The Kingdom of Heaven

by 19

  Elijah. I’m that bastard Elijah. He was an executioner. He still is. That’s who I’m inside. Elijah.

  I’m not Elijah, I am, I AM

  Spectre slapped him again, and shook him, and he was inside his own skin, lying on Spectre’s couch, soaking fucking wet, feeling like he’d been hit by a truck. He opened his eyes. –Mary.

  –I’m right here, she said, sounding like she’d been crying for weeks. He pushed himself up on his elbows, and saw her sitting on the floor in front of the armchair. Jordan was in the chair, curled up small, and he was holding Mary’s hand. He’d been crying too, apparently.

  –How did I get here?

  –We dragged you to the truck, mostly. You walked for some of it. And you were talking like you’d lost your mind.

  –I did. I did lose my mind, he said.

  He sat up very carefully, gritting his teeth.

  He put his feet on the floor, started to stand up, re-evaluated that idea, and tried again, more slowly this time.

  –Want to tell me what the fuck you were on?

  He shook his head, pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

  –I wasn’t on anything. Where was I? When you found me?

  Spectre didn’t answer, and he uncovered his eyes and looked at him, waiting. –Well?

  –It’s called the Golgotha, Spectre told him. –It’s where they—where Calvary—

  –Yes, he said quickly. He didn’t need to hear any more of that. –I know all about what they do there.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a long-sleeved tie-dyed shirt of Spectre’s and a black velvet skirt of Zillah’s. Nobody was even close to his height, so borrowing pants had been out. He was holding a handful of ice wrapped in a dish towel against his nose. It didn't seem to be broken. He considered fixing it. Something stubborn and hateful inside him wouldn't let him. He wanted a bloody nose. Like a human might have.

  Mary was making him a drink. She brought it to him, and sat down beside him, without looking him in the eyes. He caught her right hand in his, set down his makeshift ice pack. Her palm was wrapped in gauze.

  –What happened? he asked her, twining his fingers with hers, so that she couldn’t pull away.

  –I fell when I was running, she told him, almost whispering. Her eyes were filling with tears again. –I’m sorry I—

  He touched her face, brushed her eyelashes, her eyebrows, with his fingertips.

  –Don’t. It never happened, he whispered, and when she closed her eyes he started to unwrap the gauze from her hand, very gently.

  Her palm was scraped raw, like a road burn, weeping fluid. He hissed through his teeth in sympathy. He looked at her, asking without asking. She still wouldn’t meet his eyes. –Mary, you know…if you would let me…he began, awkwardly.

  –I don't want you to waste it, she said.

  –It's more like love than sugar, Mar. Limitless, he said.

  –Will it hurt? she asked, her voice tiny. She was staring at the tablecloth.

  –No. Not this.

  It was unnecessary. They both knew that. And they both knew why he was going to do it anyway.

  She nodded, once, and squeezed her eyes closed tight, as if she didn’t believe him. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at how young that made her look.

  He cupped her hand in his, with her palm turned up, and put his fingertips just above the worst place, then touched, as lightly as he could. She flinched, and he moved to holding her wrist, and he began it.

  He did it very slowly. He started by knitting closed the capillaries, then closed the deepest layer of skin from the outside edges to the center. She made a small, faint sound, with her lips pressed hard together, and her fingers curled hard, fell open again. She wound her other hand into a fist. He was pulling closed the top layer of skin, smoothing out the tiny textures, and he sent some of it up her arm, just because, and she gasped and tried to pull her hand away, almost a reflex.

  –Don’t, he told her. She stopped resisting, and when he finally stopped her eyes were unfocused and her breathing was strange.

  –Did it hurt? he asked her, drawing circles on the new skin with his fingernail.

  She swallowed, and said, –It felt like…like Heaven happening just under my skin.

  –Not Hell this time?

  She shook her head.

  –You should have seen yourself when I did it before, when you had pneumonia. You were orgasmic.

  She glared at him, blushing, and squeezed his hand hard in a way that was decidedly unfriendly. –I was not!

  –You’re right. I was orgasmic. It was almost the first time I ever had my hands up your shirt.

  She made an infuriated noise, and did her wineglass trick again, dipping her fingers into his drink and flicking rum at him.

  He leaned close to her, watching her face to see if that was all right. She reached up, and put her hands in his hair, and pulled him close, hugged him tight. He kissed the side of her neck, buried his face in her shoulder. He wanted to tell her all of it, wanted to cry, wanted to scream. He only knelt on the floor and wrapped his arms around her, and they were okay again.

  Zillah woke him up, coming in the door at about three in the morning, reeking of drugs. He and Mary were curled up on the fold-out bed –Do you like what you've become? Zillah asked him, whispering across the dark space of the living room

  –Go to Hell, he said, and pulled the quilt over his head.

  (31)

  He was sitting at the dining room table pushing eggs and bacon around on his plate. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make it art. He took a bite, feeling like a zombie. The eggs were probably wonderful, judging by the way Jordan was devouring them. It was like eating styrofoam in butter. He had to struggle to swallow it.

  Soft hands, smelling of lilies, came around his neck from behind, fingertips trailing down his throat. –Can I talk to you? Mary asked him, close to his ear.

  He turned to look at her. She was pale with dark circles around her eyes, and she looked like Death for an instant, terrifying him. He stood up, the chair clattering, and pulled her close and held her until she stopped shaking.

  Like a deer. That's what she looks like–a deer.

  –I love you. I told them all to go home. I'm not going out there again. That's not the life I want, he said.

  He knew it was already too late.

  –I want to live with you and have kids and make love like a couple of teenagers until we're eighty. That's the life I want, he told her, his voice hoarse and flat.

  He hoped he was convincing her. He wasn't convincing himself at all, and the look Zillah gave him made him bare his teeth and think things that made him positive he was no Messiah.

  –I hate sleeping without you with me. I don't ever want to do it again, she said into his shoulder, very close to tears.

  –You won't. I promise. Not ever, he told her.

  No salvation, Zillah mouthed at him. Mary had her face buried in his chest, and she couldn't see either one of them.

  Fuck off, whore, he mouthed back.

  (32)

  He and Mary went home.

  Most of his followers left, and whether they went home or went around as new strange missionaries, he didn't know. He had done all he could. Some of them...maybe twenty...stayed in Calvary, and after a month or so of their polite and pleading letters left on his doorstep, he broke down and spoke with them. Their agreement was simple. He was perfectly willing to be friends, but he would not under any circumstances be any kind of deity or minister. Period.

  Some of them stayed in the little camp, and repeated the few sermons he had given them to anyone who would listen. He ignored them.

  Elijah regaled his flock with tales of the demon-possessed witch and his whore, and they all nodded, hallelujah, and prayed for his soul. Whenever the minister got the idea in his head to get a group together to march out to their house again, there was a sudden lack of volunteers.

  He healed a broken
leg, on a horse this time, because a crying boy knocked on his door at six in the morning and begged him to help. He had never tried to use it on anything other than a person before, and he hadn't been certain it would work. Apparently the power didn't care what kind of animal it worked on, human or otherwise.

  The boy gave him a rabbit's foot in payment. He accepted it gravely. It was old, and loveworn. It was still on his keychain, balding, precious. He loved it. He needed all the luck he could get.

  He would lie in bed at night, beside his beautiful wife, and stare up at the ceiling. Her body was changing, very subtly. Her nipples were darker and more sensitive, and her hipbones didn't poke his quite so badly anymore, and her stomach was rounded, very slightly. She was perfect, and he spent hours kissing her, telling her dreams, telling her jokes, telling her everything.

  At night, he would lie there, and think, Was that it? Am I finished? Is it finished? I have everything I have ever wanted. Please, just let this be my life. Please.

