Adventures in a Macramé Vest

When the Pharaoh pulled the first lever we knew we were pretty much boned; all we had were small arms and mummies just laugh at that shit.  The ancient, man-sized gears of the world-ending clockwork began to turn, a slow rumble more felt than heard, shaking fine veils of sand from the massive stones overhead.

Carmelita gave a warrior's cry and went at him with her tomahawk—the Pharaoh gestured, two fingers and a cocked wrist, summoning a consuming wall of snakes and flame that chewed her from the very fabric of this existence.

Tomás screamed as he emptied three mags into him, each reload a practiced blur, but it was literally just punching paper.  The Pharaoh was nothing more than a monstrous piñata, the thinnest of materials containing the mortally corrupted immaterial.

He laid a brown claw upon the final lever and I found myself shouting, unencumbered by thought—fear and the ultimate melancholy at the end of all things pulling the words from me:

"What evil is so powerful that a man can forget the warmth of companionship?"

He seemed to consider this—though his face was locked in a spiced-resin rictus, teeth curled at arid angles—his body language spoke of remembrance, of eons-effaced nights of fragrant curves in a darkness that held no terror.  Breath, of all things, rushing at an octave higher than his own; perhaps a soft curtain of hair, cassia and cinnamon on the lips, a damnable clasp giggling and darting from his seeking fingers, a puzzle finally solved in a wave of flesh to the face and the hieroglyph for motorboating.

The Pharaoh paused.  "What is that," he croaked, "to Eternity?"  But the crack in his voice echoed the flaw in his withered soul, and the end of the lever had already been set into it.

I stood at the lip of the pit containing the hungry machine and bid him come.  He hesitated, then took a shuffling step nearer.  Then another.  Side-by-side we regarded the handiwork of angry gods, vulnerable men, and things without names.

"What is this," I asked, daring to lay a trembling hand upon his weightless chest, "to that?"

He regarded the thundering orrery with paper-thin slits over glinting black and made as if to sigh—and he would have had I not made a fist to grip him by his crackling sternum first.  I pivoted and hurled him, lighter than imagination, toward the inconstant maw of machinery.  He made no sound beyond the rustle of leaves in the fall, summoned no demons in his surprise, though he did clutch at the my sleeves to reverse the drop and destroy me instead.

Luckily for all of us, I was wearing my macramé vest.

The bathtub sloshes in the humid dark. It sloshes because it is filled with... liquid, a liquid that submerges and contains. A man cowers in the corner, a tiny, crumpled man, a man who fears for the end of bathtub liquid containment. He has in his possession a certain clock that can count those hours—has been counting those kernels of seconds mounded in cupped hands of minutes—since it was first constructed and wound by trembling, doom-palsied fingers. The man's fear is compounded by the essential paradox of clocks: that such devices are incapable of measuring the infinite (so it would seem, though it has never been true for anyone) ray of time, instead clipping, with their gear-work, a 12-hour segment joined at the ends like the Ouroboros wyrm. The horrid clock mocks the illusion of Eternity with the same 60 seconds, the same 60 minutes, the same 12 hours repeated for as long as the spring holds the nervous tension of those original hands. The man's true fear is not that things will end but that he must endure the anxiety of his circumstance in an unchanging, undying cycle as the bathtub sloshes in the humid dark. 

Question 1: When the alarm sounds, is it a heart attack, poop, or both?

Question 2: This is not a question: Let's involve a monkey with a radio collar (or bomb) somehow.

Dean the Wisp

Dean the Wisp was thin and slight and had no idea how he got that way; he moved like a bedsheet in moonlight, flowing in a wind he couldn't feel.  Somehow he was only aware on certain nights of the year, making the years seem as weeks and the human world all around him a jittery fireworks show of lives briefly bright, bursting into existence and just as quickly withering back.  He was the legend that got broccoli et; 13-year-old girls stared into candlelit mirrors and chanted his name; creepy old men invoked him in rings of glowing campfire faces; but he was different from the rest.  Unlike loch-stranded plesiosaurs or big-footed country cousins of Man or almond-faced anal-probers Dean the Wisp was the real deal—a ghost story with a real motherfucking ghost.

