When Swan gets it going, she has no idea how she did it. Some fidgeting in the right places did the trick.
She says, "It's kind of like a vacuum tube mixed with a hot air balloon."
Swan pulls a lever from outside and they hurry within the cart, hold tightly to each other, then they blast off.
The blast causes another earthquake, a larger one. They can see the sphere crumble in on itself in another section, but it doesn't yet go to pieces. Holding itself together by threads.
"It won't be there much longer," Swan says. "We're lucky to get out when we did."
"We should have taken the rest of our supplies," Tree says. "We don't know where we'll end up."
The spiky fish girl holds his hand as they glide through space. The tube splits off in several directions every hundred feet. But they don't have control over their destination. Swan really didn't have a clue what she was doing.
CHAPTER TEN
They arrive in a landscape of black melty razor glass bushes. It could be the same landscape Tree arrived in when he came to Heaven.
"No, it's different," Salmon says, pointing to the hills. The grass is white with a layer of snow or cotton or, as Salmon describes it, marshmallow sauce.
There are also large mushroom-like trees that look like oozing turtle pies. The sky is the same green as it was. Kind of like the color of Swan's lips. But now with hook-shaped clouds spilling in like ocean breakers.
"It's good to be above ground," Swan says.
Tree frowns at her and the landscape.
Salmon picks bone-figs out of murk trees.
"Hey look, we have food," he shouts. "These are good." He bites into one and scrunches his face at the bitter fruit.
The spiky fish girl sway-walks over to him and examines them.
"Those are poisonous," she says, then laughs at him.
"No they're not," Salmon says with a fig dangling from his mouth. "I eat them all the time."
Swan picks him out of the tree and gives him a piggy-back ride, bone-figs raining down her back as she runs in circles around the bushes.
Tree scans the surroundings. No signs of civilization. Maybe over the white hills.
He hikes toward a hill of snowy grass. Swan and her screaming passenger race through the turtle-shaped mushrooms to catch up to him.
On top of the hill, they see a city in the far distance. There aren't any roads so they follow the fields of white, making it easier to spot any shadows that might try creeping up on them.
The closer they get to the city the larger it appears.
"I've never been to this one before," Swan says. "It's enormous. A kingdom."
Salmon spots a road from the green girl's shoulders. The road is mostly piles of large flat stones that disappear into the white grass hill. It doesn't look like it's been used in a very long time.
"Another dead one," Swan says.
"You don't know," Salmon says. "It's a huge city. People might live on the other side."
There doesn't appear to be any movement within the city at all, but Tree feels like he is being watched.
The buildings are like Roman palaces built for the Titans. Salmon especially feels small walking through the streets.
"This is the oldest city I've seen," Swan says. "The Greek Gods must have lived here."
"Were the Greek Gods real?" Salmon asks.
"Probably not," Swan says. "But you never know. The old ones were giants like the Greek Gods. We really don't know anything about them. They left some homes and furniture behind. That's the only proof we have that they were ever here."
Their steps echo softly through the whispering houses. The street as wide as a field. Salmon makes them hold his hands as they walk through the ancient ghost town.
"This was a major city," Swan says. "Maybe it's the city where God lived."
Searching the metropolis. The buildings are all empty. No furniture or belongings left behind. Just the occasional cobweb or pile of leaves. The farther into the city they go, the larger the buildings become. Even larger giants lived out here.
Swan finds a family of angels living in a garden in a rural section of town.
"There is life here," she says.
The masturbating babies flap through the fruit trees and duck into bushes.
"Do you think they're the only ones here?" Salmon asks.
"Can't be," Swan says. "Angels don't have the intelligence to tend a garden properly. Somebody must look after them."
There are no signs of life except for the small garden of angels. Sometimes golf-birds will fly out of windows across the street, but it is otherwise dead.
"Why do I feel like we're being followed?" Tree asks. "Watched?"
"I have that feeling too," Salmon says.
"It's normal." Swan glances into the giant windows and doors around them. "These deserted cities always give you that feeling."
The buildings stare down on them with angry eyebrows.
Where the buildings stretch higher than mountains, they find the center of the city. A castle. The tallest and grandest structure they've ever seen in Heaven. It bursts into their view with brilliance and thousands of overwhelming colors.
"Look at it," Swan says. "That has to be the house of God." The structure is more alive than any other building in the city. It is crawling with vegetation. Vines like centipedes of purple human hands coat a large section of the building. From between the massive bricks grow dog-sized flowers that are an icy moon color Tree has never seen before. Stick-birds circle the tower high above. Cat-hoppers watch them with sharp snail eyes. They approach the gate of the castle. The bars have fused shut over time. Razor-vines thick as oak trees slither up the iron bars.
"We're like bugs," Salmon says, as they crawl under the gate. "Like cockroach people invading a home."
They step into the courtyard. An entire landscape in itself. Forests of silver trees and black rose bushes stretch across God's lawn.
Swan can spot ledges in the massive front door where trees have sprouted. Caves have cracked open to support wasp-eagle nests.
"I'm beginning to think CLOTTA was right," Swan says. "She always said that God still lives in the deserted ruins of the capital city. All alone in his giant castle that's higher than the clouds. She never saw it for herself, so I didn't believe her. But this could be it."
"He might be on his deathbed," Tree says. "Not quite dead yet, but pretty much on his last breaths."
The cockroach people stare up at the door like a cliff and wonder how they're ever going to get it open.
There isn't any space between the ground and the door for them to crawl under. The door doesn't seem to have been opened in thousands of years. It is grown into the ground, become a part of the doorframe. No cracks or holes. Completely blocked.
They follow the wall, searching for some kind of opening.
"CLOTTA said it's forbidden to come here," Tree says. "They wouldn't make it easy to get in if it's forbidden."
"They also wouldn't leave it unguarded," Swan says.
They have lunch in an apple grove that grows cheesesteak flavored apples, resting in blue mushroom grass and staring up at the beastly structure. Just waiting for some sign of life to show itself.
Swan takes a nap under some shade as the two men go for a walk.
"I want to learn how they used to cut shadows off," Salmon says.
"Why do that?" Tree asks.
"So that I don't have to love you anymore," he says.
"Cutting your shadow off is going to change that?"
"On Earth, priests said that homosexuality is evil," Salmon says. "If it's evil then it's a part of my shadow and I can cut it off of me. I wouldn't have to love you or any other man ever again."
"What if homosexuality isn't evil?" Tree asks.
"The priests said it was."
"The priests were wrong about a lot of things."
Tree is squatting behind an apple t
ree, trying to excrete his recycled lunch.
He's facing his shadow, examining it. There isn't a sun so he doesn't know what light source is creating it. Perhaps it is God Himself. The castle is directly behind him. Perhaps the shadows in Heaven always point away from God, hiding from Him.
The little girl shadow stands up from behind his true shadow and waves. She still has a mind of her own, but normally likes to blend into the other shadow. It is her protection blanket. The girl moves her limbs at Tree, as if trying to communicate.
This is the first time the yellow man has had constipation in Heaven. He really feels like he has to go but nothing is coming out.
The little girl's shadow makes finger puppets for him. She does a dog and a duck pretty well. He laughs out loud at each one to be polite, but he doesn't really know how to act around kids. He's not even sure if she can hear or see him.
In his shadow, Tree notices something odd is coming out of him. There is an extra hand in the shadow and it isn't one of his or the litde girl's. He stretches his head until he can see between his legs.
He is excreting a human hand.
It looks like it is growing out of his homemade rectum, fingers wiggling at him, and he opens his mouth to scream but Salmon and Swan scream for him instead.
Something is trying to kill them.
The black rose bushes are too thick for Tree to see what's going on, but there is something chasing after his friends.
The keen blade flips out of Tree as quick as a switchblade. When he tries to run, he is thrown backward. The hand growing out of his rear has grabbed hold of a tree root.
The yellow man pulls at the hand, tries to pry open its fingers but it won't budge.
He can see the danger now. Goblin-octopus creatures are driving his friends away from the grove. There are dozens of them. Salmon screeches like a banshee at them, and they shriek back at him in an even higher pitch.
Tree squats down and positions his feet as close to the hand as possible. Then shoves off.
He can feel the rectum gash rip higher up his back. Then POP and he flies into the dirt.
Looking back: a human head lies on the ground before him. A living bodiless head with an arm attached to the front of its face like an elephant's trunk. Its fingers still clutching the apple tree's root. Its eyeballs blinking and rolling around in their sockets.
Tree chases after the horde of octopus creatures as they circle the castle wall. They have long chain-link tentacles and a blender of metal teeth.
He doesn't need to think about his actions. They all come naturally to him. The blade cuts their legs out from under them as he passes through the horde, removes their teethy heads from their necks.
White fluid like blood sprays out of their missing limbs and coats his face, almost blinding him.
Leaving a trail of thrashing bleeding bodies all the way to the back of the castle where he catches up to the bulk of the group, crowded around a vined wall.
Swan and Salmon are up in the purple millipede vines, dodging the chain tentacles. Salmon doesn't look conscious. His body limp. A large gash across his chest and insect sludge dumping out of him.
The seahorse girl can't climb any higher. She uses all of her strength to keep Salmon from falling.
Tree cuts a row of them down before the mob realizes he is there. They turn to him and shiver their tentacles at him violently. One of them hooks his leg with a barbed chain from behind, but Tree de-throats the shrieker before it can fling him away from the crowd.
Wave after wave, the metal octopus soldiers charge at him with slashing chain tentacles, but Tree is too fast for them. His arm tornados, dodging their limbs and striking vital organs. He mows them down like grass, climbing up their milky corpses.
His spider foot launches him high over the crowd and catches a vine with its metal legs. It crawls up the vine for Tree, strong enough to pull his whole body up as he hangs upside-down slashing at the creatures without even looking in their general direction.
They do not climb the vines after him. They just glare at him, blender-teeth roaring and grinding with anger.
Tree sees Swan staring down at him from a wide ledge above.
"You're amazing with that," she says, helping him onto the balcony.
"It is a part of me," Tree says.
They are on some kind of windowsill garden. A field of vast food trees and ponds. Tree steps down into the soil next to Salmon's body.
"Is he dead?" Tree asks.
"I think he'll make it," Swan says. "We'll see in the morning."
Tree is on the edge of the balcony, gazing out at Heaven's vast landscape. He can see the ocean from here, just past the city limits. A great green ocean stretching out to the horizon.
He wonders if there are islands out there. Or other continents. Heaven is probably a thousand times the size of Earth. Limitless. Full of lands for them to explore.
Swan is eating piles and piles of fruit. She says they are the most amazing things she's ever tasted. After an hour her stomach balloons out like a puffer fish.
"You look pregnant," Tree says.
"Maybe I am," she says.
"Is that possible here?" he asks.
"No," she says. "But who knows, maybe the food will be recycled into a baby."
She rolls her swollen belly at him, imagining a yellow spiky baby inside her. Tree doesn't want to think about it. It reminds him of the human head with an arm for a snout that came out of him earlier.
"I don't doubt the possibility," Tree says.
The sky is darkening to a navy blue. Tree and Swan huddle together, watching the ocean in the distance.
"Have you looked through the window yet?" Tree asks.
Swan doesn't answer the question.
She is distant. Eyes soaking in the atmosphere.
"It's nice here," Swan says. "I think we should stay for a while. We can build a house by the lake. Grow vegetables in the garden."
"I thought you wanted to see if God really exists?" Tree asks, rubbing her ribbed thigh.
Swan shrugs.
She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, absorbing the fresh sunny-flavored air.
The spiky fish girl sleeps in Tree's lap, drooling down his yellow skin. Salmon lies in a cozy hole in the soil. Maybe alive, maybe dead.
Tree looks back and forth between the ocean and the enormous window behind them. A faint blue light emanates from somewhere beyond the edge of the frame. There's nothing else he can see on the other side. Just a haunting blue glow.
There are giant beasts out in the sea that will occasionally surface for air. Whale-like creatures made of hundreds of hairy elephants melted together. Eyes like freckles on the sides of their lobster heads.
They sing to Tree in warm glassy voices. A lullaby with lyrics he can't possibly understand. But he enjoys the soothing sensations that caress in and out of the back of his neck as he listens to them, weakening his eyes, drawing him closer and closer to sleep, as he peers out across the vast landscape of Heaven.
An infant peering out over its crib.
FILE UNDER BIZARRO FICTION
Heaven is no longer a paradise. It was once a blissful Utopia full of wonders far beyond human comprehension. But that was a long, long time ago. The afterlife is now in ruins. It has become an ugly, lonely wasteland populated by strange monstrous beasts, masturbating angels, and sad man-like beings wallowing in the remains of the once-great Kingdom of God.
As two men die and awake in Heaven, they find themselves inside of new bodies with strange alien skin. They no longer remember their previous lives. All they really know is that the afterlife is a horrible, ugly place. Desperately seeking answers, allies, and refuge, these two newcomers explore this surreal world. But what they will soon find is that Heaven has become a place not that much different from Hell
A BIZARRO BOOK WWW.BIZARROCENTRAL.COM
III, Ugly Heaven
Ugly Heaven Page 8