What Manner of Man: Chapter 35 🦇

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

• We’ve made it! 🎉 Next week’s entry will be the final one of the novel.

• I’d like to formally apologize to all the people who kept asking me perfectly reasonable questions like how many chapters would there be in total — I just kept making last-minute changes to the ending and eventually I gave up on knowing the answer before I got there.

• The end is nigh, but don’t despair! As soon as we’ve finished serialization, there will be some exciting announcements forthcoming.

• I’ve just posted an alternate (previous draft) version of the events of chapters 33 and 34 to Patreon — one that goes much closer to the action. If you wanted to follow Victor into the crumbling bell tower, now’s your chance!

LETTER TO VERA ARDELIAN

Undated. 

Dearest Sister,

I feel the need to write one final time, though it must never reach you. Oh, Vera, I’ve had such a wondrous experience — my lips have known the kiss of death.

I met my annihilation, and from it have drawn the breath of life. I have enacted the role I was never meant to fill: that of sacrifice. Not, however, on the behalf of any god. I placed myself between Alistair and the blow that should rightly have killed him. With my heart’s blood, I bought a temporary reprieve from the exigencies of fate, for what nearly destroyed me also destroyed its talisman.

In doing so — in choosing my terrible, murderous love over all humanity — I transgressed against something more primal than any law handed down by the Church. For my transgression, I was rewarded. 

I transcended the barrier between man and beast, and in that moment I was free. I find I remember very little of the actual sensations of death; only the terrible pleasure of it. Through that act of violence, I was delivered from the limitations of my individuality. My wound became an aperture through which I could escape and touch sacred infinity.

I entered into a godly realm, and what I found there was love. Not the repressive, censorious love of the gods I have known but a love crimson with blood  — lawless, ferocious, untrammeled. I perceived the whole of the mundane world for what it was — ever-burgeoning, extravagant life; the totality of being locked together in a violent dance of becoming. The knowledge of it was too much; I recoiled from it. 

I passed, then, to a quieter place, where I no longer beheld the teeming chaos of it all. There, from my new vantage point, I saw that beneath and between and all around was suffused the light of love. With dove-like tenderness the world loves the hideous, thronging mass of itself, and I was a part of it. For one fleeting moment I glimpsed the true meaning of all symbols by which men have signified God.

What I felt, then — it could not last. It would have rendered me incapable of existing alongside other mortal beings. I had to leave this vision-realm. To embrace it would mean either to become god myself, or to die in an ecstasy of passion. I am not so advanced an aspirant as to be ready for either fate, nor do I think I ever will be. 

I have been in hell and discovered the wellspring of the soul. It is clear to me, now, that the faith and cure I once followed was itself the spiritual poison I had sought to drive from my heart. At the heart of the mystery of life and death I found no token of the proscriptive god I had worshiped — nor of Lord Vane’s — only an eternal, immense and overwhelming bursting forth of potential. The essence and principal of creation, endlessly becoming; a bright, bewildering freedom to be seized and given shape.

There was no necessity to worship it, nor to praise or even pray to it. Those things within me which my Christian faith alone had made terrible blossomed, assuming the shape and hue of harmonious beauty.

It would occupy a lifetime of study to begin to understand even a fraction of this illumined world in which I find myself. What I have learned of love alone makes me tremble.

In the midst of apocalypse — a miracle. Death had been as inevitable as sunrise; yet as my vision cleared, the first thing that struck me was that it was still dark as night. My lover and I were whole, and the twin spirals of the ring lay broken in two pieces far below.

Alistair was insensible with grief. I opened my mouth, wishing to impart some of the joyous vision I had received — but my lungs were on fire and I couldn't produce a sound.

I reached up with my uninjured hand to touch his face, rousing him to sudden, astonished consciousness of me — of our survival. I don’t know how long he kissed my ravaged lips and wept and cradled me in his arms; saying my name over and over again until he felt assured of the reality of me. The inevitable had been prevented; I lay in Alistair’s arms. My love — the great beast. When the villagers came, eventually, to collect our bodies, to celebrate his death and mourn mine, we descended to meet them.

I have not returned to what remains of the grounds. The only things left standing were the bell tower and part of Alistair’s conservatory. I’m told the rest is little more than an uneven shelf of stone spilling into the sea. Yet a new growth of young life has sprung up all around, and the plants of the conservatory have begun to grow wild, free from their walls of glass. Further down, perhaps, a circle of upright stones now stands beneath the open sky.

We will live, Alistair and I, though we are neither of us quite what we were. I have suffered the loss of some fingers — the last two on my left hand. Quite trivial, compared to all I have gained. Alistair, too, is —

EDITOR’S NOTE: Beyond this point, two lines of this paragraph have been rendered indecipherable.

When I am stronger, I intend to go back there — perhaps I will ask Silas to convey me — and dispose of all the remaining journals and letters containing the record of these experiences. My writings prior to midsummer were consumed in the conflagration along with the manor. Those which are still in my possession, I wish to ritually inter as near to the place as possible. I shall commit their story to the earth.

I must forge a new path ahead into life for myself and Alistair, and if that means I may never see you again I must learn to bear it. I feel the need to make some expression of farewell. I will miss you terribly. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, and that you will be happy.

Your loving brother,
Victor Ardelian

I would like to briefly state that I am aware of the ongoing situation with Substack’s moderation policies, promotional channels, etc. I condemn the platform’s self-serving response utterly. It is deeply repugnant to me that I am sharing a platform in any sense with Nazis. 

I also agree with a lot of the points made in this nuanced and thoughtful article by Julia Serano on the current state of online media platforms. Though it was written in response to a previous incident with Substack, it expresses many of the things I feel about our current moment far more eloquently than I could hope to. 

I have the greatest possible respect for the writers of the many publications who have made the choice to remove their newsletters from this platform. I am familiar with all the alternative hosting services that are available, and they invariably cost $40-80 CAD per month for a newsletter of my size. Unfortunately, I cannot afford that right now.

I have, previously, considered the possibility of enabling paid subscriptions on Substack as another way for readers to support the publication. Under the circumstances, I will not be doing that — paid content will continue to be available exclusively through Patreon. 

My priority and my commitment to you is that I will keep writing queer and transgressive fiction wherever I can for as long as I am able. Your support — whether as a reader or patron — means everything to me. Thank you. 💜

-St John

Message from 2024: Hello! 👋 What you’re reading is a draft version of What Manner of Man. You can get the complete, edited and expanded novel DRM-free on Itch.io or at the retailer of your choice.

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