HOLY NIGHT

by Rex Sexton

This story has not yet been published in print. Permission is granted to make and distribute complete verbatim electronic copies for non-commercial purposes provided this permission notice is preserved on all copies. All other rights reserved. To correspond with the author, send email to RSCohen@uic.edu or snail mail to Rex Sexton, 100 W. Chestnut St., Chicago, IL 60610.

Bio of Rex Sexton and synopsis of the novel Desert Flower

Desert Flower, excerpt from novel by Rex Sexton

Fiction and Painting of Rex Sexton on CD includes his novel Desert Flower, fvie short stories, poems/songs and images of 20 of his paintings, plus classic works of fiction by some of his favorite authors. His fiction introduces you to worlds that outwardly seem familiar, but that operate in accord with their own eerie rules and expectations. Once you get caught up in the characters, reading one of these tales is like watching your own recurrent nightmare -- you can't stop reading, and you'll never forget. Review in Large Print Reviews

Too dangerous. Kopec brooded, as he looked out at the labyrinth. Too risky. It would be impossible to maneuver safely through the maze of this monster city. The ghostly vistas looked as grave and as imperturbable to Kopec, on this Christmas eve, as all the other cities and towns and villages proved to be on less benevolent nights. He decided to leave his duffle-bag at the bus terminal. If his visit went well, he could return later for his things.

Domes and towers and solitary stark stone structures surrounded him upon leaving the bus station, Looming streets faded out of sight. As he moved among those vaulted walks, the night waving its bitter cloak across the vertigo of granite, he fumbled in his shabby coat for the Christmas card stuffed deep inside its pocket. It was a miracle his brother's card had ever found him, Kopec marveled. It was beyond even the realm of chance. That the card had found him at all made him wary. But what could his brother do for him now? Even if Simon had attained, as he hinted in his letter, a position of some influence, it had come too late for Kopec. Over the bleak and bitter years, if Kopec had learned nothing else, he learned that once you stepped outside you never could go back. He had stepped too far outside. He was lost. His ticket was one way to nowhere. They might, moreover, after all this time, find one another total strangers. He had changed, as we all must with life. In fact, he hardly recognized himself. The world had changed. His brother was a married man now and apparently a considerable success. He wondered, grimly, if it were foolish to have come here, as desperate as he was. It might even be a trap.

Beneath the lights of a marquee, he stopped to read the scribbled address. Holiday music from a speaker along the street floated mechanically about him in the icy air and the sparse, putty faced crowds brushed around him in a frosty tempo with the jingling tunes. Kopec began to feel, as he labored to read the neon dazzled words, that uneasy feeling of entrapment and foreboding which he learned to associate with crowds and light. He tried to fashion a map of the city in his mind, hastening to escape. East, west, north, south? Suddenly noticing among the decorous holiday couples who shuffled between the night clubs and the musical theaters, a young woman who appeared to be intently watching him, he hesitated for a moment, under the lights, to see what she might want.

She moved slowly toward him, staying close to the cover of the buildings, keeping within the shadows of their haughty glow. In the suffusion of light and darkness which enveloped her, he could dimly make out a tumble of ash-blonde hair which fell in folds around her ermine draped shoulders, and framed the elegant angles of her pale, placid face. By the woman's expression, however, which appeared to be as indifferent to the crowds along the street as he dream-like walk seemed to be unconscious of them, Kopec decided he must be mistaken. Just as she drew nearer to him, a Metropolis patrolman lumbered by and she turned, quickly, tracing back her steps, still moving within the shadows.

"Are you going into the theater?"

The stout patrolman stood before him. His manner was imperious. His gaze was fixed and mocking. He balanced his bulk on the balls of his feet, planting them firmly apart, posting himself as a barrier between Kopec and the small crowds gathering at the theater door.

"I'm not sure." He found his voice faltering for an excuse. "That is, you see, I just stopped for the light."

He handed the patrolman the card and told him that he was on his way to visit his brother and sister-in-law for the holidays. When the patrolman examined the address - in the park vicinity, an affluent district - he frowned, studied Kopec again a little uncertainly, and then curtly offered him brief directions.

