Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five

by Freeman, Jesse James

  Margot was staring at a chip she'd gotten in her nail polish and trying to figure out how it had occurred. When she raised her eyes up to meet the deep pitted gaze of her new teacher, she didn't give off any airs of concern for her safety or the integrity of the mission.

  “Can vampires chew gum?”

  ~17~

  POST-MODERN SALLY FIELD

  “I FEEL OKAY.” It was all Billy could get out of her when he had asked, as they flew the Hog-Bitch down deserted Nevada farm and market roads. Billy had broached the subject of food with her and she shook her head. He actually hadn't been thinking straight, and was dreaming of a big cheeseburger when he just blurted it out. Then he was gonna backpedal, but he just blurted it out again. “I'm not hungry.” She just stared ahead as back-desert Nevada flew by.

  “I told you nobody is going to be looking for this awful truck. Why are we avoiding the highway? Why are you taking us this way?”

  “I made a promise and I'm keeping it.”

  She didn't look at him, which let Billy know that she was extra-especially annoyed with him. “When have you ever kept a promise?”

  “The highway runs right through Vegas. I said I wasn't ever going there again, and I'm not.”

  “Some girl looking for you there?”

  Billy shook his head. “No. That's the problem. Can I just drive without you navigating?”

  Anastasia looked out the window on her side. “I'm not stopping you. Drive.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We're getting out of Pahrump, then out of the rest of this damn desert. I thought you were in a big hurry to get out of Nevada?”

  “No, where are we going ultimately?”

  “I don't know. You said you wanted to get out of California and I got you out of there. Now I want to get out of Nevada, and I'm gonna get us there too.”

  Anastasia traced her fingernail in a lazy circle on the window glass. “Then where will we be when we get out of Nevada?”

  “Whatever state comes next.”

  “Where are we going to eventually stop this road trip? You know what I'm asking, you do that on purpose.”

  Billy gripped the wheel tighter. He wanted to shift gears for even more emphasis, but he was already running wide open in fifth. “I'm not doing anything on purpose but driving. I don't have any idea where I'm going.”

  Anastasia looked back to him. “You always knew where you were going before.”

  “That was before.”

  Silence.

  “Where have you been?”

  Billy was the one getting annoyed now. Wherever he'd been, he did not want to answer her. This, of course, made Anastasia push the question even harder.

  Silence.

  “I was out in the desert looking for them. I found out about a place where they used to meet.”

  “Where who used to meet?”

  “The Satanic Five. It was an old mission off a dark…”

  “…desert highway? That's a song, nimrod.”

  “It's kind of a true song.”

  Anastasia had forgotten how hopeless it could be to hold a conversation with him. Especially when he was in full on scared little boy mode, like he was now; that was even worse than trying to decipher the grunts intermixed with mildly gooey affectionate and heavy sexual innuendo he usually cast out as language.

  “When we get out of Nevada, you can just drop me off on the side of the road. Wherever will be more than fine.”

  Billy went for the gear shifter and then back to the wheel. He was getting a headache trying to talk to her. He'd forgotten how hopeless she was to hold a conversation with. Her high, snooty language, intermixed with mild sweetness, laced with girl-trickery and heavy sexual innuendo she pretended was English.

  “I'll drop you off wherever you want, fang tits.”

  Anastasia folded her arms to cover up her breasts. “Unlike you, I do have a plan. You will do nothing more than slow me down. The world has changed, Billy. Our time is done.”

  “You got that right. I don't need you slowing me down either. I gotta figure out what my next move is going to be.”

  “Let's hope it's as ill-thought as the last one of your moves.”

  “I didn't notice you complaining.”

  “I was not talking about that.” She no longer considered trying to keep her blood pressure from rising or not raising her voice. “I was talking about you deciding it was a good idea to go back in time and try to change the past because you had a dysfunctional childhood. Who does that?” Anastasia went for the exaggerated hand gestures. “Oh, I know how I'll make myself all happy and complete, I'll just go give the space-time continuum a tune-up.’”

  “It didn't work.”

  Billy's voice was sad, filled with remorse and lament.

  “So, you did go back?” Damn you, Anastasia, why did you just speak those words with any level of compassion in your tone?

  “I don't know. I went somewhere. Twice.”

  “Twice what?”

  Billy considered not even going into it with her. He was thinking that the best first step in his new plan would be dropping her off at the Welcome to Whatever-State-Comes-Next pavilion when they crossed that imaginary line, leaving her in a cloud of Hog-Bitch smoke.

  Her eyes were wide and soothing, and she seemed like she cared. Damn you, Billy Purgatory, why are you falling for this again?

  “You remember when we were kids and the Time Zombie zapped me off the baseball field?”

  She nodded. “We were talking on the train.”

  “Right. You kept asking me where the thing took me, and I couldn't remember.”

  “You said that you couldn't remember.”

  “No, I really couldn't remember.”

  “So…”

  “So, I remembered. I went someplace — well, Africa — but that'll just confuse you…”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Anyhow, I was still just a little kid and I went home. But it wasn't my home, it was where some other me lived.”

  “You were in an alternate reality.”

  “Right. Yeah. Hell, I don't know. Sure.”

  “What does any of this babbling you're doing have to do with anything important and non-babbly?”

  “Well, the last time you saw me, when ‘grownup’ me went back in time with the Time Zombie, I went to that same place.”

  “You were there with your ten-year-old self?”

  “Yeah.”

  Anastasia quietly considered. Billy was just about to forget it all and turn up the radio when she started speaking again. “So, what was this place like?”

  “Perfect. Wrong, but perfect.”

  “So why did you ever come back here, then?”

  He wasn't going to say it. Please, DO NOT let him say it. Anastasia wouldn't be able to bear the pain of something so love-lost and string cheesy.

  “My mom was there, but she was one of them.”

  “One of… The Five?”

  Billy nodded. “I saw things that I didn't want to see, and I think just by me being there, and seeing them — I think I did something really bad, Ana. I think I did something that's going to be horrible for all of us.”

  “You broke the universe.” Anastasia repeated the words of the goddess to him.

  Billy looked from the road to her, gave her that quiet look like he'd taken the trick way too far this time. He built too big a ramp, and when he crashed landed from this trick, it wasn't just going to be him that would come crashing down in a heap. It was going to be everyone — he was not only going to explode in mid-air, but the flames were going to burn everyone in the grandstands.

  “I don't even know what I did. I don't know what to do next. That's why I was looking for them. I was really looking for her.”

  “I'm not sure if Mommy can kiss it and make it all better.”

  “I think she can. I hope she can.”

  Anastasia leaned back in her seat before running her palms
down her legs and stopping at her knees — staring at him until he turned to her for a sign, an emotion, something.

  “I have a message for you, Billy.”

  Billy looked back at her, searching for that flash of hope in her words. “Your mother said for me to tell you, ‘Don't try and find her. Leave her be.’”

  ~18~

  CALLING ME HOME TO GLORY

  THE WIZARD STILL WORE A WINNING SMILE as he was pressed to his knees. A ring of torch lit riders ran about him on the hilltop, and he sloshed about on the ground as two of the night men roughed him about. They dragged him towards the lovely form of a terrifying girl who dismounted her horse in disgust and annoyance.

  The men stopped and held the Wizard up straight as her boots made delicate tracks in the mud towards them. She didn't remove her riding gloves. The Wizard wasn't sure if this was because it would be a quick exchange before they moved on, or if she was disgusted at the off chance she'd have to touch him. The old man knew when she looked to the stars before reaching him, that it was to gauge the time, as the old masters had taught him to do when he was no older than his boy.

  The red haired woman didn't try to hide the fact that, in her eyes, she had better things to do. She snapped her fingers and the Wizard was let loose, pushed forward so that the left side of his face became richly acquainted with the mud on her boot.

  His eyes trailed up just enough to watch her raise the left heel and press the toe of her pointed boot into the ground. Using sweeping swirls with her foot, she drew the symbol into the mud at the Wizard's eye line. It was the same symbol the Wizard had taught his boy how to draw on the wall. The symbol that had been saved his entire life until things became very desperate, and he had become very old.

  The eye and the tendril.

  “Do you know what that means, what I have drawn?”

  He was unprepared for the voice. It ever so sweetly dripped off her tongue to fall slowly to his spotted ears, in such a way that he could almost see the musical notes floating in the air.

  “It has been passed down.” The old man's voice was not as sweet in comparison; he was almost ashamed to be answering her in his cracked timbre. “It's to call you when we are at despair. When our lives are through on this earth.” She said nothing, just listened. “It's the symbol to bring us home. To bring me home to the Master.”

  Her foot retracted from her glyph in wet earth. “The Master? There is none to care for any of you. You are no one's lost sheep.”

  “Respectfully, my lady, you are wrong.” He kept his gaze affixed on the eye she had drawn. “It has always been this way.”

  “No, you are wrong. Nothing is always any way.”

  The Wizard was perplexed. He raised his fool neck up just enough, but not too far so it might be lopped off for offense. “So tell me then, please, if this is not so, then why did you come for me at all?”

  “We did not come for your tired bones. We came to see what you know of the symbol, and those who employ its power.”

  The old man hacked out a quick laugh of revelation. “The Five? You speak of them now. I can tell you they are amongst us, yet still far from here.”

  “Where?” Her voice was losing its honey.

  “Across the ocean, that is where you will find them.”

  Hands grabbed the Wizard's arms, pulled him from the filth he had rooted within, and brought him up again, still on his knees. The woman of red was not pleasant to look upon any longer; her face twisted into a scowl. “You old ones, always across the ocean from you. You and your myths are as worthless to me as ever.”

  The Wizard feared for his afterlife. “I've spent my years in loyalty to the Master and his lands.”

  “You and every breathing monkey. None of what you have done has made you any more special than any of the others.”

  “What is to become of me?” The Wizard played the kindly old grandfather card as she turned to face her mount.

  “When we get home, we burn you.”

  The Wizard smiled a beam of desperation. “In Hell?”

  She stroked the neck of her horse, her back to the old wretched heap. “The time of gods is long ended, Wizard. There is no Hell.”

  “You lie!” The Wizard used any strength remaining in his marrow to try to rise up and run at her, but he was held fast by her men. “There is a Hell, and the Devil will know of me and my horrors. My life's work.”

  She turned and smiled. “I told you, silly hermit, there is no Hell.”

  The Wizard was closer to weeping than he had ever been. “I feel it is real, I have felt it real since I was a boy. Hell is true as the Hangman's Star. How can you know? How can you be so certain?”

  She stirrupped a boot, and he watched her rise into the air and swing her leg over the dark mare. “I know better than anyone. I'm the Devil's Daughter.”

  ~19~

  A LAMENT FOR BIOLOGY

  The Cedar Badger Bar was over the mountains, two hundred miles up the coast from the town that Billy Purgatory grew up in. The neon character over the doors, which lit the motorcycles lined up out front, was not actually of a badger — it was a woodchuck.

  This had been pointed out to the management, and to the bar regulars, as a means of providing an interesting conversational aside by a biologist who happened to have a specialization in woodchucks, or groundhogs, if one preferred. Marmota monax, if the bikers who were sipping beers wanted to get really technical.

  Unfortunately for that guy, the bikers weren't into getting anymore technical than they already were, and didn't find his aside particularly amusing. The Cedar Badger Bar kept a pretty regular clientele and usually weren't so friendly to new faces — especially scientists, or people who could read.

  Moon found it curious, as she pushed through the saloon's swinging doors, that there was a sign nailed over the entryway which read:

  We Don't Serve No Biologists Never!

  Moon was not the only girl in the biker bar; there were lots of them. She wasn't the only girl in there in black leather pants either; about half the other girls were dressed in some variation on the theme. The same could be said about the riding boots she wore and the black leather gloves she had sticking out of her left rear pants pocket. She was the only girl of Asian descent, though, amongst a sea of bleach-bottle blondes. The unicorn head decal, emblazoned in a purple glitter bull's-eye on the front of her white tank top, did the rest of the setting Moon apart from the crowd.

  She took a seat at the bar, enjoying the bass riff from the very Americana 70's greatest hits jukebox playlist. She could feel hundreds of eyeballs bearing down on her, an energizing mix of confusion, lust, greed, and undeniable envy.

  The bartender was a mountain, and had a morbid fascination with tattoo art that depicted smiley-skulls, pole-dancers, and his mother. He had so much hair covering his face that his questioning eyes might as well have been on a St. Bernard.

  “Wine, please.” She smiled as she tapped her fingertip on the bar to the beat of the music.

  The burly bartender reached down, dug around, and raised up a cardboard container he hoisted to the bar top by a handle.

  “You got anything that doesn't come in a box?”

  He didn't say a word, so Moon gave him a nod. “Well, at least it'll be sweet.”

  The bartender punched the on-board boxed wine spigot and began to fill a wine glass with the finest pink concoction that one could expect from a wine bag entombed in a cardboard box.

  Sliding it to her, the big man moved on to replenish beers down the bar. Moon considered that he might never speak and was perhaps a mute — or, he had never seen a girl who wore her natural hair color before and was just in shock. She sipped her wine; it was, in fact, sweet, and that would have to do. She felt the eyeballs get closer to her back and smelled their cheap perfume, but it didn't make her turn to them.

  Five pairs of cheap boots stood at Moon's back as she drank. She could see the tops of their big hair over the line of whiskey bottles that ran along the mirror
behind the bar. Arms crossing and stances tightening — three of them chewed gum. Moon could hear the popping noise it made against their teeth.

  Then one leaned in. “You're a long way from China, bitch.”

  Moon felt the whole room lean forward and brace for the show. She could smell their dirty money, exchanged from one hand to the next. She had one more sip of wine to go.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Moon took in the girl's face. She was one of the more attractive ones, if that said anything in this room. She most likely had something to prove to the other girls and the alpha males of the pack, who surely coveted her for things beyond her geography skills.

  “I'm looking for someone, and I'm sure she's not you. So, either you go and bring me the girl who reads the cards — the gypsy — or you take one last look at that pretty face of yours in the mirror before I finish this wine.”

  The girl pushed her right side fully into the bar and opened her arms wide like a good angry hen. Her blonde hair flew wildly and her lips were painted in bubblegum lip gloss. Her eyes and twitching mannerisms indicated that she was under the influence of speed, and Moon almost felt bad for the girl. Not bad like anything resembling remorse, because Moon held none of that in her quiver; bad like she would be wasting her talents on this one.

  Being unworthy had never stopped Moon's hand before, and she decided not to finish that last taste of wine before she let that hand of hers take flight. Moon watched as the glass shattered against Bubble Gum Lips’ face and ticked off the aftereffects to herself as they happened: initial impact, broken cheekbone, glass lacerations to the right side of the face, continuing lacerations across the face, the stem dislocating and then breaking the nose…

  At the nose, Moon applied pressure with the stem and punctured into the nasal cavity, using what was left of the glass to lodge into the skull. With a twist of her wrist, Moon snapped the neck to such a degree that when dead Bubble Gum Girl hit the floor, she was lying on her back, yet her face was pointed at the floorboards.

  Moon smiled at the pink impression the girl's lips had surely made in kissing the spot she'd just been standing in so proudly.