INCOGNOLIO Read online

  Sitting on pillows on the living room floor, I say, “I know. Let’s play Flip, Sip, or Strip!”

  “What’s that?” asks Micaela.

  “Okay, so we each take turns calling a coin flip.” I take a quarter out of my pocket. “If you guess right, pass the coin to your right. If you guess wrong, pass the coin to your left and either remove something you’re wearing or take a shot.”

  Gem and Micaela both giggle.

  “There’s one catch,” I add. “You can’t do the same thing—sip or strip—more than twice in a row.”

  They excitedly agree to the game, so I fetch three shot glasses and a bottle of Cuervo Gold from the liquor cabinet and get started, flipping the quarter, guessing wrong, and taking off my shoes.

  “Anything that’s a pair counts as one item,” I point out.

  Before long, shoes, earrings, necklaces, pants, blouses, and dresses are all in a pile, and the three of us are sitting in our underwear, getting increasingly drunk.

  Micaela is the first to remove her bra, which she does tantalizingly, like a professional stripper, accompanied by oohs and ahs. Several shots later, Gem and I are also topless.

  By the time all three of us are bare assed, I’m flying high, and feeling optimistic about my chances of initiating a ménage à trois. When Micaela excuses herself to go to the bathroom, I sidle over to Gem, whom I haven’t seen naked since our college days, and kiss her lovely neck.

  If I weren’t so smashed I’d feel Gem tense up, but oblivious to her feelings and intoxicated by the scent of her sweet flesh, I run my hands over my sister’s body and take her left nipple into my mouth.

  “Cut it out!” Gem shoves me away and scowls. “I told you I don’t want to get into that.”

  Anguished and humiliated, I stand up and stumble out of the living room and out onto the deck without stopping to put my clothes back on. I stare up at the sky, the mad swarm of stars making me dizzy and nauseous.

  Impulsively I stagger down the stairs and across the beach to throw myself into the sea. Over and over I plunge my head underwater, determined to drown myself, to end the misery for once and for all.

  But I can’t do it. Coughing and sputtering, I finally crawl back and collapse on the sand, disgusted with my inability to even kill myself. I cry like a baby as I drift into unconsciousness.

  A short time later, awakened by the rising tide, I manage to get to my feet and stumble back into the bungalow. I find the living room empty and wonder where Gem and Micaela have gone. Muffled noises coming from down the hall prompt me to open the door to Micaela’s room, where I discover the two of them making love.

  Gripped by a wild fury, I grab a carving knife from the kitchen and stagger back to the guest room, an animal-like growl escaping from the depths of my gut.

  “I’ll kill you!” I shout, seizing Gem by the hair and holding the knife to her throat. “You traitor! You cunt!”

  Gem is frozen in terror. Micaela pleads with me to put the knife down.

  I’m on the verge of slicing Gem open when her eyes meet mine and my heart breaks. Sobbing, I lower the knife and let go of Gem’s hair.

  Still clutching the carving knife, buzzing on adrenaline and crazed with emotion, I order the two of them out of bed and into the living room. Gem makes as if to put on her clothes, but I stop her, saying, “No. Nobody gets dressed.” I have Micaela sit on the sofa while Gemina and I sit facing each other on the floor, chest to chest, hugging each other tightly.

  “The time has arrived for the two to become one,” I announce, my voice sounding drugged and hypnotic. “Join me in chanting the sacred word, so that Gem and Paige may merge and remain together from this night on.”

  I begin chanting, “Incognolio…incognolio…incognolio…”

  “Cut it out,” says Micaela. “You’re scaring us.”

  Without releasing Gem, I retrieve the knife from the floor and jab the point lightly into my sister’s side. “Chant with me, Micaela! You too, Gem, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

  Both now join me, their voices shaky, all three of us intoning, “Incognolio…incognolio…incognolio…incognolio.”

