Vincent didn’t know where exactly the meetings were held, so he followed the distant pulse of music through the rec center halls. Since the school admin could hardly afford the cost of demolition, they slapped some boards across the entrances and left it to rot. The very same night, the boards came down and never went back up. Three years on and the walls were covered in a kaleidoscope of fresh and fading tags, threatened by mold. FORGED IN HELL, DEAD GIRL FROM SATURN, DROSERA EYEZ, ATROUS ABYSM.

Faced with a barricade of upturned desks and chairs, Vincent cut through the indoor pool. The co-ed lockers were a hothouse of beetles and curled weeds. Vincent’s glasses fogged. A notification pinged in the corner of their digital display: the temperature had risen by nine degrees. Ahead, sunlight filtered through smashed windows and dispersed across the rectangular pool-cum-swamp. Its waters were green, the surface scummed with stinking algae. Heat radiated from the ooze. A black cloud of mosquitoes hovered close above.

Through the exit, Vincent reached the stairwell. Climbing the concrete steps, the music rose in volume and intensity. At the second floor landing, Vincent heard the first murmurings of muffled conversation. At the third floor landing, he found himself face-to-face with a demon.

The hound’s head was painted ten feet tall. Red fur, white flames for eyes, jaws open wide. Saliva glistened on the tips of its fangs: twin tac-knives with serrated edges. The inside of its maw was painted black; flecks of night flaked in scabrous patterns from the door. A garble of breakbeats and conversation pressed through the walls.

Vincent caught his breath. He wasn’t short for a boy, but his posture made him small, accentuating his round face and narrow shoulders. Sweat stained his collar and soaked through the back of his black school uniform. Only now did he notice the itches on his neck and ankles. The mosquitoes’ work, no doubt; tomorrow he’d have a necklace of fat purple welts. Stupid, he almost said, stupid, to make it all this way and just stand here shaking. He forced his hand to the black door’s handle.

A woman’s voice, electronically slowed to a syrupy moan, cried from beyond: “Is anybody there?”

Stepping into the room and the music crashed over Vincent, breakbeats so loud his glasses shook. Heavy curtains blotted out the sun; in its place, a strip of colored LEDs glowed like distant flares in a tangy fog of cigarette and hash smoke. The lights cycled along the color wheel, tinting graffitied concrete gold, green, pink. Vincent stood frozen, music seeping under his skin, shaking his guts around.

The crowd surged before him, diffuse light warping skin, blending faces together. Bodies congregated around an old box TV flashing neon gunfire and a quartz ashtray vibrating atop the stereo. Hard-faced youths in school uniforms and black collars pounded cheap beer, and copulated on a ratty couch. In the far corner, Vincent hallucinated some manga warrior, but it was only a mannequin in a patchwork of pilfered riot gear, a bullet hole punched through its tinted visor. Someone screamed; the party continued.

For a moment Vincent spotted what could have been silver eyes, and then his vision was filled by the giant: standing with his hands in his pockets, face covered in dueling scars.

“The hell do you want?”

Vincent recognized the upperclassman. Wasson, second lieutenant. Like the others at the party, a black leather collar was secured around his muscled neck. Vincent stared at the clasp.

“I’m here to talk to Gauss.” The giant cupped his cauliflower ear. Vincent yelled, “I’m here to talk to Gauss!”

Wasson barked a laugh. “Get lost, kid.” Once, Vincent had seen him throw a security guard through a plate glass window.

Vincent forced himself to say, “I want to join the pack,” and Wasson looked at him like the underclassman was something crawling on his food.

“Are you deaf? Get the hell out of here.” Vincent didn’t move. He wanted to, he just couldn’t feel his legs. So then the knife came out, tiny in the giant’s hand, blade full of red light. Vincent’s world flashed along the tip of the blade.

A long-fingered hand clasped Wasson’s wrist, gently dragging it down. The boy was tall, lithe, blonde hair flowing down to his shoulders. When the giant saw him, he backed away. The boy wore no collar.

“You were looking for me,” Gauss said, not a question. Vincent stared into his eyes, silver from lid to lid, shining like coins in a pool. The colored LEDs caught their long lashes, filled the hollows of his cheeks. Vincent felt suddenly naked, his skin translucent, Gauss appraising his innards like furniture.

