dead writer’s eye in the vacant socket. In all, thirty-four people were arrested over the murder, dismemberment and cannibalism of the writer, though many think that more were involved during that fateful day.

Now a year on, that day still echoes to some. Meetings and book signings were cancelled, fans were turned away. The writer’s family remains in hiding fearing that an attack would spread to them. Some other writers with similar followings have become more reclusive. There is still speculation over the nature of this act. Jose Mars, a long-time friend, said that “he merely wrote his own self-fulfilling prophecy – he wouldn’t have wanted to go out any other way". To be divided and consumed by his followers. Very J.C.” This in a way rings true. The last moments of video surveillance footage, most of which leaked during the whole fiasco, shows the writer in his last moments. Just before the throng of fans descended upon him, it can be seen that his not afraid. Indeed, he is smiling.

The writer’s books still sell well, though not nearly as well as when he was alive. Strangely enough, each of the thirty-four people arrested and imprisoned over the death of the writer have all become published. Their works include 6 novels, 12 short story collections, 8 poetry submissions to various magazines, and other features that have appeared in other mediums. Indeed to quote the writer, “It’s better being part of a collective than being alone. But being viral is better. Because you become the collective.”

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