Episode Details

Don Henley was playing Jones Beach for the Labor Day weekend. I could think of no better way to end the abased eighties than to hear Henley perform Building the Perfect Beast. It had been their anthem now it would be my eulogy. There were thousands of people at the concert but I was probably the only one that knew what he was talking about when he boasted that they knew the secrets of eternity, they had found the lock and turned the key. As a sly aside he said Pandora’s not going to like it. All I could think to myself was if you’re going to open Pandora’s Box you better know what’s inside. Henley went on with his salutation; the day had come, soon he would be released, hallelujah they were building the Perfect Beast. I wondered where he was getting his information. He had better find a new source. I guessed those were heady days a few years ago when that song was written. Now that we had finished abasing the eighties we had finished ourselves in the process. The eighties were so abased that marriage vows before consummation was never even an option. If I had told Dianne we had to get married before we could have sex she would have thought me insane for real. Henley finished his tome by saying that they were going to take Olympus in an all or nothing attempt. No doubts the Titans would strike back but where did they think they were going without Hecate, nine out of ten times in chess when you lose your queen you’ve lost the game.

When we got back from Jones Beach that night Andrew called the two Arab attendants in the Seven Eleven next door to my apartment complex Sand Niggers. One of the Arabs responded by pulling a pistol. I was outside the store so I didn’t see it but when I heard about it I went to go get my AR15. I figured shooting an Arab for no real reason had worked for Camus’s character in The Stranger and it would work for me too. On the way back to the apartment a drunken Geir slipped on the wet grass and started trying to swim through it. The moment of levity diffused my homicidal intentions.

Late that night when everybody left Michelle, and I went into Cypress Hills and got an ‘eight ball.’ When we got back, we had an expensive bottle of vodka lying around and hours before the dawn. When daylight began to show through our window Lilith was with us and she seemed more powerful than she ever had before. Michelle was in a complete trance almost half her hair was standing up on end. Shadows appeared all over the walls, everywhere you looked. They began to move around the room with great rapidity independent of the wall. When I started feeling hands all over me I began to feel threatened and I was in no mood to run. I went into a red out. The next thing I remember is blasting away at them with the sounds of the gunshots ringing in my ears.

I smashed the window of my apartment with the still smoking AR15 and threw it to the ground outside. When I thought about it, I decided to get as far away from the scene as possible. The cops were going to come into that apartment and up those stairs shooting regardless of whether they found the gun outside or not. I pulled on a pair of jeans and started to go down the darkened stairway, but I saw movement in the shadows and Michelle was taunting me about it waiting on the stairs for me. I went to the broken window and jumped from the second floor. I landed on my feet and felt my right ankle pop. Something else gave in the bottom of my left foot. But I knew if I wanted to live, I had to get as far away from the gun as possible. Since I was wearing only jeans they might not shoot if they figured I wasn’t armed.I started to run and with each step my right ankle became looser till it was flopping around like an untied sneaker. I ran into the super at the next building. He was standing there as if nothing had happened. He ushered me into an unfurnished apartment in back of him and told me to stay in there. When I checked the door, I found he had locked it somehow fro