The city seemed, this wintry eve, to have been carved out of some great, black rock and then abandoned to nature. It piled its way up into an abyss of sky-less night, gathering from that darkness a whisper of a snowfall and he walked alone beneath it down the wide barren boulevards that cut between those dark mountains. Christmas carolers, if they did appear, did so always off at a distance and only for a moment, and then they quickly vanished down into the shelters from this harshest of cities where all life continued in closed and intimate societies.

He walked within that icy night for an interminable time. The cold, the biting wind, the fatigue from the bus trip, began to take its toll, playing in chimeras with the dream-like drift of his thoughts. The bleak episodes of the last few years - the years after the turning - reappeared before him as a grim shadow-show. His mind reeled with the mean streets, the sordid places, the violence, struggle, the fear and the flight. He shuddered as he watched himself fighting to survive.

The bitter night, it seemed to Kopec, was wrapping his own singular world brutally around him. The story of his life since he had seen his brother last was in essence much like this night - weary and ragged he had journeyed without reprieve down solitary streets through the cold and dark always chasing after some glimmer of hope in the distance never to be realized. He
had clung through those years to that hope even as his life and the world grew more hopeless.

The towering structures dwindled in the darkness. Swank shops and upscale boutiques emerged amidst a miracle of fairy lights and holiday decorations. The closed shops surrounded him with a Twilight Zone realm of display front windows in which magnificent mannequins enacted a fabulous existence in some mock dimension of placid perfection amidst the snowbound desolation. He found his footsteps falling faster upon the pavements hastening to escape. As he bent in turn each wind-swept corner, the smiling, painted, puppet-like figures seemed to gaze at him derisively from their designer dream worlds, to laugh and whisper. He could almost hear their hollow howling in the wind. The park was inaccessible when he reached it, closed for the night by city curfew. Rather than risk another run in with the patrols, he detoured around its endless walls. His lean frame pulled within itself under the coats thin protection. At length, he reached the fringes of an affluent neighborhood. The houses loomed like castles in the falling snow. At an elegant structure, he left the night and wind to enter a quaint arched passageway.

"Sweet dreams are made of this.
Who am I to disagree?
I traveled the world and the seven seas.
Everybody's looking for something."

Rock music met him as he ducked in from the ghostly dazzle, hard blunt beats which bombarded his shivering body like bullets. Kopec could see nothing. He groped blindly through the staccato dark. The arched stone entrance was as black as a crypt. He searched the shadowy void uneasily, wary of the broken lamps, braced against some druggie skell who might be lurking with a knife.

He found the door and rang the bell. The black winds whipped and wailed around him. He knocked and rang the bell again. The great door boomed with the rhythm of the base. Knock knock who's there? Kopec muttered to himself. Knock knock who cares?

His teeth were chattering. His feet were blocks of ice. Despite his poundings no one came. He tried the latch but it was bolted tight. He searched the dark in desperation.

"WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE!
I HOPE YOU"RE GLAD TO BE HERE!"

A stunning woman with wild dark hair, dressed in black, suddenly appeared like an apparition as the door opened wide and the blazing light and thundering music exploded in the passage. The woman's eyes were holy mysteries. Her pale skin was so perfect it seemed painted on. She studied Kopec over the rim of her tilted cocktail glass. Between her ivory fingers a slender scented cigarette was burning into ash.

"I'm Steven Kopec." Kopec chattered. He had to shout to lift his voice above the sonic blast. "Simon Kopec's brother!" The light was blinding. He dug anxiously for the Christmas card buried deep in his shabby coat. When he finally found it and offered it to her, the wind tore it from his fingers and it fluttered through the night.

"I'm expected!" Kopec shouted. He shielded his eyes from the doorway's dazzle. "I'm Simon's brother!" He stood shivering in his shoes, frozen to the bone.

"I'm bored."

The woman gazed at him without expression. She talked from a dream, a hypnotic trance. She took a drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke in his face. She drained her drink and turned away.

"The house is empty."

A phantom in the foyer informed Kopec as he slipped shuddering inside.

"Then there's room for one more." Kopec forced a smile.

"You're here alone."

The figure was indecipherable, a robed man shadowed from the party's lights, tall, gaunt, eerie.

"A lonely number." The phantom paused and pondered. He brushed stiffly past Kopec and closed the door. "One." He returned Kopec's smile with a sardonic grin. Teeth like giant pearls split the hooded man's face in half.

