Soon his wish was granted, and Zack found himself in a red-rock cell with Father Kai and Lucky. A torch down the hall flicked haphazard shards of orange light into the little cell, and Zack suddenly remembered how much he hated small places. Lilly sat alone in the cell across from them, just as Kerberus had promised.
Once the soldiers left, they discussed their situation.
“I heard them talking during the march,” Lilly said. “They will throw us to the dogs over the course of a two-day event. They’re charging admission; there will be thousands of spectators. They will take the four of us on the second day, and give us a chance to confess our crimes and convert to Sorkanity in front of the entire city.”
“Well then, our mission is clear,” Father Kai said.
“Yes,” said Lilly, “we must go out there and refuse to confess. We must stay with the villagers as long as we possibly can. Only when the dogs’ teeth have actually penetrated our skin can we leave.”
“No, no, there must be some other way,” Zack said. “Maybe we can trick the guards or tunnel out of our cells.”
“Zack,” Lilly said, “this isn’t a cartoon. This is real.”
“But we can’t just give up!” Zack said, shaking the rusty iron bars in front of him.
Lucky joined in, but they were steadfast.
“Lucky,” Zack said, dropping to the ground with exhaustion, “did you see anything that might help when we came in?”
“No, nothing.”
Zack looked down the hallway. “Maybe we can bribe the guards,” he said.
“With what?” Lilly asked.
“I don’t know…”
This was an unusual position for Zack and Lilly. In the complex spheres of modern business and law, there was always some other option, some new strategy… some final appeal. But this iron age prison was very simple.
“There must be other Makains in the city,” Zack said. “The volunteers had plans to open churches all across Limbo, and that was weeks ago.”
“If there are, then there are,” Father Kai said. “If not, then we will meet the dogs in the Arena. There is nothing we can do now to change that. All that is left is to remain calm and meet our destiny with peace in our hearts.”
“One of us could go back to Earth,” Zack bargained, “you know, and then reappear in the city.”
“Zack,” Lilly said, “you know God would never allow that. That’s not like expanding the fountain room.”
“Hmmm…” Zack thought out loud, “what did Kerberus say? Feign weakness and offer an opportunity to exploit it? I know. We can pretend that we’re sick or something. Then the soldiers will have to open the cell.”
“Zack, they’re not stupid,” Lilly said.
“Well what if we pretend we’re going to confess? We could say that we’ll do it if they release the other Makains first, and then just not confess. Wait no – scratch that. If they’re willing to release the other Makains, we could just confess plain and simple.”
“Zack,” Lucky said, “it wouldn’t work. They hold all the cards here. They can let the other Makains go, have us confess, and then hunt them down in the desert the next day.”
“Well what about the law?” Zack asked. “Maybe there’s some kind of Sorkian law that we could learn about, with some loophole that Lilly could find?”
Lilly smirked. “That’s idiotic,” she said.
“But –”
“Zack, my legal skills are just as useless here as they are in Heaven,” she said, prompting a long minute of silence.
“Look Lucky,” Zack said, when Lilly’s words had finally left the air, “you don’t have to go any further with us. You don’t owe me anything. You’ve done way more than anyone could’ve possibly asked, and we don’t need four Church leaders up there refusing to confess. Three is fine.”
“No Zack, I’m coming. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I’m still an animal at heart, and I want action. So far, the only regret that I have in this entire thing is that we gave up at the village without a fight.”
“Ok buddy, ok.”
Then there was a sound.
“What’s that?” Lilly asked.
“Footsteps,” said Lucky. “Heavy ones.”
“Ah,” said Father Kai, “the Angel of Peyote returns.”
“What’s that, a joke?” Kerberus said, rounding the corner.
“Now is as good a time as any,” Father Kai replied.
“Oh fatalistic one,” Kerberus said, as his guards appeared behind him, “soon will be just another fatality… lying in a coyote’s belly! Let’s see you philosophize your way out of that one!”
The guards laughed.
Then Kerberus approached Lilly’s cell, leered in, and gently ran the back of his hand up and down the bars. “And then there’s you kitten.”
Zack got angry, but then he got an idea. “You win Kerberus,” he said. “I’m going to confess, and I don’t care what you do to my wife.”
“No?” Kerberus asked, turning.
“We fell out of love a long time ago, and I just want to live for myself. You can kill the other prisoners too. Just spare me.”
Lilly rolled her eyes behind Kerberus’s back, making it clear that she had no faith whatsoever in this unrehearsed scheme.
“Hmmm,” Kerberus said, “let you live? Is there anything in it for me? Besides the confession?”
“Sure. I’ll join your army. I’ll help you in the peyote trade or Sorkanity – whatever you want. I’m pretty educated myself. I can be useful.”
“Well, it is tempting,” Kerberus said. “You’ve really impressed me so far with your usefulness, but I’m going to have to decline your offer.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a Saturn’s day.”
“Huh?”
“And because you have brown hair.”
Lilly rolled her eyes again, and she and Kerberus waited for Zack to get it.
“Oh dear!” Kerberus said, when Zack’s face finally sank. “So that was your feigned weakness and offer to exploit it? My, I do hope in your next life that you come back as something with a brain, or at the very least, a spine.”
The guards laughed again.
Then Kerberus led them to the end of the row, and Zack and the others heard the rusty creak of a lone cell door opening, followed by a woman’s cry. It was Kosos.
“No! No! I helped! I named the Makains!”
“Indeed,” Kerberus said, “and now you shall receive the most glorious and handsome reward of all… me!”
The men carried her away, and she writhed, wriggled, and squirmed like a fish being reeled to shore.
“Lilly,” Zack said, when there was a safe distance between them and Kosos’s muffled sobs, “I want you to leave before he comes for you.”
“Zack, I need to go up there with you. I can’t abandon the villagers now.”
“Lilly, you can’t, it’s too much. The price is too great, and the benefit is too small. You have to leave.”
“Zack, you can’t tell me what to do.”
“Lilly, I will never let it happen. I’ll go back to God. I’ll break up with you.”
“Go ahead.”
After another sleep-barren night, morning arrived with the sounds of an entire city aglow. The Sorkians were filtering into the Arena overhead, and their laughter and song rained down on the prisoners like the ten plagues. For those above, this was a holiday, and the Makains’ thoughts and feelings were no more important to them than the turkey’s had been to Zack and Lilly on American Thanksgiving.
The noise grew louder and louder, and weighed heavier and heavier on the lobsters in the tank, until at last the guards came for the day’s first og. Soundless as the Reaper that now employed them, they glided to the end of the hall, congregated a small group of men, women, and children, and led them back toward the stairs, allowing each of them to stop along the way at the Church leaders’ cells to take one last look at the shepherds that had led them so far astray.
“Curse you all!” Santanodis screamed, when it was his turn.
“Santanodis,” Zack said, “be brave. There’s a whole ‘nuther world –”
“No! No more stories! At least have the decency not to lie to me at my funeral!”
“But I’m not lying.”
“Stop! All I want is to hear you say it – just once. Say it just once before I die. Makaism is a lie. The fountain was an illusion! You have never met God! Say it!”
“I can’t.”
“Roarglvuk! You took everything from me! All but for a lie! A dirty, corrupt, murderous lie! Roarglvuk! Curse you all to hell! To hell!!”
A minute later, they were gone, and the crowd was chanting. “Hrash og! Hrash og! Hrash og!” Then silence. Then a gaggle of “ohhhhhhhs!” Then a blood-curdling scream. Then cheers.
This went on for some time. Then there was a lot of clapping. Then the noise dissipated. Intermission?
The guards came back an hour or two later – it was impossible to know which – and this time, Zack, Lilly, Father Kai, and Lucky were forced to watch Klatu walk past them.
“How could you lead me to this end?” He was crying.
“Klatu –” Zack started.
“Don’t! I won’t hear any more of it. All I wanted was to provide for my family. All I wanted was to sell a little more cacti. And this is the price I pay for putting my faith in you? Damn you! Damn Makaio! DAMN GOD!!!!”
“Klatu!”
But he was already gone, and the crowd was already tuning up. “Hrash og! Hrash og! Hrash og!”
Zack jumped up and shook the bars. Lilly and Lucky did the same, but nothing happened. Then Zack looked at the ceiling, walls, and floor; he was clutching at straws. How could it end like this? How could Klatu die without them getting one last chance to do something?
Zack looked down the hallway. Had anyone gotten out? Were there other volunteers from Heaven in the city? Would they come flooding the Arena and the prison at the last minute? Would little Santar suddenly and miraculously appear with some crazy last minute plan?
No. This was not a movie or a videogame, it was real. Soon Klatu would be dead, and Zack and Lilly would be responsible not only for his painful end, but also for widowing Tarta and depriving Klatan of a father.
They waited.
“Hrash og! Hrash og! Hrash og!”
Then silence.
Then the “ohhhhhhhs,” “ahhhhhhhs,” screams, cheers, jeers, hoots, hollers, and claps returned, and the four Church leaders knew that they had more blood on their hands.
None of them spoke for the rest of the day. Then, when night fell, Zack pled his case again.
“Lilly, when he comes for you, leave.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do Zack.”
“Lilly, you’re not going to take a rape for Makaism. That’s completely absurd. After the Arena, we’ll come back down. We’ll fight again another day. Father Kai, Lucky, and myself will refuse to confess. That’s enough. You’re not going to let Kerberus have his way… you’re not going to let him win!”
“Zack, I don’t care about Kerberus winning. He’s a dumb animal, don’t you realize that?”
“No, he’s actually pretty smart.” Zack hesitated. “In the desert,” he fished, “he played this joke on me…”
“I know,” Lilly said irritably. “I wasn’t awake for it, but I heard about it the next day.”
“Yeah, well the soldier was so convincing –”
“Zack I don’t care. I would never judge you for something like that. And I know Kerberus is smart… maybe smarter than anyone in this room. But it’s just IQ-wise, not morally. Kerberus lived his entire life in the wild and no one ever taught him how to think like a human. He doesn’t make moral decisions any more than his coyote does; he never had the chance.”
“Smarter than anyone in this room? What do you like him or something now? Are you going to enjoy this?”
“Fuck you Zack.”
“No Lilly, this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of on Heaven, Earth, or Limbo.”
“Zack, don’t you get what I’m saying? Kerberus isn’t evil. The evil ones are the people back on Earth who knew the difference between right and wrong. The people who had a chance to help others and a meaningful choice but who spent their lives just getting theirs: work, TV, food, shopping… work, TV –”
“What the hell does that have to do with Kerberus coming to rape you!!!”
“Everything! Listen Zack, I don’t want to be like those people. I don’t want to have to say that when it came time for me to make a sacrifice, to do something really hard, that I turned away.”
“Lilly, this is crazy. Absolutely crazy. I’m not going to tell you what to do. But for the love of God, please think about this rationally and come to your senses.”
They waited in silence in the dim torchlight. The hours passed on, and for a little while, Zack hoped that Kerberus would not come. But then, well after the torch had given its last, Zack heard the sound of heavy footsteps. Then, that familiar, rusty creak. However, when Kerberus entered Lilly’s cell, he found nothing but a cold dead body lying there.
“What a pity,” Kerberus said, walking out of the cell and back into the hall. “You do realize of course golligan lover, that she’s the lucky one.”
“Whatever you say General.”
“Haha. Yes, rather. Oh by the way golligan lover, what do you want on her tombstone? Maybe they can write that she died of a broken heart because her husband spent all of his nights laying with the beasts.”
“No,” Zack said, “just have it say this: ‘She put in more than she took out.’ ”
Kerberus stopped, and for a brief moment, was at a loss for words. He looked perplexed, as if there was something he wanted to ask, but just couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Then, finally, came this: “You idiot. She’s not going to get a tombstone.”
