In The Lap Of The Gods

by John B. Hendricks

  “I’m not shaking that.”

  “Witness,” Jehovah said.

  “Funny,” Enoch said. “Really, really funny.”

  Chapter 61[61]

  Eve awakened on a spiked leather couch. She carefully lifted her head and looked around. “This is the kind of stuff Adam wanted me to get into,” she said disgustedly. “I wonder if this is part of some kind of kinky revenge plot.” She spotted Lilith sitting on a desk.

  The woman was gorgeous, dressed in a sheer black bodysuit and wearing a jeweled crown was stroking what appeared to be a handle of a cat-o-nine tails. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Lilith said. “Hope you’re feeling all better.”

  “What do you want from me?” Eve asked, struggling to sit up without impaling herself.

  “I guess we could talk about the men we have in common,” Lilith answered. “Adam surely must have spoken of me or did he tell you he was a virgin when you two met?”

  “Lilith,” Eve said. “The big mistake.”

  “You can say that again, toots,” Lilith said as she slid sensuously from the desk. “But he was the only bronco in town and I road him for all he was worth, which wasn’t a whole lot in retrospect.” Lilith spat on the floor, steam rising in a very nice effect.

  “Where am I?” Is Adam behind all of this?”

  Lilith laughed. “That dolt? You fiercely overestimate his skills, just as he always did before having sex with me.” Lilith moved closer to Eve, brandishing the long whip in front of her. “You’re merely a pawn in the game, princess. A chess piece to be moved around and ultimately sacrificed.” She paused. “But I’ll play the part of graceful villainess and let you know the details of the plot. That makes the torment taste a little bit sweeter for me.”

  “Let’s talk about the other man we have in common. My estranged husband of convenience, Lucifer, is on a quixotic mission to create his own little world of love. He wants to take the best of both species, angel and human, and create a race of freedom loving citizens who are unencumbered by the strings of a meddling uber-deity. He’s a regular Ayn Rand,” Lilith snorted.

  “You mean he’s coming for me?” Eve gasped.

  “Apparently he thinks that you’re the best that the human race has to offer on the female side of things, and of course he considers himself to be the crème-ad-la-crème of angelhood.”

  After all these years, Eve thought. He’s never forgotten me.

  Lilith said. “Jehovah left the back door unlocked and Lucifer is taking advantage of the situation. He didn’t count on my little interception, though.” Lilith ran her fingers through Eve’s luxurious hair. “Amazing,” she said. “I hope my hair is this good after I’ve been dead since the beginning of time, like you.” There was a knock on the office door. She let go of the hair in disgust. “Who is it and is it worth you being dismembered for?”

  Teeraal poked his head in the door cautiously. “I have the information that you requested, your most evil dementedness.”

  “Then leave it,” Lilith shouted and flicked the whip at him, shearing all the fingers from his hand. The folder dropped to the floor on top of the still twitching digits. Teeraal quickly withdrew, trailing bright green ooze.

  “Incompetents,” Lilith said, storming toward the door. She scooped up the now limp fingers and tossed them at the retreating back of Teeraal. “I’ve told you idiots to always retrieve your dismembered parts!” She slammed the door in fury.

  “Can’t even get them to pick up after themselves,” she said to Eve. “Worse than children.” She opened the folder onto her desk and browsed its contents. “Yes,” she smiled. “Yes.” She looked over at Eve. “We’re going to the beach. I hope you brought your swimsuit.” She nodded briefly, and then summoned the minions over the newly installed loudspeaker system. Across the torment area, human eardrums throbbed and exploded, leaving them in temporary agony.

  “Sweet,” Lilith said.

  Chapter 62[62]

  “How is the device coming along?” Lilith asked.

  “It is preceding well, your wretchedness,” Cresil said nervously.

  “I need it done now.”

  “But-

  “This was your concept, toad,” Lilith said. “You proclaimed that your mighty abilities would be able to create it in a timely manner.”

  “Your vileness, you volunteered me.”

  “Don’t correct me!” Lilith snapped, swatting him briskly on the side of his head with her scepter. Her Minion Guard chuckled. “I want results!”

  Cresil was sweating profusely. All he had done was mention something he had read somewhere about the only way to stop pure evil was with pure love. Maybe he had seen it on Oprah. Regardless, that’s what he got for opening his fool mouth. Chronic brown-noser.