"ZOOMING TOWARD THE ZERO
BOPPING TOWARD THE BLACK HOLE
ROCKING TOWARD THE NO SHOW!"

Death camp creatures of gigantic proportions climbed the flickering walls, while demon shapes danced in the inferno below. The great marble hall was a huge domed holocaust of multicolored lights, movie images, rock music and twisting figures. Kopec remembered the grainy, black and white films from history studies. They were documentary footage of concentration camp survivors. Like ghouls in phantasmagoria, the skeletal specters twisted and tottered tortuously on their spindly legs. Barely of the earth, beyond death, eyes vacant, they were synchronized to howl with the music in a fathomless despair as they skulked across the illuminated walls, heads agoggle on their scrawny necks. The ghostly ciphers and their barbed wire backgrounds counterpointed the delirium below like a black ballet. The Goth garbed grandees with their flaming hair and shadowed eyes and spiked appendages, the diamond decked debutantes, the designer donned dilettantes, the shiek socialites and the demimonde decadents rocked below them in their endless ritual endlessly repeated. The wrong place. Kopec brooded as he took in the spectacle. What is this place. A towering silver Christmas tree, decorated with golden dollar signs, loomed above the dancing figures, rising from the middle of the marble floor to the base of the gleaming dome. The tree revolved on a floodlit stand, caught the colored light, and cast rainbows around the room. The dancers rocked around the chimerical cone as if in a tribal rite around a bonfire. Dazed and amazed by the towering tree, Kopec followed its glittering tiers to their lofty peak. On top, a skeleton with wings, perhaps an angel of death, tipped the blazing Christmas tree and seemed to rise like burning bones from a funeral pyre. Above the death-angel, like a storm cloud afloat in the concave of the ceiling, a giant tarantula hovered in the hollow of the dome. The brackish black illusion, which must have been projected by a hologram, crawled murkily over the hellish party. Silvery strands extended from the arched articulations of its slowly scrabbling legs. The web-like threads glinted in the refracted light and dissolved amidst the dancers. A wreath of words, written in colored Christmas lights, encircled the giant spider at the base of the dome. The blinking wreath read: Simon Says: "THE GREATEST MADNESS IS THE GREATEST HAPPINESS! MERRY MAS X!"

"Look what just walked in."

The greatest madness. Kopec stared at the message stunned. Simon says: the madness, the madness.

"Maybe it's the ghost of Christmas past?"

"Maybe it's the Holy Ghost?"

Kopec was covered with snow. It was turning into ice. Frost crusted his hair, caked his tattered coat. It was colder in the room than it was outside. His face felt frost-bitten. He could see his breath.

"I think it's the abominable snowman."

"I think it's abominable."

"It's a party prop you deadheads!"

"Party propping what?"

"The Needy."

"Tres Seedy."

Shaken and dazed, Kopec struggled through the pandemonium furtively searching the enigmas for his brother, wary of seeing him. Satan costumed servants shifted through the bedlam. Eyes blazing, tails flicking, they dispensed small ebony crosses to the revelers from pole-handled church collection baskets which were piled high with the crucifixes. The crosses were actually party pipes. The heady scents of hallucinogens further rarefied the rocking mayhem. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, "Brides of Satan," dressed in black wedding gowns, carried trays of drinks through the mob from an incandescently lighted bar in the corner which was carved from polished ivory. The shimmering bar was ornately arched and garlanded by the pearly "Gates of Heaven." The gate-keeper, who was dressed in a black Gestapo uniform, smiled ruefully at Kopec as he poured drinks from a skull.
"Mr. Party Prop!"

Kopec reeled blindly through the rockers lost in the nimbus, heart pounding, head spinning. The grand hall was so crowded he could barely move. He shifted and turned, struggled and searched.

"Bachelor number Zero!"

His legs felt rubbery. His head was in a fog. He was choking on the drug-smoked air. The crowds swelled and surged, crammed around him. Elbows jabbed into his ribs. Hardbodies slam danced into him. He was swarmed by a chimera of bright glazed eyes, pale perfect faces and mocking grins.

"Who designs your clothes Mr. Party Prop?"

"Calvin Swine?"

"Georgio Our Moan Eee?"

