ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR
IRRESPONSIBLE HATE ANTHEM
Such as the liner notes to the album indicates with the date of February 14, 1997 (a date that was in the future relative to the release of Antichrist Superstar), as well as the distant mechanical voice repating what is heard toward the end of the album, this moment in the story exists at what may or may not be Adam's final show. It is the storytelling technique of showing the outcome to shocking effect then show us how Adam got to that point. His visions and goals are fully realized. His hate and venom are focused at the height of his return to true form. He looks nothing like he ever has before, especially how he looked in the body of Omega. In a sense he is the finality, but Adam has a strong foothold on the body. The body though, is distorted and mangled and pieced together. Much like how Manson appears in the videos for "The Beautiful People" and "Tourniquet". More on that as this final chapter progresses. It's appropriate that the end of the story took place one record after "Portrait of an American Family" (which is the spiritual prequel to the Triptych), for the sound is similar for records made near each other but it works for the story in the sense that Omega is returning his sound and band back to the original state before everything fell apart. Before Love. Before Coma Black. Before the Infinite Vacuum of Space Encompassing. You can hear the crowd, uproarious with fanaticism for whatever Omega spews forth. He's making a defined stance that he is different and separate, but still on the side of the people. But if the people will not stand up for themselves they will get destroyed in one way or another. Omega is all and nothing. He is the ism (a belief system) but his hates a prism (he hates all). He doesn't need to choose a side because he's on his own side now. Life means everything and nothing to him, after seeing the atrocities committed over the last two chapters. HIs body is rotten with decay because he no longer takes his synthetic medicine provided by Holy Wood to keep him plastic, but his body shows signs of being strung out on natural drugs. His limbs are crumbling, his skin has lost its color except for homemade tattoos, bruising, and makeup. He will fight to have his revenge, and use his fans to achieve this but he doesn't care if he or them lives or dies because life is pointless anyway. For if you rise up with the fruit of goodness, someone else will come along and eat it. And the cycle of sowing and reaping begins again.
THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
The sound at the beginning kinda feels like how a filmmaker would create a visual/audio effect to signify that we're stepping into the past. Previously we saw that Omega was shown the whereabouts of the holding area/factory for all the plastic gods. Now we see that he has modified himself. He has modified his band. Through knowledge buried in his sub-concious, he has reverse engineered the drugs and found a way to counter act the effects of the coma his bandmates were reluctantly put in. He shows them how to empower themselves physically now. He's mastered the assembly line and all its parts. Doable, but not pretty. Much like Manson and his band appear in the video for "The Beautiful People", all pieced together with mechanical enhancements, flesh falling apart, held together by stitch and nylons. Adam had all their belongings brought to the factory in order to write the next step in his domination. When the sewed themselves and the new message together, Adam fires up the broadcasting equipment and projects the beginning of the end to as far as it will go. They play the song over and over. When the band tires, they play the song on reel-to-reel, while they pound their being with every drug imaginable. Some mindless drone Holy Wood whore starfuckers find their way to the source of the transmission. The band turn them into their minions. They give them an extremely high dose of meds and go to work on their legs, sawing them in half and attaching mechanical risers. Beneath long black dresses and makeup , they would look like the angels and they would serve as the go-between for Holy Wood and its new God, Omega. Once the band had been made in the image of Omega, and they could realize their old potential with their new potential, Omega called forth to the citizens of Holy Wood to descend upon the factory. Here Omega would deliver is first message as their newly remodeled God. He himself had mechanical risers installed to tower over them. He's taunting them. Flaunting his parts to them. Pointing out all their sins, most importantly ones of those in power who got suspicious and showed up to linger at the back of the crowd. Omega wanted them to realize they had lost everyone and they would lose their lives next. Quite accusatory to them, and goading the crowd on to the point of furious hysteria. They have destroyed what is good, Omega will create something better. Kill anything you think deserves to die. Some kill each other. A large mass attacks and kills the powerful. Prick yr finger. It is done.
DRIED UP, TIED, AND DEAD TO THE WORLD
Like they had once before when they had originally toppled the powerful, Omega and his followers celebrate. Hard. They traveled back to the site of their original settlement. They had brought back all the resynthesized drugs from the factory (which was destroyed as they left) and found that their original stash had survived attacks. There was a secret bunker that only Adam and his band knew of and they usually kept their most treasured items. Unfortunately it was also where Coma Black had blown her brains out. The band and Omega descend into the bunker. Previously they celebrated a great defeat with an all-night binge of drugs and music. This night would be the same, but much different. Harder drugs. More drugs. Accelerated induced schizophrenia. Hallucination. Omegas body was a machine, his bands was not. They blacked out just before dawn. Adam looks at the corpses of Coma Black and Coma White. He looks at himself in the broken mirror that the bullet hit after it left CB's head. "You cut off all of your fingers. Trade them in for dollar bills." Adam's remorse for his choice to sacrifice himself to the angels and allow the MC to take power and CB kill herself. And now he sees where his body is showing extreme wear and tear from lack of the proper medicine. Angrily he snarls at himself, "Cake on some more makeup to cover all those lines." Track marks and where his seams are coming apart. He fixes himself a bit and turns to CB, "Don't you want some of this?" He grabs between her legs and licks her cheek, "Don't you want some of this?" The God of Fuck. Nothing. He slinks away and dances in the candlelight, watching himself gyrate like a puppet. He hears her voice for the first time in a long time, quoting her suicide letter to Adam, "You take what can not be given. You ride what can not be ridden. Pinch this tiny heart of mine. Wrap it up in soiled twine..." Adam feels terror. But no chills. Fright. But no tears. As he turns toward her corpse. She's not moving of course. He slinks down into her face. Adam is furiously angry. He yells in her face,"You never read what you've written!" How dare she make demands when she was such a deceitful, manipulative, lying piece of bitch trash. Adam doesn't feel that way at all. Why did he say that. He looks at himself in the mirror again. Scratches at his face and arm. Tears the rubber hose away from his arm. CB whispers, "I'll be your lover." Adam locked on his own gaze, "I'll be forever." He can almost feel CB's breath on his neck, "I'll be tomorrow." Omega grins ear-to-ear, "I am anything when I'm high." Omega grabs CB and picks her up, swinging her around. "Don't you want some of this?? Don't you NEED some of this??" He slams her against the wall and walks his hand up to her pussy. It's dry and hard. As he hallucinates revenge fucking her, he hallucinates her voice in his head, "You shove your hair down my throat. I'll feel your fingers in me." She leans closer and purrs, "Tear this bitter fruit to mess and wrap it in your soiled dress." Omega wraps his arms around her so tight he can hear her ribcage crack, bit by bit. With her final breath, "Now you must spit out the seeds..." A reference to "In The Shadow of the Valley of Death". She put the seeds in Adam long ago, now it was time to reap what has grown within him.
TOURNIQUET
"This is my lowest point of vulnerability." Omega looks at Coma White. Just a rotting pile of meat, ready for harvest. In his head Coma Black is screaming to come alive. With Adam's new knowledge he could reassemble CB and have her come alive. CW means nothing to Omega. "She's made of hair. And bone. And little teeth...things that can not speak. She comes on like a crippled plaything." He smells her pussy and slides his cock across his face. Nothing moves. Some blood gets on his shaft. Swiftly he grabs her by the skull and tears it from her body, spine and all. It just dangles there. "Her spine is just a string..." Another throwback to Holy Wood ("She's a burning string, and I'm just the ashes") CW, much like CB, embodies Adam's fall. Now the other shoe has dropped. CW's body slumps further to the ground and a severly putrid odor comes from her body. Omega gets to work taking bits and pieces from each Coma and swapping them out to make for perfection. The band drug some bits and pieces from the factory, Omega uses some of those, he takes bits and pieces from his own body, hijacks her nervous and cardiopulmonary sytems to inject new drugs to wake her brain. "I wrapped our love in all this foil. Silver tight like spider legs." He looks her in her dead-black eyes. "I never wanted it to ever spoil. But flies will lay their eggs." He steps back to look at his creation. New dress. New body. New blood. She isn't moving. He attempts to spark consciousness by referring to a past that feels familiar. Her hatred and death. "Take your hatred out on me. Make your victim MY head" As opposed to her own suicide. Anger washes over him again. "You never ever believed in me!! I am your tourniquet!" He pushes and pokes at her skin. Punches her in her chest. Jerks off and cums on her face. No response. Not an echo in his mind. He goes over the process, speaking out loud, "Prosthetic synthesis and butterfly...sealed up with virgin stitch." He looks over at the pile of flesh and bone that was CW. His band still blacked out. He leans into her ear. "If it hurts baby. Please tell me. Preserve the innocence. I never wanted it to end like this. But flies will lay their eggs." Adam panics, and Omega freaks out. He starts pushing the corpse around the room and screaming at it. "Take your hatred out on me! Make your victim my head!" He's smashing his fists and head into the brick walls. He treats her like a puppet and mimics her voice, "What I wnated! What I needed! What I got for ME!" He sees everything about her as selfishness. He tears her dress from her body and bends her over a table and starts raping her asshole. "Take your...take your..." He's banging furiously,"Get up out of me! I'm not proud with me." When he finally cums inside of her, he can hear her voice as a distant whisper. He moves over to press his face against hers. He can hear her, "I never ever believed in me...I am your tourniquet..."
