The Manhattan Prophet

by Jake Packard

  Ibrahim squeezed harder, staring into the man’s terrified eyes. “There is only one thing you need to know, asshole. Gregor’s word is law. He is God. He’s the one who is going to set you free.”

  The choking man gurgled but couldn’t force out intelligible words. Jamal could see the man’s alarmed face turning blue in the midnight chill. His friends looked on.

  With a twist of his wrist Ibrahim crushed the man’s Adam’s apple, his head slumped forward, and all his struggling stopped. Ibrahim dropped the body on top of the dead junkie and turned to the other three. “Anybody else got some joke to tell me?”

  The henchmen look at each other but said nothing.

  “No?” Ibrahim asked, shrugging his shoulders. “Now that, my brothers, is really funny.”

  Chuckling, in the curious cold of the solstice night, Ibrahim turned in the direction of Jamal’s hiding place, leaving the consequences of the two lives as somebody else’s rubbish to clean up off the, rock-hard Shantypark dirt.

  Jamal ran so fast he almost took flight, his outraged fear finding the last little bit of fuel in his empty tank. But the night made everything look so different. He longed to hear his grandmother’s scratchy voice crying out from her rocking chair, wished he heeded her words.

  His little heart pumped faster than any other time in his life, and a dreadful sense of being lost from everything he ever knew surged out of his heart and into his blood, numbing his already-shocked sensibilities.

  He ran. He thought he saw a brooding shadow to the left, so he veered to the right. Then he cut down through a makeshift alleyway between ragtag and tattered hovels, and then around a clapboard lean-to. He leaped over a motionless body, and then a quick left behind a big boulder.

  Where am I? How do I get out of here? His stupefied young brain screamed.

  A big white tent with a dim light inside loomed in front of Jamal. Without a moment’s hesitation, he dove to the ground and crawled under the door flap, too terrified to worry about the dangers awaiting him there.

  * * * * *

  Maria

  Barely a mile from Shantypark, in an upscale East Side apartment, the red digital numbers on a tablet flicked from 4:59 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. A brisk beeping sounded for the briefest moment before a young woman’s hand appeared from beneath a colorful comforter, and knowing exactly where to go, shut it off.

  Maria Primera rose from her silk-sheeted, king sized bed, clad in a black thong. She crossed her spacious and airy living space and drew the curtain by her enormous bay window, revealing a spectacular view of the East River and the city lights beyond. No evidence of the blast from here.

  An electric-blue, early morning glow silhouetted Maria’s perfect shape. She stretched her creamy, mid-twenties hazelnut skin into a full body yawn, jutting her breasts towards the ceiling. Her thick, brown hair hung long behind her, and a few whirlpool locks lazed over her clavicles. At the height of this body extension she froze for a full beat into the sculpture of her life, which she could title, “Life is Grand.”

  She lied down on her plush carpeting, and started the crunches that began her daily workout. Brain always ticking, she zoned into her own personal stream of consciousness.

  Throughout her youth Maria demonstrated the unique ability to listen and learn from her parents and teachers. That fortunate gift kept her safe as an adolescent and prone to success as an adult. As she grew, this innate skill put her in tune to the pulse of the people, making her good at her job. After today, she thought, her face would become a household icon in every living room on the planet.

  She rolled onto her side, rested her head on her elbow, and began leg lifts.

  She felt happy knowing that she had clean blood, great genes, and everything needed to attract a man of a similar level and type. Perhaps even fall in love. She’d marry eventually, have kids, and in her golden years, she’ll have pure and untainted grandchildren at her feet. But most importantly, she will come to grace as a leader in her sphere of influence, with the mythic power of the famous who are able to move the media about with just the strength of their names.

  And now it seemed so close to her grasp.

  In her eclectic bathroom, naked in her warm shower, the ticking in her brain continued. She reviewed the major biographical points of today’s story over and over in her mind. She knew the details as if ingrained into her DNA. The birth, the death and abandonment, the first early signs, and the spontaneous literature. All parts of the great picture puzzle, which, after all these months of hard work, will come to completion in a dramatic way on this very morning.

  Drying off with a fluffy turquoise towel, she looked into the full-length mirror, smiling at herself with natural confidence. How wonderful life could be, she thought, how beautiful! How karmic! Just point your energy in the right direction and the universe opens all its doors.

  Of course, Salem would say there are the doors we think we know about, but what of those we could not even begin to imagine?

  * * * * *

  Herbie

  The nightmares poured out of his reality - A plume of rust-colored smoke belched upwards into the flames that roared out of the power plant. Bleeding children crawled out of a crumpled school bus that lay on its side along a leaf-strewn road. A white woman floated in a bathtub of blood.

  His memories melted into his subconscious - He ran through a maze of hospital corridors. Screams of pain and despair cried out of every room. Doctors tried to talk to him, nurses tried to help, but he couldn’t stand still because at the farthest reaches of his peripheral vision, in the corner of the waiting room, amongst an unruly crowd of the bewildered, in the chaos between this world and that, he saw the muzzle of the gun, pointing straight at his heart . . .

  The phone in the pile of garbage that littered his tiny West Side tenement bleated out three times in a pleasant sounding robotic female voice, “5:30 a.m.”

  A bruised hand clawed out from under the covers of a lumpy single mattress that lay on the floor on one side of the room. It groped around for the little black box, knocked over a half-empty beer can, and then slapped the alarm off.

  Half asleep he knew his inertia would kill him. Half awake he felt shocked to realize that he was afraid to die. Because everyday in his waking world it seemed like God was a just a hunchbacked, tattooed little tailor, helping him try on death for size.

  He watched the trigger finger squeeze. He saw the bullet launch. He tried to shout, he tried to flee. But nothing moved in his room, except the curtains by the open window. They blew in spasms with the toxic breeze from the city outside, filled with so much engine whine and fetid smell.

  The voice of the snooze alarm sounded again, “5:35 a.m.” Herbie Lipton grabbed the phone and threw it against the wall, just missing the guitar leaning in the corner. It banged into pieces, scattering jagged bits of cheap plastic into the haphazard patchwork of scraps and wrappings of the fast-food nation, cigarette butts, beer cans, and tequila bottles strewn all over the floor.

  Herbie pushed the layers of worn fabric resembling blankets off his body, which shivered and sweated at the same time. He stumbled towards the shower, past the small kitchenette with the rusty faucet dripping brown water in a tortured psychobeat into a sink full of crusty dishes.

  His savage hangover jackhammered his brain.

  In the dim bathroom he peered into the cracked mirror, amazed by the weathering that time and life added to his looks. Not surprising bearing in mind how he continually abused himself, he admitted to the man in the looking glass.

  True, there might have been a time when he acted out with extreme depression, consuming huge amounts of alcohol and drugs. But considering his life, who wouldn’t have done the same? Marty and Ira were good about giving him all that time off, and paying for the rehab. Of course, the truth was they needed him back at the station. Nobody could do what he could.

  But, what good did it all do anyway, Herbie thought. His binge drinking had worsened into daily drinking. But now he fun
ctioned, and nobody really knew. And, if they did, they didn’t really care as long as he did what they needed. So why should he worry? Why should he stop?

  He tried on the hair shirt of despair and is waiting on the tailor’s adjustments.

  Abandoning his reflection in the cracked glass, he stumbled into the grimy shower. Standing under the corrosive spout, dirty drops of water sputtered forth like a shower of needles that stuck into his skin and burrowed deep. He no longer asked why he existed in this unbearable pain, because irrespective of what he did or did not do, the universe has its own incorruptible patterns. And we are just the infinitely tiny, totally uncertain particles in the enigmatic substance of the cosmos.

  He shivered in the cold water, and grabbed onto himself as if his body might dissolve and wash away down the drain.

  * * * * *

  Gregor

  Jamal lay with his face in the dirt, too afraid to move. Time passed by, how much he could not perceive. Fatigued, he drifted in and out of consciousness. Echoes of the few pleasures he enjoyed in his short life in Shantypark helped him sleep, but sharp memories of the omnipresent pain panicked him back awake. When he opened his eyes into the dim light of the white tent, he found it empty. No presence of anything to fear. Peaceful, blissful. The only sounds came from the drum machine of his frightened little heart.

  Wary, he stood up. Wiping the dirt off his nose, he looked around with a sense of amazement generated by the wealth of crates and bags of supplies he saw organized into tidy rows and aisles. A cornucopia of fresh produce, boxes of canned goods, bundles of paper towels and toilet tissue, lay in clear view in front of him. In some of the cartons there appeared to be fresh linens and towels for the taking. In his blind terror, he somehow snuck into a warehouse full of everything he never had. And nobody seemed to be here. Way beyond what he hoped for in his wild and random romp through the Shantypark night.

  The feast for his eyes made his empty stomach growl, but his instincts screamed trouble. The only warehouses he knew about were owned and controlled by gangs. Something he just avoided and didn’t want to run into again, even if it was one of the black gangs. People in Shantypark tried to take care of their own, but no one liked a thief. At the veteran street-smart age of ten, Jamal knew that’s what they would think if they caught him here uninvited. Thoughts of what he just saw in the cruel alleyways of his hometown chilled him to the bone, so he turned to run. But then he heard the echoes of his crying little sister starving to death back in his tent, and he stopped.

  Flustered, he saw an apple, sitting next to an open bag, atop a stack of boxes on the other side of the tent. The apple beckoned to Jamal. As he stared, the sweet apple gave off a melody, which grew into a song of allurement, which swelled into a symphony of intrigue. It enchanted him. It seemed so simple to have that in his mouth, then grab a few more things and try to find his way home.

  Unable to further resist, he scuttled like a mouse up to the bag of fruit, and within an instant the apple was lodged between his teeth. Its flavor set off the fireworks at the end of the brilliant rhapsody blowing his mind. A triumphant fanfare of pleasure saturated his taste buds.

  But to his utter disbelief, before Jamal could even swallow his prize, he heard a sound that set his heart palpitating in fear.

  An insistent drumbeat, measuring time as if it was ending, headed his way. Jamal knew it would soon be in his face. The percussion of the gutter creeped him out, but the accompanying sounds of wild, animalistic men scared him so bad, his throat froze closed. He leaped behind the bag he pilfered just in time. In that instant, a gruesome parade broke through the tent flap into the space where he had first been standing.

  A masked, black-caped executioner led the way, carrying a torch with one hand, the other rested on the hilt of a long, curved sword swinging on his hip.

  Ibrahim entered next. Jamal freaked. He just saw him torture and kill two men without the slightest bit of remorse.

  A motley gang of stanis followed Ibrahim dragging a young woman tied to leather ropes. She wore a burlap sack hanging off her shoulders, one breast almost completely exposed. Some of the men danced and whirled about her, while others poked at her with wooden staves, and pinched at her with their nubby fingers.

  The rest of the gang poured into the tent, drumming garbage can tops with pieces of pipe, the primal beat pierced by their disharmonic chanting. They marched up the aisle between the rows of produce rubbing past the bag Jamal hid behind with the apple stuck in his teeth. They passed through into the next tent room on the other side of a thin canvass sheet.

  By the flickering light of their torches, Jamal could see all their actions cast as silhouettes on the tent wall separating them. The men placed the drugged and stunned young woman on all fours upon a wooden platform in the center of the room. He heard them ripping the burlap bag off. Howls erupted as the ghouls saw her naked body vibrating and glistening in the torchlight.

  The gang leader, flanked by his captains, entered through the tent flap. He chugged from a bottle and sucked madly on a cigar. He strode right past Jamal cringing behind the bag of fruit and into the raping area. His gruesome followers pressed back to create an opening, and he passed through to the unholy altar.

  Gregor observed the scene with a vile impassioned eye, and then dispatched his captains to their men. He raised his arm towards the ceiling and the tent went silent. Leering, Gregor milked the pause.

  Jamal could feel the evil in the tent all focus on this one man.

  Gregor struck his fist down producing a sudden unanimous cheer.

  One scurvy captain stepped up behind the victim and mounted her the way Jamal remembered the stranger and his mother a few hours before. A few hours that felt like a lifetime.

  The girl cried out in pain. The men surrounding her screamed their approval.

  Gregor pounded his chest with his fists and bellowed like an alpha gorilla. He cast his bottle aside. Then Jamal saw his shadow invade the girl’s head, and he heard the girl’s terrible screams gag.

  Jamal felt paralyzed, his knees couldn’t stand and his lungs couldn’t breathe. His eyes, which couldn’t come close to comprehending the full debasement of what they saw, bulged out of his jaundiced sockets at the shadows only a few steps away.

  The sex crazed stanis howled and gyrated, almost reaching a sick, symbiotic orgasm. Gregor screamed in primeval triumph. Splatterings of mixed fluids sprayed upon the canvass, causing a deep crunching desire in Jamal to vomit. He knew if he did his fate would be worth less than hers. He choked on the apple, fighting for breath.

  The executioner raised his black sword high in the air. All movement stopped in a maniacal instant.

  Jamal dared not breathe, almost passing out as time stretched into an unearthly, hell-drenched pause. The canvass tent wall between him and the atrocity became a vibrating painting, quivering in wickedness. It lingered there long enough for Jamal to tattoo that picture indelibly into his mind.

  All eyes faced Gregor, who existed for this complete power to destroy. He gave the executioner a nod.

  The mighty weapon sliced down. The single sharp stroke chopped her head off at the neck, leaving the Gregor holding the severed head, fellating himself through her freshly dead lips.

  He climaxed and bellowed, and the gang fell to their knees in obeisance to his raging madness. Their foreheads touched to the ground as one. Then like a herd of primitive reptiles, they rose back up in one long horrific cheer.

  Gregor strode with pride around the room, carrying the girl’s bloody head over his crotch. The gang fell in step behind him, parading in triumph around the tented warehouse, his temple of the unworldly.

  Whereupon, with great nonchalance, he knocked a bag of apples off a crate and glared down with gleeful vengeance at an apoplectic little black kid, frozen in fear, with an apple glutted in his mouth.

  Gregor’s erection pointed at him through the girl’s decapitated head. Looming just inches over the boy, a sickly liquid dripped down upon
Jamal’s horrified little face.

  * * * * *

  The Mayor

  John Kennedy Storm became the mayor of New York five minutes after the bomb, because everyone else in the city government had just died or became radioactive. Because of the chaos, it took almost two years to hold an actual election. But by that time no one had any doubt about it. Without his singular brand of leadership, the commanding way he took over when other powerful men were reduced to emotional rubble, all might have been lost. So by the results of that popular landslide they might have well elected him king.

  Jack, which everybody liked to call him, just as they did the president he was named after, started out life as a kid from Harlem whose daddy taught him the value of hard work and clean living. He delivered pizzas after school for a little extra money, helped shovel the snow off his elderly neighbor’s porches, and tutored the local kids on the block in Spanish and Algebra after school. He was the over-achieving native New York pride and joy of his dad, Theodore Roosevelt Storm, who everybody liked to call Teddy, as they did the president he was named after.

  He played basketball in high school. At 5’11” everybody thought Jack too short. But, his quickness, uncanny eye and, most of all, his ability to exist in the no-think zone made him all-city his senior year. Fans of Big Apple basketball look back with glee on that celebrated season, when Storm’s Harlem team met with Pellet’s Jefferson High Brooklyn champs for the city title. Jack’s three-pointer at the final buzzer in double overtime carried Manhattan to a one point, come-from-behind victory that will exist forever in the annals of classic sport moments. Of course, being the son of Teddy, he never entertained going pro like all the others. No sir, he was going to really make something of his life. And, yes, he did.

  Some who tend to mythicize say that Jack breezed through Columbia and Columbia Law, although those who knew him remember him working all the time. Not on his course load, which he aced every semester, but on activist student and civic watchdog organizations. By the time he graduated top in his class, his academic and work-related resume loomed so strong that every prestigious midtown law firm in New York City recruited him, offering huge sign up bonuses. But Theodore Roosevelt Storm’s son chose a small grassroots uptown firm that specialized in litigation involving civil rights and discrimination. Here at his first job, the bonus came from seeing smiles on the faces of the people his work helped gain the justice and fair play they deserved.