My Babylon: Book One: Body

By James L. Wilber

My Story

An obsessed magician will do anything it takes to satisfy his perverse needs.

My Myth

He turns to forbidden arts to manifest his will.

My Revelation

In doing so, he will bring about the end of everything.

My Babylon

A serial novel about the paranormal and dark desires. The story of a cursed young man who has an intimate view of the Apocalypse. My Babylon weaves elements of urban fantasy, erotic horror, and real-world occult practices to form a unique personal tale that thrills, terrifies, and even enlightens.

My Babylon is told in a series of novellas. All five books of the My Babylon story are now available as single ebooks, or together in the Complete edition both in ebook and in print.

Find more great indie authors at Midworldarts.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James L. Wilber
• Release date: Jul 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301029617

James L. Wilber

James L. Wilber describes himself as Anne Rice and Chuck Palahniuk’s bastard love child. He’s a pretentious prick who claims to pen, “literary genre fiction.” Which means he writes smarmy shit about wizards and vampires doing a poor job at hiding his symbolism and metaphor. He’s turned to self-publishing on the correct assumption his stories are just too fucking weird for mass consumption.He has contributed to numerous books for roleplaying games from companies such as: Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, White Wolf Studios, Bastion Press, and Atlas Games. He was also a writer on the Origins Award nominated, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game by Eden Studios.Mr. Wilber also assumes the roles of husband, ceremonial magician, podcast host, and owner of a 100-lb Alaskan Malamute.He lives in Indianapolis, a dreary place built by masons obsessed with circles.Along with Stephan Loy and Dick Thomas, James is a member of Mid-World Arts, a collective of indie writers dedicated to helping each other produce quality works. Find out more at midworldarts.com.You can read his thoughts on politics, culture, and what he calls pagan chaos magick at scrollofthoth.com.He only uses social media that he enjoys, which means tumblr. Get to know him at scrollofthoth.tumblr.com, jameslwilber.tumblr.com, and geeksoutafterdark.tumblr.com.You can hear him on the podcasts Scroll of Thoth, and Geeks Out After Dark.Get more of his writing at jameslwilber.com.

Book preview

MY BABYLON

A NOVEL IN FIVE PARTS

BOOK ONE: BODY

BY JAMES L. WILBER

Copyright © 2013 by James L. Wilber. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Mid-World Arts

James L. Wilber is a part of the Mid-World Arts Studio, a group of independent artists helping to promote each other in order to challenge traditional media. If you liked this story, please visit Mid-World Arts to find other quality publications.

The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this book and telling others about it.

Published by James L. Wilber at Smashwords

Dedication

For Marianne. For accepting this. For tolerating me. For dragging me back from my own Abyss.

We create no myths.

There will be no new holy books written. There will be no new great revelations.

We only have stories.

We are jaded by excess. The great sea of information, capable of connecting us all, only serves to divide us by faith, culture, counterculture, and ideology. It makes us incapable of seeing the great works around us. At least for now.

I have done my best to be honest. To reveal these events as they happened, to put myself in the same mind as when they occurred.

I am the magus Ego Sum Legio. This is:

My story,

My myth,

My revelation,

Liber 589 – The Book of Eschaton

My Babylon

Jesus said, If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. I am amazed at how great a wealth has made its home in this poverty.

- The Gospel of Thomas

Chapter 1

One of the hardest things to steal is a human body. By comparison, money can be taken easily, though the amounts make a big difference. You can grab a dollar out of a tip jar, or bash on a vending machine to liberate a buck without much fuss. If you ask the right person the right way, they might just hand you a dollar. They never give away bodies. Not here in the U.S. of A. Not in any civilized country.

A cadaver only costs about a grand. Anyone could whore themselves or offer manual labor for a couple of months and come up with a grand. You don’t even need a real job or any skills. I had a job I could tolerate, as a dishwasher. The pure mechanical nature of it kept me in the profession. I rented out my body for nine dollars per hour, but my mind remained my own. Trust me, I could come up with a thousand dollars much easier than what it took to steal that corpse. But even if you had the cash, no one will give you a body without the backing of a medical license and a mighty institution—school, hospital, or laboratory.

Yeah, I suppose if you had a lot of money you could buy a body. Parts and whole corpses get sold on the black market all the time. One in good shape can reap tens of thousands of dollars under clandestine circumstances. Coming up with that kind of money takes years of hard work, or stealing from a bank, jewelry store, or some other repository of liquid assets. Just as hard as robbing a morgue. People get upset when you steal that much money. I went for the morgue.

You may ask that if freshness doesn’t matter why not dig one up like old Dr. Frankenstein? I’ve buried enough family to rule out that course of action. Sure, graveyards have limited security; most don’t even have cameras. Once you bypass the fence, you’re in a secluded spot. You can take your time excavating your treasure. The only problem is, since the turn of the century, undertakers have been placing coffins in burial vaults. This means the casket sits nestled in a half-foot of concrete strong enough to prevent the weight of all that earth collapsing in when they drive across it with a back-hoe. The family may also opt for a liner made of plastic or metal to keep water out of the grave. Even the most determined re-animator and loyal hunchback lack the brute force necessary to pluck a body from a modern grave.

The other obvious method of obtaining a corpse--making one myself--never entered my realm of possibility. I abhor violence. Despite everything I’ve done. No matter how perverse my personal creed seems to most, I refuse to kill another human being. I know the theft of that girl’s body caused grievous emotional harm to her family. For some reason we hold dear those lifeless tissues. Perhaps because they are a symbol of the spirit that left them. Honestly, it was because of its power as a symbol that it was worth so much to me. I still anguish over the trauma I caused the relatives and friends. They would never know, never believe, that my plan was designed to inflict the minimum amount of suffering on the planet. The corpse, of course, didn’t mind. As Marla Singer so eloquently put it, They’re dead, and I’m alive, and I’m suffering.

The longing came over me last fall; I suppose from watching all those college students return for the coming year. I live in an old neighborhood. The houses, some almost two-hundred years old, have been split into duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, and those get shared by up to a half-dozen incoming college students who descend on the town every September. The district’s old-growth trees, cracked sidewalks, and sagging faded homes attract bohemians and artists and loners like me. But when the nights turn cool, the residents brace themselves for the onslaught of keg parties, loud music, vomiting in the bushes, and other obnoxious late night behaviors. I’m a night person, so it doesn’t bother me much. It’s not like they’re waking me up. I consider it a challenge to keep perfect concentration while the windows are rattling. The students also drive up the rent on Vine Street and the surrounding blocks well beyond my means, but my landlord and I get along well. She knows I won’t wreck the place, and she doesn’t need to go looking for new tenants in the summer.

The parade of young girls ready to experiment with their newfound freedom made me think of Rose. I thought she was