producer, Azrael discovered the Food Network. After he spread the word, it soon became the most popular channel among all the non-corporeal beings in this plane of existence.
Cooking classes soon replaced both lyre lessons and choir as major preoccupations among the celestial orders. In Hell, Gluttony gave seminars in both meal preparation and traditional French service. This new emphasis on quality over quantity resulted in Gluttony slimming down to his college weight. Envy pointed out Gluttony's newly trim figure to Lucifer, hoping to advance himself in the sin hierarchy. Instead, he found himself transferred to the darkest, dustiest, alcove in Hell where he was forced to research new ways to promote sin among single-cell life forms.
THE END
Le Jardin des Os
We begin each day with pentothal and a song. The pentothal aids in our hypnotism. Admittedly, this must sound like an exotic and (certainly an archaic) practice, but it's all part of our calling here in the Immortality Enterprise. We are technocrats who are one step away from priests, and we hold our rituals and sacred places dear. Such as the Weeping Rooms.
This simple name has an important double meaning. Families can gather in the Weeping Rooms to shed tears for the loved one about to enter the protein vats. (Yes, they will be reborn, but tears are a healthy way to honor the end of each incarnation.) Those resurrection candidates who have no family do not go unmourned. The Weeping Rooms are lined with neural inductors, modified fetal cerebral-cell-wrapped nanofilaments that absorb narrowly-targeted EEG patterns from the room's inhabitants. When no family is available, the rooms themselves can replay the emotions that they have absorbed, weeping biologically-correct tears for those who are in need of grieving.
I am a diver by trade (as was my father), and I tend Le Jardin des Os, the Bone Gardens, harvesting femurs, skull caps, and phalanges from coral clumps growing in oceans of saline. My brother, Enrico, performs similar tasks in the floating islands of neural tissue that drift on the artificial tide. The one place neither of us likes to go are the tissue chambers. Pale, force-grown flesh clusters on a massive stainless-steel matrix, like quivering clumps of tofu. Speed-grown from vats of specially-treated stem cells, this flesh will become the skin-wrapping for each candidate's new body. And it was thinking of this, thinking of flesh, new bodies and old, that I committed my greatest sin, both to a man and to my calling.
I shouldn't have been able to commit my act of betrayal. Our daily hypnotism rituals are designed to prevent such things. But Mesmer's science relies, to a degree, on the subject's cooperation and if the subject is resistant or distracted, it simply will not take. This was my state of mind that day of my sin. I was distracted by an important piece of news: Jericho Dauphine-Gordini — the man who headed up the entire Immortality Enterprise — was, himself, a candidate for resurrection. To say that Gordini was powerful is to say that a typhoon might muss your hair. Immortality treatments are the most expensive and sought-after medical procedure in the world. The wealthy will undergo any amount of pain, of indignity, for it. They will pay anything. Amounts totaling the gross national products of many small nations pass through Immortality Enterprise's bank accounts every year. And, rightly, some of that should belong to my brother and me.
Our father had once been close to Gordini. In fact, they'd been partners. But vast wealth and power aren't enough for some people. Their satisfaction isn't complete until they prevent others from equaling them. Their hunger cannot be filled until they know that they are utterly alone in their success. This was Gordini's relationship to my father, the man who created the vast technological underpinning for immortality treatments. But he had no mind for business. One day he saw this made concrete, but by then it was too late. His business was gone, and he was left as one of the company's laborers, a diver and a bone farmer. My brother and I followed him, in turn. Enrico is like my father, vaguely content with the physical intricacies of the job. I, for better or worse, am more like Gordini and could never accept the unfairness of our state — or his. I knew that sooner or later, I would have my chance at revenge.
The process was fairly straightforward for someone who knew the Enterprise's dirty little trade secrets. We are both a medical facility and an industrial plant. One doesn't create vast fields of flesh and human organs without toxic runoff, both the poisons in industrial chemicals and organic runoff from dying and corrupt bodies. The stuff is piped into steel storage tanks before being redirected to the filtration system. The storage tanks are old and they leak — not enough to endanger the staff, but enough to fill a syringe or two.
