by Unknown
“Dad…?” Leslie said. Fred waved her back.
“I’m sorry, Kate,” he sobbed.
“It’s okay,” she said, not sure where to look. Hesitantly, she sat down next to him.
“Shit Kate, what happened to me? What happened?”
“Shh,” she said. She looked around.
“Look, let’s get in the car, okay? You’ll get sick, out here in the cold.”
“You two should just leave me.”
“That’s not happening,” Leslie said. “Come on Dad.”
“You’re so good to me,” he blubbered.
“Well, you’re my dad.”
That produced more sobs. Eventually, the women got him into the car and started back towards the hotel. Kate stayed in the back seat with Fred, her arms around him.
“Fred… what did happen to you? I mean… my God.”
He took a deep breath.
“When I was in prison? It was terrible, Kate. I mean, it wasn’t like when we got tossed in jail for protesting or picketing or that stuff. Prison. It’s like the whole thing is designed to break your soul. It just makes you as cruel and dead and boring as it is.” Kate gave him a tissue, and he blew his nose. His lip was bleeding again. “People treat prisoners like shit in this country. Like sub-humans. And eventually they’re right, because prison makes you sub-human. It grinds you down, until there’s nothing left. Nothing but shame or violence.”
He took another deep breath.
“Most of the convicts at my prison were, you know, ordinary folks. They didn’t know anything about the way the world really works, weren’t in the know. But there were two others who knew something, had a few tricks. And it turned out they’d known Donna Braunfeld. So, one time I overheard them talking, and they didn’t know I was there, and they said she’d bragged about how I took the fall for her. That I was her chump.”
“I always knew she was a bitch,” Kate said.
Fred sighed. “Maybe you’re right. Half the time, I think so too. But maybe just weak. I gotta think she’d have died in prison. Even if women’s jail isn’t so bad, there’s only so good it could be, and she couldn’t have… anyhow, it was too late to do anything. But it just broke me. Knowing that the biggest thing I’d ever done… was be someone’s chump.”
* * *
“Shit, I don’t believe this,” Carl said the next morning, hurriedly pulling on his socks.
“So the alarm didn’t go off. It’s not like there’s a time clock,” Jolene said crossly, rolling out of bed.
“Bullshit there’s no time clock,” Carl replied. “The later it gets, the more people are awake. The more people are awake, the more potential witnesses. Didn’t you pay attention to anything about the plan?”
“Carl, look. We overslept. Deal with it. The bullets aren’t going anywhere.”
“I just want this taken care of as quick and easy as possible.”
“Me too. Jeez. Just take it easy, will you?”
Twenty minutes later, still annoyed and unshowered, they pulled their truck up in front of a nondescript, ranch-style house. Carl was dressed in coveralls, with leather gloves and a cap that said “Instant Delivery.” The cap had the same logo as a removable metal sign on the side of the van.
“This the place?” Jolene asked. He nodded, shaking his inhaler. He fired it down his throat and held the medicine in his lungs.
“Neighborhood looks pretty quiet.”
He nodded again, then breathed out. He looked over at Jolene.
“We good to go?”
“A-OK.”
He nodded and got out of the truck.
Ralph Kimble answered the door in his work coveralls. The two men’s jumpsuits were almost the exact same color.
“What is it?” Ralph asked. He was irritated. He didn’t like being interrupted at breakfast, and was only partially mollified to see that it wasn’t that fucker Fred Mundy.
“You Ralph Kimble?” The guy at the door had a cardboard box and a clipboard balanced on top of it.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Nothing personal.”
Carl dropped the box, revealing a pistol with a silencer. Before it could register in Ralph’s mind, the gun had gone off into his chest. He fell backwards. The clipboard clattered to the porch as Carl worked the slide, ejecting a spent cartridge. He fired a second shot into Ralph’s chest, worked the slide again, aimed, and put a third shot between the older man’s eyes. Then he dropped the gun on Ralph’s chest, picked up the box and the clipboard, and pulled the door closed, pausing only long enough to nudge Ralph’s feet out of the way.
He walked back to the curb at a controlled, businesslike pace.
“I think that went well,” he said to Jolene as they pulled away from the curb.
“I couldn’t really see much even from the van here, so I think we’re okay.”
“Didn’t hear anything?”
“Nope. That’s one quiet goddamn gun.”
“Uh huh. You want some breakfast?”
“Yeah, I’m starving.”