LITTLE HORN
Now Omega has reached the end of his rope with the world. CB is dead and gone, clearly, along with any sense of love or understanding Adam may have had left. She's betrayed him one last time. "There's an apple in the pussy mouth. Now I am the dinner whore!" Her being is no longer the temptation to Adam. He can be what everyone desires. Nothing will stand in Omega's path. He hasn't slept in many days, and he's still mainlining whatver drugs are lying around. Some of Coma Whites's body is still lying on the ground. Omega hallucinates, "There's a tumor in the TV mouth." He leans down to CW's decapitated head and presses his ear to her mouth. His eyes widen, "Burn it out before it grows!" He starts putting her and CB back into a shape fit for burial. He'll put this to rest finally and the world will be his without connection or remorse. "Jaw wired shut to save the dick." Little whore. Little whore. Little horn. Horn. Little Horn. Adam can still hear CB's voice inside him. She's inside him. But now he's using her. Her pain and his sorrow have transformed into something else in his mind. Little Horn is born. "And the world spreads its legs for another star." The world will gladly show its face for another scar. He grabs each corpse by the ankle and drags them up the stairs. He kicks the locked door open with one swift powerful gesture. Through the trailer park and into the desert, Omega is going to bury the Coma where Adam's parents were buried long ago before all this started. Adam wants to join them in death. He's swiftly draggin them through the early morning dust. Skin scabbing and healing over, dried goo sprayed across his mostly naked body. He's muttering and jabbering to himself. "The dead will dance for what is left. The worms will wait with baited breath."Omega unearths a new gravesite and tosses the Comas into the hole. No gravestone will be left. "Save yourself from this."
CRYPTORCHID
Adam retreats back to the bunker after having put all of his baggage into the ground. Overhead the night sky is fading away to daylight. Just a few distant points of light hover so still in the clear morning. But from the horizon a light is moving. Its far but in orbit maybe. Its moving quickly. Omega's body begins to tingle and then vibrate in various parts of his body like a low electric shock is shooting through him. In his mentally deprived state, Adam has a divine feeling of relief that he has finally done the right thing. "Each time I make my mother cry, an angel dies and falls from heaven." He feels like all the pain hes been through has been for the better." Then a sharp stabbing pain in his head and the sound of thunder fades in and out, a voice under his repeating what he just said followed by, "...when they get to you." The pain subsides and he feels as if god has come to collect his due. "When a boy is still a worm it's hard to learn the number 7..." Omega is speaking to himself and whoever is in his head knowing that he is still working toward god status to complete his work. And that voice again. Pleasant but threatening, "...when they get to you." The MC has found its way back to Adam. "5,6,7,8 NEVER! 7,8,9,10 HEAVEN!" The MC is taunting him like he was in "Count To Six and Die". Adam is slowly killing himself and the MC is there to put him in his place as a human and not a god. "4,3,2,1 NEVER GET TO 7!" Adam has defeated his demons but in his weakest moment the MC wants to bring him down. Adam looks to the gravesites again, exhausted, tortured, angrily he condemns himself for no matter what he does he suffers, "Each time I look outside my mother dies!" The pain and shock erupts in his body with more intensity as the light in the sky comes directly over head and stops. Every bit of his hangover is subsiding and Omega feels as if he could rip the world in half. Adam bellows, "I feel my back it's changing shape!" Because of the corporal modifications he so sloppily did to himself, his flesh and bones are rearranging themselves in morbid fashion. His skin is scarring over in odd patterns over his back as his shoulder blades protrude like fucked up wings. Adam despises himself and whats led to this. He can feel all the old voices returning in his head. His brain is getting hacked and wiped. He feels terrible, "When the worm consumes the boy, it's never ever considered rape." He doesn't deserve this anymore. WHY CAN'T HE DESTROY EVERYTHING THAT'S BROUGHT HIM TO THIS MOMENT. His hatred has hit the perfect level. Up above him is what has been hidden all along as back up if the first crew of angels failed. The angels can never fail, and Model 15 shall carry out his destiny. They speak between themselves and to Omega, "Prick your finger. It is done. The moon has now eclipsed the sun. The angel has spread its wings. The time has come for bitter things."
DEFORMOGRAPHY
With an opening line of "When you wish upon your star", it's apparent that Manson has definitely been channeling the many facets of the tale of Pinocchio. His struggle that runs parallel with that little twig has reached a moment to say, "I am your puppet on a string. When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed." Adam can feel all the voices rushing back in his head. The MC. The angels. CB is gone though. Adam feels awful, like a walking corpse. "I fell into you now I'm on my back. An insect decaying in your little trap." He'd do anything to have CB back in any form, he fucked up. "I squirm into you, now I'm in your gut. I fell into you, now I'm in a rut." The angel's have hijacked all previous functions of thought. The MC's slimy words seep over Adam's mind like an oil spill, "I lift you up like the sweetest angel. I'll tear you down like a whore!" Adam screams back, "I will bury your god in my warm spit! You'll be deformed in your porn!" The MC croaks and cackles and long deformed laugh bellows into Adam's entire being, "You're such a dirty rockstar. Dirty, dirty rockstar." He laughs again, all digitally chopped and screwed like nails on a chalkboard. Adam feeling the horizon of defeat, continues to spit and choke on his thoughts and words, "You eat up my heart and all the little parts. Your star is so sharp, it leaves me jagged holes. I make myself sick just to poison you." The MC feels his anger and his next words words rush in like a whispering spectre, "If I can't have you then no one will...you're such a dirty rockstar! Dirty...dirty...rockstar" You bad little bitch of a fake god. "You are the one I want. And what I want is so unreal. I lift you up like the sweetest angel. I'll tear you down like a whore." Dropping to his knees, looking up at the sattelite, Adam screams and tears at his skin, "I'm such a dirty rockstar!" Adam has released his hatred of CB and the lingering from his mind, also the lingering pain, to only be filled back up with new self-hatred from being bamboozled by the new protocol. He's learned that from the beginning his actions were known by the angels and how they could manipulate him back under their will.
WORMBOY
Adam has been passed out for hours. The sun barreling down on his skin. The satellite gone. One of his bandmates comes careening out of the bunker with a video recorder in hand. He's kicking Omega awake, shouting at him and bombarding him with stories of what they've been up to since Adam buried CB, spinning in the morning light, powder and blood flinging into the air . All on SSD for perpetuity. Omega snaps awake in a fit of panic. On his feet his bandmate isn't phased by any measure of Omega's physical nature but he'll be sure aware soon. "When will you realize you're already there!" Omega shouts. Adam's mind is on overload and continuing thoughts and conversations from before. There's too many voices in his head and pouring from his lips. He turns away, "So watered down, your feelings have turned to mud." Adam and the MC are battling within Omega. Adam's bandmate has a massive bellowing gut laugh and starts recording. The MC forces Omega's face to the camera and spews, "Love everybody is destroying the value of///" Adam breaks in, turning away from the camera, in almost a mutter,"...all hate has got me nowhere." He turns back, "I know I'm slipping...I know I'm slipping away!" Adam feels too much power within him he can longer control as easily as he once did. Wide-eyed and dead-eyed he looks at the camera, "Oh no! It is everything they said it was!" In his mind Adam panics, "Oh no! I am everything they said I was!" The MC feels Adam letting go bit by bit, "When you get to heaven. You will wish you're in hell." When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed. When you seek greater power, everything you hold dear will wither away. Adam is losing grip right in front of the camera, all rage and power. Adam knows everone will see this video, "When will you realize you're already here!" To his fans. To everyone. To himself. It is done. The moon has now eclipsed the sun. We're fucked. But Omega stretches a luxurious grin across his metal teeth and speaks to the fans as well, "You'll thank us now that you have crossed over." And in a sort of whisper in Adam's inner ear, the MC tells eggs him on, "Don't pick the scabs or they will never heal." He laughs, "The world shudders as the worm gets his wings." Adam's bandmate is laughing hysterically. Adam careens back into the bunker to go to sleep.
MISTER SUPERSTAR
Adam somehow passes out and is sleeping peacefully. He dreams of CB. Before everything. All soft and long and gorgeous. A soft hand to always support. She leans down and whispers, "Hey. Mr Superstar. I'll do anything for you. I'm your number one fan." It feels real like she just walked in the room from the grave. Adam pictures himself waking up to grab and squeeze her hard. She continues, "Hey Mr. Pornostar. I want you. Mr. Sicklystar. I wanna get sick from you." Adam senses something wrong. His dream is slowly slipping in and out of a nightmare. "Hey Mr. Fallen Star. Don't you know I worship you? Hey Mr. Big Rockstar! I wanna grow up to be just like you!" Adam is having a full hallucination and fever panic. This is not a dream. The MC has weaseled his way in to Adam's slumber to completely end him. "I know that I could turn you on. I wish I could just turn you off." See the digital nature of the exchange of on and off. A concept the MC can only understand. Whatever is left of Adam's heart is splitting in two. He groans in his sleep, "I never wanted this..." The MC feels him slipping away, "Hey. Mr Super Hate." He knows Adam knows what's up so he continues to feign as CB, "I just want to love you." Then the MC funnels all love into nothing, "Hey Mr. Superfuck. I want to go down on you." Then taunts Adam's newfound cage, "Hey Mr. Super God. Will you answer my prayers?" Then delivers a final blow, "Hey Mr. Superman. I wanna be your little girl..." In a fit of all the noise and pain and rage and remorse and regret, "You could kill yourself on TV. I wish you'd kill yourself on TV. Will you kill yourself on TV?" Adam sees the end. Everything has gone terribly wrong. "I wish I was dead. I wish I was dead." As the MC continues to scream in his mind Adam reaches to the side of his bed. The revolver that took CB's life. Puts it under his chin and fires. The vision of CB subsides and his vision flickers into darkness like a bad VHS tape.
ANGEL WITH THE SCABBED WINGS
Omega has been splayed out for a couple hours, oozing fluids and electrical sparks from his head. In busts his band mate with the camera again, so high as fuck, the fact that Omega has obviously killed himself doesn't really phase him. Some part of him doesn't fear the sacrifice Adam has made, he finds it empowering to the cause. He starts recording the death, poking and kicking at the body, "He's the Angel with the scabbed Wings. Hard-drug face!" He laughs hysterically like it's a joke to him that Omega did so many drugs his head exploded. "Want to powder his nose." He pours out coke on Omega's face. It just absorbs into the blood and goo. To reassure the audience of whoever will watch the recording, "He will devour the freshest crop. Dry up all the wombs with his rock and roll sores. "Dead is what he is, he does what he pleases! The things that he has you'll never want to see what you're never going to be." And he's just deliriously high and confused and cant process any true emotion. He's trying to egg on Omega like it'll wake him up, "Sketch a little keyhole for looking glass people." Still recording every bit of his death on TV. "You don't want to see him, you only want to be him!" He starts singing some non-sensical nursery rhyme song as he pokes and prods and records Omega, "Mommy's got a scarecrow, got to let the corn grow." He leans in to to lick Omega's face and whispers, "Man can't always reap what he sows..." The bandmate turns the camera on himself and matter-of-factly states, "He is the maker. He is the taker. He is the savior. He is the raper. Get back! You're never going to leave him. Get back! You're always going to please him." He's had enough. He continues to record the death as he walks back out of the room, "He is the angel with the scabbed wings. He will deflower the freshest crop. Dry up all the wombs with his rock and roll sores." End transmission.
KINDERFELD
This whole time, the angels have been communicating from above with Omega's circuitry in order to repair, some have been sent physically to repair his face. He did a bang up job of killing himself, but it's mmostly replaceable with some leftover parts from other models. One of Omega's eyes on the other hand couldn't be replaced with an exact match. They used an older model's eye, when they hadn't perfected the art of having their models blend in. It's a cold white color, and the iris doesn't work anymore so it stays in one position. They leave soon after the work is completed and Omega gasps back to life like the instant the bullet smashed his circuitry had just happened. Adam remembers everything. But he can't cry. His emotions are as mangled as his body, but he feels someone. He feels all the voices in his head but can't fight them. The angels reprogrammed him to allow for all to be present. Adam feels all the hatred rush back into him without thought. "He lives inside my mouth and tells me what to say." He's looking at his body, all piles of random bits and pieces to keep him alive, barely. It's a mess. He can't shake loose everything that brought him to this point, "Hands are cracked and dirty...the nails are beetle wings. Tell me something beautiful. Tell me something free. And I wish that I could be." He's trapped in this disgusting body with all these voices and ideas but he feels a new empowerment. He has some lingering pre-cognition left by the angels. He feels his face, his arms, the pain of his back. He's alive for something else. "Then I got my wings and I never even knew it. When I was a worm, thought I couldn't get through it." Somehow his suicide was the final test. His hatred more potent. His hatred for himself. He hears something, "Come, come. The toys all smell like children and the scab-knees will obey." Angels maybe. "I'll have to kneel on broomsticks just to make it go away." The MC? But Adam can't shut them out. "Because today is black, there is no turning back." Adam shouts at himself, "Because your lies have watered me, I have become the strongest weed!" Adam shuffles through all of the shit lying around his room, junk, drawers, nonesense. He finds a hit. Ties himself off. Shoots up. Pulls the sringe out and sprays it in his mouth. "The taste of metal..." Disintegrator. Disintegrator. Dissent. He looks down. Three holes upon the belt. His arm is cut and swollen. The age is showing. The voices begin to subside for his body can't process natural drugs properly, he feels his old power return. He looks at himself dead in the mirror, dead in the eyes of his watchers. "This is what you should fear." As the voices subside, the angels flitter away with, "You are what you should fear..."
ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR
The video was released of Omega's body. The world, confused, joyous. Then a show is announced. How could this be. Just three days ago, Omega was dead, now the Disintegrator would be taking the stage for what is being touted as his final show. The band practiced and wrote relentlessly after Omega had reappeared to them. New songs. New energy. More drugs. More drugs. The purity of the moment was palpable. All weakness and fear was washed away and they felt a kinship they hadn't felt since before the fall. But Adam was different. More venomous and hateful and focused in every moment. As the sun rose on the final day, exhaustion and disgust had settled in each of their hearts. They slept all day like no sleep before. The show begins. The crowd is staggering. The band tears through several of its massive hits right out of the gate. The crowd is seething. Teetering. Lights go out. Podium in place, the Disintegrator takes his place and rallies the crowd into a frenzy. "You built me up with your wishing hell. I didn't have to sell you. You threw your money in the pissing well. You do just what they tell you. REPENT! That's what I'm talking about!" The crowd has accepted him as God before the show and are buying into anything he has to say. As I sneer and a wink to where he truly comes from, "I shed the skin to feed the fake. Who's mistake am I anyway?" But things have changed. He's died for them and returned to them. "Cut the head off. Grows back hard. I am the Hydra. Now you'll see your Star." He's speaking to the crowd and the himself and the voices in his head. He figured out a way to compartmentalize his true intentions while on heavy drug use. To assuage his watchers, he repeats, "Prick your finger it is done. The moon has now eclipsed the sun. The Angel has spread its wings. The time has come for bitter things." Who's doom is on the horizon? "The time has come, it is quite clear! Our Antichrist is almost here!" Repeat. Repeat. Mix. Blend. Repeat. "Cut the head off. Grows back hard. I am the Hydra. Now you'll see your star." Adam snaps himself. His circuitry goes loose as his drugs wear off. The MC and angels come careening into his thought. Emergency words and sirens. Places. Places, please. His limbs are spinning and he begins bending and shaking at his hips involuntarily. He spouts deep prior programming, "When you are suffering. Know that I have betrayed you. When you are suffering. Know that I have betrayed you. When you are suffering know that I have betrayed you..."