We line workers are only subjected to security searches when we enter and leave the facility, not while we're on duty. Hiding two finger-size autoinjectors among my equipment that day was nothing. I carefully inserted my poison surprise into the marrow base of one particular bone cluster. This was my beauty, the largest, most perfect rose in my garden, and the only collection of bones worthy of an Enterprise master such as Gordini. Perfect murder is an act of patience. I felt as if I'd been holding my breath for my entire life and could suddenly breathe for the first time.
At the end of each work day, we gather for the atropine shot that will boost us from our hypnotic state. Before we depart, we sing a threnody, an ritual sorrow song for the departing bodies. I sang with extra sincerity that night. Many commented on the quality and strength of my voice on that occasion. I was genuinely moved, with godlike knowledge of the pain to come.
I will watch Gordini rot and drink to his dying flesh every night. And when he dies and his body re-enters the Enterprise, I will poison him again. This is the aspect of immortality that neither Gordini nor my father ever considered: revenge, once accomplished, can occur over and over on the resurrected body of your enemy. And when I die and am resurrected, I will kill Gordini again. And again. I will never leave the Bone Gardens. They are my calling.
THE END
Lotus Alley
Sirikit dreamed of spirit houses for six nights running. She passed spirit houses everyday — on her way to work, when buying groceries, and on her increasingly infrequent dates with her boyfriend. Almost every building in Bangkok had a spirit house, a place for the spirits whose land had been covered by a human house, so they would have somewhere to live and wouldn't haunt the human dwelling.
After the sixth night of dreams, Sirikit stopped at a convenience store near her apartment and bought a small cake to leave at the spirit house by her front door. Sirikit made this small offering every day for a week. She felt foolish the whole time. Spirits were things her grandmother believed in. Country bumpkin stuff. Still, she left her donut or candy bar or orange at the spirit house every morning. When she returned in the evening, the offering was gone.
By the end of the first week of this new ritual, her headaches had returned. They were the same nauseating migraines she'd suffered earlier in the sweltering summer, when the drunks used to fight below her window after the bars closed. Sirikit tried prescriptions, remedies from America, opium and stinking teas from the office herbalist, but nothing eased the icepick pain lodged between her eyes. What was worse was that, when the headaches peaked, her senses collapsed in on themselves. Colors shifted. She tasted shapes. Her hearing dulled, then became explosively loud, and she couldn't understand a word anyone was saying.
On the night of the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, plagued with migraines and unable to sleep, Sirikit heard the drunks below her window. They'd returned to her little street and were fighting like dogs. Normally, she would have covered her head with a pillow and hoped that they'd go away. Tonight, however, the drunken intrusion on her pain made Sirikit furious. She grabbed up her robe, stormed downstairs and into the alley.
The drunks were on the ground. Two filthy men brawled like vicious children. The offerings from the spirit house were scattered on the alley floor, crushed under their rolling bodies. There was someone else in the alley. A filthy woman. She was eating one of the offering oranges, the juice flowing down her cheeks, leaving sticky
trails in the dirt on her face. "Hello Sirikit," said the filthy woman.
Sirikit was startled. Not only could she understand the woman, but the woman knew her name. Before Sirikit could question her, the filthy woman came closer. "Are you ready to go?" she asked.
"Go where?" asked Sirikit. As the filthy woman came closer, she looked familiar. Even through the grime, she was surprisingly beautiful. She looked like the picture in the lobby of Sirikit's office building. Green Tara, goddess of compassion.
"Go away. Ready to leave the world of time and fear. Ready to become a god."
Sirikit blinked. "I don't want to be a god," she said as the headache fogged her vision.
"You made the offerings," said the filthy Tara.
"That was nothing. I've been sick. They were whims."
"Gods are the embodiment of whims."
"I don't want to be a god."
