The Ouroboros of the Workers’ State

It goes without saying that one doesn’t go from revolution to full communist society overnight. A process of gradual transformation has to be made, starting with the capitalist structure one has just taken over (recall when Lenin wrote of how “difficult [it would be] to abolish classes”–Lenin/Tucker, pages 668-669), smashing the possibility of it continuing seamlessly from before that takeover, and building socialism step by step, changing every facet of what had existed before, each facet examined one by one.

This process of moving along the continuum from capitalism, through the building of more and more socialism, to full communism can be symbolized by the ouroboros, a circular continuum where the serpent’s biting head represents one extreme, and its bitten tail represents the opposite extreme. The tail is the dialectical thesis of the desired communist society; the head is the capitalist negation of that desired society; and the length of the coiled body is the socialist sublation of the contradiction. In other posts, I’ve discussed this ouroboros symbolism before.

We wish to move in a clockwise direction from the capitalist head (i.e., 12:00-1:00) to the communist tail (11:00-12:00); but a counter-clockwise reactionary movement continually threatens to undo all our progress. Because of this danger, the movement towards more and more socialism must be accelerated, to at least some extent; also, proper protections must be established, and acts of treason must be extirpated with the utmost ruthlessness.

In the early stages of socialism (i.e., 1:00-3:00 along the ouroboros’ body), some concessions to the established order are sadly inevitable, as was the case with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty to get the RSFSR out of World War I, a move Lenin had to make to fulfill part of his “peace, land, and bread” promise, yet also a move that angered the impatient left communists.

Lenin, in “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, responded to this anger: “It had seemed to them that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a compromise with the imperialists, which was inexcusable on principle and harmful to the party of the revolutionary proletariat. It was indeed a compromise with the imperialists, but it was a compromise which, under the circumstances, had to be made.” […]

“The party which entered into a compromise with the German imperialists by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been evolving its internationalism in practice ever since the end of 1914. It was not afraid to call for the defeat of the tsarist monarchy and to condemn “defence of country” in a war between two imperialist robbers. The parliamentary representatives of this party preferred exile in Siberia to taking a road leading to ministerial portfolios in a bourgeois government. The revolution that overthrew tsarism and established a democratic republic put this party to a new and tremendous test–it did not enter into any agreements with its “own” imperialists, but prepared and brought about their overthrow. When it had assumed political power, this party did not leave a vestige of either landed or capitalist ownership. After making public and repudiating the imperialists’ secret treaties, this party proposed peace to all nations, and yielded to the violence of the Brest-Litovsk robbers only after the Anglo-French imperialists had torpedoed the conclusion of a peace, and after the Bolsheviks had done everything humanly possible to hasten the revolution in Germany and other countries. The absolute correctness of this compromise, entered into by such a party in such a situation, is becoming ever clearer and more obvious with every day.” (Lenin/Tucker, pages 563-564, Lenin’s emphasis)

Another concession Lenin made was with the NEP, which he himself called “state capitalism” (Lenin/Tucker, pages 511-531) as a temporary measure to deal with the economic exigencies of the early 1920s. Nonetheless, Stalin had already phased out the NEP by the beginning of the 1930s, as it was by then time to move socialism on forward. Indeed, when the concessions are no longer necessary, it’s time to continue clockwise along the body of the ouroboros (i.e., move from 3:00 to, say, 6:00).

In this connection I must discuss China under Xi Jinping, and do so with necessary candour. Nothing would make me happier to believe that the country is going down a genuine path of Marxism-Leninism, but beyond Xi’s rhetoric, I’m sorry to say that I can only see China as being, at best, in a seemingly almost permanent state of arrested NEP development.

China‘s is a mixed economy, partially state-planned and partially private enterprise. This latter part is the beginning of the cancer of capitalism in any country; the small amount of private enterprise allowed in Cuba is enough to make me fear for her future. That there’s so much more free enterprise in China should be enough to make any communist nervous, yet many respectable Marxist-Leninists out there still rationalize what China is doing. I must respectfully disagree with them.

The defences I’ve heard to support Dengism as legitimate Leninism include such arguments as wages have been rising (itself a debatable notion), hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty, and of course, theirs is a state-planned economy. All of these arguments can be applied to capitalist countries, where at certain points in history, wages have risen (as they did in the West from 1945-1973), ‘millions lifted out of poverty’ has been dubiously claimed to have been a capitalist achievement, and state-planning, or state intervention, has existed–to at least some extent–in both fascist and Keynesian forms of capitalist economies.

How have ‘hundreds of millions of Chinese been pulled out of poverty,’ anyway? The poverty line is defined at making US$1.90/day, so any money earned above that, even US$1.91, is considered to be technically ‘above poverty.’ This World Bank definition is comparable to capitalist boasts of raising people out of poverty. Granted, many Chinese today are now doing much, much better than they were back when Deng Xiaoping had just taken over (including today’s hundreds of Chinese billionaires and millionaires!); but in the rural areas–and in some urban ones–many are still very poor.

According to UN projections for 2019, the population of China is estimated to be at 1.43 billion (1,434,661,888, to be exact). Dengists boast that extreme poverty in China has been reduced to less than 1% as of 2018, based on the World Bank’s US$1.90 definition. Less than 1% of 1.43 billion is less than 14,300,000 (or less than 14,346,618, to be more exact). That’s still a lot of extremely impoverished people.

And there are hundreds of Chinese millionaires and billionaires (and these latter, especially, should never even exist!…in any country, ‘socialist’ or non.). Such equality. Wow.

Added to this, how many of these Chinese ‘above the poverty line’ in as recent a year as 2015 were making, say, US$2.00/day, or $2.50, or $3.00, or in any case, under $3.20/day? Up to 7%. How many made under $5.50/day? 27.2%, not a trifling percentage, and not much money. As of the end of 2017, Xinhua acknowledged that 30.46% of rural Chinese were still below the poverty line. I don’t think the average Westerner would be happy to make less than US$3.20/day, or less than $5.50/day, then be congratulated for no longer being impoverished!

Need I remind you, Dear Reader, that the ‘state-planned economy equals socialism’ argument is commonly heard among certain quarters outside the China-defending Marxists?…they’re called right-libertarians and ‘anarcho’-capitalists. It isn’t state-planning per se that makes it socialist: it’s how the planning is used. Does it lift the poor out of squalor in a meaningful way, or does it allow–or even facilitate—flagrant wealth inequality?

Recently, the Chinese government has cracked down on corruption; but this can happen in capitalist countries, too, if only with modest success. Socialist government is by far the most moral, but at least some virtue in government can be seen elsewhere. Virtue in government alone doesn’t make it socialist.

It’s not my wish to disparage China, or to speak out of malice; China’s growth since the 1980s has been nothing short of impressive. I certainly have no bourgeois agenda against China; these criticisms I’ve made are not the kind you get from anti-communists; nor are they of the infantile disorder one gets from impatient, utopian socialists who want everything perfect all at once. I don’t wish to see the CPC removed from power. I just want to see China move further clockwise towards the tail of the ouroboros; I want to see the more left-wing factions of the CPC having more of a say in how policy is made. I’m a patient socialist, but my patience has limits.

I would much rather have China (or Russia, for that matter), far less inclined to waging war, as the strongest country in the world than the eternally bellicose US…and I live as a Canadian in Taiwan! But until someone can provide more convincing arguments that China, having joined such capitalist institutions as the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank, is legitimately socialist, I’ll continue to have my doubts.

Consider the working conditions in China’s (and Vietnam‘s) factories and sweatshops. Consider the legal existence of private property in China, and how Marx and Engels told us, “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Consider the evidence of imperialistic tendencies, often reduced, by China’s apologists, to investment in the growth of developing foreign countries.

I think I understand the psychological motive for many to regard China as socialist in spite of its obvious capitalist tendencies: it is depressing to see the great majority of socialist nations having succumbed to neoliberal depredations, and so we’d all like to believe that China isn’t one of those casualties. Until I see a genuine Chinese movement away from the revisionist tendencies I outlined above, however, and more muscular efforts to even out the wealth inequality, I’ll find it difficult to support Xi’s government.

But enough of ‘NEP-oriented’ politics. Time to move further clockwise along the serpent’s body, from 3:00-6:00. When the productive forces are sufficiently developed, efforts towards universal housing, education, employment, and healthcare must be immediately undertaken. We’re moving towards the ideal of ‘from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her needs.’ Part of this means taking the ‘his or her’ part seriously, thus establishing full equal rights for women and a way out of the trap of restrictive traditional roles for both sexes (Lenin/Tucker, pages 679-699).

These developments, along with such ones as promoting tolerance for LGBT people, helping people with physical and mental disabilities, and eliminating racial prejudice, will help move us further clockwise along the ouroboros from its head to its tail, from 3:00-9:00.

Proper defences against the danger of a reinstating of capitalism, a move from 6:00 back to 1:00, must be erected. North Korea has done well in that regard with their development of nuclear weapons, the only thing that has prevented a US invasion. Venezuela must do more to protect herself from imperialist aggression: gusanos like Guaidó should be arrested (at least) for treason; let the liberal media lambast Maduro for being firm with these traitors, for they’ll criticize his democratically socialist government as a ‘dictatorship’ regardless of what he does. To ensure the survival of the proletarian dictatorship, not letting it slip counter-clockwise back to the bourgeois dictatorship of ‘liberal democracy,’ one mustn’t flinch at such measures.

To an extent, some concessions have to be made to ensure against the backsliding into bourgeois ways. But sometimes, those concessions really do result in such backsliding. A delicate balance must be made, like walking a tightrope. Moving too much the one way (as Mao was perceived to have done) or too much the other way (as I perceive Deng to have done) leads to a slipping along the serpent’s tail back to its capitalist head.

And once we reach the tip of the tail of the ouroboros (9:00-12:00)–when all remaining traces of capitalism have been eradicated, mountainous class differences have been lowered to the calmly rippling waves of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” the state finally withers away, and money is replaced with a gift economy–we mustn’t assume our new communist society will be a painless utopia. There will be new challenges to be dealt with, new contradictions of some sort or other. The bitten tail will phase into a new biting head, though not a capitalist one. We’ll have to be ready for those new challenges when they come.

Robert C. Tucker, The Lenin Anthology, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1975

Mark Will’s Review and Analysis of My Erotic Horror Novel, ‘Wolfgang’

I wish to give my thanks to Mark Will at Cadmus and Harmony Media for reading and reviewing my Wolfgang: a Werewolf Erotic Horror Novel. Here is what he said about it:

“Stylistically, Wolfgang: A Werewolf Erotic Horror Novel would seem to belong to the transgressive literary tradition of Sade and Bataille. The scatological aspects of the book remind one of both authors, while the sexual didacticism and the cataloguing of perversions, which I often found highly comical, are particularly characteristic of Sade. Rightly or wrongly, I even detected Sadean echoes in the names of the three avenging spirits Sades, Chisad, and Chebirüsad.

