Devil Woman

categorization is the matador’s red cape

I was at a bar in a city like New York that wasn't New York. The only thing I can recall about the bar was that it was weird. I left late and started walking home. I noticed that someone was following me and I became nervous. I sped up my walk and then I ran. Unfortunately, whoever was following me kept pace. I ran even faster, faster than seemed humanly possible, and eventually I experienced myself as a laser beaming through city streets, miles and miles on end through the vast metropolis. I still couldn't lose the stalker.

Out of the blue, I was human again and heading up the front steps of a brownstone. I couldn’t open the door because it was locked so I walked down the steps, intending to head around back. That’s when I noticed a guy coming toward me and it seemed to me that he was the one who had been following me. I quickly ran to the side of the building, passed through the open gate, and noticed a long two-by-four. The guy tried to push inside as I was closing the door, but I managed to get it shut, lock it, and put the two-by-four in place to barricade it. As I breathed easier, I tried to figure out why he had been following me. I didn't know anyone in this city, I wasn't a prime target for a mugging, certainly not worthy of transforming into a laser beam to follow me. I could hear him breathing on the other side of the fence. He never said a word and I felt no menace from him. I didn't trust him, though; it was against my instincts to believe he meant no harm.

I shook my head, walked around back and up the stairs to the outside balcony. I turned the knob of the kitchen door. It was unlocked. As I went inside, I saw a radio blaring salsa music on an island in the kitchen. It occurred to me that I did not have an island in my kitchen, that I didn't have a radio that looked like that, and it was doubtful I would have left it on tuned to a station playing salsa music.

I had an epiphany: I might be in that guy’s place and he was just trying to get inside; maybe he wasn't the follower at all. I opened the front door and let the guy inside. I explained the mistake and laughingly apologized. He told me not to worry about it and he laughed it off, too. There were seven beings in the living room. They seemed to have spontaneously appeared in a way that somehow seemed natural. Three of the men were cowboys, two men were space rangers, one was a humanoid octopus, and another was a ridiculously sexy red-skinned woman with coal-black eyes and razored finger nails. The woman was cartoonish in the sense that she was naked without being naked and yet she seemed to be entirely flesh and blood. The group was scattered throughout the overly large living room, bullshitting with each other. Without understanding, I conceived of this assemblage as an after-hours party, a spillover from the bar I had been at earlier.

I started talking with a couple of the cowboys dressed in classic 1950s-movie western gear. One of the guys was holding a saddle under his arm and looked around every once in awhile. I thought to myself, “He’s probably wondering where his horse might be.” The other cowboy, who was doing tricks with his rope, told me about a woman who eats raw chicken hearts. He was gregarious and demonstrative, a great storyteller. He claimed that eating chicken hearts gave this woman the ability to fly. If she eats one raw chicken heart she can fly for an hour; if she eats two, she can fly for an hour and a half; three, an hour and 45 minutes. No matter how many she eats, though, she can never fly for more than two hours. The Cowboy explained that this phenomenon was known as the Cluck-Cluck Principle.

As I was digesting his story I noticed that the other two cowboys and the space rangers were gang-raping the devil woman. I ran over to stop the violence but the woman appeared in front of me, blocking my way. Yet when I looked over again she was still being gang-raped. I was confused. The devil woman next to me smiled and spoke, “That’s just a facsimile of me.”

I asked her if she was the real devil woman. She asked, “Are you being serious?” She sighed before replying, “I’m you and you’re me.” My confusion overwhelmed me. My world was falling apart around me.

The devil woman continued, “You are me, you are the cowboys and space rangers, you are the devil woman being raped, you are the kitchen, the yellow paint on the walls, the air you’re breathing. All of it is you. The whole of what you see, smell, hear, touch, taste, feel, and imagine is your mind. You are forcing these things to appear as objects separate from yourself.”

