The Gods of Color

by Gunnar Sinclaire

  The bodyguards leaned forward, enthralled. Here was firsthand knowledge of their god’s etiology.

  “When I was a boy there was a growing awareness that people of Color were special,” Swan began. “By the time I was a teenager, ‘special’ had elevated to ‘sacred.’ Deference had elevated, for many, to veritable worship. Only a simpleton could have missed the theological undercurrent coursing through the diversity movement in those days, and I merely rode the waves that had been rising before my time. What nobody knew was that Divine Color had begun its descent to our world.”

  “Tell me more,” urged the vampire.

  Swan’s face was animated, and his hands were impressed into visual aids from where they rested on his knees.

  “Well, unbeknownst to everyone, a god from far off space had blasted the Caucasian oppressor peoples with the holy verity of Color approximately a century ago. As the decades passed, the holy truth of this revelation became more and more evident to the whites. I mean, our god could have spurred people of Color across the world to rise up and kill off the white demons. But, as you know, Divine Color elects to implement Its will through gentleness. So It chose a slow-acting but inexorable mind-control instead, to bloodlessly convince the white oppressors of their own inferiority and to compel them to step down from their thrones of power.”

  “How, er . . . humane of It.” The vampire smiled, his canines protruding over his bottom lip. “How did you receive this revelation?”

  “Psychic reception,” spoke Swan confidently, his eyes luminous. “Its arrival is imminent now—perhaps another year—perhaps sooner! The closer Divine Color gets to earth, the more accelerated our attainment of perfection, of diversity, will become. When It reaches our planet, all human life must be purified so as not to taint Its divinity. Then there will be no pain, no horror, no suffering. Only bliss. We will all look, speak, and think alike. Death itself will die, and we will bathe for perpetuity in the polychromatic rays of our god.”

  “So the diversity movement that began in the late twentieth-century was caused by the trajectory of Divine Color toward earth?” asked the vampire.

  “Precisely.” Swan nodded. “The luminaries of our movement from those days credited their ideas to humanitarianism and liberality. But in reality, there was no human agency there. It was the irresistible force of a god’s descent to redeem us, much as ocean waves are altered by the whim of the moon from afar.”

  “How poetic. And when did you first receive your psychic revelations from Divine Color, Terry?” asked Hommler.

  “In law school. The only class I enjoyed was constitutional law because of all the mechanisms presented therein to alter our inequitable government. But the other classes, well, I daydreamed away in. And it was during these classes that our god first communicated with me. Who better for Divine Color to present Its glorious revelations to than a young, persecuted, brilliant homosexual?” bragged Swan.

  Hommler chuckled.

  “Well, by your own definition at the bodybuilding competition, perhaps a bisexual, black, voodoo priest practicing Third-World magic.”

  Swan gulped.

  “Uhm, perhaps I was chosen because Divine Color saw in me a more effective means to disseminate Its gospel of love and Color. Had It chosen the voodoo priest Its message may have never left Haiti. Speaking of Haiti, wouldn’t it have been glorious to have been one of those seditious slaves who threw off the yoke of French rule?”

  “Most certainly. And then to go on and institute the most impoverished country in the Americas would have been exhilarating,” agreed Hommler, eyes dull but mischievous.

  The president’s eyes narrowed.

  “I don’t like your attitude lately, Herbert. Your comments are edged with heresy.”

  “Yes, well your actions drip with heresy, my president!”

  The guards followed the conversation tensely. Some had by now turned away, as children do when argument between parents becomes too distressing.

  “Me? Heretical?” Swan clasped his chest dramatically. “Explain yourself!”

  Hommler folded his arms.

  “You’ve been thwarting my devotions to Tiamat for some time now. Last week my engineers were about to break ground in New York City for a temple to her but they were harassed by police who claimed that only shrines to Divine Color were permissible in city limits. Are you some kind of hypocrite?” demanded the genius.

  “I know about your plans to turn New York into a cult center for Tiamatism,” countered Swan. “Go find another city—New York has been chosen by Divine Color as the city unto which It will disembark from Its celestial journey. I don’t want our god to be received by a city splashed with blood and offal. I know all about your Tiamatism—I’ve read your cult literature that you distribute at your Red Masses. I know all about your blood spilling and human sacrifice.”

  Hommler’s eyes were deep ice. His lip raised, and he eyed the smooth gray skin of Swan’s neck.

  “The canon of the Red Mass is secret.” The vampire spat, his rage overcoming decorum. “May I ask how a copy fell into your hands?”

  “Yes. Some of your devotees, the names of which you will never know, fell down on their knees before me and begged the forgiveness of Divine Color for the atrocities they had perpetrated in the name of Tiamat and some undenominated vampire gods.”

  Hommler turned away, his prodigious mental energies turning to calculations and processes of elimination.

  “You don’t need to tell me their names. I’ll discover them myself.”

  “And if you do you will not lay a hand on them, do you understand? That’s an executive order.”

  The limo was now driving along the old, tightly congested streets of a New England town. Throngs of children and parents paraded the avenues, their costumes slick from a light drizzle. Hommler’s legs twitched, and an impulse was repressed to launch at the man across the seats and bury teeth in jugular.

  “So many yet to convert,” noted the vampire, and his pulse slowed.

  “Yes,” mused Swan, “but one day, one day, they will all be gray.”

  Seconds ticked, and Hommler ground his teeth together in thought. As much as he wanted to lather the seats with Swan’s blood, he would abstain.

  “Perhaps your failure to, uh, appreciate my right to worship gods distinct from Divine Color is due to my own failure to give you a proper historical precedent for your actions . . . and your instinct.”

  “Herbert,” exclaimed Swan, “clearly there’s been a miscommunication. You have a right to worship any polytheistic deity you want. But America’s principal deity is Divine Color, and . . .”

  “Are you going to listen to my fucking story or not?” Hommler’s nails had by now pierced the leather and probed into the underlying cushion.

  Swan exhaled sharply, folded his arms, and looked out the window.

  “In the fourteenth century, B.C.E., before notions of Yahweh were known to Hebrews, there lived a powerful Egyptian pharaoh named Amenhotep IV. This pharaoh received revelations from a new deity, a solar disk whom he called Aten.”

  The president’s head slowly turned toward Hommler, his eyes downturned in thought.

  Hommler continued. “He became so devoted to this new god that he neglected the traditional Egyptian pantheon. He even changed his name to Akhenaten—‘he who pleases Aten.’ And he built a new, luxuriant capital city at a distant, isolated location to honor his god.”

  Swan’s arms relaxed, and unraveled from the tight fold around his chest.

  “But Akhenaten soon became very unpopular with the rest of Egypt. You see, in his zeal to honor Aten, the pharaoh had taken to desecrating the other Egyptian gods. He scratched out their names from monuments and disbanded their priesthoods. Oh, and he became so fixated with religion that he neglected both the Egyptian military and economy. The might of Egypt amassed by his predecessors was squandered.”

  Terry folded his arms again and looked away.

  “Now, I ask you,” the vamp
ire’s gaze swept across the bodyguards and Swan, “was Akhenaten a polytheist? Or was he a hateful monotheist?”

  No answer was forthcoming. The bodyguards looked troubled, their monstrous gray hands covering cheeks and chins and eyes.

  “He was a polytheist,” declared Swan, voice confident. “Even if he prohibited worship of other gods, he didn’t deny their existence. And I see where you’re going with this, Herbert. I recognize the primacy of Divine Color, but I don’t deny the existence of other gods. I don’t dispute that Tiamat and the Seven exist—I just think there’s a hierarchy and that Divine Color is on top of the pyramid, pun intended.” Swan nodded like a conqueror, chin out, eyes smug.

  Hommler wore the slight grin of a gliding serpent.

  “Unfortunately, Terry, most in academia would disagree with you. The majority of academicians perceive Akhenaten as a bonified monotheist—the dissenters perceive him as a pseudo-monotheist, specifically, a henotheist.”

  “A heno-what?” asked one of the guards, his face fallen.

  “A henotheist—someone who prioritizes one god over others but doesn’t preclude the existence of other gods. But even the dissenters who allege Akhenaten was a henotheist would agree that he was well on his way to monotheism proper.”

  “So what exactly are you saying, Herbert?” Swan asked, eyes averted.

  “I think you know quite well what I’m saying. Divine Color, you allege, is on a trajectory toward earth. And, believe it or not, you’re on a trajectory toward monotheism.”

  The president gasped, and he squeezed the seatbelt crossing his chest.

  “Herbert, Herbert!” Swan protested. “Don’t say those things, Herbert, do you understand? Do you understand? Because they’re just not true.”

  Hommler stared coolly, unmoved.

  “Well . . . how do you suggest I become more tolerant of your gods? Should I seek counseling or a therapy session?” asked Swan.

  “You’re about to embark on one.”

  “What? I thought we were going to a Halloween party?”

  “We are,” assured the vampire, his silver curls spilling over his black cloak.

  The Hawthorne Hotel rocked in the throes of its annual costume party. Brooding on the corner of downtown Salem, it had been a conductor of Halloween energies for over a century. Hommler and his friends had trekked there every All Hallows since they were goth boys high on marijuana. It was a tradition he remained faithful to even during the spikes of his political ascension.

  Limo doors swung wide, and the bodyguards lumbered out, followed by Swan and Hommler. Within the hotel lobby were scantily clad French maids, green-faced aliens holstered with ray guns, and a lycanthrope whose noticeably synthetic fur was incongruous with an expensive and intimidating mask.

  Hommler smiled at two formally dressed men in nineteenth-century apparel. Heavy black mantles draped their shoulders, and chandelier light showcased white fangs in their responsive grins. They were tall like Hommler, and equally frail. However, their wan complexions looked more the result of makeup than genuine pallor. And their canines, though impressive, seemed to lack the bite of Hommler’s.

  As Herbert and the two men embraced, Swan withdrew a step. The president folded his arms over his torn t-shirt, obscuring the logo “Diversity Rocks.”

  “So who’s the Asian?” asked one of Hommler’s friends, eyeing the president’s leather pants, spikes, and chains.

  “I’m a drummer in a Mandarin rock band promoting world peace and the intermixture of races and cultures,” informed Swan. “So why do you have to distinguish me by my race, huh? You know, I’m also Arabic. More importantly, I’m American. So you should think twice before you go and use my race like a synecdoche to single me out.”

  “Well, who’s the dude, then?” The ponytailed man smirked at Hommler, his red, silver-framed spectacles refracting light.

  “Hey!” Swan raised his finger. “How do you know I’m a ‘dude?’ Dude implies that I’m male. Do you know my anatomy? Huh? Do you know my personal gender identity? Because if you don’t you presume too much. How about I turn the tables?” The president faced Hommler. “So, who’s the wanna-be, third-rate vampire?”

  “Fuck you, man, why don’t you shut your fuckin’. . .”

  Hommler put a gloved hand over his friend’s throat.

  “Belial, calm yourself. You don’t know whom you’re talking to.”

  “Shit, man. I don’t have to take that bull-shit from him. Who the hell is he, anyway?”

  “A close friend of Herbert’s,” answered Swan.

  “So you’re here for the show, then?” queried the other friend of Hommler’s, his hair dyed coffin-black.

  “What show?” asked the president.

  “Do you have the video camera?” Asked Hommler.

  Belial parted his cloak and withdrew a silver, pencil-sized tube.

  “Good. We get more brazen with our pranks every year.” Herbert laughed. “What began with stink-bombs and spray paint twenty years ago will now culminate in something glorious.”

  “Like bathos,” cackled the jet-haired pseudo vampire, “but in reverse—upside down.”

  “Yes, Zamiel” growled Hommler, “all the fuck the way upside down. Are we inverting literary terms too, now?” He laughed theatrically. “Well, I like it. Because twisted little goth boys grow up to be powerful undead kings. Strong fucking kings! And those who had been kings are now peasants!” He clenched his white fist until it trembled.

  The clangor of a live rock band was at odds with the stately presentation room and blazing candelabrums. Hommler, Swan, Zamiel, Belial, and the bodyguards ascended stairs and found themselves on the perimeter of a crowded dance floor. Hommler draped his arms around his two friends like a school boy replete with badness.

  The black-haired goth raised a finger then pointed it decisively at a woman on the floor.

  “Bel and I scoped her out before you came,” Zamiel cupped his hand and yelled into the vampire’s ear. “I think she’s with that dumb-fuck Robin-Hood she’s grinding with.”

  Hommler nodded, and drank in the lithe, gyrating body of the woman. Her hair was gothic black, and her lips were red and glistening like a dewed rose. The corpse paint had sweated off her face hours ago, revealing a dermis both fair and delicate. Piercings gleamed from her nose, eyebrows, and ears. Had she wished she could have walked down runways as a model. She had the natural beauty, the height, the body—but walks through chilly New-England cemeteries, decrepit churches, and ancient forests were more to her liking. So she chose darkness.

  The vampire frosted her dance partner with a gaze.

  “That Robin-Hood is Steve McAllister.” Hommler snarled.

  “I don’t think so, Herb. I mean, that’d just be too fuckin’ lucky. He was balding, remember? This dude’s got a full head of hair.”

  “It’s a transplant then—or a fucking wig for all I know. Look at his shoulders—that’s stud-boy McAllister for sure.”

  Hommler stared at the couple for a moment, watching the woman kiss the neck of her partner.

  “Darn it,” cried the president, standing near Hommler, “this music is terrible. I can’t even think straight—hurts my ears.”

  “You always were a Roderick Usher when it came to loud noises, Terry,” Hommler noted carelessly, his gaze still riveted to the woman.

  “I don’t know why I let you drag me here,” Swan complained, hands over his ears. “If Scott were here at least I could dance with him. But he’s not, so I’m bored!”

  “Well,” assured the vampire, “you won’t be for long because your therapy is about to begin.”

  Hommler broke from his friends and cupped his hand over the ear of a bodyguard. As he spoke, his eyes fixed on Robin Hood. The guard nodded, licking his lips, and motioned for one of his brethren to follow him onto the floor.

  “All right,” the vampire addressed Zamiel and Belial, “you’ll probably want to get on stage to catch a clear view. If anyone gives you shit, stab t
hem in the face with those.” Hommler nodded at the stiletto hilts protruding from his friends’ suit coats. “Film well, because I want to upload this episode to the net. Look for it Monday on Bellridgehighalum dot com.” Then, with a flutter of his cape, he plunged into the crowd. Swan watched Belial follow Zamial to the base of the elevated stage, and ascend its corner. Squinting, Bel turned the silver tube toward the dance floor from his vantage point.

  Hommler’s pulse hammered in his chest, throat, and wrists. He loved the feeling of blood charting an accelerated course through his veins. It was moments like these that made life worth living. The hotel dance floor wavered in his eyes—was he in Salem or at his old high school in Boston, the strobe camouflaging in reds then spotlighting in whites the bloody nose he had received from Steve McAllister? He remembered the football jocks buffeting him like a pinball between them after knuckles slammed his nose, his scrawny arms trying to deflect their blows. And he tasted again the blood, fruit juice, and soda from a facial ablution in a punch bowl, fingers clutching his long hair. Most of all he remembered her laughter winging after him while being led by the scruff of his shirt out double doors, his white dress shirt blood-smeared, then the plunge into a trash can that broke his wrist.

  But now it was his dance, with his friends. The gloved fingers slapped amicably down on the green cloth across McAllister’s shoulders.

  “Hey there, Steve,” shouted Hommler over the bass. “So good to see you again after all these years.”

  “Oh, hey, what’s up, man?” The sports standout acknowledged the vampire with a fraction of a glance then re-wove his hands along the fishnets of his dance partner. He nestled his face into her raven hair and bemoaned his failure to remember the names of old friends who always managed to remember his own.

  “You know,” continued Hommler, his hand still on Steve’s shoulder, “that must have really sucked when you weren’t picked to play for any big-time college team after doing so well in high school. I guess you always were kind of the big fish in the little pond, though.”