The Multitudes of the Lizard Man

Chapter 4

Dear Netherwalkers,

Thank you for being so patient. The Lizard Man file is still hotter than a Bucharest summer. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the earlier chapters; this is as good a jumping-on point as any.

From here on, I won’t ask you to subscribe. I’m simply thrilled to share this chapter with you. Writing it has been an experiment, and I’m excited for you to see where it has taken me.

Now, on with the story.

Fane

The sun was rising over Herăstrău Lake. I glanced at the Lizard Man, his long green face contracting as he drew on his cigarette. Droid nestled between us. The Lizard Man spoke. My vision was starting to clear, though the edges were still blurry. The party’s loud music (wherever it was, however long it went on) still rang in my head.

Visions of drunk people, respectable people, boring people danced before my eyes, letting loose, flickering like afterimages burned into my mind. The fourteen hours I’d spent in that club, that pier of debauchery jutting over the swampy lake, felt like nothing now (just a blur, a blink) ever since Radu-Costin Delamuscel pulled out those pills. I remembered women who cooed and preened like some stunted nymphs, but more vividly I remembered Delamuscel’s hand on my shoulder, pulling me away from them, muttering, Oh come on, they’re just secretaries, like I gave a damn about their corporate social order. The International Bureau of Vice had always had an egalitarian ethos. I talked and talked until my mouth went dry and my jaw ached more than my throat, trading words with their partners as they slurred their own self-laudations.

“Is your friend gonna come?” the Lizard Man asked, exhaling smoke.

“He’s not my friend,” I said. “Just a guy I had to meet in my chase after you.”

The Lizard Man spat on the ground, his long red tongue lingering for a beat outside his mouth.

“Why are you so eager to even meet this guy? We could just leave, the three of us. I could call that taxi driver right now. I’m sure he already forgot about us after his third trip to the bathroom,” I said, petting poor Droid, who was shivering at my feet.

“I’ve seen him many times on TV. They have this late-night talk show that’s apparently filmed out of a two-bedroom apartment. I like it.”

“So when do you watch those kinds of shows. Don’t you need to hibernate at night?”

“The Bucharest summer nights have become too hot even for me. And what is there to do in the daytime? At least at night, that’s when the Delamușcel types come out. Or at least reveal their true face.”

“You dedicate time to that. What happened with all your research?”

“He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. But also know that the talk shows are my research. It’s not like I’m in any rush to understand what I am, because Jeremy Thorpe sees me as his own elixir of life pump. To him I’m a factory that ran away, an investment that must come to fruition against his own will.”

“We only see what we are looking for,” the Lizard Man said, then spat. “I can’t believe this surprises you at all, after I lived like a king in Singapore all those years. Romania is nothing. People are just as self-absorbed everywhere I go.” He lit another cigarette.

Droid let out a soft sound, somewhere between a whimper and a wheeze. At some point soon I would need to get us all back home. Otherwise, he might start going into serious withdrawal, and a sick dog was the last thing I needed right now. I needed solutions, and I wasn’t going to get them from my friend, who was in one of his nihilistic moods.

“You know,” I said, “I don’t think they even saw me at that party. They knew I was the Viceman, sure, but all they did was ask about Jeremy Thorpe. Sending their best wishes through me, like I was some kind of messenger. Like I’d carry their little kisses to his ancient ass, playing intermediary for reasons I can’t even guess. Did they think I’d actually go back to Jeremitor and say, ‘Oh, by the way, she asked about you, and he sends his regards’? Did they really think I’d say that?”

“How is he?” asked the Lizard Man.

“Who? Jeremy Torp? I can’t believe you’re asking me about Jeremy Torp after what I just told you. You know he’s the one who sent me after you, right?”

“Yes, yes,” said the Lizard Man. “I know. It’s the game we play. But… maybe tonight you’ve won it.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve won anything, to be honest. Feels like I’ve never even taken the first meaningful step. Like my life hasn’t even started yet.”

“What’s with you?” said the Lizard Man.

“I know, man,” I said. “The drugs here are weird.”

Above the trees, beyond Bucharest, beyond life itself, the dark sky lightened into blue, an orange line slicing the horizon. He still seemed almost friendly.

“He’s got his friendly traits,” I said to the Lizard Man. “Smart guy, too. Smart guy.”

Droid rubbed against my leg. I checked my wristwatch — time to prep his next dose if we weren’t heading back to my penthouse at the Triple Tree soon. Only then did it occur to me: how the hell was I going to smuggle a humanoid lizard from Herăstrău Park back to Uranus?

---

From the dying shadows of the long, grey alleyway along the lake, Radu-Costin Delamuscel emerged. Even through my fuzzy vision, I caught the dark flower blooming on his left eye—a bruise shaped like a black rose, its ruby veins faintly spreading as he drew closer, each step measured yet brisk.