“Unlike the work of Sade and Bataille, however, that of Mawr Gorshin is ideologically infused with a sympathy for the wretched of the earth and an outraged sense of social justice. I was impressed by the manner in which Gorshin appropriated the European folkloric motif of the werewolf and placed it within the context of African liberation in order to condemn the slave trade and the capitalistic exploitation of labor.

“At the same time, Wolfgang may be read as parody. The various allusions to the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale are playfully amusing, and the protagonist Wolfgang himself can be seen as a kind of Dracula-Christ with a lycanthropic twist. The doppelgänger motif is also relevant here: the character Renate, for example, is a parodic double of the character Etty (as well as Wolfgang’s mother and wife), just as the character Marko is a parodic double of Wolfgang’s father.

“The Christological nature of the Wolfgang character is emphasized by the themes of crime/punishment, atonement, redemption, and absolution of guilt. These themes are juxtaposed with various Freudian elements: detailed descriptions of erotic dreams, ritualized reenactments of family traumas (with a particular emphasis on the Oedipal), and an implicit association of the superego with good cop/bad cop personae. This eclectic combination makes for a fascinating reading experience.

“Overall, Wolfgang is a book of great subtlety and complexity. I highly recommend it to readers with the fortitude necessary for a foray into the realm of the transgressive.”

Thanks again to Mark Will (whose translation of Aeschylus‘ Persians I wrote up an analysis of) for this wonderful, thoughtful review and analysis!

Analysis of ‘A Clockwork Orange’

A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novel by Anthony Burgess that was adapted into a film in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick. I’ll be discussing and comparing both. The story is narrated by its fifteen-year-old sociopathic protagonist, Alex the Large (DeLarge in the movie, played by Malcolm McDowell, who almost a decade after would play another psychopath, one from ancient Rome), a boy whose interests include drinking drug-laced milk with his “droogs” (Georgie, Dim [Warren Clarke], and Pete), beating people up (“tolchocking,” or “ultra-violence”), gang raping women (“the old in-out, in-out”), and listening to classical music, especially Beethoven.

In this futuristic world, the wayward teens speak a Russian-influenced argot called nadsat (<<If your nadsat is a little rusty, click the link provided [or this one], for I’ll be using quite a few of these words [I’ve italicized them, even in the quotes].). The central theme of the story is the dialectical tension between freedom and restriction, physical or mental, and how one may effectively–or ineffectively–resolve this tension, with or without harming society or the individual.

Here are some quotes:

From the novel: “What’s it going to be then, eh?” (Burgess, page 5)

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. (page 5)

Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name -A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: ‘That’s a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?’ (page 21)

‘ – The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen – ” (page 21)

So I creeched louder still, creeching: ‘Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?’ (page 100)

‘Does God want woodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?’ –Prison Chaplain, to Alex (page 76)

From the film:

Irish Drunk: Can you spare some cutter me brothers? Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards! I don’t wanna live anyway. Not in a stinking old world like this.”

Alex: Oh? And what’s so stinking about it?

Drunk: It’s a stinking world because there is no law and order anymore. […]

“Ho, ho, ho! Well if it isn’t fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, ya eunuch jelly thou!” –Alex

[While listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony] Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!

“As an unmuddied lake, sir. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, sir.” –Alex, to Deltoid

“You needn’t take it any further, sir. You’ve proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I’ve learned me lesson, sir. I’ve seen now what I’ve never seen before. I’m cured! Praise God!” –Alex, during the application of the Ludovico technique

“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” –Chaplain

In the Korova Milkbar, Alex and his droogs are drinking their “milk plus something else,” laced “with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches,” wondering what to do that night. In the novel, the question, “What’s it going to be then, eh?” is repeatedly asked. The crimes they commit ultimately derive from boredom and sloth, a lack of purpose or direction in life. The boys also have too much freedom in their lives.

Excessive freedom, as Erich Fromm observed in Escape From Freedom, results in a sense of instability and unsureness, causing an anxiety that authoritarian rule would relieve one of. What are you supposed to do with yourself if you can do absolutely anything? A list of dos and don’ts provides a comforting structure, hence excessively free people (or, at least, people perceiving themselves as having too much freedom) tend to run back to forms of authority like fascism.

The violence of fascism can be symbolically seen in the droogs‘ crimes, as well as in their uniform-like outfits: in the novel, back tights, waistcoats with big shoulder-pads, “flip horrorshow boots for kicking,” and white cravats (pages 5-6); in the film, the iconic white outfits, black hats, codpieces, and black boots.

The ineffectual law enforcement of the government at the beginning of the story results in the droogs’ getting away with so much violence and rape; symbolically, this lax governance corresponds to a failed attempt at a left-libertarian society (Kubrick and other critics considered the society of his film to be initially like a failed socialism–the Russian-like nadsat symbolizes this sovietism, too, as does the pro-worker art that is defaced by graffiti).

In contrast, the later government’s use of the Ludovico technique on Alex, with its strict suppression of his criminal urges, symbolically suggests the rigidity and repression of fascism. The extreme left is not similar to the extreme right (as the horseshoe theory gets so absurdly wrong), but the one extreme dialectically phases into its opposite, as I’ve explained elsewhere.

The dialectic of freedom vs. restrictions is resolved with the idea that my right to swing out my arm, with my hand balled in a fist, ends where your face begins. Alex and his droogs, of course, have no respect for this resolution. Individual freedom to do whatever he wants is all that matters to Alex, even to the point of taking pleasure in hurting others.

Sadean delight in cruelty is shown in the film, not only with Alex and his droogs, but also with Billyboy and his droogs when they strip a beautiful “weepy young devotchka” naked and get ready to gang-rape her while a merry passage from Rossini‘s “Thieving Magpie” is heard in the soundtrack. This enjoyment in causing pain is especially evident during the “surprise visit,” when Alex gets ready to rape the “subversive” writer’s wife while singing “Singin’ In the Rain,” dancing, and slapping her and kicking her husband, forcing him to watch the rape.

In spite of how dreadful a human being Alex is, we nonetheless find ourselves liking and sympathizing with him, not just because he’s our “Friend and Humble Narrator,” but because he’s cultured and witty. His clever use of nadsat incorporates the archaisms of Elizabethan-era English, giving his already silver tongue an almost Shakespearean poetry. Then, of course, there’s his love of classical music–Beethoven in particular.

Normally, we stereotype punks as, for example, punk rockers; we look down on criminals as ‘low-life scumbags’; we think of sadists as brutish, unthinking monsters. That we can’t dismiss Alex in this way makes him all the more disturbing…for psychopaths are known for their dangerous charm. The juxtaposition of sadism with high culture is symbolic of the oppression of the ruling class. Nazis were art connoisseurs…though their reasons for liking or disliking this or that artwork were contemptible ones.

The sociopathic characters in the Marquis de Sade‘s explicit novels are cultured people in the upper classes: before and after their torture-laden orgies, they dine on sumptuous feasts, drink fine wine, wear beautiful 18th-century garments, and live in ornately decorated mansions. Sade’s satirical point in presenting his wicked characters in such finery was to allegorize the ruling class’s oppression of the people.

Alex is no aristocrat, but he has the narcissism of one. It shouldn’t be hard (pardon the expression) to know what he’s referring to in calling himself “Alexander the Large” (especially in the context of his raping the drunken ten-year-old “ptitsas” in his home while listening to Beethoven–page 39). As a pun on Alexander the Great, this moniker of Alex’s also embodies his egotism by comparing his assaults and rapes to the ancient Macedonian’s conquests and massacres. Alexander, ‘defender of men,’ defends individual freedom and culture by destroying those of other people; just as imperialism rationalizes its evil by claiming ‘to civilize the world.’

Alex has no illusions that what he’s doing is in any way moral, though. He knows his criminality is wrong; he does it anyway, because he enjoys it. Sade’s libertine characters also openly admit that they commit crimes, for criminal behaviour adds to their arousal. Deep down, we all like Alex because he dares to do what we’re too chicken to do.

We also have to consider Alex’s possible unconscious motives for committing heinous crimes. He’s obviously intelligent: why is he pressing his luck with the law? Even after Deltoid warns him that he’s getting dangerously close to being arrested (page 33), he still tempts fate…even to the point of antagonizing his fellow droogs (pages 25-27; 44-45), in whom he needs to have an unshakable trust. His wild rashness can’t just be reduced to youthful impetuosity.

Part of Alex’s unconscious is in conflict with his wish to be wild and free: part of him wants to be restricted. Recall Fromm’s analysis of the fear of freedom; people want a sense of structure, of where their place is in the world. Freedom from restrictions doesn’t often lead to a freedom to grow and fulfill one’s potential, to live in love and harmony with humanity. Freedom from, without the to following soon after, leaves a void.

Fascism and repression tend to fill that void. Fromm explains “the dialectic quality in this process of growing individuation. […] one side of the growing process of individuation is the growth of self-strength […] The other aspect of the process of individuation is growing aloneness. […] When one has become an individual, one stands alone and faces the world in all its perilous and overpowering aspects.

“Impulses arise to give up one’s individuality, to overcome the feeling of aloneness and powerlessness by completely submerging oneself in the world outside.” (Fromm, pages 28-29, his emphasis)

“We see that the process of growing human freedom has the same dialectic character that we have noticed in the process of individual growth. On the one hand it is a process of growing strength and integration, mastery of nature, growing power of human reason, and growing solidarity with other human beings. But on the other hand this growing individuation means growing isolation, insecurity, and thereby growing doubt concerning one’s own role in the universe, the meaning of one’s life, and with all that a growing feeling of one’s own powerlessness and insignificance as an individual.” (Fromm, pages 34-35)

Alex is smart enough to know that lashing out at his droogs will give the three of them motive for revenge. He’s been punished by the law before, though he’s “been out of the rookers of the millicents for a long time now” (Burgess, page 33); he has no reason to believe he’ll never get caught again, especially when he has to rely on three frienemies.

In prison, he has his structure, but no matter how much of the Bible he reads (which is just to be entertained by the violent parts), or how much advice he receives from the chaplain (Part Two, chapter 1), he still has no inclination to be good. In fact, Alex quickly tires of the physical restrictions he has around him, and mentally, he’s as free to be as wicked as ever; for prison overcrowding drives him to beat a new cellmate to death, or so is he blamed for it, anyway (Part Two, chapter 2). This, in the novel, is what causes him to be chosen to receive the Ludovico technique.

Despite what he says about wanting to be good (page 66), I’d say he only wants to change the nature of his restricted freedoms, from physical bonds to mental ones. So all of this switching from one kind of freedom/restriction dichotomy to another is just the sublation of the dialectical unity in opposition that Alex is trying to resolve.

Part of the contradiction of freedom vs. restriction is how one man’s exercise of such ‘freedom’ (licence, really) is another man’s bondage…to suffering. Alex’s freedom to beat up or rape his victims becomes their bondage to trauma. One opposite offsets the other; thus, they’re balanced in the Brahman of universal oneness.

When Alex has had the treatment turn him into “a clockwork orange,” that is, organic and natural-looking on the outside, but mechanical and inhuman on the inside, making him an automaton incapable of moral choice, he gets a karmic exchanging of the victim/victimizer roles, of enjoyer of freedom vs. victim of traumatic bondage.

From here on, we get the antithesis of all that we had from the beginning, and the opposites are paralleled especially in the movie. Instead of Alex and his droogs beating up a derelict, the derelict and his “droogs,” if you will, beat up clockwork Alex. Instead of him dumping Dim and Georgie into water, they–as corrupt cops–dump him in water (in the novel, Dim and Billyboy are the police who brutalize him–Part 3, chapter 3). Karma.

Instead of Alex terrorizing the “writer of subversive literature” (F. Alexander [another ‘defender of men’], played by Patrick Magee, who–in an interesting twist of irony–played the Marquis de Sade in the film version of Marat/Sade several years earlier) in his “HOME” and destroying his ‘Clockwork Orange’ writing, F. Alexander–Alex’s doppelgänger–sadistically terrorizes the boy by playing Beethoven’s Ninth (in the novel, it’s “the Symphony Number Three of the Danish veck Otto Skadelig”–page 130) and forcing him to hear it in a locked-up room, after the Ludovico technique has conditioned him to feel sick whenever hearing his beloved music. Karma, karma, and more cruel karma.

Instead of unconsciously trying to have himself incarcerated, Alex consciously tries to liberate himself from the hell of life, “the tortures of the damned” (in the novel, he even goes to the library to research how to kill himself painlessly–page 112).

Finally, he’s hospitalized instead of imprisoned, given “the best of treatment” instead of exposed to the tolchocking of cellmates, and had the Ludovico conditioning removed from him instead of put into his body. The self-serving government that made his body a concentration camp for his mind now gives him a job in exchange for forgiving them, so they can hope to be reelected. He’s “cured all right.”

Though the film excluded chapter 21, which the American editions of the novel had also excised until 1986; in a way, the final scene–of Alex fantasizing giving his grinning, willing bride [as I suspect she is] “the old in-out, in-out” in front of applauding onlookers (who, dressed formally, seem like wedding guests to me)–is the implied ending of the final chapter.

Eighteen years old now, and with a new trio of droogs, Alex is inspired by a conversation he has with his old droog Pete and his new wife (pages 145-146), and decides it’s time to grow up and give up on the life of crime. He ought to settle down and get married, too. Will his future son become a criminal, though?

“That’s what it’s going to be then, brothers…”

However lame this final chapter may be to readers who prefer licking their lips over dystopian writing with darker endings, it does make an important point about freedom: in choosing to give up on crime on his own initiative, Alex is demonstrating Fromm’s ideal about freedom to; Alex is going to use his freedom from restrictions, physical and mental, to be free to become a good, productive member of society.

And this is the final sublation of the contradiction of freedom vs. restriction: one freely chooses to restrict oneself from doing wrong to others. When I swing my fist, I stop myself from making it meet your face. Instead of a morally lax society that is too lenient on criminals, or one that’s repressively authoritarian, we have a society that understands the need to have a mix of freedoms and restrictions.

As Fromm explains, “submission is not the only way of avoiding aloneness and anxiety [resulting from excessive freedom]. The other way, the only one which is productive and does not end in an insoluble conflict, is that of spontaneous relationship to man and nature, a relationship that connects the individual with the world without eliminating his individuality. This kind of relationship–the foremost expressions of which are love and productive work–are rooted in the integration and strength of the total personality and are therefore subject to the very limits that exist for the growth of the self.” (Fromm, page 29, his emphasis)

So, the individual still is an individual, but one connected with the world. Limits exist, but for the growth of the self. This is that mix of freedoms and restrictions, the final synthesis of freedom vs. bondage. One isn’t merely free from evil, but free to do good. One is an orange, but sweet on the inside.

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, Penguin Books, London, 1962

Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1941

‘Creeps,’ an Erotic Horror Novel, Chapter Twenty-Four

[sexual content]

“Did you read the news in the paper today, Guy?” Thea asked him as she entered the kitchen with the newspaper.

“What’s up?” he asked after gulping down some orange juice.

“Ken Maynard and Ricardo Davis had to plead guilty on all the charges against them, including conspiracy to engage in human trafficking,” she said, then sat down across from him at the kitchen table. “Hey, don’t spill your cereal on the floor.”

“I won’t,” he said, scowling at her never-ending nagging. “So, they’re in jail now?”

“Yep. They’ve been sentenced.”

“I still remember all the confessions from the staff, how they were smiling while high on the Creeps drugs. And how they were frowning when they had to confirm those confessions once the drugs had worn off, and once the staff knew that Van Gorder and Bill Shavick had heard the sex slaves confirming it all, and once the authorities saw the video that recorded all of Mark’s criminal intentions.”

“Yeah, it’s so nice knowing the whole staff of Capitol is now behind bars, and investigations are being made of all the other Capitol branches, uncovering the same criminal scandal with the Creeps.”

“I’m glad they all got theirs,” Guy said, then shoveled some cereal into his mouth.

“Check this out,” she said, reading from the newspaper. “The so-called ‘Commodities,’ most of whom have nowhere else to go, were formerly either destitute or from impoverished countries, or from families that had betrayed them by selling them. So the government—which has also purged itself of the corrupt enablers of Capitol and put them in jail—has judged that the appropriate way to compensate the victims for their suffering is to renovate each Capitol building so thoroughly as to make the places unrecognizable for their former use, and make them new homes where the victims will be given free accommodation. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And what of Petunia? I guess she’s living there.”

“Presumably. You gonna go over there and apologize to her?”

“Apologize?”

“Yeah, for paying to rape her.”

“Thea?! What the fuck? Didn’t you already say I was a hero for helping to save all those people? Haven’t I atoned for my bad karma?”

“Guy, I’m very proud of you for what you helped me do.”

“That’s funny: I thought you helped me do it.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, I still think you should go talk to her about what you did in that VIP Room. Making her have sex with you under those circumstances is still rape.”

He sighed, then left the table, having finished his breakfast.

Around lunchtime, Guy went over to see Petunia, in her new room, which was all refurbished and given new furniture, including a bed, refrigerator, stove, TV, and sofa. She opened the door, and they stared at each other for a minute before speaking.

She was in a T-shirt and jeans, as was he.

“Long time no see,” he said. “How is everything?”

“Much better, thanks to you and Thea,” Petunia said. “Come in.”

They sat on the sofa. She looked over at him, but he, frowning, or trying to smile, just stared down at his twitching hands.

“It really has been a while,” she said. “Too long, really, since you last saw me.”

“Well,…I saw a little too much of you the last few times.”

“I don’t mind.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “You know, this room was actually the VIP room we’d fucked in the first time.”

“Really?” he asked with a guilty smile.

“Yeah. I kinda like it, actually, except for it being a little small. I feel a little squished in here. Though squished in here is a lot better than squished in those tunnels we tried to escape through.”

“Yeah, I read about that problem you all had in the paper.”

“I’m glad I’ll never have to do that again.”

“I…really feel awful about what I did here, Petunia…”

“Oh, Guy. It’s OK.”

“No, it’s not OK. I took advantage of you. I treated you like a whore.” He was gulping back sobs; his eyes were getting wet. “And I always knew…you were better than that.”

“Mark LeSaffre made me into a whore. Of all the men who paid to have me, you were the one I was happy to satisfy.”

“But I was no better than they were,” Guy sobbed.

“Yes, you were. Of course you were. You saved me, Guy. You and Thea saved me, and you saved all the other sex slaves. When you first found me in Capitol, sure I was uncomfortable, under my fake smiling, the smiling those Creeps were making me do, but I was uneasy only because I was worried you thought my slutty smiles were real. But now I’m glad you saw me there, because if you hadn’t, no one would have saved us.”

“Yeah, I guess. I just wish I hadn’t fucked you.”

“I don’t mind that. You were better than all the other Johns who had me.”

“How was I better? In having you, didn’t I rape you?”

“Not in my opinion,” she said.

“How so?” he asked.

“Because of all the guys who had me, you were always the one I wanted to have sex with.”

“Why me? What’s so appealing about me? I’m a loser.”

“Guy, you’re a hero. You saved all of us. I’ve been so hot for you, ever since I realized you’d done that.”

“Well, maybe now, but how was I hot before that happened?”

“Remember when I was sharing that apartment with Thea, and you used to come over and visit, to talk to her about, well, whatever? I saw you smiling at me, then you’d look away, all shy, whenever I looked back and smiled at you. You were such a cutie…you still are. I was always waiting for you to ask me out. I kinda liked your shyness, though: it was a nice change from all the aggressive guys who always bothered me.”

“Was I any less aggressive when I screwed you in Capitol?”

“Yeah, you were just as aggressive then, but that wasn’t the real you, just as me, acting like a happy whore, wasn’t the real me. I was happy to have sex with you, but not to be a slut: because deep down, I like you. I’ve always liked you.”

“Really? Pretty girls never like me. They like guys with, you know, cars and money and stuff.”

“Not all girls. I used to be like that, but after my ex slapped me around enough times, I left him in Vancouver, and came all the way over here, to Mississauga, to get away from him, and from my family, who only ever wanted to make me into something they wanted, not the real me.”

“Why didn’t you get another guy right away? You’re pretty enough.”

“I was hoping you’d be that guy. You’re sweet enough.” Then she pouted and whined, “But you never asked me out.” She playfully slapped his arm.

“You could have asked me out.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m a little too traditional for my own good.”

“So, you liked having sex with me?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I guess I have to demonstrate.” She pulled off her shirt.

“Wait. Uh…” He started getting off the sofa.

“What’s the problem?” she, now in her pink bra, asked. “You’ve already seen all of me. How is it different now?” She unzipped her pants and pulled them down.

“I’m sorry. I do wanna do it with you; it’s just that…”

“What?” She was standing before him in only her bra and panties.

“Remember when you said, when we fucked in Capitol, it wasn’t the real you, and it wasn’t the real me? That felt…safer.”

“But underneath the false me, the true me still liked it.”

She took off her bra.

“Why did you like it? I mean, with the false me?”

“Because,” she said, pulling down her panties and kicking them aside, “I knew that, deep down under your false self, the lecher who leered at my body and checked me out, as naked then as I am now, your real self was still there, that sweet, shy boy who used to visit Thea in our old place, who came to visit me as much as to visit her.”

“Oh, no. I came to see you…much more than to see her. I actually prefer staying away from her. She kind of annoys me. She’s a nag. Seeing my sister, that was just excuses to see you.”

“Then let’s fuck.”

“I want to…but I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“That you won’t like me—the real me, I mean, when you know all about the real me.”

“We’re all scared of that, Guy. But we try to love each other anyway, don’t we? And the more of the real you that I know, the more I’ll love you.” She unzipped his pants.

He tried to stop her from pulling them down.

“Why don’t I get to see you? You got to see all of me, and I don’t get to see you? That hardly seems fair.”

“Yeah, but I look ugly nude. You have a beautiful body.”

“I don’t believe you’re ugly nude, Guy. And I don’t care if I see physical imperfections. I love you as you are.”

He finally allowed her to undress him. Both nude, they got on the bed. He lay on top of her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He pushed his cock against her wet vaginal opening, gently coaxing his way in. She put her arms around him.

As he slid inside her, she looked up into his eyes; but his eyes were still avoiding hers. She held his face in her hands as he pushed in further, aiming his face straight down at hers, to see her wide-open eyes and mouth.

He got all the way in, getting a squeal from her.

Still, as he moved in and out, he wouldn’t look in her eyes.

“Why…won’t you…look at me?” she asked in panting words. “Oh!”

“I’m…still ashamed,” he moaned. “I remember…our first time.”

“I liked it…I like it now…I love you, Guy…You saved me.”

“Yeah, I did…I saved you all…the past…is over. Ah!”

“Yes…you’re my hero…I love you.”

“I love you, too, Petunia. Oh!”

“This is…the real you, Guy…Ah!”

“And I’m…making love…to the real…Petunia. Oh!”

“I’m…almost there! Ah!” She came.

“Me, too…But without…a condom…” He came. “Oh!”

“It’s OK,” she said. “The Creeps they gave me…ensured I’d…never get pregnant.”

“Really?” he panted.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “And I don’t…wanna have kids, ever. Now, your come in me…That’s a Creep…I’ll gladly take…inside my body.”

**************************

They got dressed and went outside.

Holding hands, they walked on the sidewalk beside the building that had once been Capitol. Now the sign in front said Community. It was a sunny afternoon.

“It’s so nice to be able to go outside again,” she said, taking in a deep breath of fresh spring air.

“Yeah,” he said. “It must have been awful being cooped up in there.”

“Hey!” a woman’s voice called out to them. They looked back at her as she ran up to them. It was Arunny. Sobbing, she threw her arms around Guy. “I just wanted to say…thank you…for saving all of us.” Her tears were soaking his shirt by his left shoulder.

“Hey, anytime,” he said. Both he and Petunia exchanged hugs with Arunny.

After letting go of him, she looked deep in his face with her soaking wet eyes. She kept looking at him with those grateful eyes for several more seconds, then turned around while still looking at him.

“Thank you,” she said again, and ran off in the other direction.

Now, a tear ran down Guy’s cheek, as well as one down Petunia’s, as they watched Arunny continue running away, back to the Community building.

They turned around and resumed their walk.

As they continued walking further and further away from the building, they came by a neighbourhood, and someone’s house, which had a garden in the front. She stopped at it.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, standing behind her. “I remember that garden you used to take care of back when you were living with Thea.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Those were happy days. I should try to set up a garden in back of the Community building sometime soon.”

“And I can visit you there regularly, as I did in Thea’s old apartment.”

“That’d be nice. It would bring back two pleasant memories.”

“Two?”

“Yeah. You seeing me in the old apartment, and you seeing all of me in the VIP room, which is now a much more important person’s room, with you as a visitor.”

They kissed.

She looked down at the garden soil. She started at the sight of a few worms crawling out of the dirt.

It’s OK, it’s OK, she thought; they aren’t glowing.

THE END

‘Creeps,’ an Erotic Horror Novel, Chapter Twenty-Three

It was almost 2:00, and Thea was standing at the front door of Capitol. Two young men came to the door. Thea stopped them.

“Sorry,” she said in her vocal fry. “We’re temporarily closed. Repairs.”

“What the fuck!” one of them said.

“Come back at five,” she said. “We re-open then.”

“Fuckin’ bullshit!” the other man said as they stormed off.

Thea’s cellphone rang. “Hello?” she said in her normal voice.

“Is Mark back yet?” Guy asked.

“No,” she said. “All the staff are in the staff room, though.”

“Do you think Mark called Ricardo and found out the meeting is fake?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s a chance we have to take. I’m locking the front doors and then coming over to you. Are the green Creeps set?”

“Yes. Everything’s set. It’s all or nothing. Petunia and all the others are in the sleeping room, about to wake up from their nap.”

“I’ll be with you in five minutes. Bye.” They hung up.

Thea went over to the staff room, looking inside and noting all the staff were there.

Where is Mark? she wondered; He should be here by now. Oh, God, please don’t let Mark suspect anything. That ‘policy changes’ excuse coming out of the blue was an awkward idea.

He came with his men in the back door, as Thea expected him to. She could hear them approaching in the hall.

“Cameron?” Mark called out. “Where are you?”

“By the staff room, Mark,” she said. Shit, she thought; Forgot my man voice again. Then in her vocal fry: “I assume you got my text about the staff meeting.” He nodded with a smirk as he came nearer to her. “Good. Shall we go in?”

“In a minute, Cameron,” he said with a smile suggesting he knew nothing. “Before we go in, let’s go in this room over here for a second.” Mark opened the door, and he and his men went in.

“OK,” she rasped, making sure he didn’t see her lock the staff room door behind her. “But Ricardo and Ken will want to start right away. We’ll have to make this quick.” She went in the other room, trying not to shake.

“Oh, let me worry about Ricardo and Ken,” Mark said, standing by the door.

Mark closed it when she was right between his men in the room. “Boys, grab her.”

They took Thea by the arms and held her struggling body on a chair. Mark tossed them a pair of handcuffs, which they put on her, the chain wrapped behind one of the thin poles making up the back of the chair.

“Mark, what are you doing?” she shouted as she kept struggling, her first two words normal, her last three in vocal fry.

“Enough with the fake man voice, Thea Cummings,” Mark said, grabbing her fake beard and ripping it off.

“Oww!” she screamed. “You bastard! You won’t get away with this! The police are coming, with the Minister of…”

“They’re all on my side, Thea,” Mark said. “You and ‘Jack’, or Guy Cummings, your kid brother, really, were plotting to take over and expose our business to the very people we pay to stay on our side.”

“Not all of them can be bought,” she said. “We know…”

“Did you know we had tech implanted in you while you were screwing—or pretending to screw—Petunia, the girl you’re trying to rescue? We put it in Guy, too. When Petunia was with you, and when his Commodity was with him, they rubbed their fingers in your ears, and tiny Creeps slipped in, fixing tech to your ears, brains, and even eyes. We could then monitor and record everything you see and hear, including your conspiratorial conversations.”

“You might have stopped me, but my brother has the app to put green Creeps in the staff. He’ll make them confess to the cop we know who’ll help us expose you.”

His men were using rope they had on them to tie her ankles to the chair legs.

Mark took out his cellphone and called Guy.

“Guy Cummings,” he said. “We ripped the fake beard off your sister. You haven’t sent those green Creeps into my staff room yet, have you?”

“Not yet, but I will if you hurt her,” Guy said.

“Oh, you were going to do that anyway,” Mark said. “So I’m gonna make this even more difficult for you. If you send out those green Creeps, I’ll sic the yellow ones you helped me program on all the Commodities in the sleeping room.”

“Go ahead,” Guy said. “I don’t care.”

“They’ll kill Petunia LeBar, too.”

Guy paused.

“I don’t care. Do it. I’m drugging your staff to help me, and the cops are coming now, as we speak.”

“And I’ll rape your sister. Here, I’ll let her talk to you, so you know my boys and I really have her.” Mark put the phone to her face.

“Go through with it, Guy,” she said. “Send out the green Creeps. I’m…” Mark undid her pants and pulled them down. “I’ll be brave.”

Mark chuckled at her pink panties, then began to unbutton her shirt.

“Do it, Guy!” she shouted. “Don’t worry about me. Don’t let these bastards stop you.”

Mark took the phone back from her. “Guy,” he said into it, “Three of us, me and my bodyguards, are gonna gang-rape your sister. In fact, to help us get nice and hard, we’re gonna use the orange Creeps on ourselves.”

Guy formed an enigmatic smile at that last sentence.

“She’ll get one up her pussy, too, so she can get nice and wet, like a good little bitch,” Mark said, then slapped Thea hard.

“Ah! You fucking bastard!” she shouted.

Guy thought, Oh, shit. The orange Creeps in her? Since when did he start using them on the pussy he fucks?

“Go find him, you two,” Mark told his men, who went out of the room seconds after. “As for me, I’ll keep little Thea here entertained. Normally I like to fuck my bitches raw. It’s the Sadean sadist in me, to put a girl’s pussy in pain. But I’d like you to enjoy this fuck, so it’ll make you feel like a slut, and traumatize you better.” He chuckled. He had her shirt undone all the way down, then he pulled it wide open to see her pink bra. A tight strap went around her to flatten her chest. He removed it. “Gee, they’re rather small to need to be strapped down, Thea.”

She spat on him.

He wiped it off his face, then ogled her bra. “So pretty in pink.”

“Fuck you!”

“Well actually, it’s gonna be the other way around, but first—“ he dialed his phone—“one thing I have to do.”

Dino answered his ringing phone as he and Leo approached the stairs. “Yeah, Boss?”

“Dino, if you see any cops or government people at the front door, take them to Room Five, make them some coffee, and tell them to wait for me. If they aren’t our people, quietly lock them in the room, so they don’t know. If they find out they’re locked in later, the door will be too strong for them to break down.”

“Will do, Boss,” Dino said, then hung up. He and Leo went downstairs and to the front doors, where Officer Van Gorder and Bill Shavick, the Minister of Justice, were banging on the door. “Thea must’ve locked the door. C’mon, Leo.”

Dino opened the door.

“You people are closed?” Bill asked. “I thought you opened at two. That’s what it says on the door.”

“We have a bit of a situation at the moment,” Dino said. “Why don’t you come with us?” He led Bill and the policewoman into Room Five. “Have a seat. There’s coffee over there. Help yourself. We’ll be right back after we’ve fixed this problem. Just wait.” He and Leo walked out and closed the door. Dino turned his key in the lock with impressive silence, putting his finger to his mouth to ensure that Leo wouldn’t say anything.

As they hurried off to find Guy, Leo asked, “Why’d you lock them in? They could get us all in trouble.”

“They could get us in even bigger trouble if they find out what we’re gonna do with Guy and Thea,” Gino said. “I’ll bet ‘Jack’ is in the Regulating Room. Let’s look there first.” They went back up the stairs to the second floor.

As they went down a hall, around the corner of which was the one leading to the Regulating Room, they heard footsteps. Dino gestured to Leo to stop and wait at the corner for whoever was about to come around.

Guy had just clicked his phone to make the green Creeps swarm into the staff room. He put his phone in his pocket and went around the corner.

Leo grabbed him, and Dino punched him hard in the face. Dino then punched him in the gut. Before Guy could shout for help, Leo cupped his hand around Guy’s mouth, and they dragged his struggling body over to the room with Mark and Thea.

They could all hear the staff screaming and fidgeting as the green Creeps slithered up their faces, and into their ears and noses. Mark wanted to turn the Creeps off, but he needed Guy’s phone to do it, for Guy had changed the access code to control the green Creeps. As much as they wanted to go into the staff room and help the staff, Dino and Leo didn’t dare, for fear of getting green Creeps in themselves.

Dino and Leo got Guy into the room, where Thea had her panties pulled down to her ankles, and her bra undone to expose her small breasts. They threw Guy against the wall and closed the door.

“Bill Shavick and some female cop are locked in Room Five, Boss,” Dino said.

