harnessing the power of the weather against his own people, simply to avenge an
electoral slight. But one day, forty or fifty years in the future – if he lived that long –
Jesse would probably be spouting nonsense every bit as...well...as deranged as that.
About some future president, Republican or Democrat. Deranged...that was the right word, wasn’t it? Yes, deranged.
The brain was just a part of the body – like any other. It, too, could be eroded away
by the wash of decades. She thought about the forest of gnarled appendages at the nearby table. If something as hard as bone could be gradually warped by time and disease, then
what hope was there for the brain? It was, after all, only soft tissue.
And at that point Ellie felt a shudder. I’ll be exactly like those old people, too,
someday, she thought.
As we grow very old, our mind breaks down.
She heard a loud whirring. A grimy plastic mannequin hand set a plate of scrambled
eggs and biscuits in front of her, and a bowl of grits to the side.
It was René again: the plastic/mechanical arm, the massive sinkhole in his skull, the
mouth without a bottom lip. The unintelligible mumbling. It was impossible, of course,
that he was waiting tables at two different places so far apart from each other. And yet, there he was.
He placed his cold plastic hand over Ellie’s cold flesh hand and gently patted it.
Then, with some force, he moved her hand off of He Wants Us Broken. Picked it up.
Made pleasant, approving moans. Brought the tract up to his still-intact upper lip. Planted something akin to a kiss on it and returned it to the table. Then he crossed himself with his mechanical hand and said three words. “Haweh. Haweh. Haweh.”
And this time, Ellie thought she understood what he meant. Could it be he was
saying “Holy, Holy, Holy”?
Before she could be sure, he returned the tract to her hands. He placed his whirring,
filthy plastic hand on her chin and tilted it up so that her eyes met his. There was power in his touch. Not sexual power, but rather absolute power. It was as though she’d been touched by the hand of royalty.
He muttered some more unintelligible words. Something, she intuited, about her.
Then he giggled and limped off to the kitchen.
Her eggs were damp and under-cooked. Her grits were – as advertised – gritty. Her
biscuits dry, possibly stale. She had half a mind to complain, but complaining about René suddenly seemed like a gross breach of etiquette. If God wanted us broken, she thought, then René possessed God’s favor. He’s the most broken person I’ve ever seen. Moreover, he validated her gospel tract. Validated not only that it was real – that she hadn’t been hallucinating – but validated that it should be treated with reverence.
She nibbled slightly at her meal. Read and re-read and re-re-read the tract. How
could she waste time on something as simple as eating when she might be face-to-face
with a miracle? It was during her third re-reading of the tract that she felt a presence hovering over her again. She prayed to God: please let it still be René, please let it still be René.
A filthy, plastic whirring hand dropped two pieces of paper next to her plate. She
turned around. “Hey, René.”
He didn’t answer.
She called out louder. Louder than shar pei lady. Louder than the blooping and
bleeping of the cash register. Louder than the small crowd stirring beyond the border of the restaurant proper – in the waiting area and gift shop.
“Hey, René!”
The waiter turned around. It was Ronnie again, not René. “Beg pardon, ma’am?” he
said.
“Oh,” Ellie said. “Nothing. I thought you were someone else.”
The waiter raised his eyebrows. Coughed. Went back into the kitchen.
Ellie briefly glanced at a check informing her that breakfast had cost a little over nine bucks. She pushed it aside and looked at the second piece of paper – a note (scrawled in a barely-legible hand).
YOU DID NOT OBEY & TURN BACK.
THEREFORE, GOD’S PLANS MUST INTERRUPT YOUR PLANS.
YOU SHALL BE DAMNED WITH BLESSINGS.
IT IS THE ONLY WAY.
THE WORLDLY AUTHORITIES ARE AWARE OF YOUR SCHEME WITH LORI
AND ARE NOW,
AT THIS VERY MOMENT, ATTEMPTING TO TRACK YOU DOWN.
IF THEY FIND YOU, YOU SHALL BE LOCKED AWAY.
YOU ARE FAR TOO INTERESTING TO BE LOCKED AWAY.
YOU HAVE FAR TOO MANY SIGNS OF DEVOTION,
TOO GREAT A CAPACITY FOR BROKENNESS.
THEY WILL BE LOOKING FOR YOUR CAR.
LEAVE IT HERE IN THIS PARKING LOT.
I WILL BE OUT THERE, WAITING FOR YOU.
I WILL DRIVE YOU WHERE YOU NEED TO GO.
I WILL TAKE YOU TO LORI.
I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN TAKE YOU TO LORI.
THE ARC OF THE UNIVERSE IS LONG,
BUT BENDS TOWARDS DEGENERACY.
Ellie held the note in her hand. Clutched it to her chest, fearful that it – like its
predecessor – would be transformed into a worthless napkin. But the gospel tract
remained with her. It had not been transformed into a napkin. So maybe this wouldn’t
either, if she had enough faith. That must be the answer: the first note had faded from
reality because she’d not looked on it with sufficient faith. She’d assumed René was
insane. She’d been ungrateful for the message, so it was taken from her. She hadn’t
deserved it.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake this time. She flung a twenty on the table and
jogged out to the parking lot.
She did not see René outside, and this made her want to kick the rocking chairs
assembled near the restaurant’s front. Even worse, there was a police car right next to the Scion. Its engine was running. The officer in the driver’s seat seemed to be sticking his head out the window and glancing back at her. Had he come to take her back to
subdivision-sanity? Back to a world antiseptically devoid of passion and miracles?
Then she heard the familiar voice and the familiar words: “Haweh, haweh, haweh.”
Holy, holy, holy. (Or, could it be “Hurry, hurry, hurry”?) She didn’t question it. She
just followed the trail of the voice. Followed it, even though it led straight to the police car.
Her faith was rewarded. René sat there, smartly adorned in the uniform of a
Kentucky State Police trooper. He giggled and jerked his head to the side. She scurried to the passenger side and opened the door.
“I need to get my bags.”
René shook his head then coughed up another word. “Obuh,” he said (with a snort
appended to the last syllable).
Obey.
She was tempted to ignore this statement. (This request? This command?) She’d
ignored God’s commandments before, after all. But she’d never before encountered a
being like René – not God, but closer to God than she was. That made a difference. Also, she’d never before heard such commandments spoken to her in a voice she could literally hear. That made a huge difference. It made disobeying sound more real, more like a mistake.
And besides, René knew about Lori. He’d even referred to her by name, in the note.
Said he could take Ellie to see her. Said Ellie was in danger of being caught and locked away. Ellie didn’t want to be locked away.
She got in.
Revelations
In the time since filing the Amber Alert, Trooper Connelly had learned far more than
he’d wanted to know about Lori Morris. For years, she’d been a puzzle he couldn’t quite
figure out. Not that he’d spent that much ti
me trying to figure her out. His only job had been to cart her off to the hospital. He hadn’t been meant to understand her. He hadn’t cared about understanding her.
But when the detectives got a hold of her computer, they had answers. Who
would’ve guessed she was a lesbo (or, at least, a part-time carpet muncher)? Who
would’ve guessed that she’d been planning this for so long? That she’d long-wanted to
kill herself and the baby? Scuttlebutt around the station was that she was a Satanist,
because the stuff on her computer indicated that she was doing all this so that she would get sent to Hell. Hell was what she wanted, more than anything. Separation from God.
She hated God for what she thought God had done to her. But God was good. She
was misunderstanding it all, blaming God for the acts of Satan. She’d fallen on her knees to Satan when she should’ve been on her knees before God.
Then again, maybe she didn’t misunderstand things. Maybe she was consciously
trying to defame the Lord’s name by falsely accusing Him of rape. Maybe she wasn’t
crazy. Maybe she was evil. Maybe, instead of getting sent off to the hospital, she
should’ve gotten sent off to a good pastor for an exorcism.
But Connelly couldn’t keep thinking about that. He had a job to do. The tech fellas
had sorted out the contact information for the woman from Indiana and Connelly was
supposed to call her husband. Yeah, that was a piece of shit assignment if there ever was one. How would he even broach the subject? (“‘Scuse me, mister, but did you know your
wife hated her life with you so much she was fixin’ to go off and bump uglies with
another woman and then off herself? You didn’t? Why, you had no clue? Are you sure?
Think real hard about things, because – and here’s something else you’re just gonna love
– there’s a baby’s life at stake. And not just any baby, a baby born with its little hunk of brain showin’ for everyone to see.”)
That’s not the way he handled it, of course. He wouldn’t have lasted long as a
trooper if he didn’t have manners. For starters, he introduced himself. “Hello, is this Mr.
Blake?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Trooper Connelly from the Virginia State Police, I’m afraid I need a
moment of your time.”
“You must have pushed in the wrong area code. This is Indiana, not Virginia.”
“I’m afraid this is about official business, sir. Do you know the whereabouts of your
wife?”
Silence. Then heavy breathing. “What’s wrong? Has there been an accident? Is she
okay?”
Damn, it would’ve been easier if the husband had been an asshole. He sounded like a
decent guy. It didn’t make any sense, really, that he should turn out to be a good guy who was worried about the woman’s safety. But he was. “Sir, I know you have some
questions and I’ll share what I’m allowed to share with you after I ask my questions. Do you know where she is?”
“She should be in West Virginia, unless I heard her wrong. A business trip. What happened? Did she have a wreck? I knew she shouldn’t have driven out that night.”
This was the part where he had to break it to him. “Sir, we have reason to believe she
was, in fact, not on a business trip. We have reason to believe she may have been trying to harm herself.”
“My...stars. How do you know that? Did she ram the car into a tree? Is she hurt? Is
she dead?”
“It’s not any of those things. Not as far as we know. But, honestly, sir there’s a lot
here we need to sort out. We have her cell phone number. We’ve been calling it, but
something seems to be wrong with the phone.”
“It’s going to voicemail? She’ll let it do that, sometimes, if she’s in a bad mood.”
