“Anyone else?” she asked, “No? Well I’m sure Momma could use a shot.”
Sissy poured another shot and slid it over the table toward Momma. Momma’s slip implant scuttled inside her skull, as if trying to peel itself out of her nerve endings. Her arms shot across the table. She knocked the shot glass over and it shattered onto the floor.
“Momma! That’s good whiskey,” Sissy said, “you know that’s the last we’ll ever have.”
She rubbed her forehead, leaving a smudge of pink behind on the back of her hand, and then knelt down to clean the glass shattered onto the floor. When she went underneath the table she bumped her chair with her shoulder, knocking it to the floor with a crack. I pulled Jeanine out of the way.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Jeanine.
Jolene started to scratch on the windows outside. A fourteen year old fear crawled into my spine. I tried to set down my knife and fork but instead of reaching the table they clattered onto the floor. I couldn’t bend down to pick them up. Jolene continued to scratch and scratch, that familiar black noise.
"What's that?" Jeanine asked.
"Oh, that's just Jolene," Sissy said.
"Cunt!" Jolene screamed from outside, shaking the foundation of the house.
"Cock sucker!" Sissy yelled back.
Sissy turned to Jeanine.
"Don't worry, Jolene only eats children. She just likes Charles for some reason."
Momma sat upright in her chair and touched the hot wire spider in her head, making it jump and clutch at her fingers. Then the hot wire spider turned its clicking mandibles toward me, and Momma’s face appeared to drip down her face, right through the sieve of her bones.
"When are you two kids going to get married?" Momma asked.
"I know why Jolene wants to eat Charles. It’s because of that baby face, don’t you think?” Sissy said, and reached over to pinch my cheeks, "Look at this cute face. Delicious monster food."
"I don't know, Momma," I said, pushing Sissy's fingers away from my face.
"No son of mine is going to be a bachelor for the rest of his life."
"Okay, Momma," I said.
"Bitch!" Jolene said.
"Crazy motherfucker!" Sissy called back in response.
Momma stumbled up out of her chair, knocked over the dead deer, and then went into the living room to watch television.
“Momma!” Sissy screamed.
Sissy threw her silverware down on the floor and followed Momma into the living room. From the living room, I heard a crash. Then Momma howled. I jumped up from the table and chased after Sissy, to find the coffee table knocked over and Sissy dragging Momma across the floor by the hair. Momma squirmed and twisted and dug her fingernails into the carpet so hard that they broke. Teddy’s stretched, salesman’s face pressed itself against the television screen, trying to break the glass with a hot wire spider.
I tried to keep my teeth from shattering in my mouth. I could barely swallow, or think, or breathe. Not with Momma’s rabbit howls, with Teddy singing an aria over Delilah's gray bed, Jolene from the swamp screaming and screaming.
“Let her go, Theresa,” I said, “she hasn’t done anything to you.”
“You’re not here!” Sissy said, gathering another fistful of Momma’s hair so that Momma’s head snapped back and her, “You’re not here all the time taking care of her! Having to keep her from burning herself on old cigarettes and forcing food down her throat because she won’t eat!”
“Let her go,” I repeated.
I laid my hand on Sissy’s wrist. She jerked it away.
“No! I won’t! You don’t know! You don’t have to tell her every half hour that Daddy’s not coming back. That the baby isn’t crying because he died fourteen years ago. You’re always out with that girl. You’ve left us all behind.”
“Theresa, don’t make me get your father,” Momma said.
Sissy backhanded Momma across the face. Blood spurted from Momma’s nose, dark blood tinged with gray, the only color I thought I’d ever see again. Momma’s blood spattered the walls, the television, more blood than I ever thought was inside of Momma’s veins.
I pushed Sissy off of Momma and slammed her into the wall. The moose head above unhinged itself from the wallpaper and crashed down at our feet.. Sissy’s eyes went wide and her hands uncurled to drop fistfuls of Momma’s ripped hair out onto the ground. Jolene stopped screaming. The house stopped rattling. Even the television with its constant babble had slowed down to an indistinguishable hum.