  “Explain it to me again,” she said.

  “The universe,” Cresil began, “is about duality. Left and right. Up and down. Abbott and Costello. Good and Evil. Without one, you can’t have the other. My thought was that if Lucifer touched something so pure and full of love, it would cancel him out, leaving a void on the evil side of the equation, making an opening available for the current Queen of Hell.”

  “Then I could fully step into the role and take on Jehovah with full force!”

  “Yes, that’s the theory but…”

  “Complete your sentences!”

  “Okay,” Cresil said. “I can’t find enough pure love here in your demesnes. Even the purest are pretty pissed off. That includes Mother Theresa, by the way.”

  Lilith raged in furious splendor for a few moments, and then regrouped. “Suggestions?”

  “Besides punt? Ouch!”

  “Football analogies anger me,” Lilith said, wiping the ichor from her scepter.

  The scepter, Cresil thought. What if…

  “I believe I have a solution,” he said. “The scepter, the crown, and all the trappings of your infernal office don’t have any actual power in them of their own. They only amplify the designee’s intent. As Lucifer’s resolve waned, so did his power over his minions and the general atmosphere of Hell became more pleasant and quite often spring-like.” Cresil sighed inside. I missed the wildflowers.

  “But if the crown and scepter were possessed by someone so pure at heart and Lucifer touched them then, perhaps both would cancel each other out like matter touching anti-matter, putting her Royal Snideness into the proverbial catbird seat.” Cresil smiled broadly. He should be in like Flint with Miss Whips and Chains from now on out.

  Lilith wrinkled her brow. “When I give over my scepter and crown, what’s to stop the recipient from turning on me?”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “Pure good would never have any desire to wield such power. Once that particular pure good is destroyed with Lucifer, the scepter and crown will be back up for grabs and you’ll be there to pick up the pieces.”

  “Ironic, brutal, and final. I like it,” Lilith said. “It’s so, Lilith.”

  “Of course, my Infernalness,” Cresil said. I wonder, he thought, if Lilith might need a consort in the near future. He grinned lustily. She’s pretty hot.

  Chapter 63[63]

  They cruised across town and got onto the expressway. Fat Boy had all the windows down and was bobbing his head in time with the slapping windshield wipers.

  “It’s not raining,” Absalom said.

  “The wipers aren’t for the rain, it’s for the rhythm. It’s essential that we keep a good beat going. That’s why we dumped all the death metal and kept all the Abba.” Waterloo boomed from the speakers. “Frida was so hot,” Fat Boy leered. “Almost as hot as Sylvia Browne. Did I mention I’d like to do Sylvia?”

  “No, you hadn’t. At least not in the last ten minutes.”

  They maintained a high rate of speed until they reached the exit Absalom remembered. He directed Fat Boy down a few suburban streets until he spotted a house that looked familiar. It was a standard Florida-issue house, light, breezy, and overpriced, but had a large Sphinx-shaped mai
lbox that Absalom remembered. Fat Boy sunk down in the seat, fedora slanted over his eyes.

  “I thought I would just knock on the door,” Absalom said, “Unless that totally blows your conspiracy warrior motif.”

  “You go,” Fat Boy agreed, fiddling with his Blackberry. “I’ve got a ton of email paranoia to deal with.”

  Absalom treaded up the walkway and knocked on the door. He started to knock again when he felt something hard in his crotch, and it wasn’t the result of sexual desire.

  He looked down and saw the black tube of a double-barreled shotgun threatening his quickly retreating groin. The shotgun poked through the doggy door, angling up sharply.

  “State your business,” an elderly voice said, barely audible through the door and over Absalom’s jack hammering heart.

  “My name is Absalom Jones. I was at a garage sale here a few years back. I had a question about an item I bought.”

  “Drop your wallet by the door, slowly. Remember, I’ve got one barrel for each of your family jewels.”

  “How could I forget?” Absalom muttered. He dropped the wallet and a scrawny arm shot out of the door and retrieved it.

  In a few moments, the voice said. “Why aren’t you an organ donor, you selfish sonofabitch.”

  Ouch. “It’s my new license. I haven’t had a chance to fill it out and get it witnessed.”

  “You really should do it,” the voice said. “It’s the gift that keeps giving.”

