The Last Great Men

The wind came up the hill off the lake, which was now frozen over. A harsh percussion of naked branches clanged as the trees shed themselves of the snow which had been falling for four days. Twenty young men stood on the driveway facing the night, arranged by height. To a passerby, they would have appeared as some sort of ragged, over-dressed army company, swaying in various states of drunkenness, ready to march on Moscow. They wore only sport jackets, and the weak among them had begun to shiver.

Behind this row of soldiers loomed the great house, its darkened windows revealing nothing of the soul within. Cold stone and gothic arches. The castle stood watch over the valley below, where a symphony of lights flickered in the late winter night.

A large door slammed as if a cannon had fired somewhere, reverberating across the hills. An inspector emerged on the tall portico of the house, dark except for the fire of his cigar. His footsteps became crunch, crunch, crunch as he descended the stairs and walked onto the snow, and turned to face the men. A moment of silence, as the soldiers were inspected. A rain of fireflies fell to the snow as the man tapped his cigar. He walked up the row, paused, and then walked back. Silence. Then the clang of the branches as the wind rustled past. He cleared his throat.

“It begins.” He said.

Benjamin and James were reclined on rotting couches in a room on the second floor. They were taking bong hits and playing x-box. Through the smoky haze of the room, a Radiohead poster and a New York Giants flag were visible. Benjamin, freckled and red-haired, was from Greenwich. James, from one of the wealthy towns astride the rolling hills of the portion of New Jersey that rises away from Newark and Elizabeth.

On the floor between them was a half-opened box of chicken-wing bones. Beside that, the carcasses of 20-odd silver beer cans. Rolling papers. An unruly stack of papers. Philosophy 131. A summation of Rawls and Nozick. “General level of happiness. Rawls wrote that the health of a society can be deduced by the mood of its citizens, starting at the bottom” written in messy cursive.

“Bitch!” said James. Benjamin had just decapitated James’s avatar with the sword of Angdar.

“You are weak. I will destroy you and your family and everything and everyone that you know or have ever known. I will destroy your children’s children and your grandparents and their forebearers.” Said Benjamin. He was Jewish, but of the German type, via Mexico.

“Faggot” said James.

Maxwell had mirrors above his bed. He installed them himself. He and his girlfriend, Pauline, had loud sex. Screaming could be heard down the second floor hallway most nights, lasting for hours. Shrieking. Expletives. He grew up on a farm on Long Island and had seven siblings. Pauline was from a “cow town” upstate. They had loud, violent sex, and looked at themselves in the ceiling mirror while they did it.

One night, there was a lot of yelling and screaming coming from Maxwell’s room. Something that was made of glass crashed as it fell to the floor. Something else banged against the wall. More yelling. A small crowd had gathered at the door. Moments later, Pauline emerged, her face bloodied. She practically pulled Maxwell out, attached like a barnacle, and the two grappled and groped their way down the hallway, down the wooden steps, out into the Great Hall, and out the front door, into the snowy night. Drops of blood formed a wake behind them. The front door slammed, and the night fell quiet. It was said that she had threatened him with a knife, that they had hit each-other. But nobody knew for certain.

Carlton was alone in his room. He was naked, and on Ecstasy. He had masturbated for five hours and was now leaning out the window. The frigid, dry air was invigorating, and his senses were alive. He closed his eyes.

He thought of the divorce. His fucking bastard father now seemed like a Mallard Duck, floating on a pond. He was just a mallard duck. He floated away from his mother. His mother was a swan, caught behind a beaver-dam on the other side of the lake. Carlton was happy. He giggled and blew his breath into the air, which produced condensation. He was a smokestack.

Moments later he retreated to his room from the window, on the top floor of the stone house. On one of the walls was a mural of a Miami sunset that had been painted by a previous tenant while he was naked and on acid with a girlfriend.

Carlton sat on his carpet, Indian style. He put his hands out in mock lotus position. He believed that he could levitate. He truly believed that. He closed his eyes.