Blood is
Thicker than water
CHAPTER SIX
When his alarm went off, waking Joe in an unfamiliar bed, his first instinct was to turn it off, roll over and fall asleep again. He almost did it. At first, it was only some half-conscious dread that his dad would yell at him that made him fight towards awareness. As his rational mind started to slowly kick in, he remembered that he was in a hotel, that he’d quarreled with his father, and that he had a breakfast date with his (other? “real?”) father.
He sighed, shoved the covers off and got up. The nice thing about living in a hotel room was that someone else made the bed, and that he could leave the heater on as high as he wanted. His bedroom at home was always cold and messy. Still, he figured it was a good thing he’d decided to patch things up with his old man. He couldn’t afford the Super 8 forever.
In the shower, he jerked off, thinking about a model in a Victoria’s Secret ad. Then he put on jeans, and his Nirvana t-shirt with the stain over his stomach.
Crossing to the diner, he could see the Mundys waiting for him.
“Here he comes,” Kate said, looking out the window and waving.
Fred glanced, nodded, then looked at Leslie. “Well?” he said.
He had just asked Leslie (who was unshaven today, wearing a St. Louis Rams sweatshirt and a Utah Jazz windbreaker) if he had sensed anything unusual about Joe. Leslie was reluctant to answer but, given his upbringing to be obedient and truthful, he did just as Joe reached the front door.
“It’s a little odd. Like static, or a double exposure, if that makes sense.”
Fred smiled with cold excitement. Leslie didn’t like the look of it.
Joe arrived at their table. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi there!” Fred replied, his eyes a little bloodshot. “Pull up a chair!” As Joe did, Fred said “Listen, let me apologize for the other night.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, really, it’s not. I made a jackass of myself. I’m sorry. I’m under, uh, a lot of strain and everything… but that’s no excuse at all. I was just, kind of drunk and nervous and…” he shot a look at Kate, who was rolling her eyes. “Well, I’d just like to put it behind us. Can we do that?”
“Sure, I guess,” Joe said.
“Terrific!” Fred waved at the waitress, who dawdled over for their orders.
“Did you sleep well?” Kate asked.
“Uh, pretty good I suppose,” Joe said.
“Nervous about seeing your dad?” Leslie asked. Both Kate and Fred gave him a quizzical glance. Joe shrugged.
“So Joe… you mind if I ask you a question?” As Fred said it, Kate shot him an alarmed look and cleared her throat loudly. Joe didn’t notice, just said, “I guess not. What is it?”
“Well… are you superstitious at all?”
“Superstitious?”
“Uh… yeah. You know, black cats, ouija boards, tarot cards, any of that?
”
“No.”
Fred blinked.
“Not at all, you mean?”
“No,” Joe said. Seeing the confusion in Fred’s eyes, he shrugged. “That stuff just never seemed real sensible to me,” he said defensively. Kate snickered quietly.
“What about religion?” Leslie asked.
“Well, like I said, my mom sang in the choir down at Grace Lutheran. We went pretty much every Sunday. Well, until she died, that is. After that, uh, we kind of… you know, sort of trickled off, I guess.”
Fred opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Do you believe in God?” Leslie asked. Joe shifted uncomfortably, hoping he wasn’t about to get some kind of Jesus Freak lecture from his new family.
“Uh, yeah, I suppose.”
“Just one?” Fred asked.
“Fred,” Kate said, in a warning tone of voice.
“No Kate, I think it’s time we were square with Joe.”
“Huh?”
Fred turned back to Joe and said “Joe… I’m going to tell you some things that you may have a lot of trouble believing. You know how the ancients believed in polytheism?” Seeing his son’s blank look, Fred clarified. “They worshipped many different gods?”
“Oh… like the Egyptians?”
“Exactly! The Egyptians had different gods representing different… principles of life, I suppose they could be called. Osiris was the Dying King. He died every year and rose from the dead, giving life to the land and restoring the crops. Isis was the High Priestess, keeper of the hidden mysteries. Meanwhile, over towards the fertile crescent, there was another Dying King, Tammuz, and another High Priestess, called Ishtar.”
Fred paused. Eventually, feeling that something was expected from him, Joe said “Uh huh.”
“All across the world, there are startling similarities between religions. It’s not just religion, of course. Folk stories and history have the same personality types, or ‘archetypes,’ recurring again and again.”
“Who had the ham, eggs and hash browns?” Fred looked up at the interruption and gestured for the waitress to put the breakfast in front of him. When they all had their food, Fred watched her walk away. When she was out of earshