In The Lap Of The Gods

by John B. Hendricks

  He realized it was too late for him to beat her to it. Fortunately for him, she was having a great deal of difficulty pulling the sword from the wall and he had time to stop her. They struggled for a moment, and he wrenched the sword free, splinters flying. With a shout of triumph, he swung the sword at her, striking her upraised hand, fingers sheared at her knuckle.

  She didn’t scream. Everything stopped and the room went completely silent. Jehovah held the sword in front of him and he thrust it at her gut.

  The blade sliced into empty air.

  She was gone.

  Jehovah swung around. Nothing. The woman had completely vanished. He lowered the sword and glanced toward Eve. She was prone facedown on the floor. He knelt down and flipped her onto her back. Blood from the mystery woman’s hand had sprayed across Eve’s face, giving the impression of a horrible rash. He checked for a heartbeat. None. Dead.

  And he had not killed her.

  He had pondered the incident many times over the years. In Heaven, Jehovah had grilled Eve about the woman in the hut. He had only pried one word from her. Synchronicity. Eve couldn’t or wouldn’t explain what that meant, how the woman had been able to end Eve’s life, or why Jehovah had never been able to find the four fingers that he had sliced from the blonde woman’s hand.

  Chapter 30[30]

  Customers were already browsing around the shop by the time Absalom had sucked up enough caffeine to get motivated. Fat Boy was engrossed in an old Sylvia Browne book. “She’s freaking awesome! I want to do her and make her think she’s in Heaven!”

  Some of the regular customers nodded and smiled. Absalom smiled back and headed toward his office, the nerve center of this operation, or so he liked to think. In reality, the main thing that happened in there was that Absalom pretended to research Novel #2 while bouncing around between downloading fart videos and trying to guess porn passwords.

  Focus, he thought. There are no more excuses. I must write now. I’ve read almost every how to write book ever written. Just do it.

  After an hour of reading email and looking at Danelectro guitar knock-offs, he got an instant message from the front desk.

  “Dude get up here there’s some freaky-deaky dude in the religion section,” it silently whispered.

  “Jeez, I’ll never get anything written with all these interruptions,” Absalom said to himself. Is too early for a tequila shot?

  The guy in the religion section wasn’t that freaky-deaky, which unexpectedly disappointed Absalom. The man had an ancient Beatle mop-top, black and thick like a horse’s mane, and wore a long raincoat draped over his broad shoulders.

  Absalom sidled up to the counter and Fat Boy tilted his head toward the religion section. “What’d think, man? Weird-o-rama city?”

  Absalom looked again. There was still nothing odd jumping out at him.

  “Look at his pants, dumbass. Down at his cuffs.”

  Absalom peeked downward and his eyes had to focus for a second. He could feel his brain struggling, grinding, and processing seemingly bad contrary data.

  A tail?

  Absalom raised his eyes from Tailman’s cuff and caught the man’s eyes, the misty grey pupils lodged deep in Tailman’s head connecting with Absalom’s deep brown ones. He felt a rush of mixed emotions. Love, hate, bittersweet memories.

  Then the tail was gone, as was the man attached to it.

  “Thundering shitbirds!” Fat Boy danced back and forth from foot to foot. Disappearing men with tails wearing long trench coats. This was Weekly World News material. He pulled out a notepad; a long thick stack of paper that he had salvaged from a stack of ancient books that Absalom had purchased from an estate sale. It was a detective pad, circa 1950’s. There were still notes written in it by the detective, witness interviews, miscellaneous items, and other creepier stuff. Fat Boy thought it gave him a subtle noir ambiance.

  Tailman was ready to checkout. Apparently, he had just walked over through the classics section. Fat Boy’s paranoia must be contagious, Absalom thought.

  Absalom bumped a slack-jawed Fat Boy out of the way. “Did you find everything okay, sir?” he asked.

  Tailman scratched his chin. “Have you ever heard of a book called The Nick of Time?”

  Absalom’s stomach fluttered. His book? An actual fan?

  “Do you actually want to read it?” Fat Boy interjected jovially, “or do you need a little something to balance out a table leg or something?”

  Tailman looked thoughtful. “I enjoy subtle characterizations. Panoramic settings. Meticulous plotting.”