“Okay,” he said, straightening his crumpled suit. “So you’re all here.”

“What happened to you?” asked the Lizard Man, his tone flat, as if he’d been talking to me instead.

“Had to deal with an asshole,” Radu replied. “But he’s a well-paying client, even if he’s a lowly degenerate. And by lowly, I don’t mean poor or insignificant. He’s no titan of industry (though he’d love that title) but a powerbroker through and through. That I can admire—that is what everyone should admire. But his baseness stains whatever reputation he might have built by now. Instead of being a courtier, he’s a pest. Or better said: a pest masquerading as a courtier. A man who doesn’t even know who he is. That is what I deeply despise. Suppose he weren’t from a good family. In that case, if he’d been born instead on the outskirts of Bucharest in a single-room hovel, he’d have surely stalked tramcars and buses, cowardly pawing at random travelers with those light, insecure touches. Now he haunts every corporate happening, every function of note, eagerly and clumsily pawing at interns, juniors, seniors, VPs, partners, PAs, and even CEOs. All night he was rubbing against my leg, and I gladly played the part of caretaker and lamppost for this exalted mutt—because it meant someone else had been spared. But through his drunken stupor, whatever intelligence still lurked behind those bulging, toadlike eyes must have caught wind of my plan of action. He got angry. He swung at me. I dodged with ease — after all, I am a master of Aikido. Learned it during my secondment in Okinawa. I could have put him down with a single throw, but I knew the bruises to his ego wouldn’t heal in time for us to close the account we’d been working on these past two years. So I let the first punch land. The second I dodged, and he fell, and he cracked his head. Bleeding. More delirious, but somehow satisfied. We had to call an ambulance.”

The Lizard Man didn’t say a word. He just watched him, unblinking and cold, as Delamușcel adjusted his tie and smoothed the crease in his jacket, pretending nothing had happened. A dry, brittle laugh slipped out of him, like he couldn’t help himself. He glanced at us both, his eyes calculating, as though trying to decide if we could handle what he wanted to say. Then his bruised face clouded over, and when he finally spoke, the words landed heavier than all his shouting about the client.

---

“Do you know the secret origins of the Romanian people?” said Delamușcel after a silence that was too long for me or Droid. Something had to be done, and I couldn't look to Delamuscel for answers.

I shook my head, and the Lizard Man stared him straight in the eye, those yellow, predatory eyes unblinking and piercing. But Delamușcel didn’t flinch. He didn’t even seem to notice. Instead, he carried on, as though his lecture had only just begun, while I quietly messaged Rizea to come through my pager.

Mioara, by Radu-Costin Delamușcel

The secret origin of the Romanian people can only be found by venturing into the dark corners of the heart. The corners we keep hidden because they seem boring. Because they reveal that we are nothing but the common mass of mediocre humanity, and whatever is superior in us pales next to our potential. The potential that only a few of our peers have ever managed to realize through history.

You see, with Zalmoxes, the druid who dared to become a god, he saved some of our Dacian people and hid them away in the Nether. When they returned, they burned every record of themselves. Every scrap that revealed where they had come from. They wanted the secret to stay buried. That is why you find this silence in our history, this Romanian silence. Those empty centuries in the chronicles, from the eighth to the twelfth or thirteenth. Romania. Wallachia. Transylvania. Gaps everywhere. Am I right or am I wrong? It does not matter. Most historians will just call me mad. And perhaps they are right. But they are brainwashed, and boring.

They were indeed the destroyers of their own culture, but they could not help leaving traces of their existence. Strands in the Nether, like Ariadne’s thread, still connecting them to the shades they became. Traces like the poem Mioara, or Miorita, which was banned during the so-called Days of the Departed, those long years before 1989. A simple ballad, contested from the moment Vasile Alecsandri — that beloved schizophrenic who claimed he saw vampires and worse — first printed it. He once confessed that the first time he feared death was when he heard this ballad from a shepherd. He was terrified he would die before sharing it with the world. What a noble soul.

But the nationalistic spirit that came with powerful movements of renewal could never accept the fatalism of this ballad. After all, what is there to learn from a shepherd too stupid to fear death? At first ignored, then hated outright, and worst of all, trivialized through ethnological and mythological readings. Even Blaga, who mistakenly brought it attention, got a bullet in his head for his trouble. Eliade never even thought of it, I believe.

Now, if you want to know what this story really means, I can tell it to you. I can tell you its symbolic meaning as no one else alive can.

On a godforsaken patch of pasture, or what some unknown poet once called a lip of paradise, though I suspect he never saw the mud after rain, three flocks of sheep appeared, three shepherds, and the whole ridiculous drama already written in their eyes.

