The Book of Skulls

chapter thirty-three Eli

Last night in the dark small hours the thought came to me for the first time that I should offer myself to fulfill the suicide requirement of the Ninth Mystery. A quick moment of evanescent despair, here and gone, but worth examination in bright light. Obviously it’s the sexual thing that’s preying on me. My total failure to make a start at mastering the techniques. Fiasco after fiasco; how can I hold myself back? They give me beautiful women, they tell me to plough two or three in a row — oh, schmendrick, schmendrick, schmendrick! It’s the Margo scene all over again. I get inflamed, I get carried away — the opposite of the proper Skullish attitude. I haven’t once succeeded in restraining myself long enough to handle all three. I don’t think it’s humanly possible, at least for me. But of course the kind of longevity we’re talking about here isn’t humanly possible either. It’s necessary to transcend the merely human, to become literally inhuman, nonhuman, if one would defeat death. But if I can’t even govern the treacherous twitches of my cock, how can I hope to monitor my metabolism, reverse organic decay through mental effort, acquire the sort of cellular-level body control these fraters must have? I can’t. I see failure looming. Frater Leon and Frater Bernard have said they’ll give me special training, they’ll show me some useful techniques for sexual de-escalation, but I don’t have much confidence in that. The problem is rooted too deeply in my essential Eli-ness, and it’s too late to alter that; I am what I am. I mount these wenches, these silent supple Aztec priestesses, and though my mind is full of instructions about withholding my seed, my body goes at full gallop, running away, and I explode with passion, and passion is precisely what must be conquered if one is to survive the Trial. By failing this test, I fail everything; I fall by the wayside, immortality lost; let me therefore destroy my unworthy self now, since someone must, and thus I will open the path for the others. So I thought last night in the dark small hours, at any rate. Thinking, also, that Timothy is another who must certainly fail, for he is unable or unwilling to achieve the necessary innerness; he is the prisoner of his scorns, so contemptuous of the Brotherhood and its rites that he can barely contain his impatience. Thus he can never attain even the basic disciplines. We meditate; he merely watches. There is a real danger that he will simply walk out, in the next few days, which would, of course wreck everything by unbalancing the Receptacle. I therefore privately nominate Timothy to fulfill the other part of the Ninth Mystery; he can’t possibly win what the Brotherhood offers, so therefore let him lose, let him be slain for the others’ sake. Last night, lying dismally awake, I thought I would bring matters immediately to their desired climax: steal a knife from the kitchen, nail Timothy as he sleeps, then skewer myself. The Ninth Mystery thereby would be obeyed, and Ned and Oliver would have their passports to eternity. I actually sat up. But at the critical moment I paused to ask myself whether this was the right time for what I planned to do. Perhaps there is an appointed place in the unfolding ritual for the Ninth Mystery, at some later stage in the process. Perhaps I would be spoiling things by doing it now, arbitrarily, without a signal from the fraters. If a premature sacrifice would be worthless, I had better not act. So I remained in bed, and the impulse fled. This morning, though I’m still depressed, I find I have no wish at all to take my own life. I have grave misgivings about myself, I’m deeply dismayed by my assorted glaring inadequacies, yes, but all the same I want to live as long as possible. The prospects for attaining the longevity of the fraters suddenly seem quite bleak, though. I don’t think any of us is going to make it. I think this Receptacle is falling to pieces.