Fresh Flesh

A severe ceremony of grim symbolism.

I am standing at the back of a walk-in refrigerator. This rectangular, windowless room is the size of a small apartment, with aluminium sides, bottom and top. It is illuminated by several lurid strip lights fixed to the ceiling. Two neat rows of butchered sheep carcasses line the flanking walls, hanging at the height of my torso from slaughterhouse hooks.

I am to conduct some kind of religious service, utilising this death chamber as a temple. I stare at the entrance, anticipating the entry of my flock. A sturdy lectern is placed before me, a striking, monolithic, iron structure. Its broad top, like an architect’s drawing board, dips square to my lowered view. It supports a massive, hide-bound, closed book, as big as a butcher’s block.

I am wearing a full-length, long-sleeved, ceremonial robe of a thick, blubbery material. Its sallow hue shimmers in the artificial glow due to a film of moisture on its fatty surface. Naked under this bizarre garment I experience it’s sticky-wet, adipose drape both clinging to and sliding across my goose bumped skin. The peculiar, keen touch of its damp, dead weight feels cold yet sensual.

I scrutinize my congregation as they shuffle in. They are unhealthy and emaciated, with deep, dark rings around their sunken, lifeless eyes and forlorn demeanours, drooping with weary resignation. They are similarly attired to me and also share an androgynous, almost alien appearance with everyone, even the women, possessing bald heads and the men shaven faces. However, contrary to my dreary disciples I am vigorous and robust, my lean physique tough and muscular under my spongy apparel.

Having arrived my zombified devotees meander, as if in a stupor, before sitting on the bare floor. Some huddle against the sides, squeezing between rumps of suspended cadavers, while others slump in the central area. They curl and wrap their stiff limbs to keep warm, shivering in the frigid atmosphere. My pathetic proselytes are careful to avoid one another, begrudging their personal space in the crowded surroundings and dodging contact with their fellows, either gazing at the floor or contemplating me.

When my complete company has assembled, I signal for the ingress to be sealed. Upon schedule the cramped church is filled with intense music. These strains resemble an endless instrumental verse of the song “Venus In Furs” by The Velvet Underground.

However, the arrangement is far more symphonic than the original recording. The single eerie, hypnotic violin is now a massive string section. The droning, twangy guitar has diffused into a surrounding wash of chorused accents. The basic drum and bass parts have swelled into chest-shaking booms of profound sonority. The lone tambourine pulse has been supplanted by a panorama of bells and chimes. ­This extravagant but tight orchestration produces a flat resonance in the boxy containment, the chilly echoes from the lambent interior dampened by the blunt obstructions, both alive and dead, interrupting its free vibration.

I begin my freaky sermon, opening the stout tome to read from its hallowed pages. These are of the same clammy substance as my dress. They are covered with veiny writing, the scratchy script having a runic character, despite being English. I declaim the solemn passages with a rich baritone sprechgesang, tuning my plainsong melodies to the pouring cadences of perpetual accompaniment, my dramatic, stentorian delivery soaring through the unrelenting, harmonic sound.

My posture is taut and resolute. My powerful comportment remains unaffected by the frosty temperature, which I counteract by the yogic breathing I have mastered but do not see fit to teach my faithful followers. To distinguish my ministry, I wear a large ruby, dangling from a gold headband, on my tingling Ajna chakra and a leather choker, embedded with a sparkling array of tiny diamonds, tight about my toned neck.

I fumble the dense folios to find the relevant texts, grabbing the heavy, slimy leaves hard between my pointed, blood-red fingernails, making jagged rips with my clumsy, overzealous grip.

Thus, I pronounce:

“Let us suffer our stuff of material matter begat from dud puddled mud.”

“Hallelujah!” responds the gaping gathering in hollow, warbling voices.

“Let us abide our slow suicide, know with done death the one dithering breath.”

“Hallelujah!” they mourn, showing missing teeth and cracked, cankered lips.

“Let the rot of not-ness bless our beating meat, complete our decaying way to the dust we must trust.”

“Hallelujah!” mumbles the queer choir with the spent surrender of world-weary fatigue.

“To be is an anomaly, the remiss continuum of pure enduring bliss forgetting to forget itself through the strife of life. The will can only kill to fulfil each leeching form of normality. By pain we gain our bare awareness, the hemmed remembrance of wry-I consciousness impressed on the soft-wrapping trap by the snick-wicked prick, the lofty flight of free-man fancy fitted into the knitted shit of bitter bite.”

“Hallelujah!” whines their tired retort, languid with the dopey hope of tenuous optimism.

“May my rank-dank skin sweat the debt of pleasures yearned yet returned in measures of sin, the grinning mockery of shocking reason paying for my stray season of flowery play.”

“Hallelujah!” numb to come from such dumb-humble scum.

“Hail the pale stale squirt, the flirt of the born-torn pervert, the skirt of dirty desire worn by the scorning mire of entirety, the wire-cutting utterance of the turd-feeding word and the absurdity of the all-falling call to live and give love through the glutinous shove of fresh flesh.”

“Hallelujah!” they groan, prone, alone.

“Let us pray.” I command.

The haunting refrain starts to fade, until only the glum hum of the condenser fan strokes the frosty silence. As I advance into trance, that passive-dynamic dance of steady-ready meditation, my pariah parishioners attempt to imitate my ecstatic state. But they can only fidget their trembling anatomies, scratching switching itches and clutching at flossy gossamers of thought never-to-be-caught by clever endeavour while their stolen souls toil in the oily flow of doughy ego.