Moab

by Cervo, RD

  Peck lets the johnnie coat drop off his short, fat body. He is naked. In the harsh glare of a spotlight, his skin is moist and albino-white contrasted with thousands upon thousands of black-green spidery blood vessels crisscrossing and spiraling every inch of his dermis. Through deep sunken eye sockets shine two intense yellow glints. Peck stares back through the plastic see-through barrier at the three men. He suddenly coughs up a mouthful of hyper-saline sea water. It is followed by hacking a glob of Dead Sea mineral mud and mucous. With a drooling smirk, Peck reaches down below his belly and searches for his little nubby penis which is hidden in the tallow of his groin.

  The three agents stiffen in their chairs as a stream of dark foul urine hits and splatters on the inner plastic wall of the chamber. With a little wiggle of his hips while pointing his tiny wiener, Peck appears to be trying to write something with his piss. His bladder empties.

  With a raspy gurgle, Peck says, “Boy, I was holding that in for a while. I was trying to write “hello” but I think I didn’t do a very good Jobs.”

  The three agents are still and speechless for a moment.

  Peck clears his throat, drops his mocking smile and says, “What? No sense of humor? Too crude? I thought it would be impolite to urinate inside of that fish. You have to have respect for wildlife.” Peck sits down on the plastic white stool.

  The three agents give each other side-ways glances. Dover takes the lead and says, “Please state your name.” A hanging microphone broadcasts his voice into the quarantine chamber.

  Peck open and closes his legs a few times, displaying his crotch. He replies, “Do I remind you of Sharon Stone?”

  The three agents remain tense and unsmiling. Dover repeats, “State your name.”

  "Are you looking for the good doctor, Morey Peck? Do you want to arrest him for corrupting the youth? I am quite confused. In the early days of walking the face of this earth, I ate children. It was natural to me. I remember this tribe on the plains of Zoar who raised their brats on an ancient grain of red millet. It made their flesh sweet. I used to bite the toddlers to death then devour them raw. Snapping and breaking their little femurs and arm bones to suck out the marrow. Truly free range and organic. I am a bit concerned that kids today are subjected to too many antibiotics and vaccines. Will they still taste good? I’ll probably have to only hunt in third-world countries and avoid the more industrialized nations.”

  The three agents all remained composed.

  “How long ago did you say you killed the children?” Dover asks sternly.

  Peck smirks and says, “Exactly, 11 thousand years, 8 months, 18 minutes, and 10 seconds, ago.”

  There is an awkward pause. The three agents say nothing.

  Peck glares back with an unnerving intensity, then scolds, “I just scanned your minds. I find it insulting that you all think I am insane. Do really believe I am just some psychopath and nothing more? Your army medical team is dumbfounded. They did all their tests and procedures and were unable to find any cardiac or brain activity in this carcass; yet I am able to sit here, chat and be charming.”

  Turning to Friedman, Dover asks, “Did anything come up in the toxicology tests?”

  “Only Viagra.” Friedman grumbles.

  Peck calls out, “Don’t bother to whisper. I already told you, I can read your minds. Agent Dover you are hypothesizing that I am on some new exotic drug that gives a false reading of my vitals. Or perhaps it a neuro-toxin excreted from the fish that causes an undetectable heartbeat. I assure you this heart does not beat. The fourth chakra is closed. I’m the Grinch before his conversion at Whoville. I am heartless. I have always been heartless since the dawn of time.”

  Internally, Agent Dover has a spike of anxiety. He worries, did he know my thoughts? What’s the trick? He clears his throat and asks, “Are you saying that you are not Dr. Morey Peck?”

  The naked man smiles again, “If I tell you who I am, I’ll have to kill you. Isn’t that what you guys say in the secret service? Is it a cliché? The fact is, I will tell you who I am, and later, I am really going to fucking kill you.”

  All three men feel a jolt of danger but remain deadly still. The Israeli soldiers in the periphery tense up.

  “Enough games!” Friedman barks, “Who are you?”

  Exhaling, the naked man shakes his head and says, “Okay you asked for it. Yesterday was a glorious day. I escaped from my prison cell at the bottom of the sea. In haste, I assembled that fish as my get-away vehicle. By a stroke of luck, the good doctor happened to be floating above on the surface of the water and I swallowed him like Jonah. He drowned in the gut of the fish and I hijacked and possessed his dead body. But I assure you this is only a temporary situation. I will acquire a better specimen soon! I am hoping I will get one with a better physique and well hung. Regardless, the show must go on.”

  The three agents all had experiences with madman, insane criminals, and religious fanatics. Hearing grandiose crazy rants during an interrogation was nothing new, but they all had a growing terror that they were dealing with something out of their league.

  As if doing a monologue on stage, the naked man continues, “Beings like me are not supposed to be mingling with the natives of this planet. But I am one of the bored-ones, defiant by nature. A rule-breaker. 200,000 years ago, when your species finally grew a bigger frontal cortex, you all became more interesting and I came to play. Emotions of love and joy always eluded me. Your ability to feel anguish and horror has always been my personal fascination. To watch you humans cry, scream, piss and die is such a hoot!”

  Dover utters, “He thinks he is the devil.”

  “No, John. You are wrong,” snaps the naked man.

  Dover bites down hard on his jaw and thinks, how did he know my name?

  The naked man continues, “I am not some archaic horned boogeyman. The cosmos is steaming with various conscious entities. I am just one of the many who is a rebel. Ha, a free spirit! Not to be controlled by those------others. I despise the others. The others are plagued with a defect called compassion. They are the cock-blockers of the universe. I gave them all a middle finger and broke their laws. Eons ago, I became incarnate and tracked the migrating tribes of humans out of Africa into the fertile crescent. I found a home in the Cities of The Plains, Sodom and Gomorrah. It is where I set up shop.”

  Litwin quips to Friedman, “Does he think is the king of the homosexuals?”

  The naked man glares at the younger Israeli agent and says, “Do you think your God sent down two angel assassins to direct a MOAB strike on my cities because he was offended by some ancient gay pride? Do you really believe it was that? Are you that stupid?”

  Dover asks, “What was the reason for the destruction of the cities?”

  “Your army has the Massive Ordinance Air Blast, but what I experienced was the real mother of all bombs. Those compassionate “others” hit me with a plasma heat wave that incinerated the whole area and scattered my atoms. A few of my molecules survived, infused into the asphalt and salt. I really became the salt of the earth. But as the Muslims know, you can’t kill jinn. My many incarnations have been scorching fire. But I was imprisoned. The rains came day after day, months after months to fill the great craters where once stood the cities. More rain to cool the molten stones. The deluge continued until there was a sea, a sea of salt. A dead sea. But my boundless consciousness was still intact. And I did feel frustration and anger. I was an unruly bad boy, put in a time-out for thousands of years. Entombed in the bottom of the seabed, I did my time and listened to the clamor of history. I listened and listened. Tuned into every frequency, heart-beat, and wandering thought of those above me. I learned every language, dialect and vernacular slang from the very beginning to now. Nothing is encrypted for me. I know the passcodes for every nuclear launch. I know all the secrets. I know where all the bodies are buried. Radio signals and satellites made my quest to learn and absorb all knowledge so much easier. But my incarceration is over. I am free. I feel like a
zombie version of Mr. Nelson Mandela.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Dover presses, “You didn’t answer the question. What was the reason for the cities being destroyed?”

  The naked man smirks and says, “I thought what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?”

  “You want to keep it a secret?” Dover asks.

  “You want the truth?” The naked man asks.

  “Yes.” says Dover.

  Doing a mock impression of Jack Nicholson, the naked man shouts, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

  “This is all bullshit!” Friedman snorts, “all I am hearing is fucking nonsense.”

  The naked man sneers at the older Israeli, “Nonsense? I know your brash rudeness is an attempt to hide your fear. I know inside you are frightened like a little school girl.”

  “Fuck off!” balks Friedman, “I am not afraid of you.”

  “You are and you should be. Will be,” the naked man adds flatly. He then exhales with a mock sense of resignation, “Okay, you all want answers. I will tell you. Better than that, I will show you. It is the story of MOAB. Is it just about the Mother-Of-All-Bombs? Or is it about a sexual deviant act? M.O.A.B. meaning mouth-on-anus-and-balls? Or birth of an ancient tribal lineage, the Moabites? Well, it is all of it, and then some. Are you three men up for some time travel? Some astral-projection?”

  Inside his head, Dover screams to himself, no! but it is too late. In the next nanosecond, a marauding immense energy takes control of his mind and he is ripped away.

  CHAPTER 3

  6,000 BC

  The plains of Samaria

  Before dusk

  A VAST EXPANSE OF ROCKY OCHRE DESERT STRETCHES IN ALL DIRECTIONS. The cloudless sky has a dimming yellow hue, simmering with a brutal setting sun. An unnerving dead stillness waits to be broken.

  Dover’s consciousness is controlled and forced to watch. He cannot see the two Israeli agents but can sense their presence and terror. The three men are invisible voyeurs with no ability to turn away or close their eyes. Their physical bodies remain sitting at the table in the quarantine unit.

  In the distance a figure approaches, walking down from a sand dune. He is a young goat herder, dressed in a coarse white tunic. Miles away, his flock has been left unattended and free to wander. He does not care if his father beats him for his neglectfulness. The call of the sisters is all that fills his mind. Some time ago, his left sandal broke. There was never the thought to pause to mend the leather straps. He left the sandal in the sand and kept going. He does not notice the pain of his bare foot on the burning sand. When his big toe fractured as he stubbed it on a jagged rock, he did not flinch. Since last night, his penis has been rigid. All stimuli in his body has been muted except for his throbbing erection His penis has not softened once since starting his journey out into the empty desert. It appears to be pointing and directing him like a divining rod. He mindlessly follows it.

  Three female figures appear on the top of the opposite dune. They are clad in black shrouds. Their heads are wrapped in veils, their facial features hidden expect for their eyes. The young goat herder sees the trio and instantly starts a frantic race down to the plateau, then up the other side toward the three. Massive amounts of adrenaline flood his body; his heart pounds, his lungs heave. Clawing the sand, the goat-herder scrambles up the embankment. Finally, he reaches the women and collapses to his knees in reverence. Gasping for breath he cries, “Ado! A-Ado, wife of Lot, may I have your two daughters?! I –I have come from a long way off! I left my family! I heard your daughters whispering in my dreams! I heard them calling to me! Telling me to come out to meet them in the wasteland!”

  Dover hears the goat-herder’s pleading rant and is shocked when he suddenly realizes that he can understand the ancient tongue. Instinctually sensing pending death, Dover feels compelled to shout out and tell the boy to run away but is unable. Dover is frozen in a dream-like paralysis.

  A gust kicks up and there is the sound of a high-pitched groan and a whistle that reverberates. Like black flags, the shrouds of the three females flap in the wind. Then the tense stillness returns for a moment. The mother’s dark almond eyes have a yellow glint. She nods to her daughters while reaching into her robes to retrieve a flute crafted from a human arm bone. Pulling down the veil from her mouth, her thick full lips have been dyed pitch purple. The skin of her face is coated with gray ashes from a fire pit. She places her mouth on the crude chiseled holes on the instrument and starts to blow. Instantly, her two daughters react, swaying like cobras to the haunting mating call of the flute. Rising, the goat-herder stands at attention while the girls encircle him and slowly dance. With a series of twirls and spins, the sisters begin to slip out of their shrouds. Soon, the two girls are naked, their long black hair tied back with twine made from dried animal sinew. Their breasts and hips swing with the hypnotizing piercing melody of the bone flute. Footprints are left in the yellow sand as they glide and skip about with bare feet. Frozen in a trance, like a rodent in the presence of predators, the goat herder continues to stand, his heart pounding. Underneath his tunic, his erection is unrelenting, jutting like a horn.

  The music abruptly stops. Ado lets the front of her robe open to reveal her own naked body. A tapestry of umber colored tattoos covers her dusky skin from neck to ankles with images of scorpions and constellations. Crude hammered loops of gold pierce both nipples of her giant pendulous tits. From a huge thick thatch of black pubic hair, hangs her long dangling brown labia which are also pierced with small bits of viper vertebra and tiny gold pins and rods. Her husband Lot has not laid eyes on her womanly flesh for years and was unaware of her body modifications. The two had stopped copulating a long time ago. Lot tried to believe that his wife had become celibate and pious. Instead, Ado has had hundreds of lovers.

  With wild, unblinking eyes, the young goat herder stares at the naked tattooed mother with awe and his manhood painfully presses further outward from under his tunic. Ado brings the bone flute back to her dark lips and music starts again. The sound is sad, melodious and carries out across the wasteland. The two daughters come closer and pick and tug at the boy’s clothing as they dance. Soon his dirty white tunic is pulled down and left bunched around his ankles. Instantly, all the females gaze at his long plank hard member which is agonizingly straining and bending skyward.

  The older daughter begs to her mother, “Can we finally have this one’s seed? We can no longer endure being virgins! We need to have our own babies! We no longer want to be barren like this dessert!”

  Moving behind the trembling goat herder, the younger daughter drops to her knees and starts hungrily licking his buttocks.

  “We will worship him now and then he will surely impregnate us!” shouts the older daughter as she turns and kneels in front of the boy and starts tonguing his tight aching testicles. Instantaneously, the goat herder’s penis curves into an unnatural u-shape on the verge of snapping a ligament and bursting. The boy’s eyes role back in his head as he grimaces and cries out in a crazed mixture of ecstasy and excruciating pain.

  The music again abruptly stops as Ado suddenly notices the scar. She hisses like a cat and says, “Get away from him! He has had his foreskin removed! He is from that other tribe that worships the mountain god!”

  The two girls do not listen and continue to have their mouths on his ass and balls. Ado quickly returns her flute to the side pocket in her robe and pulls out an obsidian dagger. The primitive blade has natural serrations and sharp contours. Rushing forward, Ado slaps her older daughter’s head out of the way as she chops down hard at the goat herder’s cock. A hellish screech echoes outward across the sand dunes, as the tip of his penis flies off and a torrent of blood sprays the face of the eldest daughter. The goat herder buckles to his knees, pukes red millet, then curls up and falls forward while holding his blood spurting member with both hands. The daughters wail and scream at their mother to stop but Ado viciously stabs the obsidian knife into the boy’s lower back, punctur
ing his right kidney. She then jams it into the middle of his spine. The point of the knife cracks off and gets stuck between two vertebrae. Ado pulls the broken ensanguined dagger free but it slips in her grasp and she cuts her own palm. She curses and growls, then turns to search the ground for rocks. The daughters continue to howl in despair but they are too afraid to physically stop their mother her rampage. Leaning down, Ado frantically claws the dirt away from a large stone. She then squats and hoists it up on her shoulder.

  “No more, mother!” pleads the oldest daughter. “Let him be!”

  “Move out of the way!” Ado snarls, displaying her crooked gold-capped teeth which are contrasted by the dark color of her purple dyed lips. She then drops the huge rock on the goat herder, hoping to crush his skull. The stone misses his head but rather hits him between the shoulder blades and rolls off. Moaning in pain, he flattens on his belly. Swearing and grunting, Ado lifts the stone again and lets it go. This time it lacerates the boy’s scalp and makes a divot. For the next few minutes, Ado continues to retrieve the rock and drop the rock. She does it numerous times. Soon, the goat herder’s cranium becomes grotesquely misshapen and pink fatty brain matter is exposed. Nearby, the sisters are clutching each other and sobbing. Finally, Ado is finished and drops the bloody slick rock for the last time. She is breathing heavily. The goat herder is prone and motionless. The sand under his body is soaking up his blood.

  As the sun begins to set behind the horizon, intense shadows fall far and wide, across the desolate wasteland. The howling wind returns and causes an echo. There is dead silence again.

  Ado flips the body of the boy on his back, then grabs him by the ankles and drags him to the edge of the embankment. She then gives the body a vicious kick. Like a rag doll, the goat herder’s naked corpse rolls down the side of the sand dune. The body comes to rest at the bottom of the slope. Tomorrow, the body’s heat- bloated flesh will be ripped apart and eaten by vultures. Skeletal remains will litter the sand.