=Geisha in the City of Death=

=9=

On Sundays, which are simulated, Neena sits in the eastern chapel, the one with all the disused satellite dishes, and kneels, head bowed, as a parable is read, ostensibly for her edification, that seems to have something to do with the cellular re-absorption rates during the mitosis of self-cannibalizing cancer cells. Along the walls large computer screens have uploaded photo retouches of celebrity deaths designed by Gnostic internet priests and Neena finds herself confronted now with the live disemboweling of the minor late 20th century actress Alicia Silverstone by medical anatomists, which is anachronistically set sometime in the 17th century.

Neena, aroused from a daydream about a parachute drop she may or may not have experienced, does not hear correctly such partial phrases as “to die again and again and again” and “a paradigm of the beauty of ritualistic human sacrifice” and “the voluntary abrogation of the human ego at the moment of nonconsensual climax,” and other things besides, misunderstanding the true nature of the Mass as  she drifts off sideways into a dream that has something unspecified to do with false doors.

She misses entirely the grand finale and the distribution of the Eucharist which she cannot participate in anyway, even though she has been “confessed” during her interrogation. As best she can make out the reason she cannot take Communion has something to do with the fact of her special status as a “lovely and exclusively grain-fed animal without blemish.” But this is rather dismissively and off-handedly explained to her in simplified terms, as if she were a mere child too young to truly understand. She is advised to simply accept what she’s told as a “Holy Mystery.”

The mass is ended. Go in peace.

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