Sometimes he was rooted in a vast blackness populated by dimly pulsing motes of drifting ash that twinkled like Christmas lights glimpsed through a blood-filmed eye—or maybe just stars.  With the proper effort he could separate one out from the rest and, compressing himself down through strange orders of magnitude, envelop that single bit, with a sensation not unlike pulling your head through a wet, heavy sweater, popping into sudden light and noise on the other side.

It was there that he saw her for the first time, making that face with a chain coffee, a cigarette and a purply-striped scarf, of all things.

J did not want you to call her Janet—ever—she hated the sound of her name coming out of the mouths of children, warped in just three third-grade tries to "Janetor", just another word for a pedophile with a mop.  So just J was fine, either the letter or J-A-Y but never J-A-E because that's not pronounced "jay" anyway.

J, as it turned out, had a magic ring—though she didn't know it.  She bought it at an estate sale with the crisp 50 her grandmother had just sent her inside a yellow birthday card with a kitten holding a cupcake on the front (such needless detail for something so trivial but that's the stupid shit that sticks after the fact when you've fucked ghosts and seen bodies explode into loops of meat—the mundane is the floatie you cling to in insane seas) because cash is lame and the ring looked old.

It was.  The ring was constructed at great expense and mortal peril in 221 by Li Feng, a learned master who drank mercury and never ejaculated—to conserve his vital essence—until his death in 398 by demon possession where he vomited a surfeit of the stuff from his mouth and eyes.  The event was said to have impregnated every maiden within earshot of the thunder crack of torn worlds, giving rise to a generation of difficult, wild-eyed children and mystic hobos.

So the bearer of this ring was ethnic or indistinct or whatever you want in non-ironic high-tops, bangs and pigtails, the result of generations of questionable decisions.  She stuck her gum under furniture, furtively, and worked a job job far beneath her Perfect World potential. 

She also had a ghost boyfriend.  The first time she had been slightly charmed, the second, suspicious, but lonely.  She googled it after that but it wasn't a thing so it couldn't have been fake.  Besides, the third time he might have looked different but he sure did fuck the same.  The fourth time she called him on it point blank:  "You're the same dude, aren't you."

"What?  Hey, that's crazy," he said, shifting off of the cooling wet spot.

She made the face.  "How do you even know what I'm talking about?"

"I—I really don't."

"It's cool.  Girls are into supernatural relationships these days—we're programmed for it.  I mean, Prince Charming is about as unreal as you can get; sparkly blood-drinking corpses are somehow sexy, and boy wizards are fuckable."

He snorted.  "Well, fuckable by old wizards."

"I know, right?  But it's okay.  I know it's been you the last couple times."  She snuggled into the crook of his arm, molded along the length of his body.  "Not only do you fuck the same, you keep using the same pick-up line."

"What?  No.  I'm smoother than that."

"'Hey, baby—ever fucked a ghost?'"  She shrugged.  "But hey, it works, so at least one of us is awful."

"The same line every time?" His eyes defocused, searching.  "Dammit."

Her breath was hot on his neck.  "When can I see you again?"

"Don't be in such a hurry—we have until dawn.  After that, I dunno.  You'll know when I find you."

"Cool."  She hummed contentedly.  Then, "Hey—next time I could go for some warm, brown eyes.  And actual abs; pecs like dinner plates.  And a good dick."

He arched an eyebrow.  "Uh—I'll see what I can do?"

• • •

It took years for the Chinese ghost-hunters to find them.  Years filled with an on-again/off-again pairing that suited them both and saw Dean settle into an institutionalized fitness buff and apparent escape artist like an ass into familiar jeans.  Snug and flattering, even in the places worn thin from overuse.

The black Humvee came across the night lawn at an odd angle, no lights as it slammed into the porch and killed the engine.  Doors popped and low voices muttered.

J woke with a start and Dean was already up, naked in striped street lights.  "Do you have a baseball bat," he asked, voice flat with resolve.

J coughed.  "No, I have a gun."

Dean shook his head.  "No good.  They invented gunpowder—they know all the bulletproof charms.  Do you have a toolbox."

"I have a katana," she offered, pointing to a display above the bed.

Dean was already banging around in the closet.  Downstairs the front door unbolted itself and creaked open.  "Claw hammer's better."

"If you say so."

"You'll see so.  Chinese vampires can't be cut."  He stood up, the claw hammer in his fist.  "They have to be smashed."  Dean hefted it claw-forward, then flipped it back hammerhead-first.