  “I know,” Absalom said. “My wife donated hers when she got killed.”

  The shotgun retreated quickly and Absalom stepped back as the door swung open.

  “You poor boy,” the short white-haired woman said in sympathy. “You poor, poor attractive widower.” She flung her arms around him. Since she was so petite, they were wrapped around his waist with her chest rubbing against his groin. His confused genitals fought the urge to expand and remained in a protective formation.

  “Come in, come in,” she said, pulling him by his belt buckle. “I’ll make you the world’s fifth best lemonade. It is truly special. Come try it.” Absalom followed by force. He looked over his shoulder at Fat Boy who was gesturing wildly as he shouted into the phone. Absalom tried to flag him down but to no avail.

  The door slammed behind him, prison-like. He smelled gardenia perfume, cachet, and potatoes.

  “My name is Mrs. Goldstein. How can I help you, Mr. Jones?”

  Absalom was trying not to touch the doilies.

  It wasn’t that he was trying to keep the décor the same. The formerly white doilies were ochre brown and a little stiff looking. In fact, the whole room had a brown tinge to it. The living room was decorated in late 20th century humidor. Cigar prints covered the walls, and stack after stack of cigar boxes lined the walls. A framed picture of Castro adorned the end table. Mrs. Goldstein’s sat down and resumed smoking a very large cigar.

  “Early in the revolution, I was a Marxist groupie,” she confided, wiping a smudge from the glass the covered Fidel’s stoic face. “Fidel got me hooked on fine cigars, light bondage, and el revolution.” She kissed the portrait again, resmudging it. “But the inner machinations of party politics chewed me up and spat me back across the strait back to Florida.” She sighed and put the picture back in its place.

  “I’m a little pressed for time, “Absalom said. “With the alien attack and all.” Mrs. Goldstein frowned at him. “Aliens,” he reiterated. “Maybe you’ve seen them on the television?” He looked around and saw no set. “Okay, maybe not.”

  “Television replaced religion as the opiate of the masses,” Mrs. Goldstein said. “I don’t want my thoughts crammed into my head by giant evil corporations promoting capitalism.”

  “Fair enough,” Absalom said. “Do you remember a few years ago, you had a garage sale? You actually called it an estate tag sale, I believe.”

  “Yeah, that damned oncologist told me I had a month to live, so I sold all my stuff so the kids wouldn’t get a damned thing from me. I figured they would ignore my will as much as they ignored me all those years, so I just got rid of the stuff I thought they would fight over with each other. It turns out I didn’t have cancer, just a dumbass for a doctor.” She took gulp of her lemonade, chugging it down. “What’s the matter with your lemonade? Too much gin?”

  “I guess I wasn’t really thirsty,” Absalom said.

  “That just leaves more for me,” Mrs. Goldstein said, grabbing his glass and pouring it down her throat. She came up for air, sputtering and coughing. “Damned fine gin,” she choked, wiping her mouth with a tainted doily. Absalom threw up a little bit in his mouth.

  “I bought an old pair of keys from you,” Absalom said. “One silver, one gold. Do you remember if they came in a box with a silver chain?”

  Mrs. Goldstein kept coughing, but still managed to take a puff from her cigar. “Solly, my old departed husband, bought that stuff on one his many trips to visit his whores in Europe.” She puffed again. “Not female whores. That I could have handled. No, he was a Christian collector of antiquities. Not much of a supply here in the Fascist States of America, unless you believe in the polygamist Mormons, so he traipsed around dingy cathedrals and flea markets in Europe and dug endless tons of gravel and sand out of the deserts of the Middle East. He would come home, trunks full of relics and general crap, trailing sand and piety all over the house. Made me sick.” She got up and went into the kitchen for more special lemonade.

  “What happened to the box, Mrs. Goldstein?” Absalom yelled, trying to steer the conversation back on course. “Did it sell at the garage sale?”

  “I switched to vodka,” she said when she came back and slammed the glass down in front of Absalom. “See if you can drink that, you pussy.” She guffawed and swallowed half her drink in one gulp, ice cubes and all. “The box,” she spluttered. “Solly said the box was special.”

  “Was there a silver chain in it?” Absalom asked, holding his breath.