"Abercrummy and Flinch?"

A willowy woman dressed in black leather, with long raven braids roped like whips, swiveled her head and lashed he long thick dreadlocks across Kopec's face. The blow was stunning. Hands ripped at his clothes, tarring them to shreds.

"Have any tips on the stock market Mr. Party Prop?"

"Can I buy your date book?"

"You're the life of the party." The phantom was suddenly beside him, fluttering like a black flame in the blazing inferno. "But then dead souls always do delight us, especially when they're deadlocked in their descent toward their dead end."

"Where's my brother?"

Kopec's lips were bleeding. A crowd of revelers stalked his steps and the hot notes from the hard rock seemed to flicker through the dazzle like fire-breathing dragon-flies.

"Simon?" The phantom looked around and pondered. "Nowhere. Everywhere."

"Where is he here?"

"No one's here."

"I'm here!"

"Are you?"

Suddenly Kopec saw him, as high tech lightening bolts zig zagged through the horrendous hall and white light and thunder flashed and rumbled through the strobe-strafed mayhem. Simon was seated on a throne in the back of the room inside a giant Horn of Plenty which was molded from gold. The throne was also molded from gold and Simon sat surrealistically atop it costumed in royal raiment. A crown of jewels glittered on his head. Sparks from diamonds flashed on his regal garments and flickered from his fingers. He was a monarchal mirage of velvet and silk and rainbow weaving. Popes in golden chasubles, copes, dalmatics and adorned with orphreys, anointed Simon's feet with sacred oil, while bishops in flowing gowns and hallowed vestments sprinkled him with holy water shaken from the flails of silver-stemmed staves, studded with gems. More dazzling than the Godly rites and the Midas-rich royal trappings was the breathtaking woman seated next to Simon atop an identical throne of gold within the horn's conical chamber.

Hair like spun gold piled high atop her majestic head, curling and cascading like the tiered tresses of a goddess, skin so pale it was almost transparent, eyes like endless seas, she was the most beautiful creature Kopec had ever seen. A diamond tiara glittered above her noble forehead, emeralds and rubies encircled her swan-like throat, diamonds rounded her alabaster wrists and ringed her ivory fingers. Her grandeur was glacial. She gazed placidly at the rockers with a royal disdain matched only by the suave smugness of Simon's anointed saintliness - an ice princess in a gossamer gown that shown so radiantly in the chimerical light it seemed woven from witchcraft. Simon's wife, Kopec's sister-in-law. An avalanche of Christmas gifts spilled past the royal couple from the horn, flooding the marble floor below them - bizarrely wrapped boxes decorated with banshees and demons, bowed and ribboned with hissing snakes. Around the snapping boxes, moribund morticians carried, like pallbearers, corpses on cooling boards which they brought to a great banquet table stretched below the golden thrones for a royal feast.

Debauchers and dandies, coquettes and courtesans reveled around the table while white-wigged waiters in ribald livery brought them body parts on silver trays. A dancing dwarf jester dressed in a skin tight costume decorated with stars and moons and wearing a dunce hat of diamond dollar signs capered amidst the bones and entrails and tankards of blood which covered the table, while he sang shrill songs and juggled skulls.

Crosses pelted Kopec as he swooned toward the royal gathering, his body moving, yet not moving, somehow being moved, a step at a time, as though by some invisible force. A chorus of phantasms sang : Retro retro rags as they stalked behind him I wanna wear some retro rags! The party pipes bounced off his head, thumped against his back. Simon watched Kopec's staggering progress keenly as he sat radiantly reclining on his throne of gold. He held a ruby-red goblet to his lips. His smiling mouth was crusted with blood.

"WHY DOESN'T THE SPIDER GET CAUGHT IN IT'S WEB?"

The dwarf jester jumped from the table and blocked Kopec's path, hopping and screeching and waving his hands.

Kopec swept his arm feebly at the little man, numbed and near delirium, but the jester dodged him.

"WHY DOESN'T THE SPIDER GET CAUGHT IN IT'S WEB?"

"I don't know." Kopec chattered.

The dwarf lunged forward and rammed his pointed hat into Kopec's rib-cage. The feasters roared with laughter as Kopec staggered to the table bent double, eyes watering and breath smoking with the cold as he gasped for air.