“Charles?” Jeanine called from behind me.
“Bubba,” Sissy whispered.
“Don’t touch Momma like that ever again,” I said.
I released Sissy and went over to Momma. She still lay on the floor, trying to escape with her legs kicking and kicking out from underneath her. She squealed when I touched her.
“Momma,” I said, “let’s go to bed.”
I guided Momma to the stairs. Jeanine rushed over to help me. Momma stuttered and drooled blood.
At the top of the stairs I looked back down at Sissy. She peeled herself off the wall, brushing her hair back with her bloodstained hand, and gathered up the moose head in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” Jeanine said.
“Fuck you,” she said, trembling, “fuck the both of you.”
Jeanine and I took Momma down the hallway.
“Your girlfriend’s a cunt!” Sissy screamed after us, “You should’ve died instead of your brother! I hate you! I hate you!”
We took Momma into her bedroom and guided her onto the mattress. She rolled onto her stomach and twitched.
“You don’t feel a thing,” she said, her voice muffled by her pillow, “write your novel. Fall in love. Get your slip implant today.”
Downstairs, Sissy continued to scream.
“If I ever see that girl around here again I’m going to kill her! I’ll kill both of you!”
“Come on,” I said to Jeanine, “Stay close to me. I’ll take you home.”
Jeanine and I went down the hallway, back down the stairs.
As we walked past her Sissy stood tall and pressed the moose head close to her stomach. Its antlers reached up to pierce her cheeks. The gray sea of her face fell down into her arms. She’d become the house, angry as the house, emanating the house. Its dark creak hallways and dead thing wallpaper bleached into her skin. Soon, I thought, I wouldn’t recognize her at all.
***
"She doesn't remember me," Jeanine told me as we walked together down the road from my house.
"What?"
"Theresa. Your sister. When I was a little girl she gave me a flower from her garden, this purple hibiscus, and she showed me the place where the swans lived. Now she's so angry and sad she's trapped in that house, like a bug that keeps hitting the glass over and over and over again."
I said nothing.
"What happened to your mom?" Jeanine asked.
"She's always been like that," I said.
"She's lucky, in a way," Jeanine told me, "your sister, I mean. If she had stayed that little girl in her garden, the shuttles would take her. The shuttles always take people like that. The kind of people who tend gardens and give flowers to strangers. She's safe this way. She'll live in that house until the end of the world."
"Jeanine,” I said quietly.
“What is it?”
“What am I going to do when you're gone?" I asked.
“You’ll think of something,” she said.
I thought of Momma’s question. “When are you two kids going to get married?” I thought of Jeanine and I sitting in the corner of the kitchen eating dinner together. Jeanine dressed in Momma’s housewife clothes, feeding me whiskey and cutting off the tips of my cigars. Jeanine straddling the kitchen sink. Jeanine pulling her lion’s hair down over her eyes, naked, falling down with me into a bed full of raw steak.
"How do you manage to stay alive?" I asked, "everyone we've ever known has died or gone crazy."
She pulled the hair back from my eyes and pressed our hips together. She pressed my fingers into her stomach, that empty space where my hands never touched bottom. I kissed the curve of her jaw.
"I don't know," she said, "we're all afraid of dark spaces, you know, but every time I see a dark space, like a shadow, or an empty corner, or a black hole - I just think there's a man of smoke sitting in that dark space, filling it up. And his legs are open and his arms are open, real wide like, ready to take me in. And he says, 'I'm here for you, Jeanine, I'm waiting for you in every space you're afraid of.' And that's how I can go into the woods at night and why I don't get stuck to the floor waiting for my prophet brother to come home. Because of the man of smoke. "
"That kind of sounds like God," I said.
"It's nothing like God," Jeanine responded, "it's just another way to fill the empty spaces God left behind."
Jeanine told me goodnight and I headed back the way we came through the woods.