  After several minutes, the lights in the room begin to flicker, a low rumbling grows louder, and the stench of burning rubber fills the air. A strange tingling sensation courses through my body, and I’m convinced that the miracle has occurred.

  When I open my eyes, the first thing I see is Micaela perched on the sofa, a look of sheer horror on her face. Gem shrieks and tries to pull away from me but can’t. I turn my head and find that my cheek is somehow stuck to hers. Starting to panic, I ask Gem to stand, and the two of us struggle to our feet.

  And now it’s all too clear what’s happened. Our torsos are fused. We are conjoined.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MAZAZEL

  The next morning, I’m having breakfast out on the deck with Paige. The sunshine is glorious, and cumulous clouds drift majestically across an azure sky, like swans across a lake.

  “I’m sorry, Micaela, but I can’t take over your novel,” Paige says. “I tried my damnedest, but I just can’t seem to write.”

  “That’s cool,” I say. “I had a breakthrough last night. Words came pouring out nonstop.”

  “Excellent. Glad to hear it.”

  “Yeah, except some scary shit surfaced. You had this identical twin sister you loved so much that you wanted to merge with her, and the two of you ended up conjoined.”

  “Holy crap.” Paige shakes her head. “How do you come up with this stuff?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to ask how you came up with the title for your novel.”

  “Oh, that.” I choke on a bite of toast and Paige pats me on the back until I stop coughing. “It’s…really not that interesting.”

  Paige cocks her head, clearly wondering why I don’t seem to want to talk about it. I am indeed reticent, but after some thought, figure maybe it would be good to talk it over with someone.

  “It’s actually pretty freaky,” I say. “See, I was taking this novel-writing workshop at the adult education center. There were eight of us in the class, all trying to get going on a novel. Phil, the instructor, told us that if we don’t know where to begin, we can start by developing a specific character, a setting, a theme, a dialogue, a first line, or even a title.

  “I thought it might be fun to start with just a title. So the following afternoon, sipping a cappuccino at Brew Ha Ha, I jotted down a bunch of possible titles, none of which I liked. Then it occurred to me to try using a nonsense word, so I generated a list of about twenty of them, off the top of my head.

  “Looking back over the list, two of the words stood out: Incognolio and Mazazel. I was trying to decide which one I liked best when a middle-aged man appeared and asked if he might sit down across from me. I said sure, even though there were several empty tables in the café.”

  “None of this sounds freaky to me,” Paige interrupts.

  “Just wait 'til you hear what happened next,” I say. “So this guy introduced himself as Misha Slodkin, and said that he needed to speak to me about something of tremendous importance. ‘I know you are writing a novel,’ he said. ‘I’m here to tell you that this novel will dramatically change the world.’”

  “Jesus,” says Paige.

  “I know,” I reply. “I laughed out loud and asked him whether my friend, Dean, had put him up to it, but he said he was deadly serious. He told me that my novel would become wildly popular, outselling even the Bible.”

  “I like the sound of that,” says Paige.

  “That’s what I said. But Slodkin didn’t see the humor. He said that the impact of my novel on the direction of humankind would be unprecedented, but whether it was for good or for ill all depended on my choice of a title.

  “When I asked him why so much hinged on the title, he said that depending upon the title I chose, a completely different novel would emerge from my unconsciou
s. Then he reached for the list of nonsense words I’d composed, with Incognolio and Mazazel underlined. At this point, Slodkin became agitated.”

  Paige leans forward, her eyes alight.

  “He said, ‘If you choose Incognolio as your title, the future of humanity is bright. There will be peace and prosperity among all nations, people will learn to accept and celebrate their differences, the culture of corporate greed will be replaced by a culture that values individual freedom and opportunity, civil rights for everyone, and responsible stewardship of the environment.’

  “Then Slodkin’s face turned pale. He said, ‘But if you choose Mazazel as the title of your novel, dark days are in store for our planet. Selfishness, hostility, and greed shall flourish—man against man, and nation against nation. A Third World War will wipe out the vast majority of humans, decimate the cities and countryside, and contaminate the entire globe with nuclear radiation, setting off mass extinctions of plant and animal species.’”