“Okay,” Gauss gestured with his head. Turning on his heel, he walked past the giant and into the crowd. It took Vincent a moment to realize that he was expected to follow.

Passing a plastic cooler and the embers of a drunken fight, Gauss led Vincent through the back door and onto the fire escape. Dusk spread across an expanse of highways and electronic waste, and beyond, the city’s skyline cut through a haze of smog. Prefab tenement blocks stood in the shadow of corporate towers mid-construction, broken peaks in scaffold cages. Amidst the stark silhouettes, the first of the advertising towers blinked to life, windows of cramped offices converted into panels of a digital mosaic: a slice of computer-blue sky and a mezcal bottle twenty stories tall.

Gauss leaned against the railing, chin planted on folded arms, back arched like a cat’s. Vincent traced his form. For eight months or more Vincent had waited for a moment like this, the impossible brightness of his fantasy buoying him through tedious classes and chores, sustaining him in those frequent evenings when he could barely eat enough to think straight. Sometimes when he was alone, he imagined himself kneeling before Gauss in the rec center room or a field of yellow flowers. The upperclassman leaned forward, black collar dangling in delicate hand, and when he fastened it around Vincent’s neck, hot breath like butterfly wings against his cheek, the underclassman’s world became radiant.

None of it compared to the way Gauss looked at him now, silver eyes like keyholes, letting in the glow of another place. He said, “Our admissions are straightforward. We have a test. What it was yesterday is not necessarily what it will be today. It depends on our needs. Do you understand?”

At Vincent’s nod, Gauss smiled, a little twitch of the lip that seemed to Vincent a glimpse of infinite light and compassion.

“Good,” Gauss said. “I want someone with, let’s say, teeth. Someone with blood in their system. I want a busted altar.”

* * *

Reflected in the lenses of their parabolic spectacles, the dashboard of the old convertible appeared as an extension of the androgyne’s blank, angular face. The speedometer, doubled in the lenses, pushed ninety as the car shot down a straight desert road. Vast dunes to the left and right of the road blurred into a long white corridor. A speck on the horizon grew, divided, became a village. Little white buildings glistened in the sun.

The androgyne, wrapped in black leather from the neck down, walked beneath a stucco arch. The town was bright and empty. In a vast piazza, they strode past a gathering of calcified bodies, details pitted and worn like the gruesome statuary of Pompeii. Amidst the frozen carnage, one stood alone, a tall figure with their legs bent and their arms outstretched. The androgyne filled this empty embrace. Removing their fingerless driving gloves, the androgyne caressed the abstract of the figure’s cheek, manicured nails tracing the chips and imperfections. They leaned forwards and kissed the lips of the dead their movement slowed to a stutter. Text flashed  across the screen: SCORIA  / LAVA ROCK EXFOLIANT / UV BLOCKER. The next ad began.

Vincent stood in the shadow of the video billboard. He wore a huge tented trashbag coat, and a three-chambered breathing mask over his mouth and nose. The billboard was one of six adverts bordering the park, which was little more than half a block of pavement and artificial grass. A faux-marble spout spewed sheets of blue light into a dry basin. A gaggle of loudmouths in baseball jerseys passed the hologram fountain and the suited man sat on its ledge, eating. A sleek pollution-filtering apparatus hung from his throat. Vincent watched, waited. He felt the cool iron pressed against his side. The cold touch seeped into his guts. Everything he’d do today was right if it was right by Gauss.

He’d spent the morning just waiting there, forcing his mind into something sharp. Now he heard the first buzzings of proselytization. The voice cut like a hum through the din of packed streets, vibrating through the park. The suited man looked at his shoes, grimaced.

“In the beginning there was Zero,” a masculine voice, tinny through cheap speakers. “Zero got sick, became unstable, secreted the bare and shivering One.” On the street the bustle of pedestrians congealed, parted, a trio in breathing masks pressed against the park fence, blocking Vincent’s view. “Zero is the walled garden of God and Heaven,” The tang of synthetic incense wafted through the crowd. “One and its Infinity are Hell.”

The altar-bearer trudged through the park’s gate, a hunched thing, formless beneath gray tatters. Little stubbed fingers shot out of wide sleeves, some calcified, some twitching. Its face was lost under the shade of a wide hood.

