The Mephistophelean House Read online

“The illusion?”

  “The illusion of free will. Life, as we know it, necessitates the absorption of other lives. By isolating the human soul I can sever the bonds of contrition.”

  “Would you experiment on yourself like you do on your victims?”

  “Funny you should bring that up.”

  The balustrade was bowdlerized in mist, concealing all but the parapet, the Weeping Tree, and the red box.

  The Doctor was exacerbating.

  “But in order to begin the experiment, I’ll need your help.”

  “Me?”

  “Go ahead. Take a look.”

  Cloud droplets formed on my clothes.

  The red box sat on the plinth.

  It was irresistible.

  “Open it.”

  I opened the red box.

  I was blinded by something brilliant.

  “Now do you see?”

  A faded sun burned meekly.

  “It’s just a mirror.”

  “Look again.”

  The Doctor was right.

  It wasn’t a mirror.

  Desire, drives, the mind, the soul, discordant facets of a whole began take a heavy toll upon a self I once extolled.

  “Now do you see what you were all along?”

  I could see the parts.

  Mouth. Eyes. Ear. Hair.

  The pieces held up.

  But the whole wasn't there.

  “Now do you see what we do all along, ignoring exactly the things that we long? Absolved of the curse of original sin you’re digging a hole and you’re filling it in.”

  I realized why people looked in mirrors.

  They yearned for a self; a whole.

  But people were wrong.

  There was no self.

  There was no whole.

  “You corrupt me…”

  “With your own image?”

  “I am forever corrupted!”

  “By free will?”

  I held my tongue.

  “If it’s free will you seek, in the mirror you must peek…”

  I disregarded the Doctor, a stranger to myself. I was not what I thought I was. Before, where I had been, were two discordant selves, two irreconcilable personalities, each with its own aspect, a perfect, mirror image of who I wanted to be and what I had instead become, a series of epistemological contingencies one would mistake as having a life.

  The cathexis was brilliant.

  It was all that I wanted.

  The Doctor put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Now do you see why I gift them this gift? To be rid of this ruse? This ill designed queue? Serving the servile, august and deranged, picking apart the delirious brain?”

  I tired of the Doctor.

  All I wanted was the red box.

  “One question remains,” the Doctor complained.

  “What’s that?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Who told you where I was?”

  “Andrews.”

  “Andrews? No, no….."

  “Well,” I stammered, “when I moved into the House I...”

  “You went to the House,” the Doctor exclaimed, “to the one place you weren’t supposed to go?”

  “What do you mean ‘weren’t supposed to go?’ As if you owned me.”

  “Stop. You’ll have to go back. We’ll try it again. Believe me, Andrews will wish he was never born. Hey, stop! Don’t look in the mirror! Don't you know what you’re risking? I tell you, you’ve got to stop! Don’t you get it? You can still go back. It’s not too late. Don’t you want to go back? You must go back, you must, because, if you don’t, if you don’t...”

  “What could be worse than this madhouse?”

  “You don’t understand…”

  “What?”

  “It is not what you think. You’ll see yourself as you really are.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off myself.

  “What have you done? What have you done? It’s too late. It’s too late. I can see it on your face. You’re beginning to piece it together. Yes? I put the knife and the poker in the dumbwaiter. I hid the pieces in the attic. Then I mopped the floor. But it doesn't matter. No matter how hard I try, the pieces never fit together. But you know all about that. You were there! You saw the whole thing.”

  The Weeping Tree torqued. The spinning wheel spun in reverse. A jewel shone atop a ladder of thorns. A stone was cast. A hole was dug. A sign was hung. The Mephistophelean House was for rent.

  I reached out.

  Behind my shoulder I could see the Doctor.

  “Don’t you realize what the things in the basement are?”

  “The things with flies for eyes?”

  And it was then, as I looked in the mirror, I saw there was only one person on the balcony, and that I was talking to myself.