A monster chased me the entire way back home. It chased me through the woods felling trees as it went, stomping so hard I thought it might knock stars out of the sky. I ran up to the porch and yanked open the front door and slammed it shut behind me. I slid down to the floor and the monster whispered my name as it insinuated its thin, brown fingers through the bottom of the door.
Sissy, sitting on the couch and watching television, said nothing as I slid down to the floor and the monster whispered my name. It insinuated its thin, brown fingers through the bottom of the door. I tried to push my fists into my mouth.
It whispered my name once more before slinking off in the night to wait. It never tried too hard to catch me. It had all the time in the world to wait for when I would be ready to be caught.
Chapter Nine
During high school graduation my class sat in the auditorium in blue rows and the principal walked onto the stage for his speech like he was being pursued by a merciless ghost. When he got to the podium and looked out toward the audience the soft, blue veins of his face squirmed. He spoke into the microphone at a tense whisper.
“This is a very important day for you all,” he said, “you’re about to go into the world and try to make something of yourselves. Well, all I can say about that is don’t try too hard. Be good, and don’t draw any attention to yourselves. The most successful kind of person is a quiet and obedient person. Before you pursue your dreams, you should ask God what he wants instead.”
The principal looked behind him. He turned back to the audience with his eyebrows wide and his mouth sloped to one side, and he coughed into the microphone like there was gravel in his lungs.
“Good luck, kids,” he said, after he’d regained his composure, “without God’s protection, it’s a vast and cold universe out there. And before I let you go, we have a special guest speaker from the capitol. One of the saints employed at the Bureau of Salvation. Give him a good welcome.”
I sat between Jeanine and Ezekiel. Jeanine gripped my knuckles. Ezekiel leaned over to the girl in the other seat and whispered, “God tells me death is near.” He kissed her all over her face and neck. The heated center of the sphere on the back of his head pulsed.
The saint walked onto the stage wearing a white robe stained with his stigmata. When he approached the pulpit I saw he carried a flamethrower and a can of gasoline.
“And remember kids,” the principal, “God believes in you.”
The prophet reached the podium, took the microphone from the principal, and smiled down at us to reveal his red stained teeth. The principal skittered off the stage, coughing. The prophet raised the flamethrower up over his head, and blood dripped from his stigmata wrist and onto the floor.
“Get this straight, kids,” the prophet said, “if you think you're anything but dirt, then you're in for a surprise. Ignore everything your principal said. It doesn't matter what you do now, you're still going to die. You're all sinners and scum of the earth. You've spent the last eighteen years of your life fucking, cussing, and spiting the Lord. Well, kids, when the end comes you're going to be wishing your mother aborted you with a coat hanger and ended your miserable existence before it ever began.”
He opened the can of gasoline and splashed it across the first row of students. Before they could move he whipped the flamethrower toward them and squeezed the trigger. A shot of fire erupted from the muzzle, setting the entire row of students up in flames.
Ezekiel, Jeanine and I stood up. Ezekiel and Jeanine ran down the aisle toward the doors. I went to follow after them, but the saint splashed gasoline down the aisle behind them and a tide of fire rolled past, blocking my exit. Fellow students caught in the rows in front burned fast, soon nothing but char smeared against the seats. I turned around with the heat bubbling on my skin, eyebrows and mouth seared, and ran the opposite way.
“Don’t worry, kids,” the saint called out from the stage, “it might hurt right now but soon you’ll realize this is the best thing for you!”
I turned my head back just for a moment to see him point the flamethrower up to the ceiling. A burst of flame hit one of the support beams above, which then cracked and fell, crushing a row of students below.
“Jeanine!” I called out, my voice weak from the lack of oxygen.
“The best life lived is the one not lived at all, you good for nothing animals!” the priest said, “Better to die now and get it over with!”
I ran to the back of the auditorium toward the door, tripping over my classmates writhing on the ground. I touched the door to attempt to pry it open, but it was so hot it seared my hand. I cried out and stumbled backwards. Another lick of flame shot above my head, catching my hair on fire. I put it out with my burned hands.
