FOCUS
"What is the weight of a soul, the substance of a spirit? And can you measure it?" I lean back in my seat and study Simon's face for the arrival of an answer. The youth has been so good in his exposition of Buddhist philosophy and expertly subtle in the communication of his sexual identity, but loses it where supernature and quantum physics intersect.
"I don't think you can quantify it if you're talking about something supernatural, beyond the natural world. Maybe we can't measure it."
Okay, so I am wrong. Simon can extend logic beyond textbook answers. I smile, admitting the possibility of a good answer. I cough and the slight breeze from the ferry's air conditioning rubs razor chills against my neck turning my whole body to shivers that I quickly cover with a reply. "But, the soul could be so light that it's immeasurable by mechanical or electrical devices."
Simon shakes his head. "If scientists have found a way to look out at galaxies using theoretical equations then the same should be possible with the soul."
"What if it doesn't want to be found?" I ask. "If, when it's freed from the body it buys into the whole afterlife and suddenly knows why it must move on or stay hidden."
It was all bullshit of course, well, most of it, but bullshit that was going to keep Simon at my side until we docked at the Hook of Holland. Bullshit of which even Weaver would have been proud.

I hardly consider myself a pupil though on occasion Weaver had fondly called me 'Chela', a novice in the mystic arts. My reticence in accepting the accolade was not through any lack of self esteem but rather because of the place in which the knowledge was imparted. Prison was a learning experience in itself and degraded the process if not the content.
Still, Weaver was keen to pass on his knowledge and I to accept it because it kept my mind from my sick body's incarcerated state. More importantly, it freed me from the dangerous vacuum of individual thought that can occur, like an epileptic fit, at any time inside. At first I thought Weaver's lessons were for my benefit but then I realised he was only preparing me for his own purpose.
He had initially taken pity on me, after lock-up sitting on the lower bunk and massaging away the bruises I had received from another of Annil's morning beatings. "You don't have to be this weak, you know: There are ways of surviving that the little thug wouldn't understand."
The desperation in my face must have trumpeted my readiness to accept anything but another beating. His gangly arms tensed, veins slipping against unnourished muscle, when he pushed himself off the bunk and snatched up the battered pad of paper and pencil from the cell's one table.
He dented the paper with thick strokes, creating a simple but unintelligible mandala of circles, squares and triangles. Finally, a single flourish produced a tilting swirl that could have been a signature, but certainly not his own.
Weaver sighed and straightened up, the growing intensity in his arms, hands and eyes suddenly vanishing. He passed the picture to me and smiled.
I looked down at this doodle, unsure how to react and flinched a moment later when I realised he was talking to me.
"At the turn of the 20th Century they used to think that real magic was achieved with robes, ceremonial and occult grades of greatness. Huge organisations like The Golden Dawn and OTO drew rich patrons who funded temples and lodges.
"Everything, beautifully ornate. Problem was that only these groups proclaimed the richer patrons as adepts: the magic was weak and unfocused.
"Then the likes of Aleister Crowley broke away and formed their own theologies of magic -- Crowley even added a 'k' to his brand to distinguish it from the others. He worked with the mind and symbols rather than outside props, bit like the virtual reality researchers do now for computer companies.
"He wasn't alone. Many from the London artists' colonies founded their own magical systems, including a man called Austin Osman Spare. He believed that using symbols keyed in to the human subconscious you could do all sorts of magic. He was able to summon the strength of a tiger, the calm or cunning of a snake, the wisdom of an elephant. He believed it was all there in our past waiting to be summoned; called it Atavistic Resurgence".
I mouthed the words, their meaning still far from me.
"He even conjured a rose out of thin air."
I couldn't help laughing, "A rose. Why not something more useful."
My blunt disbelief did not appear to anger or put him off. He tapped at the paper. "The symbol's like a visual spell. All you have to do is internalize it so that you can imagine it when you close your eyes."
"And what then?"
"When you can replicate it well enough in your mind and have given it time to key into your subconscious, all you need to do is concentrate on the symbol and you summon the strength, the magic, within you."
"Oh yeah?" The smirk on my face must have hinted that I was unconvinced. His habit of mixing tall tales with truth -- a habit shared with the infamous Aleister Crowley, he had once told me - left me nervous about believing everything he told me.
Yet, that confident smile of his, visible only when he knew he had won, never flickered as he left me alone in the cell.


The boy is a miracle in bed; smooth taut skin so different from the coarse roughness of Weaver's practised fucking in the prison bunk. My cellmate had been a genius with the mental arts, but their development seemed to have sapped any natural physical ability a lover. His kisses had been shallow, his erection soft.
Simon, has pleasure mapped into his flesh, the sureness of a whore, tempered with whispers of innocence. He is the lover I craved in prison before I settled for Weaver, and now I want to take just a little longer in his company.
I still adore my prison-side mentor, will do anything for him, but such young company -- mind, spirit as well as skin - is rare in my experience. I need to savour it for just a while. After all, Weaver has strived ten years for freedom: He can wait a little longer –- at least until we get to Amsterdam.

I did not choose the violence. The opportunity was there and it chose me. For three weeks I learned the symbol that Weaver had drawn, concentrating on its rough spiky uniqueness with a determination I had lost at my sentencing.
Prison became a portal, my cell a cabin from which I rarely ventured. The screws frowned every time they poked their heads around the door to announce lock-up and my personal officer eventually gave up asking if I was hiding from someone.
Oh yes, I was hiding, but not from any nightmare that place could conjure. Weaver had told me to concentrate and also warned me not to let anyone else see the symbol: such discovery would diffuse its power. So I hid it in my shoe where sweat made it damp and, eventually smudged each of its thick pencilled contours. The sharp, defined image remained fresh in my mind and, when the time came to use it, I was surprised at the speed with which I could conjure its presence.
It was coincidence rather than force of will that finally brought this power into use.
Eric Parker was a quiet loner yet he had a voice, his fists, and they gave him the say of any animal prison gang. It must have been my upcoming release date that awoke him to my presence within the prison system. In the past he had simply pushed me aside if I had gotten in his way. Relieved as I was that he was not interested in me, I had never worried about these assaults, but when he started to see the possibilities in my release I began to dread his presence.
Parker needed a link to the outside and, having no natural friends, saw the opportunity to mark me as an unnatural ally. Several times he threatened me on meal breaks and then, two weeks before I got out, he came to my cell when Weaver was away.
The first I knew of his presence was the dull clang of the door closing. Then the smell of his aftershave - stolen, no doubt from Boris on C Wing who always reeked of the stuff - preceded his thick fingers wringing the flesh of my arm.
I cried out, forced off balance to turn and face him.
"Hello," he whispered, in a voice that sounded as if it came from the bottom of a particularly rank well. "I think it's time we bonded."
I fell back against the hard-wire frame of the bottom bunk bed, certain of what he meant. Not a word passed my lips as he approached, raising his arms to pull me out of my hole. I flinched and retreated into the saving space between the bunks only to feel the twisting of my tee shirt in his fists as they pummeled my scrawny chest.
At that moment fear cancelled physical response and instinct took over. The image I had so carefully cultivated in the hope that it would mean something cascaded before my eyes.
I had expected to feel a sudden rush of brutal force through my body, readying it for combat, but instead my arms and legs relaxed catching my assailant off centre.
He fell forward, lashed by my arms with such power that I almost did not hear the brittle sound of his jaw crack. He opened his mouth with a wail. Blood seeped between his teeth and peppered his chin as he staggered back.
My foot followed, toes twisting within sandals, bevelling viciously up and into the soft fat of his chest. He went down in a fit of coughing, drizzling dark liquid on the slick green floor.
The symbol throbbed in front of me, its power inside. I rose, involuntarily clenching my fists, standing over my victim, prepared for him to fight back; but he did not.
My feeling of invincibility receded. I stepped back against the wall, wheezing and coughing: All strength gone, feeble reality returned. Gasping for breath, I watched the only sign of movement from Parker's body: The twitching fingers of his left hand pressed down against the floor and he pushed himself into a kneeling position. Bloody-faced, he looked up at me. Beaten for the first time in his five years in the system he did not know what to do.
I pointed to the wash basin. "I'll be back later. You won't be here."
When I passed through the door and out onto the walkway I smiled and prayed to Weaver.

I shake the spunk-filled condom into the sanitary bin by the sink and steady my quaking hands. The boy in the next room dopily calls my name. I ignore him, confident of the drugged Vodka's power, that he will lose consciousness within the next two minutes.
If you are going to commit murder the one big problem is the body. That is one of Weaver's maxims. I believe him not because of any legal proof, any time done, or any rumours of bodies hidden, but because he is the sort of man who never asks someone else to do something unless he has been there himself.
Anyway, according to him this is not murder. And disposal of the body? I have no such concerns.

It was nearly teatime when I pushed open the metal door to my cell, half expecting to find Parker still bloodied-up but waiting for me. Instead I found the floor clear except for a dark red rose in full bloom where my nemesis had fallen.
I stooped and picked it up, wary that someone could be waiting for me to bare my back to violence. No such attack came so I slipped my fingers around the stem, resting the thick thorns carefully in the palm of my hand.
I realised someone had entered the cell: behind me. Instinctively I turned, the thorns slicing against my skin. I winced in pain then sighed with relief when I caught sight of Weaver's passive face. He was carrying a thick water-bloated paperback, Anne Rice's The Body Thief, his finger stuck as a marker in the middle.
"You?" I asked, raising the rose to eye level.
"Miraculous," he smiled.
"You've never given me a present before."
He blew an exaggerated kiss at me and held out the book. "A present and a promise of rewards to come".


