That such a disgustingly evil place as this exists in the universe is a matter of shattering amazement to me. I look about myself now, as if to try and clear away that deep and clutching haze that has been fogging my memory, but everywhere there are clouds, the same torturing pain in the curve of the branches that snicker above us. Bare and blasted is this place, now caught in the dead of winter, yet marked with the certainty that it is always so, always grey, even in the midst of the most luscious summer. After all, there is no room for healing or love in such places of obdurate purity.
I am not sure how I came to be here, or what the day is, or what has gone before. All I know is who is present, and the looks on their faces, that none of us ever meant to come here. But then again, I suspect we were drawn here by invisible hands. How else can I explain what is happening now, or what I know is about to come to pass? In such places there is no future, no present or past. All are melded together in a somnolescent knowledge that precludes wonder or hope because the outcome is already known to the players. No, in such places as this, we do not act out the tragedy to discover the outcome. We act because we are forced to act, and for the mere pleasure of the audience.
Reality? Nightmare? There comes a point when it's too difficult to tell. There are the hellish aspects of a dreamscape all about, the lack of background or even meaning, and yet I can remember times when I felt much the same, and was as far from sleeping as I ever could be.
"Oh, my God!" Anne's voice trembles slightly. But there is no God. This place has been blasted by too much judgement, perhaps even his. A courtroom? Perhaps, yes, but ancient beyond mortal conception and more present than any construct of feeble, human hands.
How different this places seems in the daylight, under the rain of light from the cold sun, and yet how much the same. The smell is stronger, of course, but now that I can see what it is, can try and come to terms with it in my own way, the urge to flee is not so strong. But, oh, how I know we should flee, all of us, because it is so obvious what is about to happen, what will happen. In such places, there is only room for cold and demonic judgement, judgement to satifsy the vindictive hatred of the judge and that is all. Why are there such places? I suspect that there are other entities in existence that, like ourselves, have their own law, and must keep to it.
The floor of the clearing into which we inadventently stumbled is bare of even a blade of grass. The soil is hard and rocky. It is not difficult to discern that no shred of life will ever be harbored here. Hanging from the sky like dusty curtains, leering with all the power of titans, are the grey and lifeless trees, as frozen it seems as the soil. Eerily they crowd around us, making a border of some sort, but between what? Bare and blasted and heinous we have found ourselves, oppressive and keen with hurt, and desire to hurt. Through the echoes of the wind I can almost hear the peals of maniacal laughter.
It is then that I notice that my clothes are torn and my skin cut. I can taste the curious combination of blood and dirt in my mouth. Like little pricks of fire I can feel the bruises, scratches, and abrasions covering my body. Yes, more and more is coming back to me from out of What Came Before. These injuries, they are simply the mark of my last madness. I must wear them now, here, like badges.
But the most horrible thing of all, what reeks most profoundly of desecration and impossible punishment is at the center of the place. Anne is standing halfway towards it, looking up in sick wonder, but the rest of us hang back by the perimeter, staring. For there in the center of the clearing grows the most horrible and twisted tree of all, rising horribly ashen out of the ground, comprised of stone passion and slaughter, the trunk an unhealthy shade of black and mottled uncomfortably. It has unfolded its obsessively broad limbs so that what open sky there would have been is completely obscured. Around the trunk of the tree there is a dense growth of thirsty folliage, thick and lacking any healthy emanations whatsoever. The leaves hang dead from the branches but refuse to be severed. It seems to be on the verge of death, desperately seeking fresh blood to remain alive another season.
Hanging from one of the lower branches hangs the partly decomposed body of a man. His clothing has been shorn from his body, eaten perhaps by the same carrion that sometime ago plucked the eyeballs from his head. Those dark, empty sockets, embedded in the thickly red and swollen flesh, seem like deep wells of crusty anguish, and it's hard not to look at them. There is no breeze to stir his body. Limply it hangs facing somewhere off to the left of Anne, gaping stupidly. Crude and rotting, his hands are caught in the loop of the noose at the front of his neck, as if in the final throes of death he had suddenly changed his mind. As if he had fought so desperately he had somehow managed to squeeze a finger or two through before losing consciousness. The meek denial, the laughter of the trees always just so close to perception, must have been very loud in his ears then. The silence is so loud now, distraught with great booming peals of impending laughter, that I am mildly surprised I can hear Anne's shrieks.