One was upright, painfully aware of his own dignity. The second fancied himself clever. The third fancied himself even more clever. At sundown, the two clever ones whispered together in the long grass. They hatched a plan, as such men always do when the light is dying. Let us kill the upright one, they said, because he is strong and has many sheep, beautifully horned rams, obedient horses that heed their reins, and dogs that know exactly when to bite.

But what they did not reckon with was a little talking sheep. Who could believe such a thing? Some have dismissed it as nothing more than a trope, but that is only because no one wants to admit that anyone can speak with animals if they are humble enough to learn their language. This is among the first spiritual gifts in any tradition, for through Tradition humanity was granted the power to tame the earth. Those who came down from the Nether understood this and kept counsel with their flocks. They chose the shepherd’s craft because it ensured they would never lack for company.

So back to the sheep, the spotted one with wool like smoke. For three days straight she refused to eat, refused to stay silent worrying our shepherd. What is it with you, little one? he asked her. Is the grass not to your liking or are you sick? Or is it something darker? And that little creature lifted her head and spoke.

Master, you should lead your flock into the black grove, where the grass is sweeter and the shadows thicker. And you should call your strongest dog, the loyal one. Because when the sun sets today the other two mean to kill you.

Ah, but our shepherd did not cry out because he was from the Nether, and knew that death is death only for those that fear it. He did not run. He did not beg. He looked at her, at his little spotted spy, and smiled the smile of a man who knows he has already left this world.

If it is my time, so be it, he said. When I fall, tell them to bury me here, in the sheepfold, close enough to hear the dogs. And at my head put my flutes, the bone one and the elderwood one. Let the wind play through them. Let the sheep gather and weep red tears over me. And tell them nothing of murder. Tell them only that I wed a queen, a bride of the heavens, and a star fell on my wedding night. The sun and moon crowned me. The fir trees and maples were my groomsmen and the mountains sang. The birds played their thousand tiny instruments and the stars themselves were my candles.

And again, soft as wind through grass, he added, And if my old mother comes, running across the hills, her wool belt unravelling, asking after her son, weeping, you show her kindness. Tell her the same. Her boy wed the daughter of a king on a lip of paradise. Nothing more. Spare her the rest.

What you have just heard is the thanatic renewal principle described in symbolic detail. The secret of True Thanatic Renewal, the one that occurs at the molecular level of our scaly companion. But that is enough for today.

“That dog is really looking something awful,” said Radu-Costin Delamușcel with a sigh, just as Rizea finally found us at the edge of the park.

“Artisans of life are the poets of their own tragedies. And those who came down from the Nether were sent into the hereunder by Zalmoxes,” he added, picking up Droid in his arms and settling into the back seat beside the Lizard Man, who had pulled his hood low over his eyes.

“I apologise. I know you two gentlemen are fine people,” Rizea muttered, staring at the hooded figure next to Delamușcel, “but I do not take junkies.”

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Acknowledgements

I’m grateful to all of you, each and every one. You help bring the Lizard Man to life. But this chapter wouldn’t have taken the shape it did without the distinct visions of three incredible creators. Their work sparked ideas and helped me sharpen my vision. I can’t recommend them enough. Below, you’ll find pieces they suggested, so you can see for yourself what makes them extraordinary

Below is the latest piece by

Eros

. It captured me from the first lines with its surreal intensity and the way it balances raw truth with layered, self-aware humor. Still, it's sincere without a hint of cheap parody or hackneyed pastiche. Ceramic rewards multiple readings, at different speeds and done at different times—it never leaves you empty-handed, but each reading leaves you wanting.

Ceramic _________ On the Sea of Mal.

By

Solace Solnova

I shall not link her latest, but my favorite of hers so far. It’s a fine blend of truth, candor, and self‑deprecating humor. She manages to confront the discomfort of ignorance with honesty, while making you laugh and reflect simultaneously. The combination of sharp insight wrapped in vulnerability and wit is what makes good writing memorable.

There are so many stupid people in the world.

Kerr Martin

’s guerrilla ethos is something I keep in mind whenever I feel hesitant to start a new post, especially when time is tight. You can find his guerrilla guidelines on his page, but I wanted to share one of his stories instead. This one captures the grime and glitter of the creative underbelly with cinematic flair. The writing moves effortlessly between confession and performance, drawing the reader into its chaos and making them complicit in the spectacle.

Palm d'Whore

I’m not asking you to comment just for the sake of engagement, but I would love to hear if any of your own stories or projects resonate with Multitudes of the Lizard Man, thematically or in any other way. This ties into a project I’ll only be teasing for now — more details will come soon.