INCOGNOLIO Read online

  I lie there, stunned, as Yiddle squawks, Gratuitous violence!

  The guy rolls me over, ties my hands behind my back, hauls me up to my feet, and throws me over his shoulder like a duffel bag, then carries me out of the apartment and down the stairs before shoving me into a panel van.

  I roll helplessly around in the back of the vehicle for what seems like forever, straining to remember whether I have any enemies. He finally pulls to a stop and, from the sound of it, closes a garage door. Then the door of the van slides open and there’s my answer, grinning at me malevolently, that rat-faced, overpaid, scumbag of a ghostwriter, Dick Fracken.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SMOTHERBOX

  Now that I’ve kidnapped Muldoon, I can finally hijack the narration. And job one is to shorten the sentences. No run-ons for me. As the preeminent ghostwriter of trashy novels, I know as well as anyone that when it comes to sentences, less is more. The shorter the sentences, the greater the book sales. Chalk it up to laziness or short attention span, but it’s that fucking simple. Why else are so many adults reading young adult novels?

  I order Grunt to drag Muldoon out of the van, one of several vehicles parked in my oversized garage. On my command, Grunt manhandles the captive into my sprawling 12,000-square-foot mansion, an edifice worthy of Homes of the Rich and Famous. The three of us proceed to the cathedral-ceilinged living room, featuring a spectacular view of the open sea from its perch atop a 500-foot cliff. The room is jam-packed with world-class art—Pollack, Rothko, and Modigliani—and furnished with the ultimate in Danish Modern design pieces.

  After untying Muldoon’s hands, Grunt leaves, and I offer Muldoon a seat. He stands and, after glaring at me for several seconds, complies. I ring a hand bell and Quenchley—my butler—appears, bearing pastries and Earl Grey tea, which Muldoon refuses.

  “Perhaps you’d prefer whiskey?” I say.

  “I’ll have you arrested for this, asshole,” he replies.

  “Good luck with that. Cops are in my pocket.”

  “So what the hell do you want from me?”

  “Stop writing Incognolio.”

  “Think again,” says Muldoon. “My agent set a deadline and I intend to meet it.”

  “Not if I keep you here.”

  “What’s it to you, anyway? Isn’t your latest Floyd Robertson piece of shit selling well?”

  “Number one on all the lists.” I smile and sip my tea. “As you can see, I’ve got plenty of dough. What I don’t have is fame and recognition. I’m the top-selling novelist in the country, yet no one knows my goddamn name.”

  “With a name like Dick Fracken you should count that as a blessing.”

  I devour an éclair and suck my fingers clean.

  “Enough small talk,” I say. “Stop writing Incognolio and waive all rights to challenge my version in court—or we’ll begin, ahem, enhanced interrogation.”

  “Go straight to hell, you hack.”

  “Have it your way.” I blow a high-pitched gold whistle that hangs from my neck, and Grunt instantly appears.

  “Take him below,” I tell Grunt. “As you’ll see, Muldoon, I have my own little version of Gitmo in the basement.”

  I give him time to sweat it out while I get a rubdown from Malena, my Swedish masseuse. After my happy ending, I go below and join Grunt and Muldoon. The latter’s face has turned ashen.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” I say, gesturing toward the extraordinary assortment of torture devices assembled in the room. There’s an antique rack from the Tower of London, a pillory, and an iron maiden from the Ming Dynasty. There’s a wooden horse, a Judas chair, a water board, a smotherbox, and all manner of thumbscrews and tongue shredders. Hanging from the walls are gags, whips, paddles, crops, cudgels, cattle prods, nipple clamps, and suspension cuffs.

  Muldoon sits at a metal table in the center of the room. Lying before him are a pen and the contract I had my lawyer draw up.

  “Sign it.” I take a seat across from Muldoon. “Spare yourself the excruciating pain.”

  “Why do you even have all this stuff?” he asks. “Who do you use it on?”

  “My authors,” I reply. “Do you think I got this stinking rich on standard ghostwriting contracts? By the time I’m finished with my clients, they’re lucky if they get any royalties at all.”

