Authors: Mike Jones
Infernus (16 page)
"Hmmm," ruminated the nude man. "That might not be such a bad idea after all. I'll think about it, how about that?"
The young man sat back down without speaking again. The nude man smiled, and began deliberately, slowly putting back on his clothes. "You will ask me to stop reciting my book somewhere during the next few chapters. Nearly everyone does." Bright sunshine was glaring through the windows in amber streams and bathing his naked, hairy body.
A woman in the room asked, "Why?"
"Because people tell me it is hideous, unrelenting and it gives them nightmares."
Another voice: "Isn't it
just
a story?"
"Yes," he said, pulling his pants to his waist. "I made it up. Completely! We cannot proceed unless that is established first. It is
complete and utter
fiction."
A large, beefy young man stood up. "Then why? Why would someone tell you to stop reading it?"
He calmly looked at the young man, sunlight glittering in his green eyes. "Because," he began, then laughed, "maybe it is a novel
in
Hell."
The young man smiled and shot back, "You mean a novel
about
Hell?"
"You tell me next week what
you
think," the old man said, wearing his pants now.
"I don't believe a word of it," said another.
"I hope not." He began pulling his T-shirt over his short-cropped, gray hair. "It is merely a novel and a short one at that. But, what if I could get inside your head? What then?"
"I hope you do," said a young woman named Josie.
"With a blender?" he asked, then left.
AFTERWORD
"THE REALITY OF INFERNUS"
In 1991, I discovered that my first lover, Michael was HIV+. His previous lover found out that year that he was HIV+, so I insisted Michael be tested. I wanted to find out what my future was going to be like. It wasn't until '93 that he began contracting the first signs of AIDS.
That was bad enough, being confronted with the reality that someone you love very much is terminal. That you are actually going to lose them. And you feel so amazingly helpless because there isn't one damned thing that you can do about it. The utter helplessness you feel is overwhelming.
I'll never forget Michael leaning into me as we sat on the couch one evening and saying to me, "I don't wanna die." We both cried together, silently, for a little while.
At some point in '93, I began thinking of writing some book as therapy. I had no idea what I would write. None whatsoever. I had a lot of pent-up anger (turning to helpless rage) that I didn't know what to do with. Feelings that had nowhere to go.
For years I had been thinking of these themes that became the whole of Infernus. All the loops of chapters that turn, as circles, into themselves; all the elements of eternity that now exist in the book. But, never as one book; not as a whole. Just pieces, maybe short stories, but not altogether as one book.
One day, as Michael was just entering his sickness that would last, for him, a year and nine months, quite like magic, a bright silver sphere appeared in my mind. I could see roads and canals and valleys in it that represented chapters and themes, all circling around each other. That sphere was Infernus.
Instead of ripping off Dante's
Inferno
, I thought I would do an homage to it. So, instead of naming the chapters "Cantos" or after the circles of Hell, I would manufacture everything (and I do mean everything!) as circles. Everything in the book circles around to itself eventually. Sometimes merely a few pages later you will see something loop around to itself. Other times it's many chapters later. But, that was my homage.
I felt I could turn this sphere in my hand, and look at it this way, and then that. And see it all, all the time. All the layers; how every chapter related back to this chapter, or that chapter. All the relationships I never had to build because they were already established in my mind. The ending, the colors of the demons. All of it. I could see it all whenever I chose.
(It is obvious to anyone who has barely any interest in the classics that Dante's
Inferno
must have been a huge influence on my childhood. And you would be right. But, of course, in my twisted mind, I never felt Dante went far enough. I also knew, that in his day, he couldn't have gone farther. It never would have been published. Or he would have been executed, or the like.)
I've placed this paragraph in the middle of this dull, dull, dull afterword (that no one's gonna read) to discourage the uninterested scanner. Here it is: The next thing I'm going to say is my theory...and it's mine. If you ever meet me, please do not ask me
why
I wrote
Infernus
. I really don't know. It appeared in my life rather rudely in '93, and it's been tormenting me ever since. And this is true whether the book sells a hundred copies, or twenty-million. Other than therapy for me, I have no idea at all why I wrote it. I'm just as much in the dark about it as you are. Heh-heh.
The first thing I knew was that it had to be handwritten. The visceral experience of actually touching the notebooks with pen was extremely important to me. I believed it was an essential part of my therapy.
Every time I put pen to paper, the book just flowed out of me, in the order you see it now. I could pick up exactly where I left off before. The book was written, in order, that way. All the layers were already there in my mind, just waiting for me to write them down that way.
I wrote when I had pain. Over the next three years (continuing two years after Michael had passed away) I wrote 86 pages, its original length. Over the next twelve years, through 2009, I added about sixty pages to it, refining and changing it here and there. (By the by, I
do not
recommend taking sixteen years to write a novella! No, indeed. Unless you go completely bonkers! Imagine
Infernus
in my head for 16 years total. Whew!)
Shortly before Michael died, dementia robbed him of the memory of who I was. He began to think I was one of his caretakers. That truly
scraped
my soul.
That defined Hell for me. So much so, that when I wrote chapter nineteen, "The Core," and made this chapter the
definition
of Hell, the things the creature said as she lay disintegrating in Dr. Mountfountain's arms were the same things I had heard Michael say to me. Taken directly from his conversations with me. "I'm sorry I came into your life and ruined it" and "Don't ever send me away."
Then I went quite mad with my writing. I decided instead of using pen to write with, I would (metaphorically) stab the paper with a knife, cutting and slashing and wounding.
Quite early in writing this mess I knew no one would ever publish it, so I decided, that instead of writing a
horror
book, I would write a
horrible
book. The distinction for me was this: Since I knew it was never going to be published (and who, in their own madness would publish such an offensive mess?), I would pour my guts onto the paper and just write like hell. Since it would never be published, why not put every dark horror I could think of on paper, and simply not worry about writing "down" to anyone? Make a horrible book just for me.
And I did just that; or attempted it, never caring if anyone ever read it. It was merely therapy for me. My creative juices turned the most murderous things in my mind that I was thinking of doing to this horrid disease, and to others that had treated Michael badly and me because of his disease (and no, you wouldn't believe some of the stories) into episodes in
Infernus
.
Probably the reason I had saved my most vitriolic poison, and the longest chapters, for false religions, was because of how
some
of these lovely individuals directed their version of "love" toward Michael and me. Yes, I'm being facetious.
It must have worked as therapy. I never needed to get on any medication or see a therapist.
I'm completely normal!
After reading
Infernus
, wouldn't you agree?
See you in your dreams. Heh-heh.
Truly...The End!
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