  Fat Boy said, “I’ve enjoy those things as well, but what does that have to do with The Nick of Time?”

  “Go re-stock or something,” Absalom pointed. “Buzz.”

  Fat Boy took the non-subtle hint and walked off, dragging his feet like a six-year old that’s being forced to bathe or kiss his fat aunt.

  “I apologize for my helper,” Absalom said. “He’s mentally challenged.”

  “As we all can be, at times,” Tailman grinned, porcelain white teeth that were perfect in a George Hamilton kind of way. “Do you have the book?”

  “Coincidentally, yes, we do have the novel in stock,” Absalom half-grinned. “I wrote it.”

  “Really!”

  “I probably have a case or two in the back, or maybe one right here.” Absalom pulled out the glossy covered book from under the counter. “Want me to sign it for you?”

  “Groovy,” Tailman smiled. “Make it to my buddy, Sam. In-a-godda-de-vida.”

  “Iron Butterfly rules!” shouted Fat Boy from across the room, air-guitaring frantically. “Da da da da da da da da da…”

  Absalom laughed, the sound bursting free from his anguished soul. He signed it briskly, his pen light in his hand. He could feel a few ideas for his Novel #2 pulsing in his fingertips.

  “Hey Sammy,” Fat Boy shouted. “Do you know what In-a-godda-de-vida means in Iron Butterfly-speak?”

  “No, I surely don’t.”

  “It a reference to the Garden of Eden!” Fat Boy exclaimed.

  Sam nodded solemnly. “Really?”

  Chapter 31[31]

  “So Sam, what’s your story?”

  Absalom studied his lunch partner closely. It was a rare thing to meet a man who had read his book, much less a fan who would offer to buy him lunch, even if it was a sit-down lunch at Burger King.

  “Story. Ah, yes. The writer inquires,” Lucifer smiled, twinkling a bit. “My father was an inventor or sorts, always tinkering, always fiddling with things.” He shrugged his shoulders a bit, the lines in his face flexing. “He had a great failing, though. He felt like he had to come up with something big. Not just a better mousetrap. He wanted to come up with a better mouse.”

  Absalom took a nip from his hamburger. “What about your mother?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember her at all. Some kind of Earth mother, or so I’ve been told. However, my father and I have been at odds for years. We had a bit of a falling out.” Lucifer stuffed a few fries in his mouth. He hated small talk, especially when it related to the early days. “How’s the follow-up book going,” he asked, steering the subject into a more comfortable direction. “I recall reading an interview you gave that promised a satisfying conclusion?”

  “It’s a disaster in progress,” Absalom frowned.

  “Your book ended with the protagonist waiting by the phone and hoping for a call from the woman?”

  “Yep, that’s it.”

  “So, don’t leave me hanging. Did the call ever come?”

  From the police, Absalom thought. Mr. Jones, your wife has been in an accident…

  “That’s the problem, Sam. Not only do I not know what happens next, I’m not sure if I even care.”

  Lucifer studied him. He saw Absalom’s pain and felt a stirring in his own groin. Old habits, as well as old pleasures, can be hard to break. He willed himself to tumescence.

  “My wife died," mumbled Absalom through a mouthful of processed bu
rger. “She died in a car wreck. It killed her and my muse at the same time. Now that’s a cheap hamburger joint moment.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.

  Lucifer mulled it over. This guy is in no shape at all to finish a book. Is it possible that the reference to the Book of Angels was just a bizarre fluke of writing? One thousand monkeys writing a Shakespeare play. One monkey writing Finnegan’s Wake? He decided to press on.

  “I was curious about something I read in your book,” he smiled. “You wrote about a map of the road to Heaven. Was that metaphorical or do actually have the map?” He laughed for effect, holding back a glimmer of anticipation. He also burped, which he couldn’t hold back.

  “Onions do that to me too,” Absalom said. “I wish they would use Vidalias. That’s an interesting question, and it’s one thing that I miss about writing. Sometimes I just come up with stuff out of the blue, assemble it into a semi-coherent set of words, and then at night, deep in the darkest corner of my dreams, bam. Something appears to tie it all together.”