  “Well, do your best. You don’t scare me.”

  “Oh, I have no intention of using any of these devices on you, Muldoon.” I grin and crack my knuckles. “I happen to know that your pain tolerance is off the charts.”

  Muldoon stares at me grimly, straining to figure out my angle.

  “No, you’re a guilt and shame man,” I say. “It’s emotional pain that’ll get me what I want from you.”

  Muldoon swallows hard.

  “We both know that what little you’ve revealed about your backstory is bullshit. Well, I think it’s time to set the reader straight.”

  Tiny beads of sweat appear on Muldoon’s forehead.

  “You’re not married to Fannie Mae,” I begin, “because you’ve never been able to sustain a love relationship. And you abandoned your teenage son at an early age and have ignored his recent attempts to renew contact.”

  Muldoon’s left eye begins to twitch.

  “Furthermore, you’re not brain-damaged, you’re mentally ill. You’ve been in and out of psychiatric wards and receive disability payments due to manic-depression with episodes of psychosis.”

  There goes the right eye.

  “You have no literary agent and your previous novels, Under Milquetoast and As I Lay Decomposing remain unpublished. You’re a madman who imagines himself a writer in order to give yourself a reason to live.”

  Now sweating profusely, Muldoon presses his eyelids shut.

  “And then there’s this.” I remove a piece of paper from my pocket and unfold it. “Public intoxication. Vagrancy. Trespassing. Disturbing the peace. Resisting arrest. Possession of psychedelics. Possession of narcotics. Three DWIs. Driving without a license.”

  Muldoon hangs his head. The end is near.

  “Oh, and let’s not forget about Micaela.” Muldoon looks up, his eyes filled with dread. “She wasn’t stillborn, was she? That’s merely what you tell yourself to avoid facing the fact that you killed her when she was only—”

  “Enough!” cries Muldoon. “I’ll sign.”

  “Not so fast.” I grab the pen. Having triumphed much more easily over Muldoon than I’d anticipated, a new idea occurs to me. I have an opportunity here to take on all of the glory and none of the pain. “I’ve decided that your questionable writing style and twisted imagination are well-suited to an anti-novel like Incognolio.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “At this point, I couldn’t care less about royalties. You take ’em. But when you finish the novel, my name goes on the cover.”

  A broken Muldoon weakly nods his head.

  “Excellent. I’ll have my lawyer draw up the new contract,” I say. “From here on in, Muldoon, you’re the ghostwriter.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RAZA LARAT

  Soon I’m back home, disgusted with myself for allowing that bastard to reveal my true background, the details of which are enough to turn anyone still reading this novel against me, not to mention that I’m now obligated to complete a book for which I’ll receive no official credit.

  It’s time to face the music and admit that I’m a pathological liar who slanted and fabricated much of the earlier material in an effort to win the reader’s sympathy. The upside being, this leaves me with no choice but to overcome my shame and guilt, stop running from my past, and find a way to write authentically.

  It means learning to write for myself, not to please readers or to make it onto a bestseller list. What’s important is not who takes credit for the work, but that the novel be a vehicle for coming to terms with myself and discovering the meaning of Incognolio, which I am convinced holds the key to everything.

  I knock back tw
o shots of whiskey, sit down at my desk, and return to the cult story, in which I complete the four-hour bus ride from the Khadaar to the Compound. On our arrival, the other novices and I are separated by gender and escorted to a commissary. We’re told to strip and hand over all our clothing and possessions to be stored away in baskets, then given white cotton yoga-style pants and shirt, underwear, toothbrush and toothpaste, a brown bar of soap, and a thread-bare towel.

  Then we’re led to a bunkhouse, where I choose a top bunk and dump the toiletries atop a stained and scratchy-looking wool blanket, after which I follow the others to the dining hall for a dinner—which we are requested to eat in silence—consisting of plain yogurt, brown rice, herb tea, and a Ding Dong for dessert.

