look like. His imagination, though fertile when it came to trickery and theft, was 
impoverished in other regards. The skill to picture these eminences was beyond him, so he 
had not even tried.
    Why then was he so distressed to set eyes upon them? Was it the scars that covered 
every inch of their bodies, the flesh cosmetically punctured and sliced and infibulated, 
then dusted down with ash? Was it the smell of vanilla they brought with them, the 
sweetness of which did little to disguise the stench beneath? Or was it that as the light 
grew, and he scanned them more closely, he saw nothing of joy, or even humanity, in their 
maimed faces: only desperation, and an appetite that made his bowels ache to be voided.
    "What city is this?" one of the four enquired. Frank had difficulty guessing the 
speaker's gender with any certainty. Its clothes, some of which were sewn to and through 
its skin, hid its private parts, and there was nothing in the dregs of its voice, or in 
its willfully disfigured features that offered the least clue. When it spoke, the hooks 
that transfixed the flaps of its eyes and were wed, by an intricate system of chains 
passed through flesh and bone alike, to similar hooks through the lower lip, were teased 
by the motion, exposing the glistening meat beneath.
    "I asked you a question," it said. Frank made no reply. The name of this city was the 
last thing on his mind.
    "Do you understand?" the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike 
that of its companion, was light and breathy-the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of 
its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of 
horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was 
similarly decorated. "Do you even know who we are?" it asked.`
    "Yes." Frank said at last. "I know."
    Of course he knew; he and Kircher had spent long nights talking of hints gleaned from 
the diaries of Bolingbroke and Gilles de Rais.
    All that mankind knew of the Order of the Gash, he knew.
    And yet...he had expected something different. Expected some sign of the numberless 
splendors they had access to. He had thought they would come with women, at least; oiled 
women, milked women; women shaved and muscled for the act of love: their lips perfumed, 
their thighs trembling to spread, their buttocks weighty, the way he liked them. He had 
expected sighs, and languid bodies spread on the floor underfoot like a living carpet; 
had expected virgin whores whose every crevice was his for the asking and whose skills 
would press him-upward, upward-to undreamed-of ecstasies. The world would be forgotten in 
their arms. He would be exalted by his lust, instead of despised for it.
    But no. No women, no sighs. Only these sexless things, with their corrugated flesh.
    Now the third spoke. Its features were so heavily scarified-the wounds nurtured until 
they ballooned-that its eyes were invisible and its words corrupted by the disfigurement 
of its mouth.
    "What do you want?" it asked him.
    He perused this questioner more confidently than he had the other two. His fear was 
draining away with every second that passed. Memories of the terrifying place beyond the 
wall were already receding. He was left with these decrepit decadents, with their stench, 
their queer deformity, their self-evident frailty. The only thing he had to fear was 
nausea.
    "Kircher told me there would be five of you," Frank said.
    "The Engineer will arrive should the moment merit," came the reply. "Now again, we 
ask you: What do you want."
    Why should he not answer them straight? "Pleasure," he replied. "Kircher said you 
know about pleasure."
    "Oh we do," said the first of them. "Everything you ever wanted."
    "Yes?"
    "Of course. Of course." It stared at him with its all-too-naked eyes. "What have you 
dreamed?" it said.
    The question, put so baldly, confounded him. How could he hope to articulate the 
nature of the phantasms his libido had created? He was still searching for words when one 
of them said:
    "This world...it disappoints you?"
    "Pretty much," he replied.
    "You're not the first to tire of its trivialities," came the response. "There have 
been others."
    "Not many," the gridded face put in.
    "True. A handful at best. But a few have dared to use Lemarchand's Configuration. Men 
like yourself, hungry for new possibilities, who've heard that we have skills unknown in 
your region."
    "I'd expected-" Frank began.
    "We know what you expected," the Cenobite replied. "We understand to its breadth and 
depth the nature of your frenzy. It is utterly familiar to us."
    Frank grunted. "So," he said, "you know what I've dreamed about. You can supply the 
pleasure."
    The thing's face broke open, its lips curling back: a baboon's smile. "Not as you 
understand it," came the reply.
    Frank made to interrupt, but the creature raised a silencing hand.
    "There are conditions of the nerve endings," it said, "the like of which your 
imagination, however fevered, could not hope to evoke."
    "...yes."
    "Oh yes. Oh most certainly. Your most treasured depravity is child's play beside the 
experiences we offer."
    "Will you partake of them?" said the second Cenobite.
    Frank looked at the scars and the hooks. Again, his tongue was deficient.
    "Will you?"
    Outside, somewhere near, the world would soon be waking. He had watched it wake from 
the window of this very room, day after day, stirring itself to another round of 
fruitless pursuits, and he'd known, known, that there was nothing left out there to 
excite him. No heat, only sweat. No passion, only sudden lust, and just as sudden 
indifference. He had turned his back on such dissatisfaction. If in doing so he had to 
interpret the signs these creatures brought him, then that was the price of ambition. He 
was ready to pay it.
    "Show me," he said.
    "There's no going back. You do understand that?"
    "Show me. "
    They needed no further invitation to raise the curtain. He heard the door creak as it 
was opened, and turned to see that the world beyond the threshold had disappeared, to be 
replaced by the same panic-filled darkness from which the members of the Order had 
stepped. He looked back towards the Cenobites, seeking some explanation for this. But 
they'd disappeared. Their passing had not gone unrecorded however. They'd taken the 
flowers with them, leaving only bare boards, and on the wall the offerings he had 
assembled were blackening, as if in the heat of some fierce but invisible flame. He 
smelled the bitterness of their consumption; it pricked his nostrils so acutely he was 
certain they would bleed.