PERIOD

Skaggy warthog fiction about the serial murders committed by the 'Omen,' a transcendence-seeking Goth band of rockers who drive in their van from small town to small town for performances while picking up likely subjects to castrate and kill for Satan. Cooper declares Period to be the final closer to his ultradepraved quintet (Guide, 1997, etc.). True, there are amusing lines too grisly for laughter. As one Omen says: 'We did this sort of spell where I sacrificed a guy I knew to Satan in return for him making me immortal. I don't know if it worked though. Maybe it did work. Jesus, now I don't know if I'm immortal or not.' Omen-fans Nate and Leon, lovers tiring of each other, decide to pick up deaf-mute Dagger and use him for a sex sacrifice to Satan. But the pair are too swacked to work this out clearly, and Leon goes into a general store, pulls out his gun, picks up a few bills and coins, then fixates on a nickel he can't pick up and gives his gun to the clerk'and is arrested. This Faulknerian irony may remind some of Virgil Snopes and Fonzo unwittingly boarding at a Memphis whorehouse in Sanctuary. When Nate gets picked up by Omen, his gods ask him: 'Choose between your life and our art. Which is more important, the poetry mapped by our songs or the slow accumulation of meaningless detail that constitutes your specific entity?' What? Well, at least we do know that lyricist Walker Crane 'writes' the novel Period, Nate turns into Etan and sodomizes Dagger, and the reader is left deformed and twisted, shamed, fractional, and crushed. Period.