"Of course not. None of us do. We watch the universe wiggle beneath our feet like insects in the grass. When we try to act — help the innocent or punish the corrupt — our every gesture ripples terribly through space and time. We pluck a child from a fire in the Amazon and a tidal wave kills a hundred others in Tokyo." Tara laughed.
"If you can do these things, what do you want with me?"
The filthy woman finished her orange, spat seeds on the ground and wiped her hands on the grimy green raincoat tied around her thin frame. "The godhead is eternal, but the gods aren't. As you can see… " She inclined her head toward the two drunks who still wrestled on the ground. They giggled as they clawed each other's face. "Even the gods go mad. Nothing that's conscious can live in eternity. I need to live in flesh again, to grow old and die. You are Tara now."
Before Sirikit could protest, she felt something pass through her, like a warm, pleasant shiver. Her headache was gone and when she could see again, she was no longer Sirikit, but an immense *presence* hovering above the rim of the galaxy. She swooped downward, looking for a familiar blue planet. When she found Bangkok and then her house, she saw that things had transformed subtly. She realized that she'd been gone a long time. Years, at least. Shops had changed their names. The building where she used to live had been painted a dazzling yellow. An old woman was living in her apartment. When she paused by the alley where she'd left the flesh world, she saw the nearby spirit house. It was empty. No one had left cake, rice or even an orange. She rose up and left the city forever. That night in Bangkok, a city known for its sunsets, the residents saw the most radiant sunset that any could remember.
THE END
Master of the Crossroads
I went down to the crossroads to sell my soul to the devil. I was shocked to find my high school sweetheart there trying to do the same thing.
"Belinda?" I called. "Belinda Porter?"
She was catty-corner from me and looked around when she heard her name, which was kind of ridiculous as we were completely alone on a deserted country two-lane in northern California.
"Johnny Frankenheimer, is that you? Hi!," she called brightly across the road. "Long time no see. What are you doing way out here in the middle of the night?"
I set down my bag and held up some of the cigars, candy, chicken and rum I was carrying. Not offerings to Satan, technically, but to the voudoun deity, Papa Legba.
When she saw what I had, Belinda grinned and held up an expensive bottle of 15-year old Demerara rum. We both laughed, seeing that we'd both chosen to invoke the powers of darkness at exactly the same time. She motioned me over.
"How long has it been?" Belinda asked. "Fifteen years?"
"More like seventeen," I said. "But who's counting?"
"What a funny place to run into each other. Have you been planning on selling your soul for long?"
"No, not really," I said. "It was kind of spontaneous."
"Me, too. That's so funny."
"Yeah, it is."
"So, what have you been up to all these years?"
"I got married. Hooked up with some friends from college and rode the Internet bubble til it burst. Then, to settle some debts to some very questionable characters, I dealt guns for them to even more questionable characters. Turns out the whole thing was some kind of sting government operation. They seized my passport and froze all my bank accounts. My wife ran off with one of the loan sharks who got me into this mess in the first place. Oh, and I think the Mossad has a contract out on me. How about you?"
"Wow. Rough," said Belinda. "What have I been up to? Remember how I always used to say I'd never end up like my mother? Well, turns out we both have the same bad habit of marrying alcoholic pedophiles. Who would have thought that's something a parent could teach you with the potty training?"
"Maybe it's not her fault. Maybe it's a genetic thing. I mean, I never wanted to be a business hotshot, but there was some part of me that wanted to be the kind of grown-up my dad was. I had with two cell phones, a portable fax machine, a Palm Pilot with the name and number of every Fortune 500 twonk I ever brown-nosed."
"I just wanted a kitchen with all marble counters and an in-ground pool."
"I owned my own shredder. The company didn't buy it for me. I bought it on my own. I never felt more important or better about myself than when I got that shredder home. It made my cock harder than my wife ever did."
"That's how I felt about the hand-made Mexican tile in our bathroom. Until I found the Polaroids, of course," said Belinda. She fished in her bag and pulled out an unopened Sherman Fantasia pack. Tearing off the wrapper, she opened the box revealing yellow, pink, blue and green cigarettes. Belinda chose a bright pink one and lit it with a small gold lighter. When she offered me one, I shook my head.
