The Crooked God Machine

by Autumn Christian

  "Charles?" she called out to me after a few minutes.

  I found Jeanine in the bathroom with both hands up against the mirror.

  "What happened to my hair?" she asked.

  I couldn't think of how to tell Jeanine that her hair was colored like the gauche lights that used to be in the Legion bar, orange at the tips, blue at the roots. Or that the first time I'd seen her in seven years she was insect dancing in front of a stripper pole, wearing PVC boots and a smeared lipstick SLUT.

  I said nothing.

  "I'm so tired," Jeanine said.

  "You've been asleep for a long time," I said.

  "What year is it?" she asked me.

  I told her.

  "Three years too early," she said.

  Jeanine traced the spider curves of her face, the veins that rose to the surface of her flesh like a broken garden. She touched the bare and heated edges of her wound.

  "It was only moments ago," she said, "I was still alive and the doctor put that mask over my face. And I wake up just a few moments later and now I'm unbelievably old. Like a corpse. That's all it takes. A few moments, and then it's all over."

  She pulled off the hospital gown and let it fall to the bathroom floor. She touched the war zone of her breasts and ribcage, bent down until her back cracked in the shape of spina bifida.

  "But still," Jeanine said, "you know when you go to sleep and you wake up and feel like you have this really important dream that you can't remember? It's like that too. There's this blister of space inside my head. And this space used to be all of eternity. And it seems really important, but there's only a blister left, and no matter how hard I think and think I know I'll never get any of those memories back."

  She touched the diseased spots growing bad on her chest and the gray flaked off of her.

  "They said everything would be better after I got the implant out," Jeanine said, “they told me I would find love.”

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  She continued to look at herself in the mirror and touch her body like a stranger. Even without the implant, seven years seemed to go by in an instant, as if the girl I used to love appeared in the mirror and shed everything good, her milk and honey, her butterfly wings of frozen meat, her anthropology dreams.

  I once loved that girl, and now she's a drifting snowstorm. I looked away for only a moment and turned back to find nothing left of her but a pile of gray flakes sifting on the dirty bathroom floor.

  Jeanine went back into the bedroom and put on one of Leda's dresses.

  "You had a girl?" she asked me.

  "She's gone now," I said.

  "That's how it always goes," she said.

  Jeanine touched the tulle sleeves of the dress. Her decaying body seemed to collapse within Leda's clothes.

  "Was this hers?" she asked.

  I nodded.

  "I figured," Jeanine said, "Theresa, your sister, she would never wear a dress like this."

  Jeanine moved to the closet and began looking through Leda's clothes. Jeanine touched Leda's soft soled shoes, her collection of black leather gloves.

  "What were you doing at the slip clinic?" she asked.

  "I wanted to die," I said.

  "So why didn't you?"

  "I don't want to die anymore."

  Jeanine turned to look at me, ready to collapse. She drifted back to the bed and lay face down into the blankets.

  "Why not?" she asked softly.

  "I found you."

  She laughed. "Charles," she said, "Charlie. You didn't find anyone."

  She lifted her head up. I stiffened in her eyes.

  "Maybe you're right," I said.

  Jeanine sat up slowly on the edge of the bed. Her elbows shook as she struggled to support her atrophied body.

  "What have you been doing all these years?" she asked me.

  "Looking after Momma and Sissy. Trying to keep things from falling apart."

  She glanced at my desk, now empty.

  “Do you still draw?”

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  "What else?" she asked.

  I sat down on the bed beside Jeanine. I said nothing for a long time. The silence formed a hard casement around us.

  "I think I'm a heretic," I finally said.

  "You're a what?" Jeanine asked, and then laughed softly, nervously. "what makes you think a thing like that? The shuttles haven't come for you, have they?"

  "No," I said, "but I think they will soon. Ezekiel doesn't visit me anymore. Right before he stopped coming by the house, his sphere- it looked straight through me, like it could read my thoughts and it didn't like what it found. And when our old friend, his name was Smarts, when he became a heretic and bombed the slip implant clinic, I told him I was sorry. I told him I wished I could have saved him. And I remember thinking - if I could I would have pushed Ezekiel off of him and rescued him from death. And I think Ezekiel knows. Knows that I think things like that."

  "Wow," Jeanine said, exhaling a slow, white cloud of breath, "wow. Charles."

  I said nothing.

  "Why would you go and do something like that? Become a heretic?" she asked.

  I expected God, who was on his nightly apocalyptic tirade, to crawl out of the television and tear the foundation of this rickety house apart. I expected God's monsters to come up out of the swamp and the woods and the machine fields set to devour me whole. But none of this occurred. God continued to speak from within the safe four walls of the television box, and the monsters outside continued to lurk in the distance.

  "I don't know why," I said, "it came on slowly, so slowly I didn't even know what was happening until it was too late."

  "I don't understand," Jeanine said.

  I swallowed softly.

  "I mean, you see things that shouldn't have happened, that should have never been brought into existence, and it all corrodes your brain a little more each day.