"Christmas becomes you Steven." Simon said dryly. He sipped his drink and shook his head. "But then you always had that manger born, martyr bent, crucified look about you."

"It doesn't do much for you." Kopec coughed. He stared stunned at his brother, filled with rage and dread. Simon looked better than ever. His face was flawless, handsome and fair. His bright eyes sparkled, brilliant and clear.

"I'm a man for all seasons, Steven."

"And what season is this?"

"Tis the season of Simon." Simon toasted the air. "Like all the days and weeks and months of the year."

"SIMON SAYS: 'TIS THE SEASON OF ME!'" The jester shrieked. The feasters pounded the table, yelled: here here here here!

"Not much to celebrate." Kopec panted and clutched at a chair. He stared bewildered at the cannibal feast. Was it real? The sight made him sick. He fought down nausea and tried not to gag.

"Oh, maybe not Steven." Simon smiled. "But it helps pass the time. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please! This dashing young blade is my brother Steven, come to join us in our celebration! Steven is a master of the manifest, a nomad of the unknown. He speaks in darkness to the dead rumored words which are never heard. In other words, poor Steven is a poet. But perhaps that's something you guessed by Steven's stately demeanor and stylish dress!"

"Touch us poet!"

One of the revelers roared.

"Sate our souls!"

"Warm our hearts!"

The table rocked with laughter.

"SIMON SAYS: 'THE CRUD IS A DUD!'"

"This can't be possible."

Kopec shook his head. Simon was a star at the Art League in their town. His mind was brilliant, deep and profound.

"Anything is possible, little brother, when nothing is real, and when nothing is real anything is possible. Poor Steven's a lost soul. He always was with his books and dreams. He was a starry eyed little bookworm as a lad. Apparently some worms don't turn. They stay buried in their little holes in the ground while the world changes despite them."

"You've changed."

"I've evolved."

"Into what?"

"Into the present, poor bard. No one evolves into the past, me thinks."

"Think again." Kopec shuddered.

"You must forgive Steven." Simon yawned. "He's lost touch with the times. Besides, he's out of his element. He isn't used to seeing worldly society indulge itself. He isn't used to society. The world is merely a suspicion to our poor poet and he even less to it. Less than a suspicion. Less than Zero."

"Why did you invite me here?"

Kopec searched Simon's face.

"Am I not my brother's keeper?" Simon spread his hands. "I put it to you my queen." Simon turned to the goddess. "Am I not my brother's keeper?"

"Keep him from me." The goddess laughed.

"Poor Steven.

Simon shook his head as the table rejoiced.

"No one wants a poem. But let me give you your Christmas gift!"

The phantom was suddenly beside Kopec smiling his sardonic grin. He held a thick black book in his hands.

"It's your journal Steven." Simon said somberly. "The story of your life." He raised his ruby goblet in a salute. "I published a first (and last) edition for the party - not that anybody reads. But no matter, we'll enjoy it later as a performance piece."
The Book of Others by Steven Kopec, was darkly embossed on the jet-black cover. The phantom fanned the manuscript's pages in Kopec's face. They were black and empty, a flurry of wind in a crypt, a desolate void.

"Nothing from nothing leaves nothing." The phantom shrugged. "I did enjoy your disappearance and suicide."
"At midnight black confetti will fall." Simon mused. "Black snow descending on the party from the marble dome. Steven's Storm, a shroud to drop a curtain on this Holy Night."

"Signifying nothing." The goddess laughed.

The room began to reel. There was a black fog in his brain. Kopec's temples pounded. He felt insane, He gripped the chair and closed his eyes. Like a nightmare, Simon's Christmas swirled inside his mind. It was a dream of the devil, evil come to life.
"When you do the deeds of hell hell will come." Kopec whispered. He searched Simon's face in desperation.

"Hell is here." Simon smiled. "And hell is heaven. Satan is the holy ghost and his disciples the chosen. The armies of the night have marched across the land. Our reign will rule the world for a thousand years."

"I can't see your breath." Kopec stammered, stunned. He searched the feaster's faces, all stratified by the nimbus.

"Excuse me little brother?"

"I can't see your breath." Kopec strained to see through the dazzle. "It's freezing in the room and yet I can't see your breath."

"Why would you?" Simon stared at him archly. "I'm not breathing."

The feasters roared and the Jester turned a flip. He stood on his pointed hat and spun like a top. Simon looked around the table and rolled his eyes. The goddess laughed and clapped her hands and shook with delight.

"You're not real."

Kopec shuddered as he backed away.

"And you are?"

"You're not alive." Kopec glanced around. "None of you."

Shivering in his shabby clothes, Kopec stood stupefied beside the phantom who still grinned at him and fanned the black pages. Suddenly Kopec gave the smiling specter a violent shove. The robed man flew backwards through the air like a puppet on a string, glided past the ducking feasters and then flew back darkly at him. Kopec kicked the Jester and sent him hurtling. The dwarf screeched and kicked as he swung back and forth like a raucous child on a swing. Kopec whirled and plunged into the dancers, crazed and panting. He plowed through the mob like a football player and sent the revelers flying in all directions. Mannequin men and woman swung to and fro amidst the kaleidoscopic light, cascading and colliding as they flew through the air in a disheveled pandemonium of screeching puppet pendulums.

"The party prop has popped his top!"

One of the revelers roared with laughter as he tossed madly with the others.

"The party prop has popped his top! The party prop has popped his top!"

The puppets laughed and gabbered as they twirled and tangled on their strings.

The room was spinning. The world was upside down. Kopec pushed his way deliriously through the mutant marionettes in a fever dream of desperation. Crosses pelted him. Glasses shattered against his head. The pirouetting puppets punched and kicked him as they reeled back and forth. He fought through them charged with fear and awe. Their hands tore at his clothes as he searched frantically for the door.

"Can't hang poet?"

The phantom stood before him blocking his way to the foyer.

"Get out of my way."

"You're here to stay." The phantom smiled. "There's no way out."

NO EXIT, flared above the great door, a blinding neon sign. Kopec shook the latch in a frenzy. It was bolted tight. He slammed the door. It was sealed shut, like the lid on a coffin, like the cover of a crypt. He turned back and shouldered the phantom aside. He raced helter skelter through the party looking for a window or a door.

"There's room for one more." The phantom smiled as Kopec ran madly through the room. "One's a lonely number poet, enjoy your doom."

A flying sleigh pulled by mechanical reindeer circled the blazing room. Simon sat in the carriage dressed in a Santa Claus suit. The goddess was seated beside him waving at the mob below. The Jester stood atop the giant Christmas bag decked in the costume of an elf. The sleigh circled the glittering Christmas tree and rounded the spider in the dome. The Jester tossed gifts from the bag to the leaping revelers who fought for the treasures below. He dropped blockbuster movies and pop CD's, best selling novels and fan magazines, designer catalogs and television guides, Prozac, barbiturates, and assorted amphetamines. The string-tangled puppets formed a mass on the marble floor, arms around each other, they moved in a lockstep back and forth.
"Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, riding down Santa Claus lane..."

They laughed and chattered as they moved like a drunken spider from left to right.

"Get me out of here phantom." Kopec confronted the enigma, breathless and sweating.

"It's the same outside."

"Get me out of here phantom."

"There's a place to hide."

He followed the black robed figure through the throngs. In the corner of his eye, he saw the tarantula descending the wall. A clock was striking midnight; black confetti began to fall. Puppets were catching fire from the smoldering party pipes. The odd pair twisted through labyrinths, descended stairs, the robed mannequin and the shabby poet. They slipped down dungeon-like halls, through sunken corridors. Bat-like in the shadows the phantom lead Kopec onward. They curved through dusky cellar chambers and down torch lit spiraling stairs. They turned a final corner and the robed puppet paused.

"Merry Christmas!" The phantom smiled.

He pointed a boney finger at an egress marked: DEATH'S DOOR.

End

Fiction and Painting of Rex Sexton on CD includes his novel Desert Flower, fvie short stories, poems/songs and images of 20 of his paintings, plus classic works of fiction by some of his favorite authors. His fiction introduces you to worlds that outwardly seem familiar, but that operate in accord with their own eerie rules and expectations. Once you get caught up in the characters, reading one of these tales is like watching your own recurrent nightmare -- you can't stop reading, and you'll never forget. Review in Large Print Reviews

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