--to wound the autumnal city...the in-dark answered with wind...and so howled out for the world to give him a name...
-from "Dhalgren"
From the report of KM, Special Agent assigned to the Scorpion File: "We placed a bug in the home of Lilith's "therapist," Dr. Richard Malkovitch. They meet often for informal sessions, and seem to keep their relationship on a relatively "professional" level. Of course, the science of Psychology is anything but precise these days, so take anything said here with a grain of the proverbial salt……."
Lilith: Hey Doc. How's it going?
Malkovitch: Alright, Lil, and how are you this afternoon?
Lilith: (voice breaks) Not too good today, Doc. I had another….(trails off) Not good at all.
Malk: Sit down, darling. Let's talk about it.
Lilith:I don't know where to start. Maybe the beginning for a change. (bitter laugh) I was born in 2025, here in New Jerusalem, only then it was called Atlanta. I was the fifth and final child of my parents. The war broke out when I was seven. My brothers were all older than me, and members of the Army. I had one sister. . .(another bitter laugh, and a long pause) She was younger than me, only 3 years old when I was 15. By the time I was fifteen, all my brothers were dead, one by one called away to fight in a war we knew nothing about, one by one dying on fields halfway across the world . . ..My father, he was the last to die, at the skirmish at Baghdad, just before the big bombs fell here. My mother must have gotten the call when I was at school . . . I came home . . . (deep breath) . . . and I found her . . . Tell me Doc, have you ever seen a gunshot wound to the head?
Malk: No, I can't say that I have.
Lilith:Well, it's not pretty. Particularly not when the blood painting the kitchen wall belongs to your mother, and your three year old sister is curled up in the corner with her, covered in blood.
Malk: Tell me more about that day, Lilith, what you were doing, what happened, how you felt?
Special Agent KM would like to point out that this single line is indicative of most of the problems with the psuedoscience of Psychology. In his words, "How the fuck do you -think- she felt, asshole?"
Lilith: Well, I was shocked, of course. I mean….My mother had the longest hair I've ever seen, and solid black. Sort of like mine except that I cut mine off. Big green eyes, like mine, too-- I looked just like her. Still do, I suppose. I didn't recognize her. Her….(stifled crying)….Her face was gone. She had put Dad's shotgun in her mouth. Her long hair was matted with blood, and Bella-- that's my sister-- she was curled up in the floor with her, holding Mama's hair in her hand. She had been crying, but she finally got so tired she fell asleep. I didn't have the energy to clean up the mess in the kitchen, so I picked Bella up, and carried her to the back room. I gave her a bath and put her to bed, and then I dragged Mama out to the garden and buried her. I cried for a long time; it still pisses me off, y'know, that I had to go through that, that she put me through that. I was fifteen-- and I had to be a mother to Bella and take care of her and protect her….so it was 2040, and the war was about to end with a bang. Finally I crawled into bed with Bella and cried myself to sleep. The next morning, Bella was running a fever. She had all the symptoms of Burn-- you know, red rash, swollen glands, jaundice. I took care of her for as long as I could. I did everything I could. I didn't eat for seven days, I didn't sleep. I sat beside her bed and kept her cool and I felt like I was dying myself. Finally, she looked up at me-- and she looked just like my father, with a bright shock of blonde hair and the biggest blue eyes you'd ever seen, and she touched my hair, wound it around her hands like she used to do with mama. "Lily." She said. "Mama." She started crying and shaking, and I held onto her. "Lily won't leave…Lily won't go." She said it over and over and over again…."Big boom…Mama gone….Daddy gone….Big boom….Jake gone…." Jake was our oldest brother, and Bella adored him. Then she died. She had a seizure, and she stopped breathing. Three years old. I cracked. I felt as if I died when she did. I buried her in the garden. Then I went into the kitchen and picked up the shotgun. It was still lying there in a dried puddle of my mother's blood. I loaded it with shells from my father's stash, and then I went back into my room, and laid the shotgun on the bed. I opened my drawer, and took out the syringe. I injected myself with enough Burn to kill most grown men…..
Malk: (interrupts) I'm sorry, Lilith, but didn't you say that your sister died of Burn?
Lilith: Well, you see Doc, there's Burn and then there's BURN. Burn is a drug, sort of gives some of the early symptoms of the falling out sickness. High adrenaline, complete absence of pain, superhuman strength. Raises your pulse and your respiration, too. Take too much of it, it'll kill you just like the falling out sickness, too-- same symptoms. Jaundice, fever, rash, seizures. Anyway. I laid back down on the bed and I raised up the gun and put it in my mouth. It was a sawed-off shotgun, older than me. I closed my eyes, but before I could pull the trigger, the entire world caught on fire, or so it seemed.
Malk: Ah, you're talking about the day the bomb fell . . .
Lilith: Nah, doc, I'm talking about the day I died.
Special Agent KM would like to point out to any conspiracy theorists out there that Lilith was speaking metaphorically.