The suited man wrapped up the rest of his sandwich and vanished through the back entrance. The street traffic resumed its flow, minus a morbid few left peering through corrugated iron bars. They all watched the altar carried on its back.

The altar was black plastic, almost the size and shape of a turn-of-the-century computer tower but for the gabled peak, which, while also plastic, was made to resemble a shingled roof, and was once painted gold. It had fat hexagonal speakers inlaid in each side like prize emeralds, grilles slatted beneath the roof to permit air from a loudly humming fan, a cornice on each edge spewing plumes of synthetic incense, a base of varicolored bulbs blinking even now -- in broad daylight. Wrapped around the center like a bow, an LED ticker scrolled messages in hellfire red. Vincent read: I TOO WAS CREATED BY ETERNAL LOVE.

The altar-bearer’s knees buckled. Vincent thought of those ocean-dwelling snails weighed down by the majesty of their own shells. Meanwhile the sermon droned: “One gave birth to Two… these punishments might have a subject to inflict themselves… suffering removed is suffering duplicated.” The prison of matter, the suffering of space-time -- Vincent heard it all before. Their spiel was noise in a world too full of it. If they hated life so much, they should put their head on the tracks and be done with it.

Poreless faces on video-billboards smiled, laughed, brushed perfect teeth.

When the altar-bearer exited through the park’s rear gate, Vincent counted a minute, then followed. The park opened onto a narrow backstreet where the storefronts were shuttered, stoops crowded with boxes and wilting plants. Gummed adverts plastered the walls and CCTV cameras hung from certain awnings. Like gargoyles, the cameras were totems against chaos, but Vincent wasn’t superstitious -- he knew the cameras were dead, cables wired into nothing.

As the altar-bearer shuffled down the street, the sermon called, “Universally, early release is the reward for good behavior.” The masculine voice echoed off the tight walls. Vincent tapped the side of his glasses and began recording his pledge.

The altar scrolled: I AM YOUR MIRROR and Vincent was right behind it, pulling from the folds of his coat the shaft of a chipped crowbar. He stepped forward, thought of Gauss, and swung with both hands.

The crowbar’s claw caught the altar’s peak and tore it wide open. The sermon screamed and died. Vincent tripped, bruising a rib on the lip of a dumpster. He spun on his heel and the altar-bearer’s hood had fallen back. Its face was a ruin in painted plastic. Skin flecked and green, jaw distended, a little eyeball popped from its socket. A harsh, piercing whine came from behind the surface.

Raising the crowbar, Vincent thought I don’t have to do this. He followed through. The face split, caved inwards, and fell away.

The altar-bearer crumpled on the asphalt, head opened, altar trailing guts. Vincent saw the ruin and vomited on his shoes. His glasses fell into the muck, still recording. I only had to bust the altar. The sky turned black. Footsteps thundered somewhere close.

* * *

Vincent, naked, rubber oxygen mask strapped over his nose, awoke to a ceiling splotched with dark stains. On one side of the operating table were multi-tiered trays of metal instruments, some common, others obscure. On the other side there was an IV pole, two 1000ml bags dangling from its arms, clear fluid aglow in harsh fluorescent light. These he could see only vaguely by darting his eyes. The rest of his body was immobile. Through the IV, a paralyzing agent pumped steadily through his veins.

Behind Vincent’s head the wall was made of built-in cabinets. From one, a technician (white smock, white mask, black goggles) retrieved a wall-mounted scanner. It was gray and oblong with a black camera snout. In the reflection of its lens Vincent didn’t notice that his head had been shaved and locks of black hair lay spread on tile. For ten minutes he watched himself fail to scream.

A technician’s smartwatch chimed, signaling that the face was fully digitized. The scanner was retracted, the cabinet locked, the hairs swept away. The stains on the ceiling were shaped like hands or wings. At the far end of the room, a door opened and six more technicians entered. Everyone was snapping on nitrile gloves.

Vincent’s head was propped on a gel pillow. A pair of stainless steel devices resembling forceps were placed in the corners of his mouth. The devices were ratcheting with wide, curved teeth. A technician on each side of Vincent opened them a notch at a time. His gums shone pink and purple. They hurt terribly. The paralytic coursing through him was purely functional and not, on religious grounds, an anesthetic.