J blinked.  "Wait—this is gonna be bad, isn't it."

Heavy footfalls in the hall.

"Get under the bed."

A mouth of lightning ate the door, soundlessly, followed by the seeking tendrils of a Sumerian revenant hex.  Dean was impressed.  These guys did their homework—poorly.  The tendrils ignored him and the first man through the door ate three rapid hammer-blows, his look of infinite surprise decrementing into a gory underbite.  A second man pushed the first aside and tackled Dean, they hit the floor and came to grips, Dean rolling him over and jerking the hammer free to bring it down into his indistinct head when a Word of Power stunned him cold and still.

He woke to ritual dismemberment, like wearing a suit of disconnected clothes, sleeves drooping down arms, pants falling to ridiculous pieces with every move.  J was duct-taped to a folding chair, one eye swollen shut, blood all over her sleepy shirt.

There were six of them left.  One taller, older—much older—than the rest, with one crazy eye and one puckered hole in the front of his skull.  They wore black turtlenecks and ill-fitting Carharts and had snub-nosed revolvers to keep the action simple in order to thwart gremlins.  One of them had a mummified baby in a sack.

Dean dropped the ruined body and went for the others, but they were all spheres of stone.  The only one open and soft was J, her bones thin pencil lines undulating in a haze of æther-blown tissue paper.

The older, taller, one-eyed one spoke. "You know what we're here for—we will not spare you or your demon-lover."

J snorted blood out her nose.  "Then why are you even talking?  None of this matters.  Kill us, ransack the house and fuck off."  J had never been taped to a folding chair before, or beaten, for that matter, but she was finding it liberating—if she was gonna die, she could say whatever the fuck she pleased.  Besides, it was buying Dean time.  Right?

The ghost-hunters squinted at her through gemstones and broken pieces of colored glass, muttering amongst themselves.

The one-eyed Magus paused.  "That's a—peculiar thing—for a girl to say," he murmured.  Then, "Shoot her."

Without hesitation one of the men executed a flawless cross-draw and straight-armed the gun at J's head, squeezing the trigger fluidly with the extension—

Dean seized one of the ghost hunters with everything he was and hurled him at the gun as it flashed—

The bullet flattened against the ghost hunter's face as he was flung and fell, bulletproof after all.  "Hey," he said petulantly, finding his feet and scratching at the slug.

The Magus threw mystic signs, cursing in forbidden tongues.  The others cast about wildly with their gems.

"Dean," J breathed, "Who else is there with you?"

The Magus produced a tiny book of splintered pages and began flipping through it with long, vice-yellowed nails.

"I know you said it, that Hell is a solitary thing, but I don't believe you."

Someone had the mummified baby out, waving it around.

"Dean, who else is there?"

His thoughts intersected hers, not for the first time, not as completely, but just as familiar, like sunlight or a favorite pair of boots.  There's... something here calling itself "Nine-Rings-and-Thirty-Ribbons".

"'Nine-Rings-and-Thirty-Ribbons'," she repeated.

The ghost hunters, as a unit, took an involuntary step back.

"That's the one!" J yelled, "Let him through!"

I can't, Dean wavered, You're the only one, it has to be you.

J grinned bloody teeth at the Magus.  "Like I said—let him through!"

The Magus covered his good eye and there was a sudden rush, an impossible widening of everything as Nine-Rings-and-Thirty-Ribbons happened.

It was less an entity than an event—Nine-Rings tore the chi from a man and whipped another to death with it; with a word it detonated bones as the Magus ate a pound of salt, they wore halos of their own exposed brains lapped by kittens, saw their fathers consumed by dogs at the point of ejaculation, their mothers wailing and barren, the mummified baby cackling and dancing on their tessellated graves the whole time.

It was the kind of stuff you can't go back to holding hands from.

• • •

In Florida, you can fuck forever.  It has an infinite supply of the nearly dead, long lives lived until threadbare, then seized in the last gasp, miraculous, and ridden those final few miles until the grave demands its due.  Repeat with high-tops, bangs and pigtails, Viagra and golf carts, and fuck the kids who never call.

She snapped her gum and made the face, stuck it under the dash while looking him square in the eye.  "I'm drunk," she said matter-of-factly, "Let's go back to the condo and, you know."

He complied and the cart jerked and whined in the shadows of wind-fluffed palms.  Presently, he spoke.  "I just can't get it out of my head."

