The One Hundred Story Tower

Let me tell you the tale of the Tower on the hill; how the Boss invited us there for the weekend, having purchased it and taken it as his home; and how when I climbed on the air through the vaulted shaft into which you can fall for a full minute, spiraling as if on a great accretion disk, and perched on the very top balustrade like a gargoyle, I knew I had been in this place many times before and that it was the One Hundred Story Tower; the great stepped marble chamber of Louis XX at its crown, wherein stand glass-encased statues of the one-hundred ministers Mountford brought before him in the time of the Accord.

A few levels down, still in the marble levels, in the studios of the painters, dwelt my nine-year-old black cat, a direct descendant of Rocquefort, the greatest cat to ever live; whom I treasured more as the years went by because I knew his time was growing shorter.

Below that, the studios of the musicians, where the Druid sang in an echoing voice. He is a loner and he dresses in a very particular way, purple hooded robe and circles of black kohl around his eyes.

And then, the offices of businessmen and lawyers.

And then, the places where I was educated, the twelfth level down to the sixth: the library that smelled like pencils, always empty except for a lone slobbering, flat-faced dog, who always tried to follow me out into the stairwell, before I shut the door fast behind; the chapels, each with its own particular kaleidiscope of stained glass; the theaters, each with its own scroll-worked balconies and colored curtains.

The silent shadow-haunted restaurant on the fourth level wherein I came upon the Boss's wife, and had her behind the wait station.

The bottom three levels were a shopping and entertainment complex, the oldest part of the tower, part of the shopping mall that stood there even before they began to erect the Tower, in order to attract investors in the late eighties. If you were to look at a photograph of the Sonics playing there in '88 (on the main concourse, next to the ice cream place), you might see me, age 5, trying to grab the microphone from Kim Gordon.

Now, my friend and I will go around back to where we were told there were rooms for rent in the ramshackle cabins clustered around the Tower's base. On the wall of the tall Tower hollow, a huge graffito depicting Queen Cthulhu in bright orange pointillist mosaic.

There are no rooms for rent, but there is a passage into the earth, down ten levels, into Satan's chamber, where to the green darkness I will say, "the truth is, I have a moral right to be joyful."

in the town by the river bank

My father threw a knife to me from the pier.

"It is a gift. The legend engraved into the blade reads, may you find some work to do during the winter. Look to the church, a prayer will bring children from its metal throat".

He waded chest-high beneath the boards and whispered to a woman who was his wife but not my mother, "I have done something that I never would have wanted to do. I have sold you. But you may choose to which man. There are three to choose from".

He called to the bank and the three men came forward. They were all good men who would survive the nineteenth century and not accomplish anything of historical importance.

And she would be poured into the basin of the one she chose, never to flow again in any particular direction.

***

And they came to pass, the things my father said. We rang the church bells and the children who had been imprisoned below came pouring out of the stainless steel funnel that we had driven into the sanctuary floor.

And the knife did find me work to do, the cutting down of those who were knifeless, and the taking of their winter goods.