  Lucifer’s sphincter tightened.

  “I dreamt about the map. It was so vivid that I can still visualize the scene, smell the magnolias. A cool breeze drifting through the city. Marble everywhere. Giant buildings with gold domes, frescoes, friezes.”

  Holy shit, Lucifer’s heart hammered. Holy shit.

  “So I went into a building that was full of books, It was sort of like a library but the books were different. Gilded edges. Leather-bound. One book, though, stood out. It looked like it was bound in pure gold. Not hard solid gold like a gold brick, but something flexible, pliable. I picked up the book and flipped through it and the printing was exquisite. Delicate lines, bold graphics. The back pages were all maps, and I remember looking at one and…” Absalom hesitated. “It sounds foolish, but it felt like the way to Heaven.”

  Lucifer felt dizzy. “And,” he said, his breathing erratic, “did you happen to remember the particular page number that this map was on?” With that, the Prince of Darkness passed out and fell face down onto his Whopper with cheese.

  Chapter 32[32]

  “Sam?”

  Lucifer’s eyes fluttered open. He was laying on some sort of divan in what had to be the most tastelessly decorated room he had ever seen. There was even a ship in a bottle sunk in the aquarium. An abomination.

  He sat up slowly, trying not to look around. He sensed bric-a-brac, but didn’t want to look. He couldn’t look.

  He looked.

  His stomach heaved and he vomited into an elaborately decorated set of teacups on the coffee table. Twice.

  Absalom helped him up and tried to steer him toward the bathroom. Lucifer straightened and pushed him aside. “I’m okay,” he grunted. “It must have been some bad pickles or e coli or something like that.” His eyes were jammed shut. “Is this your place? It’s lovely.”

  Absalom nodded. “I never got around to redecorating it. My wife liked curious items and I liked indulging her. Did you see the collection of Precious Moments ceramics? She had them all.”

  “NO!” Lucifer shouted and bolted from the room.

  Absalom found him on the sidewalk, hands on his knees, dry heaving.

  “Sorry,” he panted. “Precious Moments figurines. Bad memories.”

  “Let’s walk to the bookstore,” Absalom said. “You can sit down there and rest”

  It was sunny and mild. A few clouds sauntered through the blue sky and Absalom had a thought. How about a character like Sam in his book. A quirky sidekick for his ex-Navy Seal hero. An antithesis character. Maybe gay?

  He looked at the pale, blood-drained face of Sam.

  Definitely gay.

  When they arrived at the bookstore, Fat Boy nodded to them and resumed his favored standing position, the Crane Kick Stance. Arms raised, left knee arched with an occasional jump kick. His silent tribute to Ralph Macchio, the Karate Kid.

  In Absalom’s office, Lucifer’s mood lifted a little bit. The answer is here, somewhere in these stacks. Patience, he thought. Patience.

  “Hey, Sam. Here’s that map I sketched for the book,” Absalom said, handing Lucifer a large folded sheet of paper.

  Lucifer took a deep breath and opened it up.

  Shit. Page 345.

  He needed page 346. One more damned flip of the page.

  Trying not to show his bitter disappointment, Lucifer handed the map back to Absalom.

  “Beautiful,” he grinned, giving his best fake smile.

  Absalom was rifling through the contents of a large brown box. Lucifer looked at him curiously. He sensed something in the room now, something vibrating quietly. Something that was uncomfortably holy.

  Lucifer shivered.

  “Here!” Absalom said triumphantly, pulling a large journal from the box. “These are my notes from that period of time. I never throw anything way, which explains a lot about me.”

  Lucifer scanned through the journal. His mind was violently careening from thought to thought. The marble buildings Absalom described were very close to the real thing, too close for some obscure wild vision. Plus, the map was spot on. All along, he had assumed that somehow, a copy of the Book of Angels had ended up in this place, but now he realized something else had happened.

  The guy had dreamed of Heaven. Not dreamed, thought Lucifer. Absalom had somehow projected himself right past the Pearly Gates.

  “I’ve never had that dream again,” Absalom said. “It was so vivid that it still pops up now and then when I’m awake.”

  “Is there anyone else in your dream? Were there any people hanging around in the library?”

  “Maybe. It seems like somebody talked to me briefly, but otherwise it looked deserted.”

  Could Heaven actually be empty? Lucifer thought. That would explain the unending stream of people spilling into his former domain. A screw-up or something. What had Jehovah done? Lucifer thought back to the early days.

  Jehovah was working non-stop. There were countless details. Designing weather. Is the magma going to be hot enough? Which continent should go where? Sometimes the Project seemed too big, even for the All-Powerful. Lucifer had assisted as he could, but a lot of the work was over his head.

  One afternoon Jehovah was lecturing Lucifer about reproduction. “There were a couple of ways to go about it,” Jehovah said. “I can use the dust of the Earth, just wave my hand and there you go. Man.”

  “Yes,” agreed Lucifer, “but how many men do you plan on making? It seems like you’ll be putting in lots of hours.”

  “I have the time,” Jehovah laughed.

  “But consider this,” Lucifer continued. “If you are just raising people from the dust left and right, what is going to bond those people together? Did you read the paper on brotherhood that I sent you?”

  “I’ve been meaning to get to it,” Jehovah answered. “Honestly, it’s in the stack.”

  Lucifer rolled his eyes in his mind. Jehovah never read his memos. They were chockfull of great concepts that Lucifer had been working on. Brotherhood. Love. Companionship. But no, Jehovah was too much of a mechanic for that kind of esoterica. Volcanoes, now that was more Jehovah’s style.

  “I was thinking that maybe Mankind should reproduce himself,” Lucifer said. “That would create a bond between him and his progeny.”

  “The Created become Creators themselves, huh?” Jehovah nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Of course, where does that me. Me, as in, capital M, me. That seems to reduce my position from Deity to all Mankind to Guy That Just Got the Ball Rolling.”

  Lucifer stomach lurched with the final realization that he was never going to convince Jehovah of any changes that would be of benefit to Mankind. “You’re right,” Lucifer said.

  “I’m always right,” Jehovah chuckled.

  “Of course. Uh, I need to go check on those marsupials you’ve been working on.” Lucifer slipped out.

  The Heaven that Jehovah had created was grand in many ways. There were fine places to eat, glorious muse
ums full of art, books filled with wonderful phrasing and flawless grammar. As Lucifer walked the Grand Avenue, he felt total betrayal. Sure, he respected Jehovah. After all, he had put all this together. But his Mankind Project had taken a turn that Lucifer didn’t think he could support.

  Jehovah wanted more worshippers. The Reverent. The Thankful. The Adoring.

  Lucifer’s stomach was churning.

  “There are enough sycophants in this place,” he thought. The Seraphim sit around all day, hanging on his every word, writing it down for posterity. Michael, Gabriel, and those other Archangels were major suck ups, for sure. The Virtues, the Powers, the Principalities, wasn’t that enough to feed the ego’s need for adoration? Am I the only one that sees this?

  Lucifer hid out for the next few days, reading and mulling. He sifted through his notes on the book he was writing, a behind the scenes look at the creation of Mankind. He had jotted many notes in the margins, improvements and tweaking he considered critical. He stared at the words he had written and saw the lie that was woven into them. He knew his course, his direction.

  Jehovah must be stopped.

  Lucifer floated up out of the depths of his ancient despair. He looked up at Absalom, who was staring at him with true concern. “Poor creature of mud,” he thought. “Betrayed, and he doesn’t even know it.” He stood up and grasped Absalom by the shoulder.

  “Mr. Jones, it’s time for you to move on and finish up this book, and I truly believe I can assist you.”

  Absalom looked at him skeptically. “You have the cure for writer’s block tucked away somewhere?”

  “Sometimes,” Lucifer answered, “you only have to go around the block. All you need is a guide.”

  “What’s in this for you, Sam? Why do you want to help me?”

  “I’m a sucker for hard luck stories,” Lucifer said.

  Chapter 33[33]

  “Wildlife Hunting Trophies. You kill ‘em, we fill ‘em.”

  “Catchy,” Lucifer said. “I take it this is Phobetor?”

  “Scratchy!” Phobetor said in faux-excited voice. “When did they get cell phone service in Hell? You know that no one will deliver pizza there,” he guffawed.