  “All because of the title of your novel?” asks Paige. She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “That’s absurd.”

  “That’s exactly what I told him, Paige. Then I said, ‘Even if it’s true, how could you possibly know all of this?’ and he said: ‘Because I’m from the future.’ Well, I had a good chuckle over that, and was now nearly certain this was one of Dean’s practical jokes.

  “To make a long story a bit shorter, I played along with Slodkin, and assured him that I’d title the novel Incognolio. But when I ran into Dean a couple of days later, he swore up and down that he had nothing to do with the incident at Brew Ha Ha. Which left me wondering, as ridiculous as it sounded, what if Misha Slodkin was really from the future?”

  Paige raises an eyebrow at this.

  “So, just in case, I went with Incognolio. But as I proceeded with the manuscript, something started bugging me. I kept thinking back on the appearance of Slodkin’s face. There was a look in his eyes, a subtle hint of duplicity that left me feeling suspicious of his true intentions.

  “I began to wonder: what if he misled me? What if naming the novel Mazazel would lead to the idyllic scenario, and by going with Incognolio I was dooming humanity to a hellish future?

  “And in fact, although I set out to write a comic novel, the manuscript has grown increasingly dark and morbid. So, lately, I’ve been thinking of starting over from scratch, and calling it Mazazel.”

  “Really, Micaela?” Paige gives me the stink eye. “A man from the future? And don’t you think it’s just a little grandiose of you to believe that your novel could have such an extraordinary impact on history?”

  I break out laughing and admit that I made the whole thing up.

  “Why?” asks Paige, looking hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But the real story is…sort of embarrassing.”

  With a hint of wariness, Paige gestures for me to continue.

  “Well, I’d become so miserable being married to Jack that I got back into heavy drug use. I progressed from pain killers to cocaine to crystal meth, and eventually was mainlining heroin. I felt disgusted with myself, and when a friend mentioned that hypnosis can help with addiction, I decided to give it a shot.

  “I started seeing a psychologist who was trained in hypnosis, and she was focusing on relaxation training, emotional clearing, and post-hypnotic suggestion. But when I didn’t make much progress, she said we needed to do some exploratory work, involving a deeper level of trance.

  “One afternoon in her office, while I was so far under that I was barely conscious, I started speaking in a strange, foreign-sounding accent. I was apparently channeling a disembodied entity who called itself Quodon. This entity claimed to be one of my spirit guides, and it declared that I was in imminent danger of what it called soul death. I lost all awareness at that point, but my hypnotherapist later told me that Quodon announced that the only thing that could save me from oblivion was to write a novel in which I gave my subconscious mind free rein. Quodon also insisted that I must call the novel—”

  “Micaela,” Paige interrupts, looking at me with disappointment in her eyes. “You’re making up this story, too, aren’t you?”

  I sigh heavily and then nod.

  “Why are you doing this, Micaela?” asks Paige. “I feel like you don’t trust me.”

  “It’s not that. Not at all. I swear, Paige! It’s just that…I can’t remember where the title came from.”

  “Can’t remember?”

  “Not a clue. In fact, when you get right down to it, I can’t really remember anything that happened to me prior to starting the novel.”

  Paige has a curious look on her face.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I have no memory of my life prior to joining the writers’ group.”

  The two of us sit in silence, staring at each other.

  “So what does it all mean?” I ask.

  “Don’t you see?” Paige replies in a hushed tone somewhere between reverence and horror. “We’re not real. We’re characters in a novel.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ANGELICA

  Even while submerged in the depths of depression, I couldn’t resist the joke of writing myself into the previous chapter, appearing in Micaela’s fabricated story as the Man from the Future.

  If only, I think to myself, I could actually live in the future—or the past, for that matter—anywhere but the wretched present.