I clung to my sense of self with a spirit of desperate determination. The humanoid octopus slithered over to me. Once next to me the octopoid became a hovering, disembodied head with a male face and tentacles squirming where you might expect hair. It had giant, bulging eyes with huge black circles around them. No mouth, no nose. Electricity crackled about his tentacles. The being thought to me, “Stop interpreting your perceptions.” As the thought vanished he floated toward the cowboys raping the facsimile of the devil woman. He hovered over them and then turned back to me. The glare of the being terrified me. Its tentacles melted and dripped onto the cowboys and space rangers; they dissolved, screaming in terror before before disappearing entirely. The facsimile of the devil woman shrieked and gyrated her hips until her shape shifted into a machine that looked like a giant circular saw.

I realized everything I had known about myself was a lie. I re-examined my life and realized I had not been living. I had been looking through the wrong lens and therefore everything was distorted. I felt as if I was transforming within a cocoon.

I noticed the red-skinned woman again. She said, “Your conceptions are flawed. Conception itself is flawed. You can’t experience being exclusively through thought. Thought is based on a perception of a separation that doesn’t exist; thoughts are reflections and representations. You focus on the past and the future so exclusively you completely miss the present; the present is when and where you live.”

I thought to myself, “Wait a minute! I wrote this. This is part of a play I wrote long ago.” I asked the devil woman, “How did you know to play this character? Who’s directing this? I want to talk to the producer.” I had a sense that I was witnessing and participating in a play I had written. Part of me had an urge to claim credit for it. Another part of me simply wanted to talk to the producer because I wanted to know how he or she obtained my writing. Yet another part of me wanted to know what the audience thought of the play. “I” had the sense that whoever had put this together must be someone I had to meet. He or she or it had put it together in such a way that it felt like it was “I” who had done it.

The red-skinned woman said “You did put it together. You’re the producer! This is your mind.”

I interjected, “Wait a minute. So I’m a god of sorts?”

“God is a conception of an 'other.' Your conception of god is something you constructed. You are everything. Just be.”

I sat down with the devil woman on what was now the edge of a stage. I closed my eyes and meditated. From a balcony, I watched myself and the sexy red-skinned woman sitting on the stage. As my stage manifestation meditated, jugglers danced by, lit candles floated around the theater, and a battleship crashed through a backdrop. When my stage manifestation opened his eyes everything onstage disappeared. The  devilwoman sat next to me on stage. My stage self turned to the woman and said, “Nothing’s happening.” She laughed and shook her head. My balcony self clapped heartily and yelled, “Bravo! Bravo!”

The woman turned to my stage self. “Everything is happening. You're not yet aware of it.”

When she finished speaking a book fell from the rafters and landed on the stage with a loud thump. My stage manifestation turned around dumbfounded. The woman said, “You did that. You’re the book.”

My stage self said “I’m the book?”

“Yeah, you’re the book falling onto the stage.”

My stage representation repeated, incredulously, “I’m the book falling onto the stage, I’m the book falling onto the stage, I'm the book falling onto the stage...” As the inflections of the repeated statement changed more books fell. In minutes, dozens of books littered the stage.

My stage self turned and picked up a book. I turned to the red-skinned woman. I whispered, “I’m the Bible?”

My balcony self disappeared and “I” was back in my stage body, now both "I" and a representation of "I." I looked at the seats in the theater and they were filled with people. The entire audience was engrossed. I turned around and picked up another book. “I’m the Koran?” I grabbed another book and playfully sang out, “I’m Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance!” I was having fun. I snatched another book and shook my head. “I’m Green Eggs and Ham.” The audience roared with laughter.

The devil woman said to me, “You’re the audience, too. You’re also me, remember?”

I looked at the audience and saw their radiance. I turned to the woman. She was beaming. I wept with joy. I looked into the her eyes and she kissed me. The representation of myself dissolved and all the manifestations of the theater dissolved as well. "I" dissipated. Only she remained.