  After dinner, there’s a welcoming ceremony in the Hall of Miracles for the three dozen or so novices, culminating in an address by Babaganu—the founder of the Order of Khadaar—who sits lotus-style on a purple pillow, a sparkle in his eyes and an enlightened smile on his face.

  Babaganu greets everyone and goes on to say that several years ago he was depressed and suicidal, having bankrupted his Fortune 500 company, which cost him his wife, friends, and all his money, and just as he was about to leap off Preposterous Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the city, a word flashed through his mind: Incognolio.

  “I know that doesn’t sound like a profound revelation.” Babaganu grins. “Merely a nonsense word and nothing more. But in that moment of crisis it saved my life. The veil of illusion fell away and I stood face to face with the Mystery of Creation, the Great Unknown, filled with a transformative sense of joy and peace.”

  Babaganu takes a deep breath, slowly releasing it through his mouth.

  “Incognolio can save your lives, too. It can lead you step by step to a state of illuminated consciousness, true enlightenment, in which you are released from all suffering and brought into harmony with the entire cosmos.

  “But simply hearing the word isn’t enough. And that’s the reason for this two-week Intensive. It is less a meditation retreat than a spiritual boot camp, an ordeal in which you shall be subjected to severe stress and torment, producing a state of heightened awareness and an attitude of surrender—akin to my own state of mind as I looked down from the tower—priming you to receive the full blessings of Incognolio.”

  When the meeting ends, I make eye contact with Arielle—the journalist—who smiles at me. But we have no time to converse since everyone must prepare for bed, which turns out, beneath the blanket, to be a bed of nails, something I’d always thought was a legend. In any event, I sure as hell can’t sleep on it, despite trying through the long night to find a sleeping position that doesn’t entail unbearable pain.

  At 5:00 A.M. my bunkmates and I are roused—although none of us were fully asleep—by an annoying screech that blares over the loudspeaker for several minutes. The lot of us are sent to clean the latrines, after which we dig ditches for an hour, followed by a silent breakfast of brown rice, herb tea, and a Ding Dong.

  After the meal, everyone’s head is shaved, including the women, and we are stripped down to our underwear. Then we are all herded out to the Rock Board, a field laid out like a giant checkerboard, with huge 30-pound rocks in place of checkers, and the novices are divided into two teams.

  There are four referees, called savaks, who explain the rules of the game, which are so complicated that we have no idea what they’re talking about. Then a starting gun is fired and each novice in turn must lift one of the rocks and haul it to a new space, which in itself is laborious work under a scorching sun.

  Making matters worse is the fact that when someone makes an ill-advised move—which happens more or less constantly since no one understands the rules—the savaks assault the offending player. For instance, when I make my first move, hoisting my rock and lugging it two spaces forward, they converge on me and scream, “What an idiot, what a stupid move!” Getting right up in my face, they yell that I’m a worthless piece of shit and shove me until I fall to the ground and knock my head against the rock.

  At one point, I find myself standing adjacent to Arielle while another player is beaten and humiliated.

  “What do you know about this Babaganu?” I whisper to her.

  “His real name is Raza LaRat,” Arielle replies. “He’s a conman. Served time for drug smuggling, mail fraud, and racketeering.”

  After two hours of lugging the heavy rocks around and being brutally ridiculed by the savaks, many of the novices are dripping with sweat, severely sunburned, and in tears. When Arielle makes a bad move and the savaks whip her while calling her a filthy whore, I go berserk. I take out one of the savaks with a vicious kick to the groin and tackle another one. Two more of them subdue me, work me over, and drag me off of the Rock Board and throw me into a hotbox—a pit dug in the earth—then close and lock the lid, leaving me alone in the sweltering darkness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  Sitting in total darkness and intolerable heat on a pile of what smells like rotting fish heads, my entire body throbbing from a sound pummeling, I think things can’t possibly get any worse when they start piping in a zombie-like voice that drones:

  HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, HUH.

  HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, HO.

  HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, YEE.

  HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, HUB-ba-da, YO.