  He knew that it wasn't finished.

  Not at all.

  (33)

  One month later, Mary woke him at dawn, shaking him so hard it was rattling his teeth, and screaming something about Spectre.

  He grabbed her, said her name, and she couldn't stop screaming. He gritted his teeth and slapped her as hard as he could stand to.

  She stopped.

  –Mary, I love you, and I'm so sorry I hit you. Tell me what's happening.

  –It's Spectre, Jordan said from the kitchen. Zillah was standing beside him like a ghost, looking bored. –He's been arrested.

  That just didn't fucking compute. –For what?

  –For prostitution. They're saying the safehouse is a whorehouse, and they want to execute him and sign the house over to the church, Jordan said, crying.

  –Who's saying that?

  –Who do you think? Mary said, still almost screaming. –It's Elijah. He's scared of you and he can't get to you any other way, and I love him and they'll –

  –They're not going to do anything to him, Mar, he told her, and to his horror the result was that stomachache and tongue cramp that meant he’d just lied to her.

  He sat up and started putting on his boots.

  Zillah was standing in front of the doorway, and he waited just a little too long to move out of his way. Beginning of the end, he mouthed.

  –I don't have time for your bullshit, Zillah. Fucking move, he said out loud, surprising the entire room.

  They wouldn't even let him into City Hall, let alone into the jail. Two black-suited guards with guns bearing a suspicious resemblance to Elijah's enforcers told him that unless he wanted to get in by being arrested, he'd better turn the fuck around and go home.

  He considered doing just that, but Mary was standing just across the street, her hair blowing into her face.

  He went back to her, his mind twisting like a nest of snakes. There had to be a way out of this. If there was, he didn't see it.

  –They won't let you in?

  –No. No fucking visitors.

  She made a breaking-glass noise and covered her mouth with her hand.

  –Mar, they won't...I mean, they don't... He hesitated. –Would they really execute him? For that?

  She nodded, her hand pressed against her mouth so hard her knuckles were white.

  He was grasping at straws, now, asking questions he already knew the answers to.

  –A trial?

  Mary shook her head, and managed to say, –Aaron just...decides.

  He looked up into the sky. It was late summer, and everything looked bleached and worn. He thought of Spectre’s ridiculous floppy straw hat, both hands fists he didn’t remember making.

  Aaron decided.

  They found out when a knock slammed into the front door hard enough to shake the house. Mary burst into tears, knowing what it meant. He had opened the door, and one of the lieutenants was standing there. –The execution is in the morning. Eight o'clock, out at the Golgotha. Attendance is mandatory, the man said, and turned, presumably moving on to the next house.

  –Wait. My wife. She's pregnant.

  The man turned back to him, his eyes empty of anything resembling a soul. –So what?

  I'd like to smash your fucking teeth right in. –She can't go to his execution, she's pregnant, and she loves him.

  –Attendance is mandatory, the man said again, sounding like a robot. And he left.

  He closed the door, alone again with his hysterical wife.

  The next morning he was standing in the bathroom, with Mary crying on the bed. She had been crying all night. He was staring at the him in the mirror, thinking, Did you enjoy that? Did you enjoy dragging that pompous bastard through town, kicking him in the ass, breaking his fingers? I hope so. Because you just cost Spectre his life. You just cost your wife the only blood family she has, and you just cost yourself a dear friend.

  He picked up his razor. It only took a minute. He had read that they did that in Egypt, to mourn the dead. He would do it now.

  He shaved off his eyebrows, the first scrapes tentative, then furious. He stared at this mutilation, wet the corner of a towel and smoothed off the stubble. He nodded at himself, and what nodded back was only his reflection. He put on makeup. All black. And he was wearing the same tuxedo jacket he had married her in, fought Elijah in, the same fucking jacket they would probably bury him in.