I ran across another aisle toward the window as I choked, unable to get enough air. I climbed up onto the windowsill, shoved my hands into the folds of my t-shirt and kicked the glass with my knee. Glass shattered all over me. I rolled out the window and landed hard on my back outside in the courtyard. The auditorium behind me groaned and shifted on its steel frame.
I heaved myself to my feet. I ran out to the street and the auditorium collapsed underneath its own weight with a demon crack. The heat of the fire struck my back and the aluminum and ash reared its head over me in a cloud. My classmates still trapped inside screamed, and then just as quickly, the screaming died.
I discarded my cap and gown in a trashcan by the street and wandered around looking to see if anyone else came out of the building alive. I found the arsonist saint torching all the trees.
“Did God tell you to do this?” I asked him, pressing my palms against my eyes to keep them from melting in the heat.
“Fuck you, kid,” the saint said, and disappeared behind the burning building brandishing his flamethrower over his head.
I continued searching for survivors outside of the building. Smoke cloyed in my throat. The heat and lack of oxygen made me dizzy. I called out for Jeanine but my voice sounded like a broken legged horse. I rounded the ruins of the school and found Ezekiel smoking a cigarette underneath a burning tree.
“Congratulations,” he said when he saw me, “you’re still alive. Thank God for that, because you won’t be alive for much longer.”
“Have you seen Jeanine?” I asked.
“Who’s Jeanine?” he asked.
The burnt tree limbs stretched overhead like Ezekiel’s halo. He tossed his cigarette into the burning tree behind him, spraying ash downwards.
“Nice graduation, right?” he said, and walked off.
I circled the collapsed building again, but I couldn’t fine Jeanine or any of Ezekiel’s girls. As I walked, calling out for Jeanine in my horse voice, the heat of the auditorium made my vision white and my feet stick to the sidewalk. I started to think that the smoke that roiled off the building were the angry feet of God. Black and defeating and crushing the ground underneath it couldn’t scream anymore.
I went home.
I stumbled into the living room with ash and oil scraping
my face and smoking off my clothes. Momma and Sissy were sitting on the couch watching television. I dragged myself toward them, heels sunk low into the carpet.
“The school auditorium burned down.” I said.
“Get out of the way,” Sissy said, “you’re blocking the television.”
Without another word I crawled up the stairs and got into bed. I pulled the bed covers over my head with the smoke emanating off of me in waves.
***
That night Jeanine climbed through my bedroom window and crept into my bed. She smelled of smoke and burnt meat. She rubbed at her blackened face with the backs of her hands.
“I thought you died,” I said.
“Yeah?” she asked, and pulled her dress over her head.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she whispered. She pressed her dress against my mouth and slipped her hand into my pants. Her eyes were lazy, cloudy spots stuck to the ceiling. Her knees pooled and stuck to my sheets. She pulled off my pants. Wherever she touched me I burned.
“Why can't you get it up?” she asked me.
“I thought you died,” I repeated.
“I'm not dead,” she said, “get it up.”
“Are you all right, Jeanine?” I asked.
She slumped down into the bed, her hair falling over her face in one smooth, black sheet. She continued to touch my penis with her scorched fingers. She slipped the fingers of her other hand inside my mouth and her fingers tasted of meat.
“What's wrong?” I asked, spitting out her fingers. I pressed her close to me, touching our chins and noses together. My penis remained limp in her grasp until she released me.
“I thought some things were untouchable, unable to be harmed, even after all this time. But nothing is. Not here. Not in this world.”
“Are you talking about the fire?” I asked, “at Graduation?”
She pulled away from me. She found her dress where she dropped it onto the floor and pulled it back over her head. She smoothed out her lion's hair, trailing streaks of meat, and looked out toward the window. The black moon waited over the trees in the blacker sky, the distant stars, glowing weak, the only light left on the entire planet.
The Crooked God Machine Page 6