1996
It's been one year since CB killed herself on Valentine's Day, 1996. Now we find ourselves on the anniversary. February 14, 1997. Adam is the furthest from who he was when this tale began, a physically and mentally disfigured shadow of a good man. Now, full of seething hatred for himself, the angels, and everyone who fell for it. The people he once sought to protect have let him down by following him and Holy Wood so blindly. What is worth saving anymore? He will end their suffering and make a massive black spot on the legacy of the angels' work. He will make a stand now he hasn't since the early days of the band. The crowd is in a frenzy. He stands in the spotlight, alone, before them, letting them swallow themselves in furious hysteria. His mouth curls under like a metal snake. "Light a candle for the sinners...set the world on fire!" The band kicks in and the lights fire up lighting the faces of the socially-diseased residents of California. "I am the anti-flag unfurled. I got the anti-future plan. I am the anti-music god. There will never be enough of anti-more." Mass confusion and hysteria. Anger. To Holy Wood and CB - "I can't believe in the things that don't believe in me. Now it's your turn to see misanthropy!" To the angels - "Anti-people? Now you've gone too far! Here's your anti-christ SUPERSTAR! Anti-money (or perhaps even Antimony, an element used in Omega's construction and also processed to be used in his tattoos and makeup). Anti-hate. Anti things I fucked and ate. Anti-cop. Anti-fun..." Then from inside his body Omega retrieves the revolver that he and CB used to put bullets in their heads, "Here's is my anti-president gun! This is where your faith ends!" The angels panic. Their reprogramming should have eliminated feelings of suicide, but with his proclamations and now this, they scramble to fry his server. Something has burrowed into the system and is burning it out. "Anti-peace. Anti-life. Anti-husband and anti-wife." All the institutions of a false religion built by the angels. "Anti-song and anti-me." All the institutions built by Holy Wood. "I don't deserve a chance to be..." The angels system fires back online and Omega's body crumples and distorts for the second time. He's slipping away.
MINUTE OF DECAY
The MC snakes in, "From a dead man...geetings." Digital decay. Omega's mind drifts into the grey. A minute is like a million lifetimes in space. Adam speaks to the MC only but echoes in his head. Two warriors dying alone together on the battlefield. "There's not much left to love. Too tired today to hate. I feel the empty. I feel the minute of decay. I'm on my way down now. I'd like to take you with me." Adam has memories from just seconds ago that feel like a faraway dream. Visions of the show skittering in his mind's eye like a fucked up VHS. He fears he won't ever complete his work. "The minute that it's born, it begins to die." Severe anguish and exhaustion, "I'd love to just give in." But it would be defeat and his fear of death is overwhelming, "I'd love to live this lie." The MC emits what could barely be called a chortle. Adam continues in his weak state. "I've been to Black and back. I've White-d out my name." Adam feels as if he is simply drifting in space like before. "A lack of pain. A lack of hope. A lack of anything to say. There is no cure for what is killing me. I've looked ahead and saw a world that is dead. I guess that I am too." Somewhere in all of Omega's hatred, his thoughts find Coma Black again. His nihilism has brought him back to her and it's the only thing that can lift him out of this digital trap. In one swift breath he feels her hand behind his head, his mind reconnects to the machine, and the show must go on. It was a lifetime lived in a minute. Too many conflicting emotions bursting from the shoddy seams, but he has risen again to his seething animosity.
THE REFLECTING GOD
"Your world is an ashtray! We burn and coil like cigarettes. The more you cry your ashes turn to mud!" The crowd is on top of itself, folding and heaving in a wave of disbelief as Omega walks again. He looks disdainfully down on them, "The nature of the leeches. The virgins feeling cheated. You've only spent a second of your life." As he has finally gained his composure he mocks the angels again for each time he falls, he grows stronger and stronger. "My world is unaffected. There is an exit here. I say it is and it's true! There is a dream inside a dream. I'm wide awake the more I sleep. You'll understand when I'm dead." Omega's power is capsizing the angel's regime and his death he shall release earth from it's shackles in some form or fashion because they simply can not stop him for he has superceded their supposed power. "I went to "God" just to see. And I was looking at me. Saw heaven and hell were lies. When I'm GOD every one dies!" Omega throws the revolver to the ground at the foot of the stage, daring anyone to come on stage and pick it up. He points to the wounds on his face from his suicide, "Scar. Scar. Can you feel my power?!" He points at a fresh spot of disgusting synthetic flesh, "One shot and the world gets smaller." A young girl crawls onto the stage and slowly picks up the gun. Omega slinks toward her, grinning oh so devilishly. "Let's jump upon the sharp swords and cut away our smiles." He leans right into her ear, "Without the threat of death there's no reason to live at all." She's frightened. She looks back at the crowd apprehensively. Adam sees some of Coma Black in her. Too frightened to face the truth. Omega steps up right behind her and repeats, "I went to "God" just to see, and I was looking at me. Saw heaven and hell were lies. When I'm GOD...EVERYONE DIES!" She spins around and points the gun in his face. "SCAR. SCAR. CAN YOU FEEL MY POWER! ONE SHOT AND THE WORLD GETS SMALLER! SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT! MOTHERFUCKER! SHOOT!" He steps closer into the gun until it's right between his eyes. "Each thing I show you is a piece of my death." He taunts her, "No salvation. No forgiveness. No salvation. No forgiveness. No salvation. No forgiveness." The crowd repats along with him in unison, "No salvation. No forgiveness." Omega looks her in the eye and shrugs, "This is beyond your experience." The crowd continues to feverishly chant. Omega plainly screams to her, "FORGIVENESS! FORGIVENESS! FORGIVENESS!" She closes her eyes and pulls the trigger. Without proper aim or confidence the bullet merely goes into Omega's mouth and out the back of his throat. Adam panics and hesitates unsure of what's occured, the shock of the moment releasing his mind into the grey where the remnants of his memory lie. In his youth, alone in his bedroom, singing along with his acoustic guitar while Coma Black sits next to him, smiling in the dark. The crowd cheers at the sight of Omega stumbling around thinking he's dead. In a flash he realizes he isn't dead and whatever is left of his hatred somes spilling forth in a frenzy directed at this girl still holding the revolver. Omega's metal mouth is filling with blood, his mutated wings flaring from his back, his legs stretching upwards, he becomes more frightening and imposing than ever, "SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT MOTHERFUCKER SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT MOTHERFUCKER!!!" The next five bullets leave the gun in quick succession each one landing in his face and chest. Omega plummets backward and slams to the stage with a great thud.
THE MAN THAT YOU FEAR
(It's best to watch the video, for it and the song succinctly depict the finale and it has always served as the jumping off point for this whole project.)
Adam screams his final words into his death and his consciousness drops away into a darkness completely free of the angels's control. Then as if waking from a bad dream, sunlight through the window of his trailer greets his human eyes. He's in his bed back in the Valley of Death, not too long after the attack from Holy Wood. It's a life that should have been. Just as Omega was offering his audience the chance to cleanse the world of theirs and his sins, Adam's true hopes have come to fruition. Instead of leaving earth and allowing all the events of the past year to occur, he remained with his band, his community, and Coma Black to allow them the opportunity of empowerment through punishment for what he brought upon them. He feels happiness again. His body is true and untarnished. Coma Black is still alive. His pain and sorrow is met with only love and embrace. They shower together and he whispers everything he ever meant to tell her before she had a chance to kill herself. She lovingly dresses him in all his familiar clothing. He finally feels like himself again. And as he leaves his trailer and looks upon his people, he doesn't feel hatred, he only feels contentment that they have taken justice back for themselves. To free themselves from the painful cycle that could occur if Adam left earth, subsequently giving power to Holy Wood, he would willingly give his life at their hands. For he is already dead. Adam knows it's just a dream, but his mind was all he had left and he needed to put it to rest. They reach the killing grounds. Adam takes a moment to meet each person eye to eye. There is pain within Coma Black, but he would much rather her live than he continue on his path toward destruction. He was never as pure as they, but he might be now. As the darkness closes in again, he can hear the last remnants of digital chatter from beyond..."When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed."