  "And then it happens that you see something really terrible, something so profoundly awful, that you realize you have to get out. You think you will tear apart or go insane if you see another moment of it.

  "That this isn't just the way things are supposed to be. That something's gone wrong. There was this force set in motion from the beginning that was destined to go wrong. And we're all caught up in the wheels of it, unable to escape, because it's a mechanism so much more powerful than any of us."

  "Wow," Jeanine said again.

  "And it's controlling each of us, driving us toward this ultimate outcome which none of us can comprehend, even though we're stuck right in the middle of it. It's bigger than the black planet, it's bigger than God. It's probably even bigger than the stars and the places beyond the stars. It's this mechanism at the center of the universe, which decided our destinies a million billion years before we were even born."

  Jeanine said nothing.

  "I first felt it when my baby brother died," I said quietly, kneading my palms down into the bed until I touched the box springs, "and I've felt it pulling me, driving me, ever since. Like I could have been nothing but a heretic. Like nothing I could ever do would change that."

  I tried to catch my breath and I pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw bursting phosphenes. Momma appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Her hair cracked and broke between her hands. I looked up.

  "Your sister's gone," she said.

  Outside in the swamp, someone screamed.

  I ran past Momma and down the stairs. I yanked open the front door. I ran down the porch and toward the tree line. The front door banged shut behind me.

  The sky pulled down over me like a blind. I reached the swamp and the swamp rose up to grab me. It sucked the shoes off my feet.

  Out here I heard the nearby machines pulsing and grinding their silver bullet limbs in preparation for another plague. I ran blindly, listening for another scream, but I could hear nothing except the machines and the wind barreling through the trees and swelling up like a wave to wash over me.

  "S
issy?" I called out into the swamp, "Sissy, where are you?"

  I slowed down. The map of twisted branches underneath me scratched tiny symbols into my skin.

  "Sissy?" I said, softer this time.

  I brushed back a low hanging curtain of Spanish moss. Through the trees I saw the woman of the swamp, Jolene, waist deep in the chilly water. Lichen grew on the north side of her face, obscuring half her nose, one eye, a lilt upturned corner of her mouth.

  She held out her hand to me and the skin on her fingers curled away like burning paper.

  "It's been a long time, Charles," Jolene said.

  She smiled and the fireflies in her teeth trembled. I stood immobile in the bower of trees, holding the curtain of moss between my fists.

  "Did you bring another knife to try to murder me?" she asked me, “do you remember our special time together?”

  I took a step backwards.

  "Come here, Charles," she said, "there's no running away. You've known that for a long time."

  I said nothing. I could only look at the glistening and trapped fireflies.

  "Charles," she said, and her voice darkened, as if grinding glass, "come here."

  I stepped forward out of the trees and the curtain of Spanish moss fell behind me. I approached the edge of Jolene's pond, like I had done when I was a child, swallowing softly, my eyes stuck to the bones lying at the bottom of the water where my dead baby brother still rested.

  "I'm looking for my sister," I said, "I thought I heard her scream."

  "There's no one here but you and me," Jolene said, "and soon there won't even be that."

  She reached out and buried her dripping hand into my hair. She forced my head up, exposing my throat to her sharpened teeth. Her breath smelled of rotting and wet lost things - feathers, sorghum, blackened leaves.

  It was as if time brought me back into a circle to this moment, as if I had become old and bitter and doomed, only to find myself a young child again.

  Jolene forced me down to my knees in the seeping dirt.

  "Look down into the water," she said.

  "I can't," I said, with tears streaming down my face, "please. I can't."

  She pushed my head closer to the tepid water. I dug my hands down into the muck, shaking, my spine tearing itself from my back, my jaw unhinging itself from my face.

  "Look or you drown," she said.

  "Please," I whispered.

  But just like the first time, I looked.

  The dust settled at the bottom of the swamp and the black moon hit the green waters, illuminating the bones underneath. The bones unchanged, bones molested, gnawed, and broken. Bones that went down into the dark forever. The history of all humanity. Our origin and epitaph. Bones.

  "I know," I whispered, "I know that I am nothing, all right? I've been learning that my whole life."

  I couldn't breathe in the overwhelming smell of her rotting tea green dress. She traced my forehead with her sucking fingers, fish gut thumbs.

  "I'll tell you a secret," Jolene said.

  I said nothing. I could say nothing.

  "That girl passed through my swamp the night she left you. She was being chased by a big bad thing."

  "What?" I said. Down in the water the bones formed into the shape of long decayed bodies, Sissy and Momma, Daddy, Jeanine, Smarts. The animal bones twisted into their familiar faces. The animal hooves became their gut wrenched hips.

  "Are you saying Leda's alive?" I asked.

  "Maybe," Jolene said, "maybe not."

  She released my hair. I fell back, gasping.

  "Do you remember you're mine?" Jolene asked.

  "I haven't forgotten," I said, swallowing big cold rushes of air, "I can't forget."

  I crawled away from Jolene's pond and back toward the bower of moss.

  "If you find her,” Jolene said, "tell her I said hello."