“If they know they’re locked in, we’ll have some explaining to do,” Mark said. “Never mind, at least they’re not gonna hear what’s going on up here. It’s too late to turn off the green Creeps with Guy’s phone, but we can get our revenge on him, by hurting the people he loves.”

Leo punched Guy as he tried to get up.

“And this is how I’m going to hurt him,” Mark said, getting out his phone and clicking on his Creeps app. “Good. Guy didn’t change the access code to the yellow or orange Creeps, as he had the green ones. Dino, turn on the TV. I want Guy to watch Petunia and all the other Commodities die, all the ones he’d hoped to save.” Dino turned on the wall-mounted TV in the corner of the room.

“You’re willing to kill off all your sources of profit?” Guy asked, wiping the blood off his mouth.

“Thought I was bluffing, eh?” Mark said. “I can replace all of them like that.” Mark snapped his fingers, hardly bothering to look up at the TV. All the Commodities were screaming on the TV as a swarm of yellow Creeps crawled onto their bodies. They frantically tried to wipe them off their arms and legs, but so many more replaced the ones wiped off that self-defence was futile. “I have people all over the world recruiting new Commodities. Families in Africa, India, Cambodia, Latin America…poor families actually sell me their 18-year-old daughters, sometimes sons, too. I pay them well, they kiss their kids goodbye forever.”

“Exploitative bastard,” Thea said.

“We’re gonna exploit you in a minute,” Dino said.

“I’m not so sure, Boss,” Leo said. “She’s awfully hairy. Almost no tits. Ugly body. Who’d wanna fuck that?”

“Fuck you!” Guy said, fiddling with his phone behind his back while lying on the floor. “I bet your mother is uglier.”

Leo kicked him in the gut.

“That’s why we use orange Creeps, Leo,” Mark said. “They give us the help we need when the woman’s body doesn’t inspire a hard-on.” He clicked an app to summon three Creeps.

“I’ll bet you’re just impotent,” Thea said.

Mark slapped her. “Boys, untie her legs, un-handcuff her, and lay her on the floor.”

As they were doing that, Mark looked up at the screen.

“The screaming stopped,” he said. “They should be burning up inside by now. Wait…what the bloody hell? They’re fucking!”

Guy grinned.

On the TV screen, instead of several dozen naked sex slaves writhing and squirming in agony from incendiary tech burning up their internal organs, they were all paired up in a huge orgy. Guy could see Petunia sucking a man’s dick, while another man was fucking her doggie-style. Arunny was sucking Petunia’s left tit while a third man was fucking her doggie-style, too. Since most of the lovers were women, there was a lot of lesbian sex to be seen.

“What’s the use of a revolution without common copulation?” Guy said, mocking Mark’s incorrect quote of the Marat/Sade. “You must have clicked the wrong icon on your phone for them, Mark. Clicked ‘orange’ instead of ‘yellow’.” He laughed, hoping Mark would believe him.

Mark looked back at the TV screen. Did I click the wrong icon, in my anger and absent-mindedness? he wondered. I thought I saw yellow Creeps on the TV screen. The room they’re fucking in is dark, so it isn’t easy to see clearly. Were they yellow, or orange? I’m getting sloppy.

“Well, I’ll just have to hurt you and Thea more directly,” Mark said. Three orange Creeps slithered under the door crack and into the room. Definitely orange, he thought as he saw them crawling nearer. I’ve gotta be more careful. He, Dino, and Leo pulled down their pants and underwear. “We were going to have orange Creeps for you and Thea, but now I think we’ll just fuck you two raw, as we normally like our bitches. Only orange Creeps for us three.”

Guy breathed an enigmatic sigh of relief at that last sentence.

The Creeps crawled up the rapists’ legs. Guy smiled.

“You’re taking those up the ass?” Thea asked, sneering.

“Why not?” Dino said in a shaky voice, smiling and shivering as the Creep went into his rectum. “We have…kinky…tastes.”

“Yeah,” Leo moaned. “They feel…good…up the ass. Oh!”

“Leo’s…bi…by the way,” Mark said, also shaking. “He…likes you, Guy. Ooh!”

Leo grabbed Guy and got ready to fuck his ass.

Guy struggled as Leo was undoing his pants, but Leo punched him in the gut. Guy’s pants and underwear were pulled down to his ankles. Leo knelt behind him.

“We’re gonna…rape you both, then…kill you,” Mark said, shaking as he got on top of Thea, Dino holding her for him. “Then we’ll…kill that cop…and Shavick…in Room Five. Stop squirming!”

“You can’t kill everyone,” Thea said as she tried to get free of Dino’s grip and get Mark off of her. “Someone will find out and stop you!”

“I own…the cops…and government. I just…have to know…their price…Wait, this doesn’t feel right…I’m hot inside.”

“Not the kind of hot you were expecting, eh, Mark?” Guy said, smiling and noting the discomfort in Leo’s face. “Or you, Leo?”

“I-I’m burning, Boss,” Leo said. “Aah!” He fell on Guy.

“Me, too,” Dino said. “What’s in these Creeps? Unh!”

As Mark lay screaming and shaking on top of Thea, who was now more frantically trying to get him and Dino off of her, he was clicking icons on his phone.

“Remember those yellow and orange Creeps that got mixed up, Mark?” Guy said, finally getting Leo off of him. “I never sent them back to the supplier. I thought you and your thugs here would want to rape a few Commodities today, so I set up those Creeps at the last minute today, so your cellphone app would summon them.”

“I know,” Mark gasped. “I should’ve…figured it out…when I saw…all the Commodities…fucking on the TV. Ah!”

“As I said, I was hoping you’d use them earlier,” Guy said. “Before the meeting. Your monthly lunchtime fuck, with a Commodity as raw as we’d have been here now.”

“I just summoned…all the orange Creeps…to come here,” Mark grunted. “You won’t be ‘raw’…if you know…what I mean. Ah!” He fell to the side, shaking and groaning for a few more seconds before dying. Dino then dropped down dead, falling on top of Thea. She shoved him off.

“Oh, fuck!” Guy shouted as he looked at the door and heard the familiar screeching.

An army of orange Creeps was crawling under the door, and straight at Guy and Thea, who were only now pulling their pants up. Before they could do them up, Creeps were already on their thighs, crawling on their bare skin, racing for their anuses and Thea’s vagina.

“Oh, God! Guy!” Thea screamed. “They’re in me! They move so fast! Aah!” They were crawling up to her face.

Guy was shaking from two that were already wiggling up his rectum. He raced to get Mark’s phone.

“Can you…shut them off?” she asked, shaking all over.

“Yeah,” he said in a tremulous voice. “I even know…how to get…into Mark’s phone.” Guy tried desperately to control his shaking body, and especially his hand, to touch the right numbers on the screen of Mark’s phone to access the app. Guy traced a swastika along the numbers 3-2-5-8-7, then 1-4-5-6-9.

“How…do you know?” she asked, flailing her arms and legs, keeping her mouth closed tight, while Creeps were nearing her ears and nostrils.

“I watched him…behind his back,” Guy said, accessing Orange Creeps, then Disable.

All the Creeps lost their orange glow, just like Christmas lights being switched off; and they stopped moving, like insects on a farmer’s field sprayed with insecticide.

Guy’s and Thea’s bodies stopped jerking about. Guy dropped on the floor beside his sister. The immobilized Creeps on their faces and bodies fell off. They lay there for a few minutes, panting, trembling, and waiting for their heart rates to slow down.

Finally, Thea spoke: “Are the outer coverings of these Creeps going to melt inside us, causing the burning?”

“No,” Guy said, getting up. “The programming is supposed to make the incendiary content inside melt the outer coating, then burn you. I turned off the program, so we’ll be safe. If the coatings had melted, we’d be feeling it by now.”

Thea got up, and they both did up their pants.

“So, to get these things out, we’ll have to shit them out?” she asked as she did up her bra and shirt.

“Exactly.”

They looked down at the bodies of Mark, Dino, and Leo. Guy got the key off of Dino.

“Bastards,” she said, kicking Mark’s corpse. Blood gushed out of his mouth. “Eww. We’d better go get Van Gorder and Shavick.”

They rushed out of the room, then looked in the door window to the staff room: all the staff were either standing, seated, or lying on the floor, rocking or fidgeting, their eyes agape and staring in a daze.

“We need to bring Van Gorder and Shavick in there right away,” Guy said, “while the green Creep drug is still at its most potent point, to get them all to confess the truth.”

“You really think it’ll work?” she asked as they hurried down the hall to the stairs.

“Yes,” he said as they went down. “Sodium Pentothal is mixed into it; it’s like a truth serum. Besides, when Petunia and the others come down off that aphrodisiac, horny high they’re on, we can get them to confirm the truth about Capitol.”

“I’m proud of you, Guy,” she said. “You’ve proven what a good guy you are.” They grinned at each other.

On the first floor now, they could hear banging on a door. They raced over to Room Five, and Guy unlocked the door.

“Why were we locked in here?” Shavick asked.

“Because Mark didn’t want you to know that he just tried to kill us,” Guy said. “He ended up killing himself.”

“I told you he was crooked,” Officer Van Gorder said.

“C’mon,” Thea said. “Let’s go up to the second floor.”

They all ran up the stairs and down the hall, much of which had an army of immobile orange Creeps on it, to the staff room. When Van Gorder and Shavick looked through the door window and saw the dazed staff, Guy got out his cellphone, clicked on the app controlling the still-crawling green Creeps that hadn’t yet crawled inside anyone, and turned them off. They lost their glow, and now lay as still and dull in colour as the orange ones in the other room.

“Luckily, the door to the staff room closes tight enough to seal off any possibility for the Creeps to crawl outside,” Guy said. “Unlike the orange Creeps that were crawling into this other room.” He opened the door, showing the corpses of Mark, Dino, and Leo.

Van Gorder and Shavick gasped at the sight of the bodies, then winced at their half-nakedness.

“You said they killed themselves,” the policewoman said.

“Yeah,” Thea said. “That’s why their pants are down. They let the orange Creeps crawl up their asses.”

“Why?” Shavick asked. “Why kill themselves like that?”

“They weren’t trying to kill themselves,” Guy said. “Normally, orange Creeps are for getting the sex slaves ready for sex. These three wanted to get themselves horny—“

“So they could rape us,” Thea said. “Then they’d kill us.”

“Luckily, I had a box of these orange Creeps which had mistakenly been equipped with incendiary content meant for yellow Creeps, and vice versa, as we’ll see in the room where the sex slaves are kept to sleep at night. Mark used these wrong ones on himself and his two bodyguards, and so they killed themselves accidentally.”

“Sorry,” Shavick said, wincing and shaking his head in confusion. “Orange Creeps? Yellow Creeps? What are you talking about? All these things on the floor?”

“Yeah,” Guy said. “We’ll explain everything in time.”

“Let’s go to the sleeping area,” Thea said. “Mark used the wrong yellow Creeps on them, thinking he was going to kill them in revenge for our exposing his criminal business.” They were hurrying over to the sleeping area. “Again, lucky for us, Guy tricked Mark with the switching of the colours,” she continued, as they reached the sleeping area and looked through the door window, “and instead of killing the sex slaves, Mark caused them to do this.”

“What the hell?” Shavick said as he watched the naked women and men continue their orgy. “It’s like a porno film.” He chuckled; his and Van Gorder’s eyes looked away.

“Yeah,” Guy said, clicking his cellphone to turn off the yellow Creeps, of which the few still lying on the floor became immobile, no longer glowing. “We’ll have to wait a few hours for them to come down from their horny high. Then they’ll be able to tell you what’s really been going on here.”

“Do they have any clothes?” Officer Van Gorder asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Thea said. “There’s a locker room on the far side of the room, where all their clothes are kept. That door in the right corner leads to it.”

“It’s locked, but I have the key,” Guy said. “When they all come back to normal in a few hours, we’ll go in and get their clothes for them. But for now, let them indulge themselves, I guess.” He chuckled. “They aren’t hurting each other.”

“It seems to be the best sex they’ve all had in a long time,” Shavick said. All four of them laughed.

Is my sister Mary in there, in that orgy? Van Gorder wondered as she tried to find her among all the gyrating flesh. I don’t see her anywhere. Oh, well. I’ll try to find her later.

“In the meantime, let’s all go back to the staff room, and get confessions from the staff,” Guy said as they all started walking back there. “As I told you before, Officer, the green Creeps act as a kind of truth serum, a pacifier that will make them perfectly cooperative. I also want to demonstrate, in the Regulating Room, how we can make them say anything we want. That’s how Mark controlled them.”

Analysis of ‘Three Friends’

Three Friends is a concept album by Gentle Giant, released in 1972. At this time, the band was a sextet, with saxophonist/singer Phil Shulman playing beside his younger brothers, Derek (vocals) and Ray (bass, violin, acoustic guitar, backing vocals); original drummer Martin Smith was replaced by Malcolm Mortimore, who played only on this Gentle Giant album before being replaced in turn by drummer/tuned percussionist/singer John Weathers, who would stay with the band until their breakup in 1980.

This album is not as dissonant or complex as the other Gentle Giant albums, and I say this in full knowledge of how they abandoned progressive rock in the late 70s in an abortive attempt to become more radio-friendly. Put another way, I don’t consider their attempt at going pop to be genuine Gentle Giant…and I don’t think mine is a minority opinion. The profit motive ruins art by forcing it to conform to trends.

The outer front album cover shows three boys, sharing a similar whitish-blue-purple colour for their bodies, sitting and facing each other, with a seagull in the middle; the back cover shows the three boys with their backs to each other, their colours now different (reddish-white, greenish-white, and purplish-white), and the seagull flying away. The front cover thus suggests their similar nature at first as boys, enjoying each other’s company by the sea, an image I’ve elsewhere associated with the highest peace; this then changes, on the back cover, to their growing different from each other, and thus alienated, with the memory of their togetherness by the sea having flown away, like the seagull.

The inner sleeve shows black and white drawings of the boys at school, with their strict, authoritarian teacher, their blissful memories together hearing an old brass band, and playing with kites on the beach, with the seagulls flying nearby. Then, we see each of them as men in their respective career choices: a wealthy businessman in his coat and hat looking at his nice, expensive house and car; a construction worker with his pickaxe; and an artist in his (basement?) studio with his drawings. The three men are facing away from us, for they are as alienated from us and the rest of the world as they are from each other.

The six songs of the album tell the story of these three boys, whose childhood friendship ended with them as men going their separate ways–a worker, a painter, and a businessman. This story can thus be seen to be an allegory of how class conflict causes alienation among people who, except for this class conflict, would be close and happy together.

Here is a link to all the lyrics on the album.

The first song, “Prologue,” sets the tone for the album by presenting a precis of the story in the lyrics, and by creating a dark mood in the music. A snare drum roll by Mortimore leads into a mildly dissonant opening, with Kerry Minnear‘s organ, Gary Green‘s guitar, and Ray’s bass; these three are playing in 6/8 time while Mortimore is drumming a cross-rhythm in 4/4.

Next comes a dark theme, the main one of the song, played on Ray’s fuzz bass, Green’s guitar, and Minnear’s Minimoog. Phil joins them on baritone sax, then sings the lead vocal, with a backing vocal by Minnear, singing contrapuntal melodies that are independent of each other, and reminding us of the independent voices of a polyphonic Renaissance madrigal, already a staple of Gentle Giant’s music.

Phil sings of how the boys’ friendship shared all the joys and sadness that any childhood relationship would have. “But fate and skill and chances” would eventually separate the boys, not just geographically, but also in terms of class, most crucially. As Phil and Minnear are singing, we hear Ray’s sad notes plucked on a 12-string acoustic guitar in the background.

“They tell their tales to justify,” that is, justify why they have had to go their separate ways; for, in spite of how, deep down in their unconscious, they’d much rather be together again, as adults they are in deep denial of how empty their lives have become. “Skill” separates them, for their differing skills (or lack of them) result in their going either higher or lower in terms of social class, the “chances” being their differing economic opportunities.

“Schooldays” is my personal favourite song on the album, for it is the richest in melody and harmony, in my opinion. It opens with a playful melody on Minnear’s vibraphone and Green’s jazz-toned guitar. It suggests the joyful, spontaneous energy of children running around, laughing, and playing together. Minnear and Phil sing in reminiscence of the happy time the boys shared, one voice following the other, as one boy chasing the other in play.

Each of the three men, in his dreams or internal monologues, has moments remembering his Edenic childhood; for only in their unconscious minds, or their private thoughts, would they allow such idyllic moments to be experienced. “Was it real, or did we dream? The days of children gone,” young Calvin Shulman (Ray’s son) sings as Minnear sings of the boys together with their ice cream on the beach, or hearing the brass band play.

The childlike innocence of the first half of the song gives way to a dark melancholy in Minnear’s pounding piano chords, based on the tritone interval (the diabolus in musica), suggesting the loss of that Edenic innocence as childhood naïveté acquires devilish knowledge in the authoritarian setting of school. The bitonality between these dark piano chords and the simultaneously playing, but also fading-out instrumentation of the previous “How long is ever,…” section also emphasizes the conflict between childhood innocence and adult experience.

The strict, Yahweh-like teacher wants obedient, unquestioning pupils who get all their homework assignments done on time. One suspects that the boy who thinks “it’s worth the pain to go out when [he] want[s]” will become an underachieving student who, when he becomes a man, will be…

“Working All Day” begins with Green playing a guitar part whose tape recording is slowed down, the discordant lowering of pitch suggesting how the first of the three friends has gone down in social rank, and how discordant the resulting class conflict feels. Indeed, since he’s a member of the working class, the painful contradiction between him and the bourgeoisie will be most keenly felt of all three men.

“Digging up the roads,” he has to do the most menial of labour to live. As miserable as he is, though, he’s often in denial of that misery, for he gets his money to “spend it where [he] like[s],” and “money buys escape” (drinking and partying, presumably), so he’s “got no regrets,” apparently. This denial of discontent is just as evident in the other two friends, as we’ll soon see.

The guitar- and sax-driven main riff reflects the meat-and-potatoes life of the working class, a strong contrast to the jazzy playfulness of “Schooldays,” and the Baroque lushness of the first part of “Peel the Paint.” The rock-oriented voice of Derek is thus most appropriate for “Working All Day.”

“Papa was rough. He didn’t care for learning. Hell, life is tough.” Either Papa was “rough” in the sense of unrefined, or “rough” in the sense of beating the boy, or both. In any case, the first friend wasn’t encouraged to be ambitious, hence he’s a worker.

The bitterness he feels over his life’s disappointments causes him not to believe in socialist ideas about equality, so one assumes he isn’t in a union; from this, we can assume that “working all day” means working more than eight hours a day for him.

He does all the work, “the boss gets all the money. Life ain’t just.” Without a union to help him fight for his rights (and this at a time, in the 1970s, when unions were at their strongest), “who can [he] trust?” The dissonance of the background instrumentation at the end of each verse symbolically reinforces the sense of class conflict, the contradiction between the interests of the boss and those of the overworked, underpaid workers.

Since the painter, whose story is sung by Phil during the first half of “Peel the Paint,” is “free from the start” and “thinks he has won a place in the sun, free from the worries and the ways of everyone,” it seems reasonable to assume that he isn’t the stereotypical starving artist. I’m guessing that this second of the three friends has achieved a moderate level of success, though “high in the air, his dreams are there,” as he hopes for greater financial success.

Since the first friend is working class and the third friend is among the upper classes, and since all three friends have gone “from class to class” (as we hear in the title track), that is, separated from each other in terms of social class, it is safe to assume that the artist occupies the remaining section of the social ladder–the middle class.

He fancies himself a creator of great art, of the sort that will be remembered among the masterpieces of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Vermeer; hence, in the background instrumentation we hear Ray plucking violin pizzicatos behind Phil’s singing, then after we hear Phil sing “colour the brush,” we hear a lavish pastiche of Baroque music with Ray bowing harmonized violin overdubs. This Baroque/Rococo parody suggests the artist’s snobbish pretensions.

The contrast between Phil’s gentle singing of “colour the brush” (i.e., put on the paint, and hide yourself), as against Derek’s aggressive singing of “peel the paint” (i.e., take off the paint, and show who you really are) symbolizes the artist’s pretence of artistry against the moral imperative to reveal the ugly truth, that the artist has compromised his integrity for money. Putting on the paint, versus taking it off, is like a prostitute painting her face with bright colours of makeup (as if pretending to like what she does), versus removing it and showing her unhappy self.

The artist imagines himself to be refined, but underneath he’s “the same old savage beast,” whose savagery is reflected in the change from the fancy first half to a balls-out hard rock second half, now with Derek on lead vocals. This brutish materialism is what the artist really exudes underneath the phoney genteel surface, since he’s a mere panderer to lucrative trends; Gentle Giant’s moral condemnation of the painter is ironic given how the band made a failed attempt to do what Genesis succeeded at in the late 70s, a pandering Gentle Giant would soon regret. (If you want to hear simple, but well-crafted pop songs by the Shulman brothers, I recommend checking out Simon Dupree and the Big Sound instead.)

Speaking of pandering for the sake of financial success, consider now the third friend, who’s grown up to be “Mister Class and Quality?” He brags of “the prizes [he has] showing,” then denies his narcissism by saying he “never shout[s] about them,” namely, his “house and car and pretty wife.” His friends are his only in terms of how they can help him rise higher; put another way, those two childhood chums of his are no longer of any use to him, so why try to reunite with them?

After each verse, a dissonant counterpoint is heard between the guitar, organ, and bass, once again representing the class conflict between him, “the artist [and] the lazy workers” as well as between him and those at work, among whom he must “give and take the orders.” There’s a similarly dissonant bitonality between the fading-out end of the instrumental jam (licks courtesy of Green’s bluesy guitar and Minnear’s wah-wah electric piano) in the bridge and the return of the main riff (lead by Ray’s violin) for the final verse.

The title track is a sad epilogue for the album. Some on the internet claim either that the three friends see the error of their ways and reunite in the end, or at least imply a possible reunion. I see no evidence anywhere in the lyrics or in the music, especially with this last song’s melancholy melodies, to justify such an interpretation.

Their childhood past was “sweet in sadness,” for it included both the good and the bad times that occur in every relationship. The “gladness” that comes “in the end” must be ironic, a reference to how gladly the businessman chooses money over friendship; how the painter gladly panders for money, instead of sacrificing comfort for the sake of preserving artistic integrity; and how the worker gladly spends his meagre wages as a fleeting “escape” from his miserable existence as a wage slave.

The tragedy of the three friends–a tragedy whose cathartic quality is what makes the album so artistically satisfying–is their mutual alienation, an inevitable consequence of moving “from class to class,” lower, middle, and upper. People on different rungs of the social ladder don’t mingle, except “to give and take the orders.” That’s the whole point of Three Friends: all of us, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, are like those three lost boys, separated by skill, fate, and opportunity, mutually alienated.

‘Creeps,’ an Erotic Horror Novel, Chapter Twenty-Two

On the 17th, Mark and Guy were in the Regulating Room, Mark watching the video screens of the clients having sex with the Commodities while Guy was entering data into the computer.

“So, are those new Creeps programmed and ready?” Mark asked.

“Just about…there,” Guy said as he typed a few keys. “All done.”

“Good,” Mark said. “I have to go meet with the police commissioner and the Ministry of Labour, give them their thank-you gifts.” He grabbed the handles of two briefcases filled with cash.

“I’m surprised you’re not having your usual lunchtime fu–,” Guy said, first with a slight frown of disappointment, then remembering he wasn’t supposed to know about what he was about to say. “D-don’t you normally go to F-Fredo’s for lunch around now?”

“No time today,” Mark said. “Gotta give this cash to our business allies.”

“Why do you have to go there physically in this electronic day and age?”

“I could just wire the money to them by computer, I suppose, but I like the personal touch. It reinforces our relationship to give it to them personally, face to face.”

“It’s sure nice having the government on our side,” Guy said.

“It is. I really don’t like the government at all, but we can’t get rid of it. I’m a libertarian, at heart.”

“And a libertine, at hard-on.” Guy chuckled, and Mark’s chuckles followed.

“I’ve always been pleased with the similarity between the words libertarian and libertine, in sound and meaning. Well, if you can’t beat the state, take it over, I always say. With a business like this one, you have to, in order to survive.”

And your hypocrisy in that regard doesn’t bother you at all, obviously, Guy thought.

“I was thrilled when we were able to clinch the legalization of brothels. For me, it was a new sexual revolution, and in my view, the only real revolution. I remember an old play by Peter Weiss, the Marat/Sade, when the Marquis de Sade asks, ‘What’s the use of a revolution without common copulation?’ I don’t remember the exact wording, but the quote was something like that. Anyway, I have to go. Back by 2 PM. Take care of the place for me.”

“I will, Mark. Bye.” Mark went out the door. “And…everything’s set up.” He got his cellphone and called Thea. “We’re ready.”

“OK,” Thea said. “Where’s Mark?”

“He’s off making the payoffs to the cops and the Ministry of Labour,” Guy said. “He says he’ll be back by two.”

“OK, I’ll send an e-mail to him and all the others to get into the staff room for the meeting at that time,” she said. “But I’m letting Mark know last, so he doesn’t interfere in any way before then. Bye.” She hung up, then began typing the e-mail:

To all staff, everyone meet in the staff room at 2:00 PM sharp for a general meeting. IMPORTANT. Stop whatever you’re doing at 1:50 and get in there for a conference with Ricardo Davis and Ken Maynard, who have important policy changes that must be discussed in detail. Only Davis and Maynard will be communicating by phone, because they are too busy where they are to be in the staff room. Everyone else must physically be there to ensure a proper relaying of the information. I just received word from Mr. Maynard himself of this. Urgent. Forward this message to any staff not addressed here.

She sent the e-mail to Mark and every staff member whose name she could remember, while walking through all the halls of Capitol telling everyone and anyone she hadn’t sent the e-mail to about the meeting.

As Mark was being driven to the police station with his two bodyguards, Dino and Leo, in the back seat, he got a message from a staff member on his phone, saying he’d be a little late for the conference. After reading it, Mark said, “What the fuck? Cameron never told me about Maynard or Davis saying anything about ‘policy changes’. Why am I being told about this all of a sudden? Cameron could have told me about this any time earlier today. I’m not too happy about him doing business behind my back. I’m getting the info directly this time, for a change. I’m calling Ricardo.”

As he was dialing the number, his driver asked, “What’s the problem, Mark?”

“Oh, my mixed-up assistant manager, Cameron Thewlis, just sent messages to all my staff about a ‘general meeting’ we’re all supposed to be involved with. We all have to be in the staff room in person, apparently, at 2:00 PM,” Mark said. Ricardo answered his call. “Ricardo? It’s ‘Free Mark’ here. What’s this about a general meeting to make policy changes, and everyone, except you and Ken, has gotta be in the staff room at 2:00 sharp today?”

“What are you talking about?” Ricardo asked.

“You don’t know anything about this?” Mark asked.

“First time I’ve heard about it,” Ricardo said.

“Never mind. I’ll e-mail Ken and find out what’s going on.” Mark hung up and sent Ken an e-mail: “Did you tell my assistant manager about a general meeting to be held in my staff room at 2:00 PM today, everyone attending? Urgent: answer ASAP.”

In two minutes, Mark got a reply. No. What is this all about?

Mark replied: I smell a rat. Let me investigate. I’ll get back to you.

“Alright, Cameron,” he mumbled as he set up an app on his phone to monitor ‘Cameron’, using the tech he’d had implanted on Thea and Guy, slipped in their ears by Petunia and Kusiima. “What are you up to?” He found an archived video recording of her chatting with Guy from a week before. He saw video through her eye and heard through her ear.

“Wait,” Mark said. “That’s a woman’s voice. What happened to Cameron’s gravelly voice?…Oh, of course! It was a disguise! Yeah, come to think of it, I do recall ‘him’ losing that raspy sound and speaking like a girl occasionally. He is a she! Now, who’s this guy—his name is Guy—that she’s talking to?”

“Cameron Thewlis is a girl, Boss?” Leo asked.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “Shut up, I wanna hear what they’re saying. This ‘Guy’…looks familiar. His voice sounds familiar…”

“We’re here, Mark,” the driver said, parking the car in the police station parking lot.

“I’ll go in in a minute,” Mark said, eyeing the video on his phone with obsessive eyes. “Who the fuck are they?” His ears drank up every word of their conversation, which seemed to be in the living room of their home.

“…and then we’ll get Petunia out of there,” she said.

“Petunia?” Mark said. “Petunia…LeBar, the one we renamed Walker? That’s it! ‘Thewlis’ was that woman…what was her name? Cummings! She wanted to prove that Petunia was in Capitol against her will. Guy was that kid, her brother! His voice, his manner, is kind of like…Jack!”

Mark turned off the video, and switched his phone over to the app for monitoring ‘Jack’. He found an archived video recording monitoring Guy from several days before, seeing what one eye of his saw and one ear of his heard.

Mark was looking at video of Thea’s face, in the same living room, for Mark recognized its distinctive wallpaper and furniture, green and brown plant and tree motifs on the walls, and polished wooden chairs and tables. Her voice was identical to ‘Cameron’s’ non-gravelly voice. He heard Guy’s voice…the voice of ‘Jack’.

“How, Thea, will we sync up the use of the green Creeps on the staff in the staff room, with Mark in there, sync that with you calling Officer Van Gorder and the Minister of Justice?” Guy said in the video.

“Now, I know,” Mark said. “They want me in that room with them, so they won’t set the Creeps loose yet. Let’s hurry up and give the commissioner his money, then get back to Capitol.”

“But what about the Minister of Labour?” Dino asked. “We have to give him his cut.”

“Paying him will have to wait for the moment,” Mark said, opening the car door. “Hurry up. Let’s move!”

Mark and his bodyguards rushed into the police station, his bodyguards even shoving people out of the way as he made a beeline to the commissioner’s office. He didn’t even knock on the door; he just barged in.

“Excuse me, Doug,” he said. “I’ve got an emergency situation back at work. Here you are.” Mark plopped the suitcase of money on the commissioner’s desk. “Sorry. We’ll talk later. Bye.”

Officer Van Gorder, who was in the commissioner’s office, looked at Mark with widened eyes as she saw him and his men rush out of the building with the same rudeness as when they’d entered. They got back into the car.

“Drive!” Mark snapped. The driver started the car.

‘Creeps,’ an Erotic Horror Novel, Chapter Twenty-One

Two weeks later, ‘Cameron’ called Ricardo Davis.

“Hello?” Davis said on his cellphone.

“Hi, Ricardo,” Thea said in her gravelly voice. “This is Cameron. Mark wanted me to tell you that from now on, he’ll want you to discuss all your business with me instead of with him. I’ll relay all your messages to him from now on.”

“Really?” Ricardo said. “That’s quite a change. Why’s this?”

“Because with the growing success of Capitol, he’s finding himself much too busy with other aspects of the business, and he wants all his dealings with you allocated to me; so whenever you have new Commodities recruited, tell me about them, and I’ll tell Mark about it in our weekly meetings.”

“OK, if that’s what Mark wants,” Ricardo said.

Later that day, ‘Cameron’ sent Ken Maynard an e-mail telling him the same thing ‘he’ had told Ricardo. Maynard replied, saying he agreed with the whole idea, as he found himself busier and busier with his work for Capitol in New York. Thea smiled when she read that.

************************

The next day, Thea was talking with Mark in his office.

“There’s a message I need to relay to you from both Mr. Davis and Mr. Maynard,” she said, remembering her hoarse vocal fry.

“Oh?” Mark said. “And what’s that?”

“They were hoping that I would mediate between them and you, instead of you talking with them directly,” ‘Cameron’ said. “They’re getting busier and busier with their work, Ken especially—he told me himself, so they won’t be able to come over to discuss bringing the new Commodities directly; they asked me to do all that for them. Only on the rarest of exceptions will they come here, the same with your going over there to talk to them. I can handle it, and they insist on it. I hope that’ll be OK with you.”

“Yeah, I guess you can act as middle man for us,” Mark said. “You’ve learned enough about the job, and I find that I can trust you just fine.”

“I’m happy to hear that, Mark.”

************************

Later that day, Guy was about to leave the Regulating Room, when, with the door just open ajar, he noticed Dino and Leo talking with Mark in the hall a few doors down.

“I can’t wait for our next monthly bit of fun in the VIP Rooms on the 17^th,” Dino said.

“Shut up, stupid!” Mark snapped at him. “I don’t want any of the staff to know about that. Anyone in a nearby room could’ve heard you.”

Guy smirked and closed the door.

************************

That night, Thea and Guy were talking in their house.

“Well, I’ve managed to minimize any contact between Mark on one side, and Ricardo and Maynard on the other,” she said.

“Good,” Guy said. “Now we just have to make sure the three of them aren’t chatting with each other on the day we spring the Creeps on all the staff.”

“We won’t be able to guarantee that, of course,” she said, “but I’ll do what I can to keep them from contacting each other, and figuring out what we’re up to. Shall we decide on a target day, when the shit will hit the fan?”

“Let’s use around…say…the middle of this month to set things up and minimize anything getting screwed up. How about on…the 17th?”

“That sounds all right. Mark usually goes to pay off the police and Ministry of Labour around that day. He typically leaves the office to do that in the early afternoon, so we can get all the staff in the staff room for the meeting then, without him getting in the way. He’ll be busy with the payoffs, which he likes doing in person, so that should minimize any risk of him chatting with Ricardo or Maynard. We’ll have plenty of time to fill up any holes by then. If there are any problems, we can add a few days to fix things, and maybe I can get him to delay the payoffs till then.”

“Sounds good. Up until the 17th, we must do all we can to keep those three from chatting.”

‘Creeps,’ an Erotic Horror Novel, Chapter Twenty

A week later, Mark called Guy on his cellphone while the latter was in the Regulating Room.

“Jack,” Mark said. “I need to meet you in the storage room, right away. It’s urgent, and I’m fucking crazy mad. Hurry up!”

“OK, Mark,” Guy said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Make it five seconds,” Mark snapped, then hung up.

Guy raced out of the Regulating Room, running spastically down the hall in the direction of the storage room.

Does he know? Guy wondered; has he been monitoring Thea and me? Did he have tech implanted in us, and did he listen to our conversation a week ago, about the plan to use Creeps on the staff? If so, we’re dead. He reached the door to the storage room and opened it with a shaky hand.

Mark was a few feet away, staring at a box of yellow Creeps with a frown. Guy was so worried, he felt as if he was going to retch.

“Oh, good,” Mark said, looking back at Guy, who was walking in slowly and leaving the door open on purpose. “You’re here. Something is terribly wrong here.”

“W-what?” Guy asked. “Is it something I did?”

“No,” Mark said. “My supplier fucked up royally.”

Guy tried to keep his sigh of relief inaudible. “What’s wrong?”

“These yellow Creeps have the wrong thing put in them. Hey, close the door.” Guy did. “What I’m about to discuss is sensitive information. My supplier must’ve got the orange Creeps and the yellow ones mixed up, that is, in each other’s coloured casings, because these yellow ones have the orange content in them. You know, the drugs with the synthesis of MDMA elements and aphrodisiacs, to make our Commodities horny and friendly with our clients. Vice versa, too, probably, with the incendiary content in the orange Creeps’ casings.”

“How do you know this?”

“First of all, take a look at this.” Mark opened a yellow Creep, in which Guy saw a thin, transparent casing for the content inside. “Notice how the inner casing has an O, for orange, on it. It should have a Y, for yellow. Second, I knew something was wrong last night when we tried to use yellow Creeps on two undesirable Commodities in the Escape Hope Initiative. Instead of burning inside, the targeted man and woman started fucking, right there in a widened part of the tunnel!”

Guy tittered for a second, then stopped.

“Yeah, Jack, it’s real fuckin’ funny to you, but it’s a big pain in the ass for me. I need to reorder more yellows pronto, and I’ll need you to go through these boxes and look for any more mistakes. When you’ve found them all, tell Hank to have them all chucked in the van and sent back to the supplier. I won’t have time to do both jobs, and you’re the only one I can trust with this sensitive information, so get on this right away.”

Mark handed Guy the yellow Creep, then ran out of the storage room. Guy just stood there, thinking.

As a man was walking into the storage room, he saw Guy about to touch the transparent casing inside the opened yellow Creep.

“Whoa!” the man said to Guy. “Don’t touch the inner casing. It’s extremely sensitive. The slightest touch, and it will open. What’s inside will come out and burn a hole in your hand.”

“Actually, it’ll probably get me hot in a different way.”

“What do you mean?” the man asked.

“See the O on it?” Guy said. “Our supplier put the wrong content in these Creeps. O is for orange, for the content that gets you horny. They were put in the wrong casings, the yellow ones. I have to check these all for Mark. He’s really mad about the mix-up.”

“OK, and when you’re done sorting this all out, you’ll tell me, and we’ll ship the boxes back to the supplier?”

“Yeah, sure,” Guy almost whispered, looking away from him.

**********************

The next day, Mark went into the Regulating Room to see Guy monitoring two clients, each with his own girl in a white VIP Room. Guy was speaking for the girls.

“Jack?” Mark asked. “Did you fix the Creeps?”

“Yes, I did,” Guy said. “The yellows are all yellow, and the oranges are all orange. The suppliers have been sent the wrong ones back.”

“Good,” Mark said, then left.

**********************

Mark was sitting with ‘Cameron’ in his office that evening.

“I’m sure glad Jack fixed that problem with the orange and yellow Creeps,” Mark said. “I was a little worried about future screw-ups.”

“I worry about outsiders finding out about the Creeps, and especially what the yellow ones do,” Thea said in her vocal fry. I also worry about how many more times I’m going to forget my ‘man’ voice.

“Don’t worry about that, Cameron,” he told her. “As Sade wrote in his novel, Juliette, it isn’t the sins we commit that we need to worry about, it’s the danger of being caught that matters. Everyone sins–the Church itself, in all its hypocrisy, admits to that at least. Covering up our crimes is what’s important. We have to commit them with a minimum of passion in order to be careful about them. I let my customers release all their passions on the Commodities, while I carefully manage the affairs of this business, ensuring that no incriminating evidence leaks out.”

“Is just ensuring no leaks enough to be safe?” she asked, quickly remembering her vocal fry after saying the first word normally. “How can you be sure nothing will ever leak out to the wrong people?”

“I have influential people in the government and police on our payroll.”

“But what if someone in the government or police who isn’t on our payroll finds out? There are always a few good boy or girl scouts even in the most corrupt institutions.”

“True, but that’s why I monitor everything and everybody around me,” Mark said. “Creep technology has almost limitless applications in that regard, I assure you. I can have something slipped into someone’s body so surreptitiously that they would never know I was monitoring them, let alone when I was monitoring them.” He raised his eyebrows while saying that last part, to give ‘Cameron’ to subtle message that ‘he’ may, indeed, have planted Creep technology on ‘him’, too.

“OK, but what about those who don’t get something slipped into their bodies? How can you be sure of them?”

“Well, there are no 100% guarantees, of course, but you know how important loyalty is to me. Also, I have a way of testing out the personalities of new employees, to make sure they’re sympathetic to our business’s way of doing things.”

“How do you find that sympathy?”

“By finding out how lacking they are in sympathy, paradoxically,” he said. “No sympathy, that is, for the prostitutes. As Sade explained in Juliette, pity is really one of the worst sentiments anyone could ever have. It weakens us. Doing good in this world is ultimately futile, as evil will always prevail. This is the way of Nature, so committing crimes with a minimum of sensitivity, a minimum of emotion, without any pity, is the safest way to live, and to live while having fun. Most people avoid doing good and evil, and just live mediocre lives. Others waste their energy doing pointless good, arrogantly congratulating themselves for their ‘virtue’. Then, still others, like me, do evil, but are calculated about it, ensuring their safety from the consequences while enjoying their superiority to the mediocre masses. You and Jack can aspire to such greatness, too, if you work at it.”

“I’m willing to do all I can to achieve that,” Thea rasped. You don’t merely do evil, Mark, she thought; you are evil. And we’re going to stop you. You’re going to face the danger of the consequences.

‘Creeps,’ an Erotic Horror Novel, Chapter Nineteen

At home, Guy and Thea took off their disguises and sat at the kitchen table. They stared at each other for a minute.

“I have an idea,” Guy said.

“I’m all ears,” Thea said.

“I’m afraid to talk about it, though,” he said. “With all that advanced tech they have in Capitol, have you ever considered the possibility that Mark may have had Creeps put into our bodies without our knowing, to track us, or record what we say?”

“How could they have put tech in us, and how would it be able to ‘record’ what we say?”

“That may be how they stopped that other guy from helping us.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve thought about that possibility ever since I realized, at the mall, that our informer wasn’t going to arrive. It’s just a chance we’ll have to take. We knew from the moment we were being hired that we were putting ourselves in huge danger, but we’ve got to save Petunia.”

“We’ve got to save all of them, not just her.”

She smiled from hearing him say that. You have humanity, Guy, she thought; there’s hope for you. Not bad, for a man. “You’re right. If Mark is tracking us with something, maybe he doesn’t monitor it all the time. Maybe he only does it when he suspects somebody. Let’s hope he isn’t monitoring us now. By remaining in creepy character at all times when we’re around him, maybe he’ll never suspect, and will never monitor us. Now, what’s your plan?”

“Well, apart from Officer Van Gorder, Mark’s paying off the police and the government, right? Well, what if we provided evidence so compelling that even the corrupt authorities just couldn’t ignore it, especially if we had Van Gorder show it to them?”

“OK, but how do we provide that evidence in a compelling way? Mark won’t let us download any of it. I’m sure that’s how our would-be informer got caught.”

“What if we used the Creeps on Mark and the staff, and manipulated them into confessing to their crimes themselves, just as Petunia was made to pretend she likes being a sex-worker?”

“That…just…might work,” Thea said with a grin. “We’d have to find a way to get all the staff in a place together, maybe set up a fake general meeting in the staff room; then we could lock them in so they couldn’t escape, then unleash the Creeps on them. Any staff not affected might try to stop us. And we’d need lots of staff members to corroborate the confessions, to make the proof more assured.”

“We’d have to use the green Creeps on the staff, to make them more docile and cooperative when confessing. They have Sodium Pentothal mixed in them, a kind of truth serum.”

“And we’d need to use blue Creeps, to knock them all out while we prepare everything for the police and Ministry of Labour. It will all have to be timed to perfection.”

“I hope Mark isn’t monitoring us now,” Guy said.

“What if he finds out we have a…friend…we’re trying to rescue? What if he were to use the yellow Creeps on her? What could we do?”

“We’ll have to think of some kind of precaution, that’s for sure,” Guy said, then thought, I wonder if I could exploit Mark’s raw-fucking habit in some way.

************************

Guy lay in bed that night, dreaming:

He was in the white room with naked Kusiima, licking her pussy. He blew in her vagina, panting out the words, “We’re going to set you all free.”

She sighed, “Thank you, Jack.”

“I’m not Jack,” he panted inside her cunt. “I’m Guy.” A drop of his saliva entered her pussy. He stopped licking for a second and looked at the drop. It was a green drop, now wiggling like a worm. It crawled deeper inside her.

He stood up and pulled out his cock. He looked down at his lover, but now saw naked Mark, on his knees as Kusiima had been.

“I wanna piss on your face,” he said, then began spraying yellow all over Mark’s face.

The piss came out like wiggling yellow worms, Creeps that crawled into Mark’s mouth, ears, and nostrils. Soon, Mark’s whole body was on fire.

As he sat there burning, Mark confessed, “I’m holding these girls here against their will. We drug them all. We kill the ones that no longer make us a profit. All branches of Capitol should be shut down.”

Guy slept like a baby.

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