He must keep in shape for his self-esteem and for the passionate work he does for his gods.
He likes to keep the house dark. Without A.C. or the hope of air-conditioning, he keeps the place cavelike and cool, accepting the dankness over the heat. He once had a dream of building a house into the side of one of the mountains, for natural cooling and heating. He'd dreamed of building it for Kelia. God, that was so long ago, when he and Kelia first lived together on Maui. He realizes the old dream is in ruins; only his new dream can come to pass now.
He lifts his long sugarcane knife, his favorite of several he owns. He has a rack of such knives along with several Japanese swords he has purchased over the years. He has a fascination for shiny steel blades; he likes their feel, the cool evenness of the metal as it is ripped from its scabbard, the way it cleanly slides into flesh and out again without disturbance to the metal. A powerful knife is like the phallus a god dangles between enormous legs, and lately, he has begun to think of his own body as a steel blade to be put to use by the gods of Oahu and the islands.
“ Have to get rest… sleep,” he anxiously tells himself now. He has suffered now for two years with bouts of insomnia; it is one of the reasons he willingly accepts night-shift work from 2 to 10 P.M. He's become used to sleeping three or four hours a day, scouting the downtown area for a while before going on duty, and then returning afterwards to the streets of Oahu to continue his hunt. But today is his day off.
He is not easily satisfied. His princesses all must be elegant, at least in appearance, to appease his gods. They must be strong- willed, not the pliant, easy pickups that will get into a car with just anyone. He likes them to stand up to him, to fight. It shows their courage, that they're worthy of his plan to re-ignite the powerful lords of the islands who speak to him, speak through him, urging him along the path he has chosen.
“ Lopaka,” they each in turn call out to him. “Lopaka… son of chiefs before you…”
“ It is you… Cowboy Lopaka. “
They each reach out to him through their sonorous voices. Their voices all mesh into one when they chant his name. The sound of it reverberates through his brain. They claim him as one of their own.
“ Lopaka…”
“ We, your gods, need you… beg you…”
“… feed the hunger…”
“… hunger that is great…”
“… feed the blood-sky-fire that feeds you…”
“… empty yourself into us…”
“… into the unbearable fire coursing through us…”
“… find us… give us your fire heart…”
“… give us our daily red…
He stands it-the suffering of those ethereal voices, dripping with unimaginable sorrow, stabbing at his brain-until he can stand it no more.
This is how he remembers it in the beginning, with the first life he ever sacrificed to the voices. It had begun with the noises in the wind, voices only he could hear, even long before he ever knew Kelia. He'd tried to change after meeting Kelia, whose presence at first ended the lamenting voices inside his head. For a time the voices were silent and held in check.
After Kelia had left, he slowly came to a startling realization: The gods had chosen Kelia for him, to grant him a special insight into their spectral world. Kelia was really the kind of sacrifice they wanted. And finally, he'd known what the gods wanted of him, why he had been born, why he had come here from his true homeland, what his purpose, after all, was… and why he killed. All part of a plan beyond even his full comprehension.
He is so focused by them when he kills that it happens independently of him, as if his limbs and his mind are overtaken by the powers who speak through his actions, as if he is no more than an arrow of his gods, as if he is not even truly present in the normal sense.
The next day, after he kills, he's awakened into a new body and being, refreshed and feeling clear-headed, remembering only the final moments before she finally expired, her blood spewing about him, painting him as he carves on and ejaculates on the body.
His ingenious method of disposing of the bodies he also owes to the inspiration of his gods.
In time, under the most common of circumstances, he will remember snatches of what he has done-or rather, what they have done, until eventually flashes of memory will reveal everything-absolutely everything.
He recalls only one name for all his victims, Kelia-for they are all one and the same when they belong to him; they are no longer Lindas or Kias, but Kelias. He knows they are all alike; that they are all shallow little creatures, interested only in pop music and rock stars, in mindless magazines and makeup, in instant gratification-“What's between their legs”-in becoming yet another dark-skinned haole, loving all things white. Western and decadent. Kelia-the real Kelia-is a full-blood Hawaiian, rarer these days than a virgin, but the Kelias he has sent to his gods were all of mixed blood, and now the gods are repeating their demand for a full-blood Hawaiian. He has tried to get it right, but the intermarriage between the races makes it near impossible here in Oahu to find such a flower for his gods.
To him, there seems little difference, just so they look like Kelia, so that when he begins to hack away with the cane knives or the swords, he might voyeuristically enjoy Kelia's torturous death again; it seems of no importance what kind of blood it is while he is catching it in his hands, sending it to the ceiling and walls or rubbing it into his nude body in an ecstatic orgy of body art.
His little bungalow's walls bear the marks of many such deaths now. It is fortunate that he lives at the end of a dead-end street against a vacant lot, his closest neighbors the clannish Portuguese down the block. No one ever seems disturbed by the noise or the odors coming from his home.
But now with the killing of the two Hawaiian cops, he worries. They are not killings he planned or wanted, particularly since the men killed were Hawaiians, and most certainly he was not told to take these lives by his Hawaiian gods, who have, for the moment, abandoned him. His gods speak continually of regeneration and rebirth, of a great empowering of the Hawaiian race far beyond what the Hawaiian politicians and newspapers scream for. How then do they feel about his having killed two strong Hawaiian warriors? He now wonders.
Warriors, hell… he rationalizes his last killings. They were working for the man, playing white cop.
He now puts his head against his pillow on the bloodstained couch and tries desperately to pretend that his eyes are weary, that he is sleepy. The drugs he uses have helped to bring him down; still, his eyes roam about the little place, marking where the previous night's fresh blood, brighter in color, shining in the glow of the oil lamp, has splattered the ceiling fan. He is effectively painting his interior in crimson, all since Kelia's leaving.
He wonders again if Kelia will ever return. Wonders if he will ever again find her. Again… perhaps a pointless time frame as long as she refuses to understand. Still, he wonders and wanders over the shards of his past, the moments when he tried to convince her, what he might have said to otherwise convince her to accept her fate, to become a sacrificial lamb. Now the what-ifs cram into his mind. He wonders if he can gain her back, what then? Might she understand now more than she did? Would she ever willingly share his newfound religion with him? Or would she again run… again too afraid to allow him a single cut, much less willingly sacrifice her life for his beliefs.
He stares at the still-blaring TV set. Reporters are jockeying for position around the federal building downtown, trying to get some joker in a beige suit to talk about the deaths of two kanaka cops. It looks like a re-hash of the earlier news programs, and so he pretty well ignores it, just letting the voices wash over his brain, their tedium hopefully helping him to get the sleep he so needs, when suddenly his ears perk at the mention of a supposed human body part found at the Blow Hole.