Her hands have flown to her face, her knees have buckled. Already she is staggering towards the body, too afraid to fall to the frozen terrain and yet too weak to resist the direction in which her body is taking her. The five of us simply stand and watch her lurch towards it, not exactly sure what happened to this place. All filled with trepidation and mourning and, of course, terror. But of what? I do not know, but it presses down on our meager bodies like a heavy shawl and will not let us breathe.
After a long moment her legs betray her and she falls toward the twisted growth, strikes the legs of the corpse with a hard smack. Yes, of course, the thing has been frozen in this Martian air for quite some time. It swings lightly above where she lies now half hidden in the undergrowth, her screams eerily and unnaturally muffled and her legs, quite visible, thrashing about.
The leaves of the foliage thirsty appear to quiver slightly with excitement, and the thought of what it might be sucking from her face jars me. Somehow, I find the strength to run to her. But the distance seems to lengthen as I fight to move my legs, and I get the sense that, as I force my way through the rancid air, she is squeezing just too much screaming into the moments.
Now I am kneeling beside her, fighting to get some hold on her legs, to pull her out. At first she resists, and then she lunges out of the underbrush at me. Frightened, trying not to touch the corpse as it passes near to me, I fall backward, but she lands like a sack of potatoes on my chest and takes me down her with to the hard ground. Fierce pain in my head now, streaking down my back and neck. For a moment my vision is dimmed, like a flashback. Anne's face mad with rage, ravaged and twisted into a mask of fury, is suddenly looming over mine, incredibly close and powerful. Her eyes, they are no longer her own.
Above her now I can see Antonius, and the expected blows never land. The fiery goddess is removed, struggling vehemently against Antonius' firm hold, but entirely unable to escape. For a moment, in the unsettling calm, they are as powerful and as present as if they were gods, and here I am, mere mortal flesh, to witness the awesome passion of the struggle between divine wills. This place seems undaunted by the suggestion of so much raw, uncontrolled power, exhibits the signs of esoteric purpose and the stringent and timeless demand for the perfect devotion that deities, I imagine, would leave in their colliseum. For a moment the hovering laughter becomes audible in distant snatches, and with the exaggerated booming in my head of my heart laboring, all I can do is simply lie here, absorbing the sleeping cold into my body and watching the corpse's feet trace circles above my head.
"No." Emmanuel's voice now, cracking and frightful in the loud silence that accompanies permanent madness. "No!" This time a loud and painful shriek. "It's just like the dreams!"
"Canine!" Antonius' voice slashes through the air like a machete.
"Yes, it really is him." Shanai sounds so close, as if she had approached, dreamlike. A subtle power, this one, but perhaps even more dangerous than the others. She has the capacity to deny the warring duo the pleasure of their fight, she has the power to forbid. And, especially here, to judge. The Queen of Archangels herself, come now to guide us to where we were inexorably going anyway.
"Don't call me that." Emmanuel's voice has thinned to a whine. "My name is Emmanuel."
"It's that man who gave us the box, David. The one in the wheelchair." The entranced wonder entrenched in her words forces me to sit up suddenly. There is Shanai, standing not ten feet away and staring calmly above my head towards the lecherous face of the corpse. She is glowing now with the flexible power of the Archangels. With an unconscious thought she has dismissed the godly wrestling, her eyes never straying from their mark, as if she were aware of everything at once that she required.
And directly behind her are the others: Emmanuel, the Prophet, his mouth hideously aghast and staring bewildered into the ground somewhere in front of him, trying not to believe, and Salvatore, trying not to let us all see that the terror has completely eaten him away from the inside. As my eyes come to his face clenched with the electricity of exhiliration (because all madmen eventually come to love their affliction), I cannot perceive what he is here for. Is he Judah, perhaps, even now pondering the betrayal of his friend the Prophet, or is he Peter himself, who was fated to deny his Lord three times before him?
"It can't be the -" Emmanuel whines.
"He had help," Shanai answers, still staring at the frozen body, and that is all.
I look around and wonder if the help were still here.
As for the moment, the god Antonius stands to my left, his eyes searching his primary lieutenant, wondering what it means when the servants know more than the masters even in the House of Heaven. Antonius, so thin and tall, all bones, as if he were about to fall apart. And Anne. Antonius has let her go, she has run off to the right, staggered and on her knees, clutching the trunks of one of the obeisant trees along the perimeter. Her breathing is shallow and sharp. She looks defeated.
Antonius turns to look above me, but I am afraid to see that suffering man in this corpse's face. It is then that Emmanuel stumbles forward. His eyes, too, are pinned to the hanging corpse. "Just like the dreams!" he cries again. His arms are making awkward gestures in the taught air. His face is filled with revulsion. "What has become of us?"
"Be still." Shanai's voice hangs beautifully between us, with the intricacy of a spider's web, oddly stretched though, as if by the forces at work here in this awesome palace of duty. "You may upset the balance."
"Me?" Emmanuel shrieks. His hands have flown to his cheeks, kneading them with his fingertips as if in reassurance that he exists. It is plain that he has come to some sort of crucial and unexpected crisis. "Are you mad?"
"Shut up, all of you!" Salvatore spits into the void. But his words sound weak and pathetic in the din, subtly diminished by laughter. "The gods have lived here. There must be respect."
"Gods?" Emmanuel seems stricken. He is shaking his head. "They come to me at night," he says, whispering now. "They show me things."
"Enough." It is Antonius again, and the power of the command is striking.
"No." Salvatore's answer is softer now, and I have to actually grasp at the words to hear them. "Those are demons."
"Enough!" And for a moment, I think that I have been reft of my power to speak altogether. "There is payment due -"
" - in places such as this." Anne does not move, does not turn towards us. The fact that I can hear her voice from so far away, through this thick air fraught with laughter and derision, does not surprise me, not when accompanied by so much power. But malevolent? beneficent? Power cannot be described in terms of intent. After all, who am I, mere skin and blood, to pass judement on the divine?
"I have been here before, too," I say then, and rise to my feet to face the others.
"Yes, so have we all," Salvatore belches. There is anger twitching on his face.
"But the dreams, Antonius! The dreams!" Emmanuel is clutching his arm as the god stares at the hanging body with something like calm calculation in his eyes. The absence of wind allows us no relief from the stench of judgement and decay.
"We all dream, Emmanuel," comes the answer. Then, he turns his eyes toward the Prophet. "We dream of ourselves."
"I have had no dreams," I say.
"Nor I," echoes Shanai, and now she is looking at me. There is something frigid in her eyes, not the warmth I would have expected from the Queen of the Archangels. I am suddenly blasted with despair, and in that frame of mind I turn and behold the very face of wretchedness, the object of the scorn of humanity, dangling from the scorched limbs of this horrific tree. The sacrifice that has been made in our honor. But what price is there to be paid for sacrifice? and what is the cost of penance? I cannot believe there is any justice in gods who demand these things. Are we not all doomed to hell? Are we not already there?
"Antonius! Antonius!" Emmanuel is leaning heavily on him now. "What do they mean?'
"Your dreams?"
"Yes, yes, Antonius! Explain to me my dreams!"
Even Anne looks up from where she sits grieving, and in her eyes I can see that she is holding her breath. A ghastly power flickers within, anger she seeks to hold back. Shanai turns, too, and my eyes leave the screaming effigy in whose face and empty sockets I can vaguely discern my own haggard fragments.
"You know," the god replies slowly, solemnly, unwilling to meet the gaze of the Prophet, "that I cannot answer that question."
"Cannot?" Emmanuel echoes the word, virtually wretching. "Or will not?" But Antonius does not respond, mutely continues to glower at the rotting, purplish corpse. "But you must -! you must tell me something, anything!"
"I am not your god!" Antonius suddenly roars, stretching his long, thin body over the battered young man in front of him. Emmanuel releases his arm and steps back, disappointment and fear now bleeding through his eyes.
"Emmanuel -" Salvatore starts to say, and I can hear the reason he is trying to push through his voice. Here we are, the six of us, at the crux of the crisis, unsure how we have arrived here. The fact that the thoughts and the visions in our heads are distorted and insubstantial, that it is lacking any basis in our communal past, is leading us all to the breaking point. But we think and act in a microcosm, and the true knowledge of things as they are lies well outside our own personal dilemmas. Somewhere, sometime, there must be an answer, and I know that. The knowledge prevents me from spilling over into the vacuum.
But not Emmanuel. Now he has touched upon an explosion of unparalleled release, and the powers behind the machinery of our minds are potent. He whirls to face his twin, and I can see in his eyes that he, too, has blurred the distinction between the world of the waking and the world of the godly. "What," he sneers, "do you accuse me?"
"Emmanuel -" Salvatore takes a meager step forward, but Emmanuel jumps away, flees toward the tree - toward me - and it is everything I can do to get out of his way. Quickly, sensing that some juggernaut was about to be released upon us, I draw Shanai back towards Salvatore. Emmanuel, standing now to the left of the corpse, faces us with tears of anguish splashing his face. "Accused!" he cries out into the air, but the trees seem to swallow his words. Anne stands now, comes toward the rest of us as we face the passion of the Prophet in all his mad glory.
"Here!" he shouts at us, and then turns to face the corpse suspended with such finality from the blackened limbs of the tree, stares up at it with his arms opened in supplication. "Here, after all this time, before these -" He stops and throws an arm in our direction. "Salvatore," he cries, "here I stand accused! See me not?" And before any of us can speak, as if we could stop him, he continues. "Yes, it is true. And I am guilty! All my life I have run away. I have betrayed the ideals that once made me proud. My people suffer, and I hide in your dormitory rooms listening to you deride them. You deride me! And I laugh with you, at myself!" Wrapped in his passion, he has fallen to his knees. His arms are wrapped around his chest. His chin juts toward the corpse as if waiting for it to strike him, but it mutely ignores his pleas. "What," he gasps after a long moment, "is there no compassion for me here either?" He is weeping now. "Am I to be held accountable for my ignorance?"
What could any of us say to him then? There was nothing, neither word nor gesture to reach him now. This spasm, as I already knew, must come to pass.
He opens his eyes suddenly, and the sobs clutching his throat stop. "I am here," he says aloud to the rude bark, "to be judged, and without a word of defense I find myself guilty! Without compassion, on all accounts. Do you hear me? I accept the guilt!"
But the corpse does not respond. It stares emptily past him, gouged and tormented with spite, locked in a firm and calculated denial. A cruel silence marks us, hangs over Emmanuel as he silently beseaches the cold idol of flesh that rots before us.
After a moment he lowers his head, loosens his fists, but his arms shake uncontrollably. "There must be punishment."
"Emmanuel," Salvatore breathes. "I never knew."
"O, Emmanuel," Antonius moans, "why have you brought us here?"
For a moment none of us can speak, can only stare at Emmanuel who is looking back at us, eyes so cold that they seem to suck what little warmth is left from my body. I can only think about how weak and frightened he looked when I first met him seven months ago. But here, now, I see that the submission is over, and even in this place of incalculable madness I can sense some measure of satisfaction in the struggle that he now undergoes. Here, for once, there is something like resolve in the tone of his muscles.
After a moment, he stands and walks quietly away, comes to a halt beneathe the awkward bow of one of the outer trees, bent now as if they were paying their respects.
The five of us that remain do not speak, cannot for some time. Even the god Antonius is dumbfounded, keeps brushing at his ears as if trying to wave away a noisy insect. But my mind races. Punishment? The word echoes like a backdrop to the thundering tumult of thoughts about fear and death and what was it justice. I am led to wonder if any of this is real. But that last question slips away, quicker than the others, because it ceased to be a matter of any importance long ago.
"We have been brought here for a reason," Shanai announces all of a sudden. She is standing to my right, eyes turned toward Salvatore, Anne, and Antonius. They look suddenly back, startled. But it seems to me even from this awkward angle that her mark is for the tall, unseemly god, the one standing uncertainly not far away trying to maintain his stature. "And so, here in this ungodly court, I accuse you, Antonius. Here, before your peers, where it seems that justice is decided and delivered. We are all, it seems, to be measured on this day. In that, also, I see the need for punishment."
Antonius straightens himself, as if to muster strength. He stands firmly to face her, his hazel eyes stolid with nothing but cold and endurate granite. Somewhere up ahead, the trees are snickering.
"I accuse you, Antonius, of malice. I accuse you of molestation. I accuse you of mutilation, of deprevation, of intent to maim. I accuse you being male. I find want in you of strength enough for yourself. I seek retribution from you for my anguish, for uncaring abuse. I accuse you, Antonius, of all these things. And I accuse you of rape."