“You idiot,” Zack said, “I know.”
Perhaps it was because it was very late, or perhaps it was because Kerberus had bullied Zack enough and truly thought that Zack had just lost his wife, but for whatever reason, Kerberus let this last retort stand without answer and walked down the hall and up the stairs in silence.
Later in the night, as Zack tried to douse the horrific visions crackling in his head – mostly of Klatu in the Arena – a very strange thing happened. Before his eyes, sleepless and staring, Lilly’s lifeless body diffused into a white cloud and floated up and out of her cell into the hallway.
“Lucky, are you seeing this?” Zack whispered.
“Yes, I am.”
“What is it?”
“Maybe it’s her body going back to Heaven?”
“That doesn’t make sense. The soldiers would find an empty cell tomorrow.”
“Wait, look!”
As if in answer, another cloud entered the hallway from the stairs, and as the first cloud passed it on its way up and out of the jail, the second cloud floated into Lilly’s cell, sunk to the ground, and slowly faded away to reveal Lilly’s unconscious body once more. Zack woke Father Kai immediately.
“That’s how we come and go from Limbo?!” he asked in utter disbelief.
“It is,” Father Kai answered.
“But why? I thought God just moved our souls back and forth.”
“Zack, the body is the soul.”
“No, that can’t be!” The thought rocked Zack to the center of his being because it meant that God had the power to destroy him completely, forever, any time he wanted. “The body is just atoms and molecules. We are more than that!”
“Yeah,” Lucky said. “What if our bodies are totally destroyed? Like tomorrow, when the coyotes eat them.”
“God will find them. He’s God.”
“That’s crazy!” Zack said, in his loudest whisper.
“Zack,” Father Kai said, “did you ever see a painting that truly moved you?”
“An analogy? Ok, we’ve got time, I’ll bite. Onc
e in Madrid, I saw one that was truly haunting. It was a Goya, one of his black paintings. It’s named Zeus, or Saturn, something like that. It shows the God, whichever one it was, devouring his son. Both appear in flesh and blood. The father looks scared, angry, alone, pathetic, and powerful, all at the same time, while the son is just a half-eaten body, bleeding where his head and arms used to be.”
“Stunning,” Father Kai said. “I will have to see it for myself when we return to Heaven.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, now that you remember the painting, the passion with which it spoke to you, and the imprint that it left behind, I must ask you – would the painting lose any of its magic if I were to tell you how Goya mixed the paints and what specific brushstrokes he used to create each effect?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Well, then should the soul seem any less magical once you learn that God built it with atoms and molecules?”
The crowd’s energy in the Arena the next morning shocked Zack like the coal plant that Lilly had taken him to on Earth. Having never been much of an athlete, he had no idea until now what it actually felt like to be on a field in front of so many eyes and voices.
“HRASH OG! HRASH OG! HRASH OG!”
The Sorkians were drinking mugs of what was most likely beer of the barley variety and eating what appeared to be roasted golligans on sticks. Kerberus sat in the center of the crowd beneath a black canopy with another important looking man, who must have been the Governor. King Sork would not be there – the capital was too far away, and surely he had other, more important things to do. Slaves in chains fanned Kerberus and the other man and brought them water. Kosos was one of them.
“Do you think there’s anything more we could have done for her?” Zack asked Father Kai. “Was there any chance at all that God would have allowed me to take her back to Earth?”
Father Kai had a ready answer, but before he could furnish it, Zack felt a gentle twisting pain in his head that forced him to look downward; God was giving him a vision.
It was an American kitchen in the 1940s or 50s, and there was a fat man in a stained white undershirt that did not completely reach over his hairy gut, and a skinny woman with curly hair. The man was holding the woman’s arm, and she was trying to get away, but his grip was too strong. He smiled. Then, laughing, he smacked her face, again and again, until it collapsed in tearful shame. Zack opened his eyes and looked up at Kosos. He would never be able to think of her as sexy again.
The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets Page 18