INCOGNOLIO Read online

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  REPETITIVE STRAIN INJURY

  When the microwave beeps, I retrieve my heating pad, which is almost too hot to handle. I allow it to cool for a few seconds, and then wrap it around my right arm, which is in considerable pain due to RSI (repetitive strain injury) caused by the hours, days, and months I have spent typing my novel and manipulating the mouse.

  At least that’s what I told Shelly, the physical therapist, when she assessed my condition—and no doubt the long hours on the computer didn’t help matters. But what I didn’t mention to Shelly was that there was another factor. Ever since the deaths of Angelica and the twins I’ve been masturbating compulsively, sometimes two or three times a day—as a sexual release and a way of dealing with anxiety and depression, but also as my only means of approximating the ecstatic dissolution of boundaries I experienced when I first heard the voice of Incognolio.

  In addition to the heating pad and the daily exercises Shelly prescribed, I am also trying to reduce the strain on my arm by making use of voice recognition software, which allows me to continue working on the novel largely through dictation. Telling the story out loud felt awkward at first, but I learned to do it with my eyes shut, giving myself even greater access to the subterranean depths of my unconscious.

  With the shooting pains in my arm temporarily soothed by the warmth of the heating pad, I return to my desk, put on a headset microphone, and wonder how in hell I’m going to personify Mazazel, whom I vaguely conceptualize as the Dark Force or Lord of the Underworld, and wishing to steer clear of stereotypical portrayals of the Devil (a.k.a. Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles) involving horns, hooves, pointed tail, trident, and so forth. Then I recall Voltaire’s dictum and decide to let readers visualize whatever they wish.

  So, with a now familiar blend of curiosity and dread, I go ahead and welcome Mazazel into Dr. Djinn’s office. There’s a deafening roar, a blast of scorching heat, and a nasty sulfuric stench—certain clichéd atmospherics being all but unavoidable—as Mazazel appears in one of his countless material forms, perched on the oak desk.

  This material manifestation of Mazazel is so unspeakably grotesque, so monstrous, so hideous, that at first I can only sneak quick glances at him before turning away, and it takes all of my courage not to flee from the room in terror.

  “I apologize for intruding upon your idyllic twosome,” says Mazazel mockingly, and then bursts out laughing. “But after all, I was invited.”

  “Thank you for joining us,” says Dr. Djinn. “There appears to be considerable tension between you and Misha, and I thought I might be able to provide a forum for resolving your differences.”

  “By all means!” Mazazel chuckles. “Fire away!”

  “First of all,” I say, “could you please give me a break and dial down the torment, so I can at least hear myself think?”

  “Consider it done,” says Mazazel, and for the first time since I left the loving embrace of the Goddess Incognolio, I am free of pain.

  “Thank you.” I heave a huge sigh of relief. “Now, I’d like to know what the hell I did to deserve such punishment.”

  “Let me remind you,” says Mazazel, “that you were free to remain merged with that pathetic harlot, Incognolio. You chose to leave her, to separate yourself, and separation inevitably brings suffering.”

  “Fair enough. But why so much?”

  “Look, I have nothing against you personally,” says Mazazel. “You seem like a decent enough chap. It’s simply my job to inflict misery and destruction upon the human race. You see, I am the Yang to Incognolio’s Yin. Without this duality, there would be no world at all.”

  This actually makes sense, and I am taken aback, having failed to anticipate that the brutish miscreant would turn out to be so articulate.

  “Okay,” I say, “but why would an impersonal force take such great delight in bringing harm? In other words, why are you such a sadistic bastard?”

  Mazazel grins, exposing his hideous teeth.

  “Simple. Because you humans have that which I lack—free will. And I despise you mongrels for it.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding! So it’s because you’re jealous? That’s it?”

  Mazazel fumes, but remains silent.

  “That’s mighty small of you,” I say. “And I’ll bet you’re jealous of Incognolio as well, since she inspires worship and adoration while you elicit nothing but fear, hatred, and scorn.”