Such as the liner notes to the album indicates with the date of February 14, 1997 (a date that was in the future relative to the release of Antichrist Superstar), as well as the distant mechanical voice repating what is heard toward the end of the album, this moment in the story exists at what may or may not be Adam's final show. It is the storytelling technique of showing the outcome to shocking effect then show us how Adam got to that point. His visions and goals are fully realized. His hate and venom are focused at the height of his return to true form. He looks nothing like he ever has before, especially how he looked in the body of Omega. In a sense he is the finality, but Adam has a strong foothold on the body. The body though, is distorted and mangled and pieced together. Much like how Manson appears in the videos for "The Beautiful People" and "Tourniquet". More on that as this final chapter progresses. It's appropriate that the end of the story took place one record after "Portrait of an American Family" (which is the spiritual prequel to the Triptych), for the sound is similar for records made near each other but it works for the story in the sense that Omega is returning his sound and band back to the original state before everything fell apart. Before Love. Before Coma Black. Before the Infinite Vacuum of Space Encompassing. You can hear the crowd, uproarious with fanaticism for whatever Omega spews forth. He's making a defined stance that he is different and separate, but still on the side of the people. But if the people will not stand up for themselves they will get destroyed in one way or another. Omega is all and nothing. He is the ism (a belief system) but his hates a prism (he hates all). He doesn't need to choose a side because he's on his own side now. Life means everything and nothing to him, after seeing the atrocities committed over the last two chapters. HIs body is rotten with decay because he no longer takes his synthetic medicine provided by Holy Wood to keep him plastic, but his body shows signs of being strung out on natural drugs. His limbs are crumbling, his skin has lost its color except for homemade tattoos, bruising, and makeup. He will fight to have his revenge, and use his fans to achieve this but he doesn't care if he or them lives or dies because life is pointless anyway. For if you rise up with the fruit of goodness, someone else will come along and eat it. And the cycle of sowing and reaping begins again.
THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
The sound at the beginning kinda feels like how a filmmaker would create a visual/audio effect to signify that we're stepping into the past. Previously we saw that Omega was shown the whereabouts of the holding area/factory for all the plastic gods. Now we see that he has modified himself. He has modified his band. Through knowledge buried in his sub-concious, he has reverse engineered the drugs and found a way to counter act the effects of the coma his bandmates were reluctantly put in. He shows them how to empower themselves physically now. He's mastered the assembly line and all its parts. Doable, but not pretty. Much like Manson and his band appear in the video for "The Beautiful People", all pieced together with mechanical enhancements, flesh falling apart, held together by stitch and nylons. Adam had all their belongings brought to the factory in order to write the next step in his domination. When the sewed themselves and the new message together, Adam fires up the broadcasting equipment and projects the beginning of the end to as far as it will go. They play the song over and over. When the band tires, they play the song on reel-to-reel, while they pound their being with every drug imaginable. Some mindless drone Holy Wood whore starfuckers find their way to the source of the transmission. The band turn them into their minions. They give them an extremely high dose of meds and go to work on their legs, sawing them in half and attaching mechanical risers. Beneath long black dresses and makeup , they would look like the angels and they would serve as the go-between for Holy Wood and its new God, Omega. Once the band had been made in the image of Omega, and they could realize their old potential with their new potential, Omega called forth to the citizens of Holy Wood to descend upon the factory. Here Omega would deliver is first message as their newly remodeled God. He himself had mechanical risers installed to tower over them. He's taunting them. Flaunting his parts to them. Pointing out all their sins, most importantly ones of those in power who got suspicious and showed up to linger at the back of the crowd. Omega wanted them to realize they had lost everyone and they would lose their lives next. Quite accusatory to them, and goading the crowd on to the point of furious hysteria. They have destroyed what is good, Omega will create something better. Kill anything you think deserves to die. Some kill each other. A large mass attacks and kills the powerful. Prick yr finger. It is done.
DRIED UP, TIED, AND DEAD TO THE WORLD
Like they had once before when they had originally toppled the powerful, Omega and his followers celebrate. Hard. They traveled back to the site of their original settlement. They had brought back all the resynthesized drugs from the factory (which was destroyed as they left) and found that their original stash had survived attacks. There was a secret bunker that only Adam and his band knew of and they usually kept their most treasured items. Unfortunately it was also where Coma Black had blown her brains out. The band and Omega descend into the bunker. Previously they celebrated a great defeat with an all-night binge of drugs and music. This night would be the same, but much different. Harder drugs. More drugs. Accelerated induced schizophrenia. Hallucination. Omegas body was a machine, his bands was not. They blacked out just before dawn. Adam looks at the corpses of Coma Black and Coma White. He looks at himself in the broken mirror that the bullet hit after it left CB's head. "You cut off all of your fingers. Trade them in for dollar bills." Adam's remorse for his choice to sacrifice himself to the angels and allow the MC to take power and CB kill herself. And now he sees where his body is showing extreme wear and tear from lack of the proper medicine. Angrily he snarls at himself, "Cake on some more makeup to cover all those lines." Track marks and where his seams are coming apart. He fixes himself a bit and turns to CB, "Don't you want some of this?" He grabs between her legs and licks her cheek, "Don't you want some of this?" The God of Fuck. Nothing. He slinks away and dances in the candlelight, watching himself gyrate like a puppet. He hears her voice for the first time in a long time, quoting her suicide letter to Adam, "You take what can not be given. You ride what can not be ridden. Pinch this tiny heart of mine. Wrap it up in soiled twine..." Adam feels terror. But no chills. Fright. But no tears. As he turns toward her corpse. She's not moving of course. He slinks down into her face. Adam is furiously angry. He yells in her face,"You never read what you've written!" How dare she make demands when she was such a deceitful, manipulative, lying piece of bitch trash. Adam doesn't feel that way at all. Why did he say that. He looks at himself in the mirror again. Scratches at his face and arm. Tears the rubber hose away from his arm. CB whispers, "I'll be your lover." Adam locked on his own gaze, "I'll be forever." He can almost feel CB's breath on his neck, "I'll be tomorrow." Omega grins ear-to-ear, "I am anything when I'm high." Omega grabs CB and picks her up, swinging her around. "Don't you want some of this?? Don't you NEED some of this??" He slams her against the wall and walks his hand up to her pussy. It's dry and hard. As he hallucinates revenge fucking her, he hallucinates her voice in his head, "You shove your hair down my throat. I'll feel your fingers in me." She leans closer and purrs, "Tear this bitter fruit to mess and wrap it in your soiled dress." Omega wraps his arms around her so tight he can hear her ribcage crack, bit by bit. With her final breath, "Now you must spit out the seeds..." A reference to "In The Shadow of the Valley of Death". She put the seeds in Adam long ago, now it was time to reap what has grown within him.
TOURNIQUET
"This is my lowest point of vulnerability." Omega looks at Coma White. Just a rotting pile of meat, ready for harvest. In his head Coma Black is screaming to come alive. With Adam's new knowledge he could reassemble CB and have her come alive. CW means nothing to Omega. "She's made of hair. And bone. And little teeth...things that can not speak. She comes on like a crippled plaything." He smells her pussy and slides his cock across his face. Nothing moves. Some blood gets on his shaft. Swiftly he grabs her by the skull and tears it from her body, spine and all. It just dangles there. "Her spine is just a string..." Another throwback to Holy Wood ("She's a burning string, and I'm just the ashes") CW, much like CB, embodies Adam's fall. Now the other shoe has dropped. CW's body slumps further to the ground and a severly putrid odor comes from her body. Omega gets to work taking bits and pieces from each Coma and swapping them out to make for perfection. The band drug some bits and pieces from the factory, Omega uses some of those, he takes bits and pieces from his own body, hijacks her nervous and cardiopulmonary sytems to inject new drugs to wake her brain. "I wrapped our love in all this foil. Silver tight like spider legs." He looks her in her dead-black eyes. "I never wanted it to ever spoil. But flies will lay their eggs." He steps back to look at his creation. New dress. New body. New blood. She isn't moving. He attempts to spark consciousness by referring to a past that feels familiar. Her hatred and death. "Take your hatred out on me. Make your victim MY head" As opposed to her own suicide. Anger washes over him again. "You never ever believed in me!! I am your tourniquet!" He pushes and pokes at her skin. Punches her in her chest. Jerks off and cums on her face. No response. Not an echo in his mind. He goes over the process, speaking out loud, "Prosthetic synthesis and butterfly...sealed up with virgin stitch." He looks over at the pile of flesh and bone that was CW. His band still blacked out. He leans into her ear. "If it hurts baby. Please tell me. Preserve the innocence. I never wanted it to end like this. But flies will lay their eggs." Adam panics, and Omega freaks out. He starts pushing the corpse around the room and screaming at it. "Take your hatred out on me! Make your victim my head!" He's smashing his fists and head into the brick walls. He treats her like a puppet and mimics her voice, "What I wnated! What I needed! What I got for ME!" He sees everything about her as selfishness. He tears her dress from her body and bends her over a table and starts raping her asshole. "Take your...take your..." He's banging furiously,"Get up out of me! I'm not proud with me." When he finally cums inside of her, he can hear her voice as a distant whisper. He moves over to press his face against hers. He can hear her, "I never ever believed in me...I am your tourniquet..."
LITTLE HORN
Now Omega has reached the end of his rope with the world. CB is dead and gone, clearly, along with any sense of love or understanding Adam may have had left. She's betrayed him one last time. "There's an apple in the pussy mouth. Now I am the dinner whore!" Her being is no longer the temptation to Adam. He can be what everyone desires. Nothing will stand in Omega's path. He hasn't slept in many days, and he's still mainlining whatver drugs are lying around. Some of Coma Whites's body is still lying on the ground. Omega hallucinates, "There's a tumor in the TV mouth." He leans down to CW's decapitated head and presses his ear to her mouth. His eyes widen, "Burn it out before it grows!" He starts putting her and CB back into a shape fit for burial. He'll put this to rest finally and the world will be his without connection or remorse. "Jaw wired shut to save the dick." Little whore. Little whore. Little horn. Horn. Little Horn. Adam can still hear CB's voice inside him. She's inside him. But now he's using her. Her pain and his sorrow have transformed into something else in his mind. Little Horn is born. "And the world spreads its legs for another star." The world will gladly show its face for another scar. He grabs each corpse by the ankle and drags them up the stairs. He kicks the locked door open with one swift powerful gesture. Through the trailer park and into the desert, Omega is going to bury the Coma where Adam's parents were buried long ago before all this started. Adam wants to join them in death. He's swiftly draggin them through the early morning dust. Skin scabbing and healing over, dried goo sprayed across his mostly naked body. He's muttering and jabbering to himself. "The dead will dance for what is left. The worms will wait with baited breath."Omega unearths a new gravesite and tosses the Comas into the hole. No gravestone will be left. "Save yourself from this."
CRYPTORCHID
Adam retreats back to the bunker after having put all of his baggage into the ground. Overhead the night sky is fading away to daylight. Just a few distant points of light hover so still in the clear morning. But from the horizon a light is moving. Its far but in orbit maybe. Its moving quickly. Omega's body begins to tingle and then vibrate in various parts of his body like a low electric shock is shooting through him. In his mentally deprived state, Adam has a divine feeling of relief that he has finally done the right thing. "Each time I make my mother cry, an angel dies and falls from heaven." He feels like all the pain hes been through has been for the better." Then a sharp stabbing pain in his head and the sound of thunder fades in and out, a voice under his repeating what he just said followed by, "...when they get to you." The pain subsides and he feels as if god has come to collect his due. "When a boy is still a worm it's hard to learn the number 7..." Omega is speaking to himself and whoever is in his head knowing that he is still working toward god status to complete his work. And that voice again. Pleasant but threatening, "...when they get to you." The MC has found its way back to Adam. "5,6,7,8 NEVER! 7,8,9,10 HEAVEN!" The MC is taunting him like he was in "Count To Six and Die". Adam is slowly killing himself and the MC is there to put him in his place as a human and not a god. "4,3,2,1 NEVER GET TO 7!" Adam has defeated his demons but in his weakest moment the MC wants to bring him down. Adam looks to the gravesites again, exhausted, tortured, angrily he condemns himself for no matter what he does he suffers, "Each time I look outside my mother dies!" The pain and shock erupts in his body with more intensity as the light in the sky comes directly over head and stops. Every bit of his hangover is subsiding and Omega feels as if he could rip the world in half. Adam bellows, "I feel my back it's changing shape!" Because of the corporal modifications he so sloppily did to himself, his flesh and bones are rearranging themselves in morbid fashion. His skin is scarring over in odd patterns over his back as his shoulder blades protrude like fucked up wings. Adam despises himself and whats led to this. He can feel all the old voices returning in his head. His brain is getting hacked and wiped. He feels terrible, "When the worm consumes the boy, it's never ever considered rape." He doesn't deserve this anymore. WHY CAN'T HE DESTROY EVERYTHING THAT'S BROUGHT HIM TO THIS MOMENT. His hatred has hit the perfect level. Up above him is what has been hidden all along as back up if the first crew of angels failed. The angels can never fail, and Model 15 shall carry out his destiny. They speak between themselves and to Omega, "Prick your finger. It is done. The moon has now eclipsed the sun. The angel has spread its wings. The time has come for bitter things."
DEFORMOGRAPHY
With an opening line of "When you wish upon your star", it's apparent that Manson has definitely been channeling the many facets of the tale of Pinocchio. His struggle that runs parallel with that little twig has reached a moment to say, "I am your puppet on a string. When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed." Adam can feel all the voices rushing back in his head. The MC. The angels. CB is gone though. Adam feels awful, like a walking corpse. "I fell into you now I'm on my back. An insect decaying in your little trap." He'd do anything to have CB back in any form, he fucked up. "I squirm into you, now I'm in your gut. I fell into you, now I'm in a rut." The angel's have hijacked all previous functions of thought. The MC's slimy words seep over Adam's mind like an oil spill, "I lift you up like the sweetest angel. I'll tear you down like a whore!" Adam screams back, "I will bury your god in my warm spit! You'll be deformed in your porn!" The MC croaks and cackles and long deformed laugh bellows into Adam's entire being, "You're such a dirty rockstar. Dirty, dirty rockstar." He laughs again, all digitally chopped and screwed like nails on a chalkboard. Adam feeling the horizon of defeat, continues to spit and choke on his thoughts and words, "You eat up my heart and all the little parts. Your star is so sharp, it leaves me jagged holes. I make myself sick just to poison you." The MC feels his anger and his next words words rush in like a whispering spectre, "If I can't have you then no one will...you're such a dirty rockstar! Dirty...dirty...rockstar" You bad little bitch of a fake god. "You are the one I want. And what I want is so unreal. I lift you up like the sweetest angel. I'll tear you down like a whore." Dropping to his knees, looking up at the sattelite, Adam screams and tears at his skin, "I'm such a dirty rockstar!" Adam has released his hatred of CB and the lingering from his mind, also the lingering pain, to only be filled back up with new self-hatred from being bamboozled by the new protocol. He's learned that from the beginning his actions were known by the angels and how they could manipulate him back under their will.
WORMBOY
Adam has been passed out for hours. The sun barreling down on his skin. The satellite gone. One of his bandmates comes careening out of the bunker with a video recorder in hand. He's kicking Omega awake, shouting at him and bombarding him with stories of what they've been up to since Adam buried CB, spinning in the morning light, powder and blood flinging into the air . All on SSD for perpetuity. Omega snaps awake in a fit of panic. On his feet his bandmate isn't phased by any measure of Omega's physical nature but he'll be sure aware soon. "When will you realize you're already there!" Omega shouts. Adam's mind is on overload and continuing thoughts and conversations from before. There's too many voices in his head and pouring from his lips. He turns away, "So watered down, your feelings have turned to mud." Adam and the MC are battling within Omega. Adam's bandmate has a massive bellowing gut laugh and starts recording. The MC forces Omega's face to the camera and spews, "Love everybody is destroying the value of///" Adam breaks in, turning away from the camera, in almost a mutter,"...all hate has got me nowhere." He turns back, "I know I'm slipping...I know I'm slipping away!" Adam feels too much power within him he can longer control as easily as he once did. Wide-eyed and dead-eyed he looks at the camera, "Oh no! It is everything they said it was!" In his mind Adam panics, "Oh no! I am everything they said I was!" The MC feels Adam letting go bit by bit, "When you get to heaven. You will wish you're in hell." When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed. When you seek greater power, everything you hold dear will wither away. Adam is losing grip right in front of the camera, all rage and power. Adam knows everone will see this video, "When will you realize you're already here!" To his fans. To everyone. To himself. It is done. The moon has now eclipsed the sun. We're fucked. But Omega stretches a luxurious grin across his metal teeth and speaks to the fans as well, "You'll thank us now that you have crossed over." And in a sort of whisper in Adam's inner ear, the MC tells eggs him on, "Don't pick the scabs or they will never heal." He laughs, "The world shudders as the worm gets his wings." Adam's bandmate is laughing hysterically. Adam careens back into the bunker to go to sleep.