  The present, in which I live alone in a decrepit studio apartment, barely getting by on the meager Social Security disability payments I receive due to my intractable depression. The present, in which I continue to grieve the loss of my wife, Angelica, who died in childbirth last year. Yes, the present, in which I try to keep myself from going crazy by working on a book titled Incognolio, a story that started out as a comic novel, but with every page seems to grow increasingly dark and disturbing. In retrospect, I suppose this should not be surprising, given the circumstances that inspired the novel.

  After suffering through three miscarriages in as many years, Angelica became pregnant once again. This time she turned to an acupuncturist who specialized in treating infertile and pregnant women, from whom she also purchased a Chinese fertility charm in the shape of a fish, which she placed on the mantle in our living room.

  Since the three miscarriages had all occurred relatively early in pregnancy, by the time Angelica was six months along, the two of us began to feel more confident that this time she would carry to term. An ultrasound had revealed that she was carrying twins, a boy and a girl. Angelica chose the name Micaela for the girl, and I settled on Muldoon for the boy.

  The pregnancy progressed without a hitch, except that Angelica’s due date came and went. After several days passed, Dr. Menos booked her a room in the hospital, and the next morning she induced delivery. After a long day of labor on a busy ward, Angelica developed a strep infection. Dr. Menos reassured the two of us that this was a common complication, and prescribed ampicillin.

  Although my wife had no history of allergies, she immediately suffered a massive anaphylactic reaction, her blood pressure dropping precipitously, her lips swelling up and turning blue. But despite all their efforts at resuscitation, her condition deteriorated. An emergency C-section was performed. Both twins were stillborn. Angelina died shortly thereafter.

  As the doctor delivered her heartfelt condolences, I remained in a state of shock and barely said a word to the social worker who met with me. Afterward, I stopped in at a tavern and sat at the bar, drinking shot after shot of whiskey until the bartender cut me off.

  Unsteady on my feet, I left and wandered through the city streets until I came to the harbor. I walked along a beach and then stood facing the ocean, watching the waves come in. There was a black hole where my heart used to be. I was furious at God and began cursing him, shouting like a madman. Then I fell down and cried, weeping and wailing as I clawed at the sand.

  But the pain was to
o much, too overwhelming, and suddenly I knew what I had to do. I stood up and stumbled into the water, still bawling like a baby. When I was neck-deep, I shrieked a final fuck you at God and plunged my head underwater. My chest heaved as I continued to cry, and I swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the sea. I surfaced briefly, coughing and spluttering, and then thrust my head underwater once more, this time determined to finish the job. The dead silence underwater was eerie, but just before I blacked out I distinctly heard a single word spoken.

  A man who was taking a late-night stroll on the boardwalk had heard me cursing at God. He managed to pull me out of the water and successfully administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  After three weeks on a psychiatric ward and a course of twelve electroconvulsive treatments, I was deemed well enough to return home. But I still felt too depressed and dejected to continue working as a clinical psychologist. I decided to go on leave, and despite the earnest pleadings of my patients, bid farewell and transferred them to other therapists working at my clinic.

  Without a salary, living only on disability payments and what remained of a small savings account, I could no longer afford the spacious two-bedroom condo I’d shared with Angelica and moved to a tiny studio apartment in the poorest neighborhood of the city.

  My grief for Angelica and the dead twins was unbearable, and the only thing that pulled me out of my despair was the memory of the word I heard before I nearly drowned, spoken in a voice that was transcendently beautiful. I was convinced that the word held some profound meaning, a meaning that I had to discover within myself. Although I’d never written fiction before, I decided to try my hand at a novel, starting only with the title, Incognolio.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  LASZLO SKUNTCH

  Figuring that Incognolio emerged from the depths of my unconscious, I’ve written whatever has come to mind, censoring nothing. But now, after writing every day for several months, I feel no closer to comprehending the enigmatic word. Clearly, it’s time to attempt a different approach.