She scooted a high-topped foot and wrinkly gray leg onto the hood.  "What."

"Nine-Rings."

"Baby, baby, baby," she sighed, "That was a one-time thing.  You and me, we're forever."

He knew it was true.

Found Wanting

Fire next time. The Good Book said so, and of course, that’s exactly what happened. The whole world blindsided, too busy with fists pressed to flesh, Western powers and third-worlders alike, blindsided by an asteroid bigger than New Hampshire. It announced the end with a fountain of fire taller than the sky, and as if bumped by the impact, nearly everyone with a nuke lit theirs off. Almost like God said so.

For Tomas, it ended in 30 breathless seconds seven miles over Barcelona. One slow moment he was licking Bloody Mary off his middle finger, watching the stewardess’ skirt tighten as she leaned—then the row of seats in front of him exploded away into hard sky, sucking the wind from his lungs as it went.

He tried to scream, but only succeeded in soiling his britches. A little yellow bag popped from the ceiling and began to beat him mercilessly about the face and neck. The bright blue sky and dark limb of Earth flickered rhythmically, like a time machine set to fast-forward.

They fell from the sky, a metal snowstorm, no two pieces alike.

Tomas gulped at the thin air, desperate to save up enough for a good, solid scream. Dear God, just one, he thought. Just let me scream once Padre, don’t let it go like this, without a sound—

He couldn’t see, it hurt to blink; he reached up with liquid hands and wiped the ice crystals from his eyes—and saw it through the flashing of sky and ground.  The grand splayed flake of a wing fluttering to and fro, falling with them; it cut sharply right, banked, then beelined right for him. He was suffused with understanding, peace, love. Warmth. Padre, I answer thy summons.

The wing stuffed itself into the passenger section, slippery.

It brought with it a tunnel of light. Tomas unbuckled himself and swirled upward toward the infinity of—

Naked people.

Naked people pressed nuts to butts, chafing. Naked strangers; naked among strangers. Everyone was there. The people held themselves in shame, men with hands cupped over flaccid members; the women with their forearms pressed against their bosoms, lone hands shielding variously furred deltas of Venus. Those few stunned and bold who walked naked did so not from innocence.

Tomas was jostled from behind, from the sides, by flesh; he forcefully rubbed up against the woman in front of him and stiffened involuntarily. She turned her head and gave him a look like a slap. Tomas blushed. “Ma’am,” he managed. Though tall, he was somewhat ugly and awkward with women; but because the Lord is merciful, he had a large and well-formed penis. He wrestled it with both hands. “Sorry,” he said to the woman.

His view of the throng of humanity was better than those of average height around him. A lumpy sea of hair spread out in all directions, fleshy arcs of faces peeping up like choppy little waves. The predominant color was a dark, tousled brown. Rising out of that tide of humanity, above it like a breaching whale, was a massive Throne. It stood empty, the seat and back glowing a deep, fading red like cooling steel. The sky beyond looked like snow.

Everyone was there. Tomas, and the whole of humanity seething, stinking, crying, huddled, some singing, occasional fistfights. Not as many people holding each other as you might expect, or hope for. They were moving slowly forward, shuffling, toward the Throne, around it. Tomas’ heart burst with sudden understanding; hope.

“Excuse me,” he asked the man next to him, “Is this the line for—”

The man punched him, bloodying his nose.

“No!” the man yelled, flecks of spittle flying, “This ain’t the fuckin’ line to get into fuckin’ Heaven!”

Tomas’ face was numb. Blood ran into his mouth. He stared.

“What he means to say,” said an old woman at his left shoulder, “Is that we’ve been judged.”

Tomas squeezed his nose. “Not me.”

The old woman frowned. “Yes, you.”

Tomas shook his head. “No. I just got here.”

At that moment they rounded the foot of the Throne, the near leg like a skyscraper, and saw the doorway with the hastily hand-lettered sign: SATAN’S RENDERING PLANT #417.

“Fuckin’ newbie!” yelled the man.

The sign stirred up a beehive in Tomas’ head. “But I didn’t, I mean, I haven’t—oh, God!” he shrilled.

The old woman was apoplectic. “Shut him up or he’ll attract one of them!”