  I didn't look back as I crawled away, but I could imagine Jolene's smile well enough, crawling with bugs, trapped wings, gritty red.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I got back home from the swamp I found Sissy hiding in the cupboard underneath the sink.

  “What are you doing under there?” I asked.

  She put a finger to her lips.

  “Shh,” she said.

  I sent Sissy back into the living room and went upstairs to the bedroom, where Jeanine stood by the window looking out over the trees.

  "What happened to you?" she asked me when she saw me bare-footed, red in the face, covered in swamp mud and slime.

  "I think Leda might be alive," I said.

  "What makes you think that?"

  "A monster told me so," I said.

  I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower faucet, and sloughed off my clothes. While I stood near the shower naked, covered in grit and mud, Jeanine knocked on the door.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Can I come in?" she asked.

  "Hold on," I said.

  I got into the shower and closed the curtain.

  "Okay," I said.

  The door opened and closed. Jeanine closed the toilet lid and sat down.

  "What was her name?" Jeanine asked.

  "What?”

  “You know what I asked.”

  "Leda," I said. I swallowed.

  "Did you love her?" she asked.

  "Why?"

  "Can't you just tell me? Did you love her or not?"

  "Yes," I said, "I loved her."

  I heard the bathroom door open and close a second time. I breathed a sigh and cleaned myself off, then got out of the shower. I changed into clean clothes and went back into the bedroom. Jeanine sat in the chair beside the window with her legs splayed out in front of her. She buried her fingers in her blue and orange hair.

  I turned the light on, as I had done every night since Leda's disappearance. Jeanine didn't move.

  "Can I ask you something?" I said.

  Jeanine said nothing.

  "Why did you get a slip implant?" I asked, "I thought you would be the last person to ever do anything like that."

  Jeanine shifted in the rocking chair. I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  "It's okay if you don't want to tell me."

  "I don't," Jeanine said.

  "I can make up Theresa's bed for you," I said, "She never sleeps it in anymore."

  My limbs burned with fatigue, and I ached to close my eyes.

  "I'm sorry if I upset you," I whispered, "you know I never meant it."

  I lay down into bed because I could no longer support my body, and almost instantly I fell asleep.

  I woke a little while later to find Jeanine hovering over me, her knees pressed into the sheets, the curve of her back shooting off like a bow in the dark.

  "Isn't it strange, the sort of things that come back to haunt you?" Jeanine asked, "the memories that we are doomed to repeat over and over again?"

  I reached out to touch her exposed thigh. The cold burned my fingers.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "You were right, what you told me earlier," she said, "that we were destined to be wrong from the beginning."

  I thought Jeanine might collapse. She leaned down and the orange colored tips of her hair brushed against my mouth.

  "We should go look for her. Your Leda." Jeanine said quietly,” You know my brother? He's a prophet. We can find him at the capitol. He knows things. He can help."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "You said she might be alive, didn't you? That the monsters told you she might be alive. That's more of a chance than most people ever get."

  She scratched her stomach. Flakes of gray drifted down onto my nose.

  "I don't have anything left to live for," she said, "but you still have a chance."

  I heard shouting outside. Jeanine and I both turned toward the window. Out in the distance, lights like swamp gas drifted through the trees. Living pale fire.

  Jeanine moved toward the window. She pressed her hand against the glass.

  "It's
the Apocalypse Brigade," I said, "they always come around right before a plague hits."

  “Those motherfuckers are still around?” she asked.

  “Well, you know. It’s always the end of the world.”

  I got out up bed and moved toward Jeanine. I looked out the window.

  The fire in in the woods drifted closer. Figures emerged from the woods. Apparitions of men, with distended limbs and vegetable shaped heads. They were chanting something about the death of all humanity. Out beyond them I heard the machines gearing up for another plague.

  As they came closer, I saw they were being led by the old man and the girl in the wolf mask, both bearing butane torches and knives.

  “Charles!” the girl called out, “we’ve come back for you.”

  I pulled Jeanine away from the window.

  “Okay, you’ve convinced me,” I said, “let’s go look for Leda.”

  I ran to the closet and grabbed two bags. I threw one at Jeanine.

  “Time to pack,” I said.

  I stuffed clothes into my bag, and then ran downstairs. I nearly ran into Sissy standing at the bottom of the stairs, smoking a cigarette and lugging her IV stand like a carcass.

  “Hey Bubba,” she said, and smiled.

  Jeanine ran down the stairs behind me, carrying her bag.

  “Wait,” I said, “I forgot about Momma and Sissy.”

  “Dead meat,” Jeanine said.

  “We can’t just leave them here,” I said.

  “Yes,” Jeanine said, “we can.”

  She pushed Sissy out of the way, then grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me into the kitchen. She opened the window above the sink.

  “They’ve only got three years left,” I said as Jeanine opened the refrigerator and stuffed our bags with all the rations left.

  “They have nothing left.”

  “Where are you going, Bubba?” Sissy asked, standing behind me in the kitchen doorway.

  “Come on,” Jeanine said. She crawled through the open window and jumped down into the grass below.

  “I wish I could’ve helped you,” I said to Sissy.