The god's mouth stands open, perhaps half in wonder that here the Angel has power enough to cast the godly from their thrones.
"How could you?" Her accusations have lost their rough edge, are finding their way to self-pity. She moves in snatches as she speaks, jerking her head from side to side. "You tried to change who I was according to your needs. Although in that respect, you have harmed David more than me. But what gives you the right to place yourself above another just because she has different strengths? Is it your height? Your penis? Do you really consider yourself superior?"
"Rape?" The word tears past Antonius' hardened lips. Now there is anger in his eyes, refusal to submit. "How can you?" It seems to be all he can manage to say. But his eyes are shouting fierce denials, hurtful accusations of his own.
"Yes, rape. The most horrid crime of all." She lowers her voice dangerously now. "You raped my head."
Shanai, my love! Why has your back grown so cold and sleepless? Why do you submit to your anger?
"How can you?"
"You knew, dear Antonius. O, how you knew how to torment me! No," she insists with determination, holding up a slender hand to silence his protestations. "For once you will permit me to finish. You alone knew what my father did to me, knew how disgusting it makes me feel, and so now I seek punishment for raping me countless times, and on every occasion. I accuse you of rape! I accuse you of raping every single person I know!"
"Rape?" Antonius shouts back at her, astounded still. "Shanai, I loved you!"
"You did not love me," Shanai responds petulantly. "Don't be rediculous. You wanted me for a trophy."
My head reels as if under a blow. For all this time, blind, it seems, mistaking obsession for love. But whose fault was that?
"Oftentimes now, instead of my father I see in my nightmares your face - your arms pinning me down! your stinking breath in my face and your terrible will -" Tears hijack her voice, momentarily steal it away from her, but in a moment she has it back, hurls the last of her words at him like mordant barbs. " - your fucking penis stuck up my vagina even when I don't want it there!" And now she is weeping. Soft, uncontrolable sobs wrack her, and I can see that it is all she can do to stand.
Calmly I approach her, lend her my arm to steady herself. Antonius simply continues to stare at her, but her face has fallen toward the frozen earth, allowing her hair to spill over it as if in protection. But in a moment she throws away my arm and takes him into her sight once again. "It is for this that I seek punishment."
"And I deny the accusation," Antonius returns coldly.
Once again there is silence. The two stand glaring at each other, refusing to submit. Anne, I am surprised to see, seems the most calm, as if unmoved by the passions of those who do not concern her. Her hands are shoved in the bottoms of her pockets, and she glares toward the tree and the grotesque corpse that dangles from it like a decoration. Salvatore, though, appears to have filled with rage. His cheeks are trembling, I can see, and there is the faint taste in the air of apocalypse. Only Emmanuel has not moved, shows no signs of awareness.
"Then I accuse you, Shanai," Antonius annouces boldly. The words rip us out of the silent realm of infinity that seems to sink deeper into our minds during each awkward lapse between judgements. But where is the jury, and what good is justice to accusations denied?
My love does not raise her head. She remains still, locked like Emmanuel in reverence. She will not witness her own damnation, because she already knows its nature.
"I accuse you, Shanai, of faithlessness. I accuse you of not being here, of never having been here. I accuse you of ungiving, of clinging, and I accuse you of desiring punishment." He stands before us, tall and still and cold and glaring, but the pain he has tried to impart in his voice is starkly absent. It seems he has finished speaking before he has even begun, because we all know that we must destroy each other.
"I am guilty, perhaps," Shanai murmurs after a moment, her voice flitting between the spaces between the distant cackling. "Yes, and perhaps the punishment will be the least severe because I desire it so much. I feel guilty so much of the time, but I just don't know what it is that I have done, or how I can fix it."
"Ah, Shanai." It is Salvatore, and he has inserted himself between them. His words are gentle with kindness, and for a moment I am bewildered by him, because I had never heard him speak so. "Whatever punishment does come, we will all share it."
"Shanai," I say, finding the words difficult and uncomfortable, but I have the sudden and sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that she is fading, right here and now, before my very eyes.
She looks up at me, and takes my hands into her own. "Stars cannot change their course, David." She pulls me closer and wraps her arms around by chest, pulling me against her body as if trying to squeeze me inside her. "Nor the fact that one day they must die."