I unzip the bulging leather carryall and pull the gunmetal case from beneath its covering of tee-shirts and jeans. As contraband it is not hidden too well but I have taken a risk that I would not be searched coming into the Hook of Holland.
Pulling the case open I stroke the two large syringes, both full of murky liquid. The first will relax the already sleeping boy even more, the second stop his lungs and heart. He will be dead in fifteen minutes.
Efficient and, most importantly, one of the few ways to leave the central organs undamaged.
I cup the two syringes in my hand, walk back into the bedroom and, with just a glance at the beautiful naked youth outstretched and peacefully unaware, I pick up the battered paperback from the bedside table.


"You're out in two weeks, I can be too with your help." If Weaver had not prepared me I would not have believed.
"How?" I asked, knowing he had at least another seven to serve before any hope of parole.
He sat beside me on the bunk and flicked through the book he had been carrying for the past week. His silence was unnerving.
"This involves me smuggling you out in some way?"
Weaver nodded and smiled. "But not at any risk of getting caught." He flapped the book and its thick pages rustled eerily against each other as he handed it to me. "Open it up and take a look."
I did as he asked, unsure of what I was expected to discover.
"Any page." He added, as if already performing a conjuring trick.
I stopped shuffling through pages and carefully pressed down on the spine.
Weaver waited another moment to be sure of my attention. "What is the most perfect and yet the most elementary thing man has ever created." When he got no reply from me he nodded towards the book. "It's pretty simple - in there."
"Language?" My answer was a stumble and I knew it must be wrong for he quickly shook his head.
"The point, the full stop. It needs the least amount of ink and in magickal texts it represents the will, spirit and mind absolutely concentrated into one point like a laser beam."
I looked down at one in the first line of the page I had turned to. For an instant it seemed to roll across the paper, boundaried only by the letters that caged it on either side.
"It's also the purest form of meditation aid. The most difficult to master and most powerful. Imagine being able to concentrate your consciousness into that one brilliant point, excluding all emotions, thoughts, feelings and impressions from the outside world; to move your mind, your being into that one spot and to hide it there. "
"And how does this help you walk out of prison?"
"It doesn't. I don't walk. When I can get to that degree of concentration I can achieve anything. Even park my mind in that full stop. Keep myself safe, hidden, just like in a magic circle.Imagine being wlthout a body; total concentration, total power."
"I still don't - "
"You're going to have to kill me."

I hold the first syringe up to the window light and rest my thumb on the plunger, conjuring the killing spirit with which I'd first become acquainted two months ago. Then I had been in the cell while Weaver's body -- sans consciousness, spirit or soul -- lay on the lower bunk. Death awaiting investigation by the authorities.
How do I get you out? I had asked him.
I look across at the battered paperback, the page torn from it, the black print on it. Somewhere on there; a speck; a soul.
Kill me, he had said dispassionately and at that point I had felt like laughing: but I had believed enough to do it. There had been no struggle, just a slight flopping movement of his bare arms when I pressed the pillow gently over his face. No evidence of violence, just lungs that had stopped breathing. No doubt there might have been the tell tale of exploded blood vessels somewhere, showing that the thin trail of life that remained had been extinguished by an outside agency. But, as Weaver had promised, all the authorities did was detain me for a few more weeks while a perfunctory investigation came to an inconclusive end.

I pick up the novel and look down at Weaver's literary existence. Trashy: The kind of thing you read and discard. He had been so firm and assuring while we were together inside, always pointing out ways to survive. Yet, to be honest, I see he was only interested in freedom and self-preservation.
We all are, aren't we?
I lift the page, slip the lighter from my pocket and watch it burn. An imaginary male scream flickers in my mind: an apt fanfare to mark Weaver's passing.
Time to go.
I stroke the boy's helpless body: A film of warm sweat comes away on my greying fingertips.
A cough chatters through my lungs.
"Sorry," I whisper, and I am.
I am not a monster; just someone who wants to survive. When it comes to AIDS there is no greater need, no greater promise.
If science can't find an answer you create your own. Never mind that someone else, just as disparate, gave you the solution or that another - more innocent - must cease to exist to continue that chain of life.
My life.
I am more powerful than Weaver, more determined, and can easily smother the weak soul lying on the bed, eject it with a simple flick of my incorporeal mind.
The needles slip into my arm. There is no feeling of finality until the final plunger has been forced down. Then I lie back on the bed. My lungs feel heavy but not with the dread of asthma or pneumonia.
No, here is a stifling relief that welcomes the brief transition of death, the promise for the soon to be reborn...

© John Gilbert, 2003