As they were shaved away, Vincent felt the whole of his bottom gums. The angle of the blade had quantified their volume exactly. Hot blood soaked into sponges following the electric scalpel’s trail. Gradually Vincent regained awareness of the faces looming over him, their features blurred behind tears. A small steel wedge was placed in the back of his mouth. It pressed against his left second molar.

Vincent was the molar whose pain blotted out the room. He became the first molar, then the second premolar. Before each tooth was placed all bloody in a chrome dish, Vincent was their screaming nerves. He was the tip of his tongue, gripped tight with tongs and lifted. The scalpel crossed its pale underside horizontally, slicing his frenula.

Beyond the pain, the room was an abstraction of intensities of light. The stains on the ceiling pulsed, seeping across white space. Vincent watched them spread as the surgeons opened his arms. The HUD of their goggles recognized the FDP, FDL, and APL tendons, highlighting each with a faint green luminescence. The tendons were snipped, the ends burned with laser pens. His breasts were removed. His arms and chest were stapled shut. The wound comprising his former genitalia was sutured into a lump. His face was put through a gap in the operating table, antimicrobial laminate pressing against his empty jaw. A scalpel traced a vertical flap along his back and a technician peeled a rectangle of skin from his hips to his shoulder blades. They hung the ends of the sheet on a metal bar and fastened it with screws and Vincent fell out of his head.

Vincent was alone in a thick, swirling dark. When cold fingers spread the muscles in his back, the dark quivered. When sections of the musculature were excised, the dark solidified, becoming for a moment opaque before falling slack with the waves of blinding pain. Sections of the spinal column were shaved and two parallel columns of thick indentations were seared into the backside of each rib. The shape of pain was matched exactly in the convulsions of the dark.

Curved rods were slotted into the columns along the spine and sealed with cement. With each bonded rib, the space became new. It was not that the darkness retreated, but rather it revealed in itself a vast range of color and sensation. There were textures, serrations, reflections, all wracked with pain. When at last the peeled skin was stapled back on his body, he realized this tortured landscape was the room’s tiled floor.

Vincent and his IV array were wheeled down a series of subterranean corridors. He saw the dark behind the flooring, the technicians’ black slippers, the length of their shadows. The screams from the meditation chambers and the oceanic hum of the air conditioner were expressions of the same force.

After being escorted through magnetically locked doors, down a cage elevator, and into a concrete gallery, Vincent was parked beside a wide metal table. The table held a plastic mask and a pristine altar. The plastic mask was based on the earlier scan of Vincent’s face. This scan had been run through an algorithm simulating advanced decomposition. The result was a lifelike rendition of how Vincent might look in the tomb.

The altar’s backside had four titanium rods and a flat, black circle with a pin-sized hole in the center. Four titanium knots rose from Vincent’s changed back, reflecting needles of sterile light. Application was straightforward. Electric wrenches were used to tighten the knots and secure the rods in place.

From a desk, the lead technician retrieved an orange clamshell device. She flipped it open, saw her face reflected in two black screens, and held a button on its back. Another technician held the corresponding button on the altar. Altar and clamshell activated in tandem. The screens were lacerated by twin white zeroes. The vibration of the altar’s fans coursed through Vincent, humming out through his ears. The machine exerted great pressure on his changed anatomy.

The top screen filled with information on the altar’s specifications and serial number. The bottom screen held an array of icons. Each icon ran a different program relating to the altar-bearer’s routing and motor control. Using a stylus, she navigated to the installation menu.  An X-ray camera no larger than a crumb transmitted to the device real time video of Vincent’s eleventh and twelfth vertebrae. A green laser on the second screen showed the trajectory of the installation drive, a platinum needle.

When the needle pierced the gap between the vertebrae, Vincent was with Gauss in a field of yellow flowers. Vincent was on one knee and Gauss stood tall above him, golden hair flowing gently with the flowers in the breeze. In the slight curve of his smile, Vincent caught a glimpse of the enormity of his suffering. Then the installation drive punctured the spinal cord, and Gauss was gone forever.

Perry Ruhland is a writer based in Chicago. His short fiction has previously been published in venues including minor literature[s], Vastarien Magazine, and ergot.press, and his debut collection Invisible Graves will be published by Organ Bank later this fall. Learn more at perryruhland.com