The man grabbed Tomas in a vicious headlock, something he was obviously very good at, and enjoyed. He clamped a meaty hand over Tomas’ bloody mouth and nose. Tomas struggled, but the man dragged him forward, toward the sign, the door, with the rest of them. Tomas began to give in, by degrees, overwhelmed and drowning in a sea of surprises. It’s all just like you’ve been taught, but nothing like you had hoped... Then he saw his father, at the door, his father, the doorman, holding open the door. Tomas started, and renewed his efforts to break loose. The man bore down on him, squeezing like he knew it was the last neck he’d get to squeeze, ever. Tomas bit his hand, to the bone, and hung on. The man screamed and flung him away, threw him forward through the crowd toward his father, the doorman.

“Father,” Tomas cried, “father!”

“Ah, me! Tomas!” They embraced.

His father pushed him away, at arm’s length, and sighed. “Let me have one last look at you.” His eyes glistened.

Tomas took him in. He was naked but for a fresh smelling T-shirt with the words MY PEOPLE WENT TO JUDGMENT DAY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT printed on it. Pinned to the shirt was a little gold badge of wings, like a pilot’s medal.

Tomas’ face twisted. “What?”

His father touched the badge, smiled. “I am a Helper. This is so the others will know me. And the shirt—” he hesitated, “—the shirt is from the... Lord of Darkness, just someplace to put the pin. Considerate, I suppose...” He grimaced, then brightened. “We have to get you a job! You and me, we can be together for a little bit before, well, you know.”

The doors swung open and closed, open and closed as the people pressed through them, into—

Tomas felt his body receding from him, falling away, a dead leaf from a tree before the coming winter. “A job?” he said distantly.

“But not that one,” his father said, pointing behind him, under the Throne. “You don’t want that job. They’re getting put into new bodies, reincarnated, to go down and mop up the stragglers.” He shuddered visibly. “You don't want that job.”

The new bodies were huge, bipedal and insectoid, eyes everywhere, with scything rows of claws. As Tomas watched, several helpers dragged a "volunteer" over to the twitching body and got to work; it was like stuffing a corpse into a sleeping bag. Bright portals winked from nothingness and spun open. Screaming, the men with skins of beasts leapt through the portals back to Earth.

To Tomas, it was suddenly very funny. He wanted to laugh loud and long, slap his thighs and bare his teeth, barking. Instead, his breath hissed from him.

“Father,” he said, barely audible, “Why?”

“Why?”

“Why Hell?”

“Oh, my son. This is not the way to Hell. There is no Hell. And they aren’t going to bother building Heaven, either. God is reclaiming all, to start over. Fresh.”

Tomas snapped into his body. “But the beauty! The humanity!”

“I know. We had the greatest potential—that’s probably why we were given the opportunity. But we failed to live up to that potential."

“Father! I haven’t had my say—”

“We all have.”

“But not me! I haven't been judged yet!”

“Son,” he intoned, then pressed his lips together, “We’ve all been judged, and been found wanting.”

“But—” His father slapped him, stunned him cold. His face began to flush hot and he held it with his hand.

“We have been judged. The Lord God judged us as a whole.”

“A whole.” Tomas’ voice was flat, a dead flower pressed in a family bible, its fragrance spent.

His father’s face softened. “We didn’t make it,” he said quietly.

The crowd jostled Tomas and he was caught up in the wave of flesh, carried forward through the doors and into a short, dank hallway, his hand still pressed to his stinging face...

Judged as a whole.

The hall smelled warm and somehow comforting; it was not the warmth of brimstone ahead, but the warmth of blood-friction; the heat of beating hearts.

Found wanting.

He got occasional glimpses through the swinging doors as they shushed ceaselessly open and closed, open and closed like a chewing mouth. And inside, strobing shots of more helpers, in rubber aprons, their feet stained as if from stamping grapes.

There is no Hell; they’re not even going to bother building Heaven...

Hell is just this little hallway, the hallway before entering SATAN’S RENDERING PLANT #417. Because Hell is just knowing. Even if only for a little bit.

He squeezed his eyes shut, squeezed the tears from them, and stumbled through the doors blindly—just like everyone else.

Old Like the Sun

You can’t have a Bible nestled between a tampon and a diaper. That’s why we exist. The Company, I mean. THE BEAST. Wait a minute. Let’s back it up. Sometimes I spill the milk before there’s a cow and not everybody gets that. 