  Smoke pours out of Mazazel’s ears, and once again I am racked with pain.

  “You have the emotional maturity of a three-year-old,” I say. “No wonder the world’s so fucked up!”

  My pain level skyrockets, until I’m in even greater agony than before.

  “This hasn’t helped at all,” I say, turning to Dr. Djinn.

  “Ah, what a shame,” Dr. Djinn replies, and to my horror, he slowly morphs into a demon every bit as repulsive as Mazazel. “If this was not beneficial, perhaps you would prefer a lobotomy. I’d be happy to perform it myself right now.”

  Dr. Djinn laughs diabolically as a collection of gleaming instruments of torture materializes on his desk, and I run screaming from his office.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE MEDICAL ARTS & CRAFTS BUILDING

  Now I’m sprinting down the street in such unimaginable distress that all I can think about is how to end the pain—I’ll do anything to stop it—and the first thing that springs to mind is suicide.

  I don’t own a gun or have access to poison, so I figure the quickest and easiest way would be to jump off a building. The tallest building is Dork Tower, which has been true in every city in the country ever since President Dork decreed that no building can rise higher than the ones he owns and had all taller skyscrapers demolished. But I’ll be damned if I will even set foot in an edifice named for that schmuck, so I head for the Medical Arts & Crafts Building, just ten blocks away.

  As I dash full speed down the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians, dogs, and pooshka vendors, I think that if only I hadn’t run into Lunaria I wouldn’t have attended the Wakan, in which case I wouldn’t have ingested the Anosh and had my fateful encounter with Mazazel. But then again, even before the Wakan I was pretty depressed and hopeless, so in truth, either way probably would have ended with me taking my own life.

  As I approach the Medical Arts & Crafts Building, huffing and puffing, I am surprised to see my twin brother, Laszlo Skuntch, approaching from the opposite direction, and when he spots me he starts running, too.

  We meet in front of the building, and Laszlo, who is carrying a shopping bag from Schmenken’s, asks me what I’m doing.

  “I’m in so much goddamn pain,” I say. “I’m going to jump off the top of the MA&C.”

  “That’s unacceptable!” Laszlo replies, grabbing my arm. “My novel, Mazazel, isn’t about a suicide. It’s about a man who murders his twin brother.”

  I try to shake him off, but his grip is so secure that I might as well be trying to shake off my own arm. “Fine, Laszlo, you can push me off of the damn building.”

  “I’ve used that method in a previous novel, and I never use the same method twice. We’ll have to come up with another plan, and you’ll have to try to escape from me, Misha, since it spoils all the fun if my victim wants to die.”

  “Fuck you, Laszlo,” I say. “I’m not a character in your stupid novel. I’m a character in Incognolio, which I’m writing, and I say it’s going to be a goddamn suicide. So piss off and find yourself another fucking victim. Perhaps we were triplets separated at birth and on your way home you can run into your other brother.”

  “Far too contrived. I’m going to stick with killing you, so you’d better start fleeing. I’ve never used suffocation before, and I happen to have this Schmenken’s bag, which will do nicely.” Laszlo pulls a new pair of trousers out of the bag and tosses them aside.

  After my horrific near-drowning experience, I have no interest in being suffocated, so I kick Laszlo in the groin. He fa
lls to the ground, and I run into the Medical Arts & Crafts building and make a beeline for the elevators, quickly pressing the up button.

  It seems to take forever for an elevator to reach the lobby, and by the time I’m inside, Laszlo is racing toward me. I hit the button for the 20th floor and the doors slide closed just in the nick of time.

  Up I go, to the retreating sound of Laszlo’s cursing. When I reach the top floor, a bell sounds and I scoot out of there. Hanging a left, I tear down the hall, searching for a way up to the roof. I turn a corner and am halfway down the corridor when I spot what I’m looking for. It’s a heavy black door marked Egress. But the fucking thing’s locked, and now I’m screwed because I already hear Laszlo’s footsteps approaching.