“No, not exactly like that. When I call the number, the line seems to go dead. There’s
no ringing, no message. Nothing. I figured there might be something going on with my
phone, so I thought I’d ask you to try.”
“I’ll call her right now – or, at least, as soon as I get off the phone. But let me ask
you – what makes you think she wants to hurt herself?”
“We’ve uncovered social networking communications between her and another
woman, a Virginia resident. There’s some indication that they wanted to do it together –
kill themselves, that is.”
“Oh...oh, Lord, save her. Oh...Oh God. Oh.”
The husband had sounded so strong up until that moment. He’d fought so hard to
maintain some sense of normality about it all. He’d scratched and clawed after normality the way a man about to fall off a cliff scratches and claws at land.
Now he sounded weak, the resolve leaking out of him each moment like air out of a
balloon. Connelly hated to be the guy who had to deflate him. But, on the other hand, the deflation was necessary. He’d asked too many questions before. Now that he’d gotten a
little taste of some answers, Connelly reckoned he wouldn’t be so big on asking
questions. He’d be more likely to take directions.
“Get on your phone and try to contact her. Indiana State Police should be calling you
very soon to start their branch of the investigation.”
“Oh Lord...Oh, dear God please. She’s just my little baby. Confused, that’s all. She
doesn’t know better. Let her live and repent, Lord. Let her live, don’t let her die and go to Hell. Let her live and re-”.
Connelly wasn’t ordinarily the sort of man who would interrupt a prayer. But
ordinary went out the window in these sorts of situations. “Sir...sir...We’ll do our best to get her back in your arms. These days, with all the cell phones and email and social
networking data at our disposal, finding missing persons is much easier than it used to
be.”
* * *
Even Ellie didn’t know where she was.
This was only natural, as so many of her memories–the people, places and things that
could anchor and orient her – felt like fragments of a dream that was rapidly slipping
away. Her brain rebelled against this process. There was someone important...someone
she had to remember. The reason for all of this: the girl with whirlpool eyes; the girl who would suck her and probe her, who would take her to the farthest edge of her desires.
Then, together, they’d plunge over that edge to a Hell that was preferable to Earth. The name started with the letter L...Laura? No, not Laura.
Lori.
She remembered this much: she loved Lori, but Lori hadn’t yet said that she loved
her back. They were going to fuck each other then die together. There was
a...creature...named René involved with this, too. A mutilated man. He’d been the one
who’d taken her from her old life. In a police car? That didn’t seem to make sense but,
yes, in a police car. They’d driven away from one world and had arrived in a new one – a place as dark and warm as a womb. A quiet place where the ground was slick with mud
and the air smelled like fading flowers.
She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, but she knew René was still with her.
She felt his cold, plastic hand guiding her along by the arm – as though he’d been to this place many times before and knew the way, or could at least see where he was going. She
also heard his voice.
“Duh-skusth,” he said.
Ellie struggled to understand him. Disgust? Disguise?
They stopped. René grabbed her chin and tilted it upward. “Duh skusth,” he
repeated, this time with a
heightened tone of seriousness, a respect bordering on awe.
Oh, the skies – René was directing her attention to the stars overhead. They were several times larger than any stars she’d seen before, and each glowed with a different
vibrant color. Even more surprising, they were unstable. (No, more than unstable.
Liquid.) They throbbed and melted and trickled toward the horizon, leaving behind trails that looked like neon candle wax (or painted pus).
Ellie followed the course of a melting, pulsating green star until she began to feel
dizzy and nauseated. Her head started to pound in synch with the palpitations.
She shifted her focus to a blue star, hoping a more soothing color might settle her
nerves. It didn’t help. It was too globby and too pale; the injured, blotchy blue of a bruise, not the rich blue of eyes and oceans. Each time the blue star throbbed, she imagined it
pumping diseased blood through the veins of all creation. She cringed, slipped, and lost her footing.
She heard a familiar whirring sound as René yanked at her hips to steady her.
Gooseflesh ran up the back of her neck, followed by a shudder, followed by a wave of
bitter embarrassment at how weak she must have just seemed to him. She’d gotten used
to a number of oddities over the last two days. So why did she find this bizarre sky so
uniquely disturbing?
She had only a hunch about the answer. It was one thing to feel increasingly
comfortable around a deformed creature like René, or even to accept that degeneracy was
everyone’s inevitable destination. But it was quite another to face the reality that stars, too, could devolve into something broken and freakish and wrong.
The arc of the universe was long but bent towards degeneracy.
It was too much for her exhausted senses. Yet, she needed to be brave and stare at
the sky. Anxiety and awkwardness no longer had a place in her life. A bizarre serenity
began to take hold of her. Yes, she was broken. What of it? In this place, the stars were too.
Like trickling raindrops on a windshield, the purple, red, green, orange, and blue
stars began to coalesce. Their colors mixed and darkened at the points of contact, while the trail each had left in its wake remained the original hue. Ellie decided an infected, deformed sky was a beautiful sky. She sighed.
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