  “Yes, I believe there was,” Mrs. Goldstein said. “It was clunky and delicate at the same time. Shiny. Made me feel good just touching it, but sometimes it made me feel just plain bad.” She sucked the rest of her drink down her throat. “Smooth,” she murmured, and fell face first onto the coffee table.

  Fat Boy watched with interest as the ambulance drove off. He scrawled a note, got out of the car, and walked to the house where Absalom was.

  “Dead?” he asked.

  “No, not quite, but she has enough alcohol in her system that embalming will not be necessary when she goes,” Absalom said.

  “I take it you didn’t get the scoop on the chain,” Fat Boy said.

  “Nope. She got right up to saying it and keeled. Typical. What’s the word on the Remusians?”

  “They are slowly rolling across each continent,” Fat Boy said. “They are using some kind of androids to do the heavy lifting. It looks like the leaders are appearing on a number of cable shows.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Hard to say, but they aren’t in any hurry, which is good on one hand because it gives us time, but bad on the other hand because it appears they are doing a very thorough and efficient job of genocidal massacre.” Fat Boy looked inside the house. “Let’s toss it.”

  “Might as well,” Absalom said.

  They pulled out drawers, emptied closets, and searched coat pockets. Fat Boy examined the toilet tanks while Absalom looked in the album sleeves of Mrs. Goldstein’s rumba records.

  “Any Celia Cruz?” Fat Boy asked.

  “Several.”

  “Excellent,” Fat Boy said. “Play it proud and play it loud.”

  They continued to dig, but came up empty. Fat Boy had lit up a Carlos Torano Virtuoso and stretched out on the doily covered couch. He puffed contentedly and hummed along with Celia. Absalom stood looking at the framed pictures of Fidel and Mrs. Goldstein, disconsolately sipping special lemonade in her honor.

  “Maybe she’ll come out of the coma soon,” Fat Boy said.


  “Yeah,” Absalom grunted. “And after that we’ll go out to the cemetery and grilled Mr. Goldstein as well. Got any chicken entrails in the Mystery Machine?”

  “Excuse me,” said Mr. Solly Goldstein, freshly returned from the market, hefting an organic tomato and threatening to throw it. “What the hell are you doing in here smoking Mrs. Goldstein’s best cigars?”

  “Mr. Goldstein, I presume,” said Fat Boy, sitting up straight on the couch.

  “I am,” Solly said. “Where is Mrs. Goldstein?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Absalom said. “There was an accident.”

  “Did she get her head stuck in the toilet again?” Solly asked, “or was she running around naked in the front yard shouting ‘Viva Fidel?’”

  “No, she passed out and hit her head,” Absalom said. “They took her to St. Bonaventure’s. She’s in a coma.”

  “Peace at last,” Solly said. “Sorry, boys. Gut reaction. If you met her, you probably have a good idea of what I’m saying.” He looked at Fat Boy’s skulking outfit. “Are you some kind of obese Ninja warrior?”

  “Har har,” Fat Boy said. “Who said dead people can’t tell jokes?”

  “Dead people?” Solly asked. “Oh, Mrs. Goldstein. She just wishes I were dead. That way I’d be out of her hair and she could return to Cuba, as if they would take her back. It’s always ‘Fidel says this,’ or ‘Fidel did that.’”

  “She said she was misdiagnosed for cancer.”

  “Mrs. Goldstein always thinks she has cancer. Lung, pancreas, bone, brain. If there were cancer of the ass, she would think she had that too. No, she was hitting the moonshine hard then and she was having a lot of vision blurring. Too much lead in the shine.”

  “Mr. Goldstein,” Absalom said. “We’re looking for a silver chain. It may have been in a box with a pair of silver and gold keys. We figured Mrs. Goldstein sold it at the garage sale,” Absalom said.

  Solly groaned. “I’m gone for a month, then I come back and a lot of my antiquities have been sold for practically nothing. Priceless artifacts and holy relics. I had a chunk of the True Cross in that lot. Fortunately, I had the chain with me in Europe. I was having a guy who knows his ancient materials examine it. He’s a metallurgist and he told me that it was more pure than sterling silver. 100% pure. But somehow it was as hard as adamantine, meaning it had melded together in a way totally unknown on Earth. He even speculated that this was the kind of chain than Zeus would have used to tie down Prometheus.”