  Between my thwarted plan for suicide and the unbearable pain, a part of me just wants to surrender to my brother and let him put me out of my misery. But another part of me rejects this idea on principle. Plus, I’d love to fuck up his writerly aspirations. So when he appears, I run right at the bastard and easily tackle him, having played linebacker for my varsity football team. Now the two of us are wrestling on the ground, a pretty even match since we are identical twins. But I manage to straddle him and beat his face to a pulp, knocking him unconscious with one final jab to the temple.

  I skedaddle via elevator, and on the way down it occurs to me that if Laszlo used this elevator to enter my universe, perhaps I can use it to slip into an alternate one. This may or may not put me out of Mazazel’s reach, but it seems well worth a try.

  I hit the button for the sixth floor, but when the doors open the carpet is still blue. I return to the lobby, then head back up to the sixth floor. Still nothing has changed, so it’s back down to the lobby. When the doors open this time, there’s Laszlo, bloody-faced and grinning, and I punch the button for the sixth floor. But before the doors close, Laszlo squeezes through and pounces on me.

  A brutal fight ensues—flying fists and vicious karate kicks to the chest and head. Meanwhile, each time the elevator reaches the sixth floor I glance at the carpet, which remains blue, then hit the button for the lobby. After several trips up and down, Laszlo manages to knock me to the floor—face down—and straddle my body. Then he grabs the Schmenken’s bag and slips it over my head, pulling the drawstring tight against my neck.

  “This is fantastic!” he gloats. “It’s my first murder-in-an-elevator scene.”

  “Fuck you, asshole.” I gasp for air. “I’m writing this scene and it doesn’t end with my goddamn death.”

  But it doesn’t look good: I’m all out of air and slowly passing out. When the bell sounds for the lobby, it takes all my remaining strength to inch my fingers up to the control panel, fumble around until I’ve located the right button, and press it.

  The doors close. My arm falls back to the floor. As I feel the elevator car ascend, my entire life flashes before my eyes, heralding the end. The elevator bell sounds one last time, and just before I black out I hear a voice shout, “What the fuck?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  UNIVERSE-HOPPING

  On something of a roll, and feeling pleased with how the last few chapters jelled, I eagerly set out on the next one. But I soon find that I have no idea how to proceed. I’m intimidated by the prospect of having to choose which among the infinite number of possible alternate universes to drop Misha and Laszlo into, of choosing just one out of that seething multitude.

  I remind myself not to overthink it, to simply let the story go where it needs to go. But that’s far easier said than done, and I’m becoming increasingly discouraged when Yiddle squawks, Mystical arts! Mystical arts! Which reminds me that I’ve got to get to the first meeting of my class in Universe-Hopping. I throw on a jacket, head downstairs, and turn left on Random Road toward Circle Square.

  As I stroll down the sidewalk, I come clean and admit to the reader that I—Muldoon—have been writing this story all along. That I invented Paige’s beachside bungalow where Micaela supposedly worked on Incognolio, as well as Misha, the grieving father of stillborn twins, and Laszlo, Misha’s evil twin brother who is writing Mazazel—all of it fabricated from whole cloth, designed to lure the reader into yet another narrative that feigns authenticity, only to prove fictitious in the end.

  Why I get such a kick out of this authorial sleight of hand is anybody’s guess. Perhaps I’ve felt deceived and betrayed so many times over the course of my life that there’s a certain satisfaction to be gained in turning the tables on others. Or maybe the shattering of fictional worlds represents my attempt to question the nature of reality and to confront mortality, much as Paige proclaimed in her writers’ group.

  Whatever my reasons, I’m tired of playing the trickster, and I sense that this tale is nearing its end, although I haven’t a clue how to wrap it up, which is distressing because there’s nothing worse than a good yarn that ends on a false note.

  But having relied on the wisdom—and perversity—of my subconscious mind all along, there’s no reason to change horses now, so I set aside worrying about the ending and instead arrive at Circle Square, enter the Mystical Arts Building, take the elevator up to the sixth floor, and locate room 639.

