Tyrannia

by Alan Deniro

  The doorknob to the bathroom is brass and shining so hard it’s almost glowing. I try it. I can’t bring her back, I know that. It’s not her house, it’s a girl’s house, but that doesn’t mean I feel bad at all for finding a fire extinguisher in my hands and aiming it at ***’s face. He’s reaching down toward the girl’s exposed shoulder, he’s got her pinned to the toilet seat and her shirt almost off. It’s good that he doesn’t notice me before I blast his face with the cold jet, because I wouldn’t want him hurting me or anything. His elbow accidentally flushes the toilet. He yells and tries to push himself backward, but he’s really falling forward. As if he’s really in the middle of a frenetic dance, moving to the guitar solo that closes out ______, because his eyes are closed and his mouth is open and his arms are going all over the place. So maybe other things can be like dancing after all. I keep squeezing.

  Anyway, I don’t know if there’s much else to talk about. The girl runs out of the bathroom and while I’m hitting *** with the fire extinguisher I tell him not to ever, ever fuck with mom again. That she’s a good person who doesn’t deserve people who’ll spend all their time figuring out what they can take from her. Then there’s a hand on my arm. The girl’s. She looks concerned. How can she know that all we wanted was a place to dance and forget who we are for a few minutes?

  Seeing her face, the magnolia blood on her lip, reminds me when my mom took me to a basketball game. We were high up in the bleachers with the popcorn at our feet and the pigeons above us in the rafters. I heard the downpour rapping on the roof, wanting in. While the game droned on, I told my mom that I’d learned how to breakdance in a dream. I told her that it was very easy and that an angel in the dream told me that I had a natural body for it, that my spine was like a Slinky. Halftime started, and the Laker Girls started their routine. She turned away, and started crying, holding her palm to her face as if she was wearing a mask she wanted to tear off. Mom then said, and I will never forget this, that I was a good son, a beautiful son with many gifts, and no matter what happened she would love me until there was nothing left to give, or until the end of time, whichever came first.

  The girl takes her hand off my shoulder and tells me that me and my friends (except ***, of course) should go, before her parents get back. Before she calls the police. I have no doubt she will. I tell her it’s a nice house she has, and lots of children in faraway places would love to live in a house like this, and would give anything for this. She smiles. Something else has taken the dancing’s place. A kind of emptiness, like the air’s been knocked out of me.

  I’m not scared, though. * and **, on the other hand, are shaking wrecks. Back downstairs, they’re looking at me to lead them somewhere, to get them out of this mess and into a more manageable mess. I guess that’s the definition of taking care of people. I don’t know if I’m up to it. After what has happened in this house with *** and my mother, I don’t know if I can dance again, or listen to Steely Dan again. But why should I tremble? As if this has never happened to anyone else in the history of the world? Like the old saying goes, you can check out any time you like, but you can’t go home again.

  Highly Responsive to Prayers

  It’s summer, but the air conditioning in the SuperCar is cold enough to kill tropical birds. I keep thinking of toucans and birds of paradise thrown into a meat locker. Not that those birds exist anymore. All the shoppers inside the SuperCar are wearing boxer briefs implanted with glowing crucifixes. They navigate between giant crankshafts. I’m wearing old-fashioned jeans and a sweater. My body’s always been colder than other people’s, like a reptile among mammals. I’m supposed to be meeting Fitch for lunch in the SuperCar supercafé, but he’s nowhere to be found and his cell is dead. It’s not necessarily a bad sign, but a weird one. I’m only using Fitch to get with his older sister, Abercrombie, who I’ve only met once. Fitch and I have been friends for about a year and I don’t know him very well. But he’s fine. We met at a prayer knot, both wanting some easy fundie action, not that we got any.

  Abercrombie is quite simply the most beautiful girl in the entire Community. She’s not at all like everyone else.

  I walk past the new line of Hummer lawnmowers toward the supercafé. The lawnmowers are also designed to kill intruders. Near the entrance of the café is a banner that reads HOW WOULD JESUS FINANCE? NO INTEREST UNTIL 2029! The booths are made out of open-faced NASCAR cars, vintage nineties, and inside those cars, the menus are set inside these toy cars on the table. And naturally, the entire store is the inside of a gargantuan stock car—you enter through the headlights and the emergency exit is the exhaust. It’s like a Russian doll or something. I took a year of Russian over the Internet, before the Community converted it—so to speak—to the Intranet. The old man behind the counter in the café doesn’t look like he wants to be there. But maybe this is the only employment he could get. He might not even be from the Community. I order something quick because I don’t want to make more eye contact with him than necessary. I also don’t want to look at his sad pit crew uniform. I take my cocoabubble tea out of the café and wander a bit more.

  So I walk for about fifteen minutes, watching the shoppers try to priceline a better deal for power grills and lawn phosphates, crates of frozen tamales, Persian rugs and platinum woks. Everything is big. In the back of the store is THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN CENTER, where you can order an entire house, with all the furnishings you would want (decided for you, of course). Everyone is older than me, pretty much, and wear these rings connected to their headsets with gossamer spiderwebs. They’re trying not to look older than me. My Dad and I used to come here all the time, and he would have fit right in, before he changed.

  I’m wondering whether Fitch has completely ditched me or not, when who do I see walking toward me but Abercrombie. She doesn’t really belong here but I think that’s why I love her. She’s wearing this dress made out of an old Teflon sleeping bag, and sandals, and her eyes are as big as electrode pads. She went to real college, somewhere in the Kansan-Aleutian archipelago—not a Bible academy like I went to. She studied history, or something liberal like that. But then she had a breakdown—Fitch never told me why—and her grades tanked and she got deported back to the Community. Fitch said she was pretty crazy, but I’ve always wanted to help her out of her shell, if I got the chance.

  Here is my chance, then.

  Many shoppers stare at her, but I don’t care. She’s old enough, theoretically, to be my mother. Her parents had Fitch in their fifties.

  When she sees me, she doesn’t smile. She’s been crying.

  “Are you Fitch’s friend Swatch?”

  “Yeah. You’re his sister.” As if I didn’t know. “Um, do you know where Fitch is?”

  She grabs my elbow and she’s very strong. “I have some horrible news, Swatch—it’s just . . . I needed to get away from the family. I knew he was meeting you, so . . .”

  “Do you want to sit down and eat?” I say.

  She looks around, as if noticing for the first time that she’s in a SuperCar. “You’re in a SuperCar,” I want to tell her while shaking her.

  “Fitch is in the hospital.”

  “What?”

  “A family ran over him. They were driving their house on the beach and they didn’t see him sunbathing, and the house just pummeled him.”

  “Shit. Just like the Wicked Witch.” How could I have said anything more asinine!

  She covered her face in her hands.

  “Okay,” I say, taking her shoulder. It’s cold. I want so much more. “So let’s not eat, then?” I blurt out. Ahh!

  “Where? Where could we possibly go?”

  She doesn’t want to be near the hospital, that much is clear. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I don’t know. Someplace else in the Community, at least. Come on. Maybe we can go shooting.” We move to the front door and I retrieve my gun from the coat
check. The gun girl—she’s about thirteen—looks at me kind of funny since I haven’t bought anything. They always want you to buy something, as if browsing is obscene. But maybe she’s just tired.

  We step into the bright sunlight. To the right is the Pretzel Empire—an actual nation-state with its own post office and everything—and to the left is a mammoth, squat building, twice as large as the SuperCar, that used to be a haircare salon. But now it’s empty. Above the dome it’s starting to cloud up with green thunderheads. “So . . . you sure you don’t want to be with Fitch?” I say, wanting to know that we comprehend each other, that I am about to ditch him as well.

  “Not right now,” she says. “It seems kind of pointless, you know? He can’t speak.” She points to the sky, above the dome. “Look. Geese. A whole flock of them.”

  I see a few surveillance drones in a flock. Bird-like, but definitely not birds. I’ve never seen a goose except in pictures. But I nod anyway. I don’t want to upset her. In fact, I want to kiss her extremely badly. And then I want to know how she feels.

  “So where—” I begin again.

  “Is that a knot?” she says, pointing to the center of the parking lot. It sure is. She starts running toward it. I had no idea she would teeter to hardcore prayer. I hear the mumbles of prayer come louder and louder as I chase her.

  “Hang on . . . you don’t want to—” I reach her as she reaches the edge of the knot. Maybe I’m a little embarrassed that Fitch and I used to always come to the knot to cop feels. Not that we ever got that far. The knot’s guardian angel—dressed in these authentic Aramaic robes with a Tommy patch near the collar—always chased us off, thrusting his Gideon toward us, speaking in tongues. What Fitch and I did, it seems like something kids would do. It seems like a long time ago, but in some ways I still feel like a kid even though I’m fifteen.

  Abercrombie edges closer to the knot and the guardian angel, who’s doing his usual thing: clenching his fists, opening and closing his eyes rapidly, and looking sincere. The knot is shaped like a giant octopus, except the tentacles are just stubs. And there’s a couple dozen tentacles. Anyway, you place your head into one of these stubs, and like that, you enter the Land of Light. About ten years ago, a group of churches with a big federal grant started developing these. I even remember how in grade school we had a naming contest for some of these areas in the Land of Light. All of the schools came up with suggestions, and they even made a kids show about it on PBS.

  I’ve never done it. Like I said, it tends to mess with your mind once you’re inside. They want you to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior really, really bad and to pray all the time. And that’s okay, in a way—after all, Jesus is my personal savior too. I’m saved, since I’m in the Community. But I guess there are different levels of being saved. And I don’t want to be too saved, if that makes sense, like what happened with Dad.

  Abercrombie starts crying again. The guardian angel gives her a bearhug. She nods as he whispers instructions into her ear, and they touch pinkies to transfer the funds. I wish it’s me hugging and consoling her.

  She shuffles to me. “So, Swatch . . .” She trails off.

  “What the fuck are you thinking?” I ask her. I’m yelling but can’t help it.

  The angel hovers, steps a bit closer.

  “You don’t have to stay for me,” she says. “Really. I mean, we don’t even know each other, right?”