MISTER SUPERSTAR
Adam somehow passes out and is sleeping peacefully. He dreams of CB. Before everything. All soft and long and gorgeous. A soft hand to always support. She leans down and whispers, "Hey. Mr Superstar. I'll do anything for you. I'm your number one fan." It feels real like she just walked in the room from the grave. Adam pictures himself waking up to grab and squeeze her hard. She continues, "Hey Mr. Pornostar. I want you. Mr. Sicklystar. I wanna get sick from you." Adam senses something wrong. His dream is slowly slipping in and out of a nightmare. "Hey Mr. Fallen Star. Don't you know I worship you? Hey Mr. Big Rockstar! I wanna grow up to be just like you!" Adam is having a full hallucination and fever panic. This is not a dream. The MC has weaseled his way in to Adam's slumber to completely end him. "I know that I could turn you on. I wish I could just turn you off." See the digital nature of the exchange of on and off. A concept the MC can only understand. Whatever is left of Adam's heart is splitting in two. He groans in his sleep, "I never wanted this..." The MC feels him slipping away, "Hey. Mr Super Hate." He knows Adam knows what's up so he continues to feign as CB, "I just want to love you." Then the MC funnels all love into nothing, "Hey Mr. Superfuck. I want to go down on you." Then taunts Adam's newfound cage, "Hey Mr. Super God. Will you answer my prayers?" Then delivers a final blow, "Hey Mr. Superman. I wanna be your little girl..." In a fit of all the noise and pain and rage and remorse and regret, "You could kill yourself on TV. I wish you'd kill yourself on TV. Will you kill yourself on TV?" Adam sees the end. Everything has gone terribly wrong. "I wish I was dead. I wish I was dead." As the MC continues to scream in his mind Adam reaches to the side of his bed. The revolver that took CB's life. Puts it under his chin and fires. The vision of CB subsides and his vision flickers into darkness like a bad VHS tape.
ANGEL WITH THE SCABBED WINGS
Omega has been splayed out for a couple hours, oozing fluids and electrical sparks from his head. In busts his band mate with the camera again, so high as fuck, the fact that Omega has obviously killed himself doesn't really phase him. Some part of him doesn't fear the sacrifice Adam has made, he finds it empowering to the cause. He starts recording the death, poking and kicking at the body, "He's the Angel with the scabbed Wings. Hard-drug face!" He laughs hysterically like it's a joke to him that Omega did so many drugs his head exploded. "Want to powder his nose." He pours out coke on Omega's face. It just absorbs into the blood and goo. To reassure the audience of whoever will watch the recording, "He will devour the freshest crop. Dry up all the wombs with his rock and roll sores. "Dead is what he is, he does what he pleases! The things that he has you'll never want to see what you're never going to be." And he's just deliriously high and confused and cant process any true emotion. He's trying to egg on Omega like it'll wake him up, "Sketch a little keyhole for looking glass people." Still recording every bit of his death on TV. "You don't want to see him, you only want to be him!" He starts singing some non-sensical nursery rhyme song as he pokes and prods and records Omega, "Mommy's got a scarecrow, got to let the corn grow." He leans in to to lick Omega's face and whispers, "Man can't always reap what he sows..." The bandmate turns the camera on himself and matter-of-factly states, "He is the maker. He is the taker. He is the savior. He is the raper. Get back! You're never going to leave him. Get back! You're always going to please him." He's had enough. He continues to record the death as he walks back out of the room, "He is the angel with the scabbed wings. He will deflower the freshest crop. Dry up all the wombs with his rock and roll sores." End transmission.
KINDERFELD
This whole time, the angels have been communicating from above with Omega's circuitry in order to repair, some have been sent physically to repair his face. He did a bang up job of killing himself, but it's mmostly replaceable with some leftover parts from other models. One of Omega's eyes on the other hand couldn't be replaced with an exact match. They used an older model's eye, when they hadn't perfected the art of having their models blend in. It's a cold white color, and the iris doesn't work anymore so it stays in one position. They leave soon after the work is completed and Omega gasps back to life like the instant the bullet smashed his circuitry had just happened. Adam remembers everything. But he can't cry. His emotions are as mangled as his body, but he feels someone. He feels all the voices in his head but can't fight them. The angels reprogrammed him to allow for all to be present. Adam feels all the hatred rush back into him without thought. "He lives inside my mouth and tells me what to say." He's looking at his body, all piles of random bits and pieces to keep him alive, barely. It's a mess. He can't shake loose everything that brought him to this point, "Hands are cracked and dirty...the nails are beetle wings. Tell me something beautiful. Tell me something free. And I wish that I could be." He's trapped in this disgusting body with all these voices and ideas but he feels a new empowerment. He has some lingering pre-cognition left by the angels. He feels his face, his arms, the pain of his back. He's alive for something else. "Then I got my wings and I never even knew it. When I was a worm, thought I couldn't get through it." Somehow his suicide was the final test. His hatred more potent. His hatred for himself. He hears something, "Come, come. The toys all smell like children and the scab-knees will obey." Angels maybe. "I'll have to kneel on broomsticks just to make it go away." The MC? But Adam can't shut them out. "Because today is black, there is no turning back." Adam shouts at himself, "Because your lies have watered me, I have become the strongest weed!" Adam shuffles through all of the shit lying around his room, junk, drawers, nonesense. He finds a hit. Ties himself off. Shoots up. Pulls the sringe out and sprays it in his mouth. "The taste of metal..." Disintegrator. Disintegrator. Dissent. He looks down. Three holes upon the belt. His arm is cut and swollen. The age is showing. The voices begin to subside for his body can't process natural drugs properly, he feels his old power return. He looks at himself dead in the mirror, dead in the eyes of his watchers. "This is what you should fear." As the voices subside, the angels flitter away with, "You are what you should fear..."
ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR
The video was released of Omega's body. The world, confused, joyous. Then a show is announced. How could this be. Just three days ago, Omega was dead, now the Disintegrator would be taking the stage for what is being touted as his final show. The band practiced and wrote relentlessly after Omega had reappeared to them. New songs. New energy. More drugs. More drugs. The purity of the moment was palpable. All weakness and fear was washed away and they felt a kinship they hadn't felt since before the fall. But Adam was different. More venomous and hateful and focused in every moment. As the sun rose on the final day, exhaustion and disgust had settled in each of their hearts. They slept all day like no sleep before. The show begins. The crowd is staggering. The band tears through several of its massive hits right out of the gate. The crowd is seething. Teetering. Lights go out. Podium in place, the Disintegrator takes his place and rallies the crowd into a frenzy. "You built me up with your wishing hell. I didn't have to sell you. You threw your money in the pissing well. You do just what they tell you. REPENT! That's what I'm talking about!" The crowd has accepted him as God before the show and are buying into anything he has to say. As I sneer and a wink to where he truly comes from, "I shed the skin to feed the fake. Who's mistake am I anyway?" But things have changed. He's died for them and returned to them. "Cut the head off. Grows back hard. I am the Hydra. Now you'll see your Star." He's speaking to the crowd and the himself and the voices in his head. He figured out a way to compartmentalize his true intentions while on heavy drug use. To assuage his watchers, he repeats, "Prick your finger it is done. The moon has now eclipsed the sun. The Angel has spread its wings. The time has come for bitter things." Who's doom is on the horizon? "The time has come, it is quite clear! Our Antichrist is almost here!" Repeat. Repeat. Mix. Blend. Repeat. "Cut the head off. Grows back hard. I am the Hydra. Now you'll see your star." Adam snaps himself. His circuitry goes loose as his drugs wear off. The MC and angels come careening into his thought. Emergency words and sirens. Places. Places, please. His limbs are spinning and he begins bending and shaking at his hips involuntarily. He spouts deep prior programming, "When you are suffering. Know that I have betrayed you. When you are suffering. Know that I have betrayed you. When you are suffering know that I have betrayed you..."
1996
It's been one year since CB killed herself on Valentine's Day, 1996. Now we find ourselves on the anniversary. February 14, 1997. Adam is the furthest from who he was when this tale began, a physically and mentally disfigured shadow of a good man. Now, full of seething hatred for himself, the angels, and everyone who fell for it. The people he once sought to protect have let him down by following him and Holy Wood so blindly. What is worth saving anymore? He will end their suffering and make a massive black spot on the legacy of the angels' work. He will make a stand now he hasn't since the early days of the band. The crowd is in a frenzy. He stands in the spotlight, alone, before them, letting them swallow themselves in furious hysteria. His mouth curls under like a metal snake. "Light a candle for the sinners...set the world on fire!" The band kicks in and the lights fire up lighting the faces of the socially-diseased residents of California. "I am the anti-flag unfurled. I got the anti-future plan. I am the anti-music god. There will never be enough of anti-more." Mass confusion and hysteria. Anger. To Holy Wood and CB - "I can't believe in the things that don't believe in me. Now it's your turn to see misanthropy!" To the angels - "Anti-people? Now you've gone too far! Here's your anti-christ SUPERSTAR! Anti-money (or perhaps even Antimony, an element used in Omega's construction and also processed to be used in his tattoos and makeup). Anti-hate. Anti things I fucked and ate. Anti-cop. Anti-fun..." Then from inside his body Omega retrieves the revolver that he and CB used to put bullets in their heads, "Here's is my anti-president gun! This is where your faith ends!" The angels panic. Their reprogramming should have eliminated feelings of suicide, but with his proclamations and now this, they scramble to fry his server. Something has burrowed into the system and is burning it out. "Anti-peace. Anti-life. Anti-husband and anti-wife." All the institutions of a false religion built by the angels. "Anti-song and anti-me." All the institutions built by Holy Wood. "I don't deserve a chance to be..." The angels system fires back online and Omega's body crumples and distorts for the second time. He's slipping away.
MINUTE OF DECAY
The MC snakes in, "From a dead man...geetings." Digital decay. Omega's mind drifts into the grey. A minute is like a million lifetimes in space. Adam speaks to the MC only but echoes in his head. Two warriors dying alone together on the battlefield. "There's not much left to love. Too tired today to hate. I feel the empty. I feel the minute of decay. I'm on my way down now. I'd like to take you with me." Adam has memories from just seconds ago that feel like a faraway dream. Visions of the show skittering in his mind's eye like a fucked up VHS. He fears he won't ever complete his work. "The minute that it's born, it begins to die." Severe anguish and exhaustion, "I'd love to just give in." But it would be defeat and his fear of death is overwhelming, "I'd love to live this lie." The MC emits what could barely be called a chortle. Adam continues in his weak state. "I've been to Black and back. I've White-d out my name." Adam feels as if he is simply drifting in space like before. "A lack of pain. A lack of hope. A lack of anything to say. There is no cure for what is killing me. I've looked ahead and saw a world that is dead. I guess that I am too." Somewhere in all of Omega's hatred, his thoughts find Coma Black again. His nihilism has brought him back to her and it's the only thing that can lift him out of this digital trap. In one swift breath he feels her hand behind his head, his mind reconnects to the machine, and the show must go on. It was a lifetime lived in a minute. Too many conflicting emotions bursting from the shoddy seams, but he has risen again to his seething animosity.
THE REFLECTING GOD
"Your world is an ashtray! We burn and coil like cigarettes. The more you cry your ashes turn to mud!" The crowd is on top of itself, folding and heaving in a wave of disbelief as Omega walks again. He looks disdainfully down on them, "The nature of the leeches. The virgins feeling cheated. You've only spent a second of your life." As he has finally gained his composure he mocks the angels again for each time he falls, he grows stronger and stronger. "My world is unaffected. There is an exit here. I say it is and it's true! There is a dream inside a dream. I'm wide awake the more I sleep. You'll understand when I'm dead." Omega's power is capsizing the angel's regime and his death he shall release earth from it's shackles in some form or fashion because they simply can not stop him for he has superceded their supposed power. "I went to "God" just to see. And I was looking at me. Saw heaven and hell were lies. When I'm GOD every one dies!" Omega throws the revolver to the ground at the foot of the stage, daring anyone to come on stage and pick it up. He points to the wounds on his face from his suicide, "Scar. Scar. Can you feel my power?!" He points at a fresh spot of disgusting synthetic flesh, "One shot and the world gets smaller." A young girl crawls onto the stage and slowly picks up the gun. Omega slinks toward her, grinning oh so devilishly. "Let's jump upon the sharp swords and cut away our smiles." He leans right into her ear, "Without the threat of death there's no reason to live at all." She's frightened. She looks back at the crowd apprehensively. Adam sees some of Coma Black in her. Too frightened to face the truth. Omega steps up right behind her and repeats, "I went to "God" just to see, and I was looking at me. Saw heaven and hell were lies. When I'm GOD...EVERYONE DIES!" She spins around and points the gun in his face. "SCAR. SCAR. CAN YOU FEEL MY POWER! ONE SHOT AND THE WORLD GETS SMALLER! SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT! MOTHERFUCKER! SHOOT!" He steps closer into the gun until it's right between his eyes. "Each thing I show you is a piece of my death." He taunts her, "No salvation. No forgiveness. No salvation. No forgiveness. No salvation. No forgiveness." The crowd repats along with him in unison, "No salvation. No forgiveness." Omega looks her in the eye and shrugs, "This is beyond your experience." The crowd continues to feverishly chant. Omega plainly screams to her, "FORGIVENESS! FORGIVENESS! FORGIVENESS!" She closes her eyes and pulls the trigger. Without proper aim or confidence the bullet merely goes into Omega's mouth and out the back of his throat. Adam panics and hesitates unsure of what's occured, the shock of the moment releasing his mind into the grey where the remnants of his memory lie. In his youth, alone in his bedroom, singing along with his acoustic guitar while Coma Black sits next to him, smiling in the dark. The crowd cheers at the sight of Omega stumbling around thinking he's dead. In a flash he realizes he isn't dead and whatever is left of his hatred somes spilling forth in a frenzy directed at this girl still holding the revolver. Omega's metal mouth is filling with blood, his mutated wings flaring from his back, his legs stretching upwards, he becomes more frightening and imposing than ever, "SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT MOTHERFUCKER SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT MOTHERFUCKER!!!" The next five bullets leave the gun in quick succession each one landing in his face and chest. Omega plummets backward and slams to the stage with a great thud.
THE MAN THAT YOU FEAR
(It's best to watch the video, for it and the song succinctly depict the finale and it has always served as the jumping off point for this whole project.)
Adam screams his final words into his death and his consciousness drops away into a darkness completely free of the angels's control. Then as if waking from a bad dream, sunlight through the window of his trailer greets his human eyes. He's in his bed back in the Valley of Death, not too long after the attack from Holy Wood. It's a life that should have been. Just as Omega was offering his audience the chance to cleanse the world of theirs and his sins, Adam's true hopes have come to fruition. Instead of leaving earth and allowing all the events of the past year to occur, he remained with his band, his community, and Coma Black to allow them the opportunity of empowerment through punishment for what he brought upon them. He feels happiness again. His body is true and untarnished. Coma Black is still alive. His pain and sorrow is met with only love and embrace. They shower together and he whispers everything he ever meant to tell her before she had a chance to kill herself. She lovingly dresses him in all his familiar clothing. He finally feels like himself again. And as he leaves his trailer and looks upon his people, he doesn't feel hatred, he only feels contentment that they have taken justice back for themselves. To free themselves from the painful cycle that could occur if Adam left earth, subsequently giving power to Holy Wood, he would willingly give his life at their hands. For he is already dead. Adam knows it's just a dream, but his mind was all he had left and he needed to put it to rest. They reach the killing grounds. Adam takes a moment to meet each person eye to eye. There is pain within Coma Black, but he would much rather her live than he continue on his path toward destruction. He was never as pure as they, but he might be now. As the darkness closes in again, he can hear the last remnants of digital chatter from beyond..."When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed."