The Best Bad Dream

by Robert Ward

  “What's the fucking world coming to?” Jack asked rehetorically. “You just can't find a good crucifix maker anymore.”

  “You better show some respect,” the guy in front of them said. “Or that could be you two assholes up there!”

  The entire congregation seemed to be getting antsy now and their leader, Alex Williams, moved quickly to his pulpit.

  “As you can see there have been some last-minute additions,” he said. “But while my assistants are getting prepared there's no reason we can't start with our first trial.”

  “It's Williams, all right,” Jack said, recognizing his voice. “He's been in with Lucky all along.”

  Jack looked to his left and saw a masked man just down from Oscar, staring intently at Oscar's feet. Jack looked down and saw blood dripping on the floor. Then he looked to his right and saw a couple of the men watching him, too.

  He wanted to attack now, before the trial started, but Oscar was leaning on his shoulder and Jack had to hold him up. He'd have to wait. If he stood up now they'd both be caught, and maybe shot by the guards along the wall, before they even got out of their seats.

  Alex Williams made a pyramid sign with his hands. A second later, everyone stood and made the sign as well, including Jack, but Oscar stayed in his chair.

  After Alex lowered his hands to his sides, everyone sat down again.

  “We are here tonight to accomplish a deeply serious task,” the Blue Wolf leader said. “We must discuss the guilt or innocence of these three people who are accused of extreme crimes against the elderly. Some of us may be tempted to be lenient. We may say, ‘Well, none of these people have been arrested, tried, and convicted of said crimes, and therefore who are we to play judge, jury, and executioner?’ But that is the very attitude that has been the bane of our existence. Older people in our society, the very ones who created the best of the world we live in, are not valued enough for anyone to bother to arrest those who commit crimes against them. Do not doubt it. I will not bore you with statistics except to say that every model we have used has come to the same conclusion. Which is this: if the crimes of these three defendants had been committed against younger people they would have not only been arrested but put in prison for years, possibly even executed. But since the victims were senior citizens—and I use the phrase proudly—they were not taken seriously. We have tried to petition the powers that be but our earnest entreaties have been met with a silence that borders on outright ridicule.”

  The gathering in the cave suddenly came to life with cries of “No, no, no!” Many of them stood in their places and raised their fists in the air, screaming. Jack looked at Oscar, who was breathing deeply, trying to get his head clear.

  The brethren in the cave sat down again and Alex Williams nodded his head as though he understood their anger.

  “This is why we decided that we must make our own justice, a real justice, commensurate with the crimes committed.”

  The crowd went berserk. The people leaped to their feet and began to scream like madmen.

  “Yes!”

  “Justice!”

  “We, who created the world we live in, the great modern world of Western civilization, will not go down defeated like the generations before us. We will not submit and we shall not be moved!”

  The audience screamed again and Jack felt a deep fear in his soul. How in the hell would they ever stop this and live to tell about it?

  Williams continued.

  “First, we shall have the readings of the crimes. I bring to your attention the case of Philip and Dee Dee Holden, owners of the Evergreen Retirement Community in Columbus, Ohio.”

  Williams looked up at Dee Dee and Phil, each on their own cross, dripping blood. They looked down at him with eyes so filled with fear that they almost seemed comical.

  But Williams didn't laugh or show any pity whatsoever.

  “This supposed four-star retirement community houses over four thousand people. Their brochures and DVDs, their radio and TV spots, would have you believe that their community is a paradise for people over sixty-five.”

  Alex Williams picked up a brochure and waved it at the audience.

  “Let me read a little of this to you. ‘Evergreen is a virtual paradise for the elderly. The golf course, designed by Arnold Palmer, makes every day a great one for novices and old pros alike.’ Interesting, when you consider twenty-three people were bitten by rats on the greens just last year.”

  The audience roared with disdainful laughter while Phil and Dee Dee groaned in agony.

  Alex Williams's words continued to torture Phil. He had to hang there and listen as Williams read about the old people who had had strokes in the cafeteria and been left there to drool and spasm out on the floor until they expired. Why? Because Phil hadn't paid the money he owed to the insurance companies that indemnified the hospitals, so there was no emergency service at Evergreen. Phil twitched in agony as he heard case after case of neglect, of old people being left out in the snow to freeze, of a grandmother being robbed at gunpoint by her own nurse, and of the case of a feeble old minister who had objected to his treatment and was therefore injected with the wrong medicine and died of shock before the ambulance arrived.

  Phil squirmed in guilt and pain. There were so many crimes documented that he had forgotten most of them. A woman who had been raped by an attendant, another woman who had been shaken down to get cable service and, when she refused to pay, had been thrown out of an upstairs window. On and on they went.

  Of course, Phil did recall some of them. Why? Because he had paid for them to go away. Had paid so many people he scarcely thought it fair to bring them all up again now. He'd paid inspectors from welfare, from Medicare, lawyers hired by people who had barely survived the impossibly harsh treatment they had received from the jerks he'd hired. He had paid cops, doctors, teachers, and the sons and daughters of those who had been injured and killed at Evergreen.

  He had paid them and made most of them go away!

  He was great with such negotiations. He had a real knack for it. And the ones he couldn't handle Dee Dee had taken care of, playing the sweet and innocent wife, opening her heart to people who had suddenly lost their mothers because they had accidentally fallen from a cheapo balcony that had collapsed.

  Dee Dee had the human touch, one of the things he loved her for.

  But look where all his talents had gotten him.

  Strung up on a cross, with nails in his hands and feet.

  And he hadn't even been convicted yet!

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Oscar slumped against Jack. Jack turned and looked down the row at the true believers who were watching him.

  “Osc, what's up?”

  “I'm going to be okay,” Oscar said. “Feeling better. Just gotta get my balance. Another few seconds, amigo.”

  “Good. But if we just run up there with our guns out, these fucking fanatics will mob us.”

  “We need a distraction of some kind, ese.”

  In front of them, though a little off to the side, the carpenters were repairing the broken cross. Jennifer Wu looked at her sister, who turned away in shame. Fucking Michelle, Jennifer thought. That crazy, greedy bitch. Jennifer looked at the cross and the big, ugly nails and wished they had just killed her when they were caught. If only Jack and his partner were here to save them. Where the hell were those guys?

  Back at the pulpit, Alex Williams was coming to the end of his list of the terrible crimes committed by Johnny Z.

  “And, finally, he killed two kindly old grandmothers in Fountain Valley, California, just last month. Killed them and took their antique butter churns, which he pawned in Desert Palms. This brings to the end the known crimes of Johnny Zaprado.” There was a cry of fury from the faithful.

  Jack assumed that now that the list of charges had finally been read the trial would begin. Who knew how long that might last?

  Oscar looked pale and wasted.

  Alex Williams spoke again.

/>   “You have all heard the documented charges against Phil and Dee Dee. How do you vote? Innocent or guilty?”

  “Guilty!” the entire congregation screamed.

  “Guilty it is,” said Alex Williams. “And Johnny Zaprado. How do you vote?”

  “Guilty!” they screamed again.

  “ Fuck him with a hot poker,” someone yelled.

  “The verdict is guilty,” said Alex Williams. “And now we come to the penalty phase of the trial. Johnny Zaprado, the court finds you guilty of murder in the first degree, assault in the first degree, burglary in the first degree, and other crimes too numerous to mention. You are guilty as charged.”

  There was a roar of approval from the crowd.

  Williams looked up at Johnny Z, dripping blood from his hands and feet. Johnny's eyes were wide open in panic mode, and he tried to talk through the gag stuck in his mouth.

  His words came out a muffled mess, and sounded like, “Waittt . . . gribmeahhh a chgabgagaga . . .”

  Williams smiled at him and turned to his audience.

  “Doesn't sound too intelligent, does he?”

  In unison the masked audience screamed back at Alex.

  “Noooooo!”

  Williams looked up at the bleeding Johnny.

  “You know what he sounds like?”

  “Whaaaaaat?” they all screamed.

  “Like a stroke victim. He sounds just like the senior citizens he used to victimize, right?”

  “Yesssssss,” they screamed, and this was followed by much laughter and general good fellowship. A few of the people on either side of Jack and Oscar pounded one another on the back.

  Jack looked at Oscar and whispered.

  “It's a ritual, man. They're working from a script.”

  “Yeah, bro. They've done this before.”

  Up on the podium Alex Williams looked to the corner of the cave.

  “Will you please bring out the ladder?”

  From a darkened corner of the cave two white-masked men carried out a stepladder, which they quickly set up just beneath Johnny Zaprado's cross. They stayed on the stage looking intently at their leader.

  Alex smiled and spoke to the audience.

  “Shall I ascend?” he asked into his lapel mike.

  “Ascend!” they cried.

  Alex quickly climbed the ladder until he was level with Johnny Z. He gave a quick glance to Phil and Dee Dee, whose eyes were bulging out of their heads.

  Then he turned his full attention to Johnny.

  “You have been tried and found guilty of multiple crimes against the aged. You have beaten, maimed, and murdered scores of older people. You have shown no remorse for these crimes. Quite the contrary, you have been quoted by reliable witnesses as being proud of your conquests of people who were older and weaker than yourself. And you have constantly bragged about your ability to outfox the laws. Why? Because you have intimidated all the living witnesses into silence. In short, you are a public menace, and we, the Blue Wolf council, have found you guilty of all the aforementioned charges. Have you anything to say for yourself?”

  Johnny Z began to scream through his gag, “Guv me a changggg.”

  The audience went wild with laughter.

  “I'm sorry,” Alex Williams said. “Would you please say that again? Your diction left a little to be desired.”

  “Ah thed . . . gimme a chance to . . .”

  But the screams of laughter from the audience drowned him out.

  “Here, let me help you,” Alex said. “Open your mouth, please.”

  The defendant did so.

  Williams pulled out the gag, and everyone could see the relief on Johnny's reddened face.

  “Is that better?”

  “Yes . . . yes . . .”

  “Now that we've made it easier for you to express yourself, perhaps you'd like to tell us why we should spare your life.”

  Johnny looked at him and nodded his head.

  “You have no right. None of you. I have never been convicted of any these crimes.”

  There was a great mumbling of dissent among the group. But Alex waved them quiet.

  “Forget that argument,” he said to Johnny Z. “This tribunal has already found you guilty. Let me help you in your own defense. If you can tell us what you might do with the rest of your life to atone for the crimes you committed against the elderly, perhaps we might see fit to allow you to live.”

  Johnny Z looked vastly confused.

  “Atone?” he asked, in what was close to a whisper.

  “Yes,” Alex said. “You do know the meaning of the word?”

  A huge sigh mixed with laughter rippled through the audience.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said. “You want to know what I can do to make up for the stuff you say I did.”

  “Wrong!” Alex screamed.

  “You still haven't taken responsibility for your actions. If you don't own your actions, how can we believe you'd ever really atone?”

  The audience mumbled in agreement.

  “Okay,” Johnny said. “I'm sorry. I am. Really. Can I tell you something?”

  “Please. Be my guest,” Alex said.

  “You see, when I was a kid, my dad was always out drunk, hustling people, and I was, like, a really sickly kid, and I cried all the time, and wet my bed and stuff, see?”

  “Yes?”

  “And so ... so my mom used to try to sleep but she couldn't, you know, what with me bawling all the time. So she found a way to put me to sleep. She really did this. She would hear me screaming and she tried to walk me around and all but I still didn't sleep. So she walked over to my bed and she got this idea. She noticed that when I was bad—you know, threw my food and stuff—she noticed that when she spanked me I would scream really loud for a few minutes but then I'd fall fast asleep. So she began to beat me to sleep. I'm not kidding. She used to beat me until my baby ass bled into the mattress but when I reached the right pitch of hysteria I would be just like a light switch. Flick! I instantly fell asleep.”

  Johnny Z began to cry. The tears rolled down his face as he thought of his savage mistreatment at the hands of his mother.

  Jack looked around at the audience. Even they seemed moved by his confession. There was a general sorrowful tone to their mumblings.

  And this encouraged Johnny Z.

  “You see how it was?” he said. “I began to hate all older people. And so I began to think that whatever I did to them was okay ‘cause it was payback for what my mom had done to me.”

  “I see,” Alex said. Even he was touched by the story.

  “And so, like, I could atone by helping older people for the rest of my life,” Johnny said. “I could start a school . . . yeah, a school that was for young criminals just like me and I could teach them to, ah, venerate their elders, ya know? I really could. I could use all the money I got, the money I ripped off from old folks to help old folks. I mean senior citizens. You see what I mean?”

  The crowd seemed to mumble as one in assent.

  “I mean who would be better at this kind of reeducation than me?”

  There was a near reverent silence.

  It was almost as though the crowd had been swayed by Johnny's sad tale.

  Then Alex Williams spoke.

  “That's very interesting, and even moving, Johnny. Really. I was personally touched, as we all were. But think of it, John. So you were spanked to sleep? Far worse things were done to people. Girls were molested by their fathers, kids were cut up by their mothers. A million transgressions far worse than yours were done to children and yet they managed to become useful members of society. But not you, Johnny! Not you!”

  Johnny looked terrified.

  “No, but wait. That was only the beginning.”

  But as he opened his mouth to list more of the terrible things his parents had done to him, Alex Williams stuffed the rag back into his mouth.

  “Bullshit,” he said. “You're a con, Johnny. Pure and simple. A man born with the criminal
gene, a man no amount of schooling or counseling can help. You are condemned, Johnny. But don't worry. In death you will do good as you never did in life. We'll use your arms to help older people who need arms. We'll use your legs so that wiser seniors can walk. We shall harvest your eyeballs, your ass, and your cock. No part of you, so worthless in life, will be worthless in death. You will achieve a greatness and a generosity of spirit in death that you never evidenced in life. You shall be redeemed.”

  The entire congregation roared their approval.

  Alex Williams reached down to one of his robed and masked assistants. The man handed him a portable chain saw, small but efficient. Alex nodded as if to thank him. Then, chain saw in his right hand, he raised both his arms like a choir leader.

  “And now let us sing. Let's sing a song that will take us all back to those days of innocence when we were young. And remember, as we sing, thanks to this man here and others like him, we shall all be young again!”

  “A sing-along?” Jack said, unzipping his cloak a little and feeling inside for the revolver and the makeshift flamethrower. “What's next, s'mores?”

  Then, to Jack and Oscar's amazement, all the masked lunatics in the audience began singing an old camp tune that Jack hadn't heard since he was twelve years old.

  “Oh, you can't get to heaven. Oh, you can't get to heaven. In Johnny's car. In Johnny's car. ‘Cause the gosh darn thing. ‘Cause the gosh darn thing. Won't go that far. Won't go that far.”

  Oscar looked at Jack and shook his head.

  “The glee club from hell, baby.”

  The masked madmen were all shaking and jiving now, like goofy teenagers around a communal campfire.

  And their insane leader was leading them in song by waving the chain saw in time to the music like a camp counselor.

  “Oh, you can't get to heaven on Johnny's skates, ‘cause they'll roll right by them pearly gates. I ain't gonna grieve my Lord no more.”

  As they sang the lunatic chorus, Jack whispered to Oscar, “When they finish singing, you know what's gonna happen.”

  Oscar nodded, and swept his index finger across his own throat.