Mr. Florentine has to make sure I get my meds at the start of every shift—it’s the only way I can keep my job. And unlike the others I actually like this one. I want to work here. I have to work here because this is the only place where I work. The meds do nothing but make me sleepy, but I suppose in truth they do more than that. They prove to me that what I experience is not mental illness but a new way of being, a lightning-licked path directly to God. I see things with a clarity most will never know. 

The meds are slow motion, the constant detonation that is reality slurring until I can see the dance of Creation, a step-by-step minuet of equilibria. Like watching Kennedy a frame at a time, his head bulging because there’s a bullet in there, slowing down. 

Kieran’s driving the forklift tonight, loading shiny-wrapped pallets of flags, bibles, money into the maw of THE BEAST. Back and forth he zips to irritating guitar rock, cranking the wheel, nearly toppling like there’s a hurry to fill the belly with massive brown cubes. But there’s no hurry—we have all night.  All night to be inside it, the only place where I experience awe.

This is where it happens.

Beneath these ceramic cathedral beams, this is where the things we cannot countenance with the idea of destruction—not personally, anyway—are brought to corruption as everything must. We just do it suddenly. THE BEAST—a Rapid Sublimation Plasma Furnace—drinks juice from the dam on the other side of the mountains, dimming all the lights in its path, in reverence, as holy relics die. Flashed to nothingness in this world, pressed beyond the veil, their energies released into unknown dimensions. It’s mostly magic. We would load it up, fire it, and when reopened, days later and still red hot, it was empty. Clean. Wonderously purified. Flags done waving, bibles misprinted or discarded, too much money all converted in a singular convulsion onto writhing plasma, white hot, the idea of power unleashed as a physical thing.

And what did these oblations bring? Angels? Demons? The Mouth of Satan to unspeak God’s Word? What dread portals spun open in here where no material thing could exist? I know the Company is variously owned by the Pope, the Illuminati and the billionaire Antichrist of the week; surely they know the truth. 

“Clear out, you fucking retard,” Mr. Florentine yells without echo just beyond the threshold. He is tiny in comparison to the vault door behind him, the megaton Hand of God poised to swat.

Kieran nearly runs him over, tipping up on two wheels just like in the safety video. “He’s not a retard, Boss,” he calls over his shoulder as he deftly sets another block into a house-sized wall of pallets. “He’s just what my Grammy would call ‘pie-headed’.” The forklift pirouettes with a whine and darts back out.

“Fuck your Grammy.” Mr. Florentine holds me with an uncompromising gaze. “He’s a state-certified retard. He takes retard pills and works a retard job.” There is more but there are three of him now, one pleading on his knees, apologetic, one with his mouth shut, one saying the hard, cruel things. I can’t pay attention when this happens. Like bees in my head.

Then there’s four of him but it’s just the New Girl even though she isn’t new anymore or even really a girl, I mean not a girl-girl but more like somebody’s mom. She hands Mr. Florentine The Clipboard and when she turns to walk away it’s like the fruit Adam bit into, juicy and dripping down his chin, sticky-sweet, and the world never the same since.

I got a woman, not one of the blow-up ones, but the foam kind. With the moveable eyes. It was nice until one of them got stuck and now I can’t bear to look at her when, well, you know. That’s why I have to put the pillow over her face when she does me. I wanted to call her Eve, but on the outside it scared me what God might think. It’s probably blasphemy that something so wonderfully mysterious as a woman should be rendered like this. So, outside, I call her Katherine. But inside, when she’s doing me, I can’t help but think of her as Eve. My Eve. Blasphemy, I know, but I can’t help myself. And even though it’s wrong, it puts me where I am. 

Mr. Florentine waves me out with The Clipboard—tonight we’re expecting some of the Special Bundles, carpet rolls all wet and heavy, the ones that make the muffled thumps and bangs when THE BEAST lights up. It has to be their souls, the sound they make hammering the innards to get out, terrified as their bodies burn in words, bound in words, burning. Words the smoke from burning skulls. 

Kieran clips the inside edge of the door with a hasty maneuver and tears open one of the big brown cubes, spilling Bibles everywhere. One of the Special Bundles bobsleds down the pile and into THE BEAST, as eager as I am.

Mr. Florentine turns red and shows his teeth. “Get the retard his shovel.”

I feel an ecstatic chill at the words and start to take off my pants. I’m allowed. It’s in the contract. I don’t have to wear my clothes when I shovel. It’s a big wide one, like I suppose they’d use for snow, but I get to do Bibles. Old Bibles, mold Bibles, Bibles that are done speaking the Word and gone hoarse with it, all the lowercase stuff still there but stripped of Power like a drained battery or a movie you’ve seen too much. New Bibles, wrapped in plastic and ready to go except some robot in China garbled the Word at like a million vowels per second as the paper whizzed by, a giant roll of toilet paper wiping a factory’s ass. Not the Truth anymore, just some dangerously subhuman version of it. Can’t read it, can’t sell it, can’t burn it—nothing between skin and air but sweat—I put my back into it. 

“Dammit, Boss,” says Kieran, dismounting the forklift, “I’ll make it right.” He tries to take The Clipboard from Mr. Florentine but Mr. Florentine smacks his hand with it. 

 “No. Retard’s gonna do it. He always gets it exactly right. He has to get it exactly right. Isn’t that exactly right, retard?” 

“Ten steps,” I sing in time with the ringing shovel, “Not seven not five not three not one it’s one two three four five six seven eight nine ten ten steps.” 

Kieran notices my erection before I do.

“Dude,” he says, “You really need to get out more.” 

 • • •

The Clipboard’s too hot tonight so I write it down on my forearms in Magic Marker: 

1. Sound klaxons, 2 short blasts.

2. Call over PA, “Clear out, clear out. Pre-ignition check.”

3. Walk THE BEAST and check the shadows.

4. Sound klaxons, 2 short blasts.

5. Call over PA, “All clear, all clear. Ignition countdown.”

6. Use key with fuzzy monkey keychain to pop panel with Hello Kitty sticker.

7. Raise cover, flip switch, thumb button, watch door close.

8. Wait for 3. Green. Lights.

9. Sound klaxons, 1 long blast.

10. Use breaker bar to short panels on either side of console, where wires stick out.

THE BEAST wakes with a whine that vibrates everything between everything, I can feel my soul shaking loose, and it starts happening in there, Hell blossoming behind yards of weird metal and a thin veneer of understanding. What is it, what is it, I ask pressing my face, my body, my self against the warming shell. I hold on until I can smell it burning me and then I have to go, spent.

This one time I was in a parking lot, a man with a gaping hole in his chest, trying to plug the gushing crimson dyke with white fingers, he staggered into me, grabbed me with bloody hands, whispered fiercely, “God is not the god of man—” When I blinked he was gone, his bloody handprints evaporated. He wasn’t real after all, but the message was. The message was.

On my way to get out more I coast in darkness behind a tractor-trailer rig hauling an identical trailer atop itself. It is confusing and natural. The end of a strap flares in my headlights, rises up in a languid sine wave, then down and into the spinning, hungry wheels beneath where it pulls startlingly taut and blinks out of existence. The trailer shifts, hesitant, and a corner kisses the engorged river of asphalt flowing rapidly past. In that instant I don’t want to jerk the wheel. Nothing is coming apart in front of me, it’s just everything following the rules. Rules that must be obeyed.

Before the second hand can cross the void between hashes I jerk the wheel. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.

Kieran gives me meth, and a beer like soda pop for ugly children, so we’re all in the same place. Too many of us in a different car, speaking in unknown octaves like the chirping of birds we’re going too slow, too slow past the crowd when the guns come out. Then the pop-pop-pop like you wouldn’t expect, shell casings ringing against the fenders and sidewalk, little bells the crowd can’t hear the crowd like an animal you hit with a stick three, four, five times and ask yourself why won’t it move? And then it does, all at once, flowing away as nature intended. The backs of heads and limbs and dear items discarded.

In the woods I ask Kieran why? It’s just rules and nature to me, but I genuinely want to know what he’s thinking. He chugs the last of his beer and hurls the bottle beyond the headlights.

“Fuck, man. It just sounded like a good idea.” He pauses and the words reverberate in my head like a child screaming underwater. “It was either that or get laid.”

He calls for another beer and is presented with one. I notice that he has a gun in his hand.

“You didn’t pull the trigger, man, but you were in the car.” He sighs and looks at the gun. “You can’t just be a passenger in this life—at some point you gotta do something.”