  I’m paralyzed. She moves toward the nearest stub, slides her head inside, and with a slick pop most of her head is gone. Her body shudders and goes limp, and the guardian angel says a little prayer over her. Then he moves toward me, switching easily from pastor to bouncer mode. He’s scowling. He thinks I’m a heathen. He must have good heathen radar.

  “You, sinner,” he barks out. “Are you ready to live before you die? To rise up after you die? Or are you going to continue your abject slide into hellfire?”

  I consider holding him up, holding the entire knot hostage until Abercrombie is free, but I see the length of a pulse taser against his arm. A knife hilt is tucked into his XtremeSkechers. And those are the weapons I can see.

  “No thanks!” I say, trying to remain calm. “I’m just going to wait over here. Until my friend’s done.”

  “Your friend is not your friend,” he says. “She’s highly responsive to prayers. She—”

  “Have a nice day!” I wave and walk back to the storefront. I still have a clear sightline to Abercrombie’s body, which shimmers in the ozone heat. I lean against a bicycle rack. No one would ever bicycle here; it’s just an antique. The SuperCar’s grille gives little shade. Realistic exhaust fumes are pumped into the air around the vestibule. It helps prevent loitering, but I guess also that people have a nostalgia for carbon monoxide. I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. A tiny glider swoops over the store’s hood; the diamond wingtips blind me. The glider is very quiet and must be looking for intruders to the Community, those who hacked their way past the residency and credit check. Kids from Frogtown or the old bank highrises. I want to think the refugees are just like me.

  Despite everything that I’ve been taught.

  “Hey.” A large hand clamps down on my shoulder. It’s the old-man attendant from the supercafé. Only, instead of a pit uniform, he’s wearing full riot gear. “What are you doing? Why are you loitering?” He doesn’t look particularly upset at me. He’s bored and has protocol to follow.

  “I’m waiting for my friend.” I point at the prayer knot. The guardian angel is crying, reading the prophet Amos from his Gideon. For a second I really believe he wants to help people. “Aren’t you supposed to be processing vegetables or something?”

  He snorts. “They have us double shifted,” he says in a low voice. The low voice is smart. There are spyroaches everywhere, small as thumbs and just as dirty. “Fuckers, I don’t even have a piss break except every four hours. Yuen just went up and quit and—” His back straightens. Maybe he got a call from a superior to deal with me. “Anyway, you can’t stay here on the grounds.”

  “But my friend—”

  “What your friend’s doing could take a long time.”

  I bite my lip. “How long?”

  “All night. And you don’t have all night. Listen,” and his voice drops again, as if down a mineshaft. “I wouldn’t expect the knotters to let her up for air for a while. But look—” He points to the arched windows of the café. “It’s off-peak, so you should be able to find a window table pretty easily. If you buy something, you’re not doing anything illegal.”

  I check my gun in again—the gun girl doesn’t notice me and I’m a little hurt—and seat myself near the window. The place is casual dining, everyone is too nice for words. It’s a decent sightline to Abercrombie. I’m all about sightlines. The security guard/prep cook is right. Abercrombie doesn’t come up for air. I spend the hours eating and drinking, whatever they have to offer—country-fried shitake, mostly. It’s starting to get dark, the dome reflecting ghostly shadows onto the asphalt. The streetlamps flicker on. I wonder if Abercrombie’s starting to get hungry, whether I could give her any food or drink.

  I start to doze, and dream my own version of the Land of Light. Well, it’s more like a half a dream, since I know I’m dreaming. Does that count? It’s almost pitch black in my Land of Light, and other people run past with flashlights in their hands, laughing. I have no flashlight. There’s an ocean nearby, or maybe a lake, because I hear waves and birds squawking. I hear a whispering voice next to my ear, and I wonder if it’s Jesus. Then I startle awake, and I see outside that a sparkling white crusader van has pulled up next to the knot. I jump up. The dining room is full, and nearly everyone looks at me.

  “Hey!” I yell. I start running toward the door. The old man looks up from the pit crew, in the middle of overturning a slab of hickory ribs. I know he’s contemplating changing back into
his riot gear, but then figures it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

  Outside the door, sprinting toward the van, I see that the guardian angel moves to Abercrombie. She’s still in the knot. He takes hold of her elbow. He closes his eyes and starts praying again. Then he starts up with the crying again. Crying is a lot like speaking in tongues, it seems like. People in white suits—containment suits, it seems like—move out of the van and start plucking people from the knot. They’re checking some kind of meter next to each person that I hadn’t noticed before. Abercrombie’s meter has a gold glow. It would have been impossible to see in daytime.

  Stupid stupid me. I’d heard about this happening—choosing a few who respond really well to the knot and taking them away for “further ministerial training.”

  Then the thought crosses my mind: maybe Abercrombie wanted to come to the knot in the first place. But, I don’t know, felt some obligation to see me first and tell me about Fitch because I’m his friend.

  I can’t bear that thought, so I push it away.

  “Leave her alone!” I shout. I’m shrill, I know this. The guardian angel smiles at me, as if to say, what do you think about this? What would you give to be me? Then he turns away and motions to a driver of one of the vans. The van pulls up.