And so the two of us remain as we are, rocking gently back and forth against each other. She has passed her crisis, has staked her accusation and been accused, and the punishment - if it is forthcoming - has already been assigned somehow, somewhere. Who knew how such things are decided in a place like this.
"I have not finished," Antonius says to us after a moment.
"No, please!" Anne's voice cuts between us, and for some reason I flinch. Her eyes are desperate, flickering past everything around her, unseeing. "No more! Please, enough of this madness!" But there is no answer for her, and the anger working through Salvatore pushes away the last remnants of compassion within him, deepening terribly.
"I accuse you, David," the great and horrid god decrees. "I accuse you of inaction."
Strangely, I am relieved to hear that my time has come. There is no escape from infinite justice. But I will not give up my grip on Shanai. No, it tightens. She still holds me close as well, perhaps infected by the same alarming sense of bereavement. Together, in such a manner, I accept the accusation. For in saying nothing, does not one submit? I have done enough inacting in my life to know that such tacit submission is deplorable, that of all options available to humankind the most depraved and shameful is that of refusing to choose. The act of abstention. Those who abstain from life must never have lived.
"Goddamn it, David," Salvatore suddenly spits. "Can't you see what's happened to Canine? You have the power of absolution, if only you will use it. Say something! Anything! David," he insists, taking a step closer, "you will regret it if you don't."
But even his pleas do not break my slumber. No, my grip only tightens on that fragile body. I do not want the two of us to ever come apart again, am trying to will the fabric of our bodies together. The laughter in the air, all around me now, rings hollowly with hateful loss. Through such cocaphony, how could I have heard Salvatore's meek voice trying to carry me back toward heaven? The only thing I can feel is naked, wearing only my abrasions.
It is then that Salvatore breaks. Screaming wildly, he rushes toward the tree, leaps onto its trunk. The sheer ferocity of his cry separates me from my love before I realize what I have done. Emmanuel whirls around, his face a smear of dismay, his arms clutching vaguely at the air around him. Salvatore is tearing some of the bark as he scrambles upward, and I can see black ooze dripping from the fissures. All the while he screams like a beast, and rains the thick skin of the tree with blows. Before he has reached the first branch the skin of his hands is covered with blood, but he does not seem to notice.
"Salvatore!" Antonius cries out, perhaps fearing that the tree would animate and attack. But, as I already know, the powers in this place are much too subtle.
Now he has reached the branch from which the body hangs, and he turns to look over us. His eyes are clutched with fear, the cords of his neck look as thought they are about to snap. "You!" he screams, pointing a frantic finger toward Anne. She stands not far away from me, stricken. "I accuse you! Filthy whore! Tramp!"
Is is the first time that have ever seen Anne at a loss for words. She stares back at him, shocked, one hand hovering over her cleavage and the other extended, as if pleading. Her knees are bent, as if straining against a heavy wind.
"I accuse you of inducing this madness! I find you guilty of sedition! I find you guilty of being needlessly stupid!" He shouts from the tree above us, hanging like another limb above the corpse, blackened with fury and self-loathing, so consumed by the bitterness of his hatred and an utter sense of helplessness that it is difficult to discern him through his words. He seems to flit about from place to place, ensuring our doom, and now he is looking over us all, about to cackle. "Welcome to my world," he sneers, swinging like a monkey. "I've already been punished, you see. No need to accuse!" And with that he begins to kick wildly at the corpse's head.
Anne is screaming, but she does not take her eyes away as Salvatore continues pummeling the rotten, frozen flesh, watches with such spiraling panic that she seems to be suffering his very blows. And then, after a moment, a piece of the corpse's head falls away, revealing something very black and uninviting inside, the same color as those empty eye sockets, and now Anne is running. Screaming still, she lunges into the trees, disappears immediately from our sight, devoured. But her cries linger on, do not fade for some time. Salvatore continues to kick at the corpse, breaking off larger and larger pieces of its head until finally the noose slips over the neck and the body tumbles to the ground. It lands virtually intact, sitting on top of the deathly underbrush against the trunk, and if it had had a head it might have been facing us. But there is nothing we can do, frozen now like the rest of the trees, for we have become a part of this place. So we remain as we are, staring at Salvatore whose heavy breathing is the only sound to be heard, except for the billowing laughter that by now has completely swallowed Anne's desperate screeching.
This site and all its contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one Adam Wasserman.