He presses the gun into my hand, heavy and warm with body heat. The weight of it coagulates the bees in my head. He’s right. So I shoot him in the leg.

It takes longer than any of us expected for him to bleed out, even though I know the bullet went through the femoral artery even before I pulled the trigger. It’s no coincidence that old-people clocks are round—cause and effect have a way of looping back on themselves that’s obvious if you know how to look at it. Everything’s a feeling—the crack of bone, the kick of the gun, the weight of the unfired cartridge, Kieran’s thumb pressing it into the magazine, the boredom of the Mexican lady who tamped the round at the factory. All the pressing, pulling, pushing that brought us to this moment: we all squeezed the trigger, we all severed the artery. There was no other possible outcome.

He passes with only a little effort at the end—his breath involuntary and agonal before ceasing mid-gasp—I strain to see evidence of his fleeing soul. He was wreathed only in nothingness. 

I bury him with the others.

 • • •

There’s an unhealthy weightlessness that comes with undoing your safety belt and leaving the passenger seat; you float down the aisle and open the cockpit door only to find there’s no God or dog or Chewbacca in the copilot’s chair. It’s just you, the yoke, and 900,000 pounds of metal and jet fuel hurtling toward the ground. You can dart away like an astronaut and try to buckle back in—or you can take the stick in both fists. Either way, the world only loaned you to the sky. It wants you back. It’ll have you back. Because while it’s fun to talk about, you don’t actually know how to fly a goddamn airplane.

THE BEAST is beyond the whine, beyond the low growl that raises hackles in a 10-mile radius—it roars, now, its throat wide open to swallow a little bit of our reality and take it only God knows where. 

Ten steps. Ten steps to get there. The heat squeezes my bare flesh, threatening to press me in pieces through the sieve of another world; it’s hard to be here. It’s taking all of me to be here. The razor makes a line weeping crimson beads of dew and it’s nine steps, then eight, and the steps peel away, bright and shining, a purity of sensation like sunlight on the naked soul.

Ilsa and the Death of Doubt

Beneath the thumping floorboards, Ilsa hugged the hatbox and shivered, eyes squeezed shut. She tried to make herself as small as possible, pulling her knees up to her chest, collapsing inward, crumpling her consciousness into a tiny, infinitesimal wad. The final, fearful refuge of a prey animal, retracting into the crevices of the mind. I'm not here, I'm not here, I'm not—

Above, the Ukrainians were making a mess of the Professor's lab. Drawers yanked from desks bounced hollow and metallic, papers fluttered like her heart. Something heavy crashed into glass again and again. Strange liquids began to seep and smoke into the crawl space. The sting in her lungs yanked her out of her mind-hole and a wave of panic gushed after.

"Here!" an accented voice bellowed, "There's a trapdoor under the table! The old man was lying! You two, move it!"

More crunching glass, grunting and a low scrape vibrated the boards above her head.

Ilsa looked at the hatbox. "I have no choice," she whispered. But the Professor said—

Another scrape, longer this time. A sliver of light slashed her face.

"Forgive me," she breathed. Ilsa upended the hatbox and the pearlescent garment spilled out, finer than silk, unrolling like liquid moonlight. She peeled her own dress up over her head in the cramped space, kicking her shoes away. Her bra came off with the one-handed trick, the envy of all man-kind, and she briefly bridged to peel her panties down over her pear-shaped ass and rolled them off her legs and gone. She gripped the second skin, oily and vaguely luminescent, hesitating for what could very well be the last time.

Above, more boots now, more grunting.

"I want her alive!" the voice barked. Scattered laughter followed.

Ilsa's hesitation broke and she thrust her feet into the legs, feeling the thing snug about her toes; she pulled it up, over her hips and cool across her tummy. The impossible task of finding the arms in an everyday bodysuit was absent—the thing wanted to be worn. She didn't so much slip into it as it slipped onto her. All that was left was the hood. What will it be like, she wondered, will I ever come back?

Another scrape and more light.

She yanked the hood over her head and it swallowed her face, her self, whole. The Insanitard claimed another rider.

Black was white, the moon was made of kittens. And knives, knives came alive in throats.

So close, so close, grown men struggled with a mere table.

"Hurry it up!" Ilsa growled, flexing against the trapdoor.

Puppet Show in an Empty Theater

The day after the Singularity, everyone woke up feeling just fine.