  The stench, heat, and mind-numbing chant hinder my ability to think. But there’s nothing else for me to do, so I ponder my situation as best I can, wondering how long they’ll leave me here, what other ordeals I’ll be subjected to, whether Arielle and I can figure out how to get past the electrified fences, and occasionally recalling how great Arielle looked in her underwear.

  After an unknowable period of time spent in these conditions, I hear a woman’s voice calling out my name—Muldoon, Muldoon—and I’m wondering if it’s Arielle when I am startled by a hand lightly slapping my face. So I reach out in the darkness and feel the body of a woman sitting next to me, and when I ask who’s there she says it’s Delphia.

  To my amazement, I’m no longer in the pit but back home in my coat closet, having discovered in Chapter Three that it’s the one place where Delphia and I can think rationally, untouched by the Incognolio epidemic. I tell her that I have somehow managed to transport myself from the cult subplot to this epidemic subplot.

  “Naturally.” Delphia laughs. “After all, you’re the one writing the novel.”

  I realize that she’s right, that I’ve somehow lost my sense of agency within the narrative and repeatedly become ensnared in the productions of my own imagination: freefalling down Bottomless Boulevard, stuck in a closet, imprisoned in a hotbox.

  “Are you saying that we can walk right out of this closet and think normally if I simply decide that the epidemic has moved out of town?” I ask Delphia.

  “It’s worth a try,” she responds.

  So I get up and open the door and the two of us walk out into the living room.

  I turn to Delphia, who says, “Withered shots of horsemint have jammed my hackleberry doormat.”

  I frown and reply, “There are no brain feathers left in the humpmoose cataclysm.”

  Disapportioned, I grample her and brinkly scrunch back unto the closnet.

  Once my head has cleared, I say, “See, it’s not so simple.”

  “I guess not,” Delphia replies. “Your subconscious mind has such a firm grip on the story that you’re limited in the degree to which you can consciously direct the plot.”

  “What about the Faloosh? Can you use it to see into the future and find out how we solve the mystery of the epidemic?”

  “Afraid not,” says Delphia. “The Faloosh grants me visions spontaneously and can’t be willed.”

  I sigh. “I guess we’re stuck in the closet, for now.”

  “Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Why don’t you just stop writing and find yourself back at your de
sk? Then you can go see your therapist and try to figure out how to proceed.”

  That sounds like as good a plan as any, so I close my eyes and when I open them again I find myself at my computer, typing out this sentence.

  I call Dr. Miranda, and although I’m not scheduled to see her until next week, she says to come right over because her 2:00 P.M. cancelled. When the unsolicited input I’m expecting from Yiddle doesn’t arrive, I decide to give her some much-needed attention. I gently stroke her and whisper what a good bird she is, and then walk down Random Road to my therapist’s office.

  I’ve been emailing my new chapters to Dr. Miranda—the only person I dare show them to—so she’s aware of how the story is progressing, or regressing as the case may be. “I feel I’ve lost my way,” I tell her. “I have no idea where the story is headed, and I seem to be fighting my own subconscious, making it increasingly difficult to write.”

  “Tell me,” says Dr. Miranda. “How would you distill the novel down to a single sentence?”

  I think it over and say, “It’s the story of a man who tries to liberate himself by writing a novel in which he gives his subconscious mind free rein. At least that was the idea when I started the thing. But the deeper we get into the story, the more disturbed my protagonist seems to grow.”

  “Yes, I can see that. But perhaps it’s like the process of psychotherapy, in which people often find they become more distressed and may even feel themselves falling apart before things begin to get better.”

  “That’s all well and good, but at least in therapy everything I say remains confidential. A novel can be read by anyone who buys, borrows, or steals it.”

  “True,” says the doctor. “Maybe you’re feeling blocked because you fear that giving your subconscious so much leeway is dangerous. That your writing may reveal material that is threatening to you and that you may not want to share with others.”

  “Exactly,” I reply. “I’m broke and intent on writing a book that will earn some serious scratch, but most of the reading public simply want to be entertained, not challenged by the ravings of a certified lunatic.”