When Niko was a boy in St. Petersburg Florida his father found a line of sawdust along the length of the patio of their home, a sign of termite infestation. Niko and his brother Van had swept up enough sawdust to fill two grocery bags. Wondering about its odd red color Niko had looked at a handful under a magnifying glass and seen that cupped in his hand were the bodies of ants. The foundation of the house was literally crawling with them.
Looking at the mounds of vanquished masses fallen from the Ramp on their inexorable way to become citizens of the undiscovered country Niko had remembered grocery bags filled with the bodies of fire ants, tiny red bodies heaped thick enough to be mistaken for sawdust.
“I said I would show you a thing.” Geryon’s voice brought Niko back around. The monster had folded his wings tight to his broad back and now stood with the terrible spectacle of the shackled god a gruesome epic backdrop looming like some murdered Gulliver among sadistic Lilliputians. “Something that is to words as a cube is to a square. It will not harm you but you must willingly experience this thing.”
Niko shrugged. “All right.”
“You take this lightly.”
“I’m not indifferent, I’m numb.”
The monster studied him. “Your detachment is your armor I believe.” He knelt before Niko like a bestial parent before its changeling human child. Those horrible plus sign pupils, the searing aqua of those eyes. “I have seen many here defend themselves like this. As they seek to turn away from all that they endure their thoughts fold inward like a spider in a flame. Their minds grow smooth.” He reached toward Niko but stopped. “But there is no turning away. What is felt is past denying.”
Unaccountably he felt afraid. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because this place is based on feeling. To deny your heart here is to go insane. Your armor is the very weapon they will use against you.”
“They.”
The monster shrugged and Niko had the impression that the marble face would smile if it could. “We then. But you need to understand that this is not a cold unfeeling place. Look at the torments, the tormentors. That is passion.”
“Look at the tormented.”
“That is passion too. Passios is a Greek word.”
“To suffer.”
The monster seemed pleased. “This will be your language lesson for today. Two Greek words, hubris and passios. And now you must give me your permission to take your hand and show you what I will.”
Niko held out his hand but Geryon drew back. “Permission must be stated.”
“You have my permission then. What are you going to do?”
“Show you how I see the world.” Cold fingerbundles covered Niko’s mortal hand—
TRUDGING THE FROZEN waste Niko has arrived on the threshold of the moment he’s been trying to remember. Touch of smooth marble on his skin. He remembers a deep shifting. A vastening. A sense of beholding the gulf that separates self from other, mind from mind. Of crossing the frontier to another soul. The deep-toned touch of tolling bells along his skin. Liquid voices of chanting monks. Taste of ozone air after lightning in the candleflame flicker of pilgrim souls constellating the plain. Tidal motion and pulsing air. The darkness smelled of amber. Dry perfume of entropy. Deafening beauty of decay. The lake of blood behind him breathing. The living pressure of the very air. All of Hell a living thing. Himself a cell within it acting out his rightful role. A small voice inside him said Remember this.
And even remembering as he labors on the frozen ocean Niko knows what memory he can conjure is a lie. Inadequate and pale. As if the mere word boat could somehow cross the ocean. Freezing air fills his wheezing lungs and Niko understands he’ll never salvage a true memory of what the monster showed him. Easier to reconstruct an angel from its footprint in the sand.
—and then let go. The disconnection marooned him to the very world and trapped him in a cage of flesh, the prison of his insufficient senses.
Niko dropped down to his knees before the monster and cried out at his sudden loss. He had told himself not to forget and now he knew only that he could not remember. Could not say what he had lost beyond the sense of loss itself.
Geryon stood before the shackled giant like a priest before his fallen god and looked down at the mortal sobbing on the naked rock like a pilgrim arriving at his destination only to learn that all he has believed is false and that his journey’s been for nought.
NIKO CAN NO longer feel his feet. He stalks upon their deadwood as if struggling on cauterized stumps. Every breath a painful draw on clotted bellows. Freezing to death. So this is what it’s like. Bones grow cold then start to burn with a different kind of heat. Kindling. Sleepy warmth. Not like the way you float on heroin. That old nodding off. That was more personal. Rock me in the bosom of opiates. This is different. Cold’s a vampire. Cold doesn’t care. Need a stack of firewood. Big fireplace. Cognac in a snifter. Big cigar.
Niko stops. Niko you fucking moron.
He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a package of Swisher Sweets cigarillos and a box of lucifer matches.
GERYON HAD WAITED till the mortal man stopped crying. He watched the man collect himself and watched him slowly don his armor of control. Stone gargoyles face the world to guard the shrine within.
The mortal man regained his feet and wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeves of his torn jacket.
“You can’t remember.”
The mortal shook his head.
“You never will. But hold to it anyhow. Keep the idea of it. The sense of it.”
“Why?” Niko’s voice emerged clotted.
“It will see you in good stead.”
Niko blew his nose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Geryon shrugged. “What it says. I leave you a final gift now and then I take my leave of you again and until next time.”
“I’m still recovering from the last gift thanks.”
“Do not recover. Learn. More important than the memory you cannot retrieve is what happened to you after it. Remember that instead. This is my gift to you.”
“What happened after it?” Niko wiped tears from beneath his eyes. “What, this?”
“Remember it.” Stone wings spread to their full width and then furled tight. The monster pointed out across the plain. “Keep your back to the Ledge and keep walking that way. You will come to a reach of ice. If you survive the walk across it, well then. You will cross that bridge when you come to it.” He lowered his hand and turned to Niko. “And now you must release me.”
“A question first.”
The great chest sighed but the monster waited.
“Why are you helping me?”
Geryon regarded him inscrutably a moment and then said, “We are ever willing to help a soul head deeper into Hell. But when you try to leave I will be baying at your back like all the others trying to flay your soul. Now let me go. You are ready to complete your little walk.”
Niko formally released him with the old phrases and the monster turned away in a great rush and swirl of stone wings and launched into the blighted air.
NIKO COUGHS OUT heated air. His numb hands cup the cigarillo to protect it from the biting wind. The warm smoke hurts his frigid lungs. He’d swear he feels them thawing as he drags in deep. Maybe it’s purely psychological. Who gives a shit as long as it keeps him going. Go ahead, tell me how bad smoking is for me.