  A few minutes later, when everyone has arrived—ten in all—the instructor, a cute pixie-like woman in her late twenties, introduces herself as Deedle and welcomes everyone to the wonderful world of universe-hopping.

  Deedle has everyone in the circle introduce themselves and tell a little about what drew them to this topic. When it’s my turn, I say that my name is Muldoon, and that while high on Ink, I traveled to an alternate universe in which my twin sister, Micaela, survived birth and grew up to be my best friend. I leave out the part about being lovers.

  “When the drug wore off and I awoke back home, I felt lonelier than ever and longed to be reunited with my sister. I continued to ingest Ink at every opportunity, but each time I took it, I ended up in a different universe. Some of them were nightmarish, and none of them contained Micaela, so I was excited when I happened to see an infomercial about this class on late night cable TV.”

  When everyone has shared their stories, Deedle tells her own story of how she was on a honeymoon cruise with Dunkin, the love of her life. One morning, Dunkin was attending a private lesson with the cruise ship’s tennis pro, when the pro smashed a high-velocity shot straight into Dunkin’s balls, causing him to faint, collapse to the ground, crack his skull, and die on the spot.

  Condolences are expressed, and Deedle continues, “I was so overwhelmed with sorrow that I landed in a psychiatric ward, where a psychologist told me about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But I felt I could never accept the loss of my soul mate, and after the hospital released me, I began consulting with mediums who claimed to put people in touch with the deceased.

  “Well, they all turned out to be frauds,” says Deedle. “I was ready to give up on that approach when I heard about Cecil Vernax, a renowned medium who was said to have helped Yoko Ono contact John Lennon. I consulted with Cecil at his home office, and he turned out to be the real deal. I was actually able to speak with Dunkin, who told me that he wasn’t dead, that he was living in an alternate universe where the tennis pro had cancelled his lesson that day. He said the honeymoon was a smashing success, and we were living in wedded bliss.

  “I was ecstatic. I asked Dunkin to describe each and every detail of the universe he lives in, vowing to find a way to join him as soon as I learned how to universe-hop.

  “Afterwards, I went straight to the library and took out every book I could find on quantum mechanics. Modern physicists have theorized what the ancient seers knew intuitively: that an infinite number of alternate universes coexist. According to the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, there are many other worlds, similar to this one, which exist in parallel at the same space and time. In fact, every time an event takes place, the universe splits between the various options available. Everything that
can happen does happen. Instead of the one continuous timeline we typically imagine, the universe looks more like a series of branches splitting off of a tree trunk.

  “For example,” says Deedle as she turns to me, “there’s a universe where Muldoon won the lottery last night and decided to skip this class. And another where he came down with pneumonia, or was hit by a bus on his way here and died.”

  I’m struck by this revelation, mind-boggled to think about all those alternate Muldoons. And oddly reassured, too, because with so many other selves out there, so many other lives I’m living and deaths I’m dying, whatever happens to me in this universe doesn’t seem so important.

  “I went online and discovered that courses on Quantum Jumping were all the rage,” Deedle is saying. “They promised that I could pop into parallel dimensions and acquire creativity, wisdom, skills, and inspiration from alternate versions of myself. I forked over a bundle to gain access to these esoteric teachings. Some of these guys suggested using your imagination to create a bridge to other universes, like a handshake across time and space. Others referred to thought transference and changing the frequency of your thinking, like tuning into a different radio station. One even suggested that in order to make the jump to an alternate universe you had to enter into a state of mind in which you forget everything you know about this universe.

  “But it all amounted to a hill of garbanzos, and I felt I was back at square one. So I went to see Cecil again and asked him if he’d had other clients whose loved ones turned out to be in alternate universes rather than deceased. And he said there had been several dozen, and when I asked him if there were any commonalities in these cases, he replied that in each case the person had been violently killed in their home universe, but survived in the alternate.”

  Deedle smiles, her face simply radiant.