"I quit," I said.
"Smart."
There was a moment of awkward silence. Then Belinda piped up, "We've fucked up pretty bad, but, you know, we could just go into therapy."
"That takes too long. I've wasted years of my life. I don't want to waste another decade and a hundred grand I don't have whining on some quack's couch."
"You're right. We're too far gone for ordinary solutions. We screwed ourselves up because we lived extremely badly. It only makes sense that the cure be just as extreme."
"Spiritual chemotherapy."
That made Belinda laugh. Hearing her, I suddenly remembered how much I'd loved that laugh back in high school.
As if she were reading my thoughts, Belinda said, "We used to have fun together."
"Yeah, we did."
"Why'd you break up with me?"
"So that you couldn't break up with me." I looked at her sheepishly and shrugged. "I figured a girl as cute and fun as you would get bored pretty quick and dump me. Back then, that would have killed me. So I dumped you first."
Belinda puffed on her candy-colored smoke and looked at me. "Boys are so stupid."
"I'm living one's skin and I don't have a clue what's going on."
"You really hurt me back then."
"I'm sorry. If it's any consolation, breaking up with you like that has been a source of constant pain and wonder for me ever since."
"Aw, that's sweet." She kissed me on the cheek and I felt a stirring in my gut that was not unpleasant.
Belinda sighed. "It's along way from the backseat of your Camaro to this road."
"I had my dad's old Rambler. Chuck Yarboro had the Camaro."
"Right. Sorry. Chuck and I went out after you broke up with me." Another awkward silence. "So, what are you here for? What are you going to ask Legba for?"
"I'm not actually looking for Legba. I'm aiming really high these days. I figure if this Legba character is who everyone says he is, then he can put me in touch with the big man. Lucifer. Satan. I'll do a soul deal with him for wealth, power over my enemies, eternal life, you know."
"Interesting," said Belinda. "Interesting. I hadn't thought of that approach. I'd thought about the Devil, too, but probably had the same questions you did. How do you get his attention? What if you do a human sacrifice and nothing happens? How embarrassing
! And then there's a body to get rid of." Belinda flicked the pink Sherman into the road. "I like it. Let's do it."
"What? Both of us?"
"Yeah, why not? You always had the best ideas, even back in school. And what's Legba or the Devil got to complain about? They get two for the price of one." Belinda reached out and slid her hand into mine. I felt like I was sixteen again.
"I was going to ask you if you thought that this was incredibly significant that we both ended up at the same crossroads at the same time on the some night."
"Smells like destiny to me, Johnny."
"Destiny smells good." I leaned in to kiss her.
"Shit," she said. "I was starving on the way up here from the city and I ate all my chicken. I have the booze and the smokes, but I can't meet Papa Legba without some roast chicken to offer."
"No problem. I bought lots of everything. I have a ton of chicken back in the car."
Belinda squealed. "My hero! Okay, you go back and grab some wings and thighs. I'll keep an eye on all our stuff and shoo any losers away from our crossroads. Deal?"
"Deal," I said. She kissed me hard and swatted my ass even harder. "Get going, devil boy."
I smiled the whole way back to the car, then cursed when I realized I'd left my keys hooked over the top of the rum bottle by the side of the road. I turned to call to Belinda, but she was gone.
I ran back to the crossroads, to the exact spot where we'd kissed not a minute before. All of the offerings were gone and there were scorch marks on the road. I backed away from the spot, tense, craning my head in every direction.
I crouched beside the car for a while, hoping Belinda would come back. I guess it really had been pretty significant that we'd both been on that road at the same time. Significant, but no coincidence. She'd gotten to Legba first and had been lying in wait for me. It never occurred to me that she could still be this mad after all these years. I thought about breaking into my car, getting my offerings and performing the ceremony anyway, but if Belinda had already gotten to Legba, then it seemed like I'd better choose another deity to help me hock my soul.
Collected Short Stories Page 7