  Not only did Mary have to go with him, he discovered that the Golgotha was a hill south of town. About two fucking miles south of town. She walked without complaining, veiled and crying, and he kept his arm around her and tried to help her as much as he could. Pregnant. Watching Spectre murdered, and being forced to walk two fucking miles for the privilege in relentless heat.

  Spectre was led along by two of the guards. He was not bound, and he did not resist. Something like peace had settled over his face. –Mary, I love you. I love all of you. Forever, he said, when they arrived. One of the enforcers growled at him to shut up.

  Spectre ignored the man, looking only at him, hard, and then turned away, being led.

  And he realized what that meant.

  Oh, no. Oh, no, he can't possibly think that. Oh no I CAN'T POSSIBLY DO THIS...

  At least, he didn't think he could.

  Do you like this? Do you? Zillah said with telepathy, at his right side. Jordan was stumbling along holding Zillah's hand, crying, wearing Spectre's straw hat.

  He ignored that. He couldn't afford to do anything else. Mary couldn't take even one more thing, and that was assuming she survived this.

  And then he saw the crosses.

  Terror. Would he fall into visions again? Here? In front of the entire town?

  –They bury you wherever you...fall, Mary said. –The crosses mark the place. They won't bury you in hallowed ground if you...if you're...

  She lost it, then, and when he stopped to try and calm her down one of the enforcers grabbed his arm. –Come on, the man ordered.

  He snarled at the bastard, pulled Mary along anyway. He couldn't do anything else. She was barely walking, and he had to put his arm around her waist and more or less drag her forward.

  Zillah laughed, very softly. Only in his own head, he assumed, as nobody else seemed to notice.

  There was a low cliff, about six feet high, and they began to line up around it in an ugly half-circle. Elijah was there, in a black suit, gold glittering at his neck and his cuffs. He had a thin triumphant smile to offer, seeing Mary crying.

  Son of a bitch. Oh, you wait.

  They pulled Spectre out in the middle, in front of the wall, and made him kneel. He did so, still without resisting.

  He's still looking at me, straight at me, and I REALLY DON'T KNOW IF I CAN DO THIS, NOT IF HE'S DEAD

  Aaron was there, up front, the good seat, you might say, with Nila behind him, her hands gleaming with rings on the handles of his wheelchair. She was looking out towards the horizon, at nothing in particular, as if this entire thing were an annoyance, a
chore.

  A man in a black hood was standing behind Spectre.

  The bastard who had come to their door said, –Aaron has decided that this man is to be put to death for running a house of prostitution. The sentence is death by decapitation.

  The crowd made a sound that was not a sound, all of them exhaling at once.

  He almost got his hand over her mouth in time. Mary only made the beginning of a scream, and he covered her mouth through her veil, and turned her around and held her to him, hard, whispering, –Don't look, Mar, don't look or you'll see it forever. Don't look.

  Jordan buried his face in his hands and turned to him, not Zillah, sobbing. He wrapped his arms around them both, like a warding.

  Zillah stood alone, and he kept his eyes on Spectre.

  The man in the hood had a machete. A fucking machete like you would use in your garden in the jungle in the middle of the desert for a murder

  and the blade went back

  and the blade snapped forward

  and Spectre collapsed in two horrible pieces, in a fountain of blood.

  Why do they always make blood so purple in movies? he thought, his mind swinging on a single corroded hinge. Why? It's really almost orange. Almost orange.

  And the sand soaked it up, greedy, mindless.

  I don't know if I can fix that, not that, I wouldn't know where to begin, and he DIED EXPECTING TO OPEN HIS EYES AND LOOK UP AT ME.

  He made a small, anguished sound that only he and Zillah heard, his eyes stinging, and he put his mouth on the top of Mary's head, holding her too hard, shaking.

  And they poured gasoline over the corpse. He could smell it, sharp, like doom. And there was no way, no way he could, fix, that

  and they set fire to him, and Elijah was watching him, smiling that smug fucking smile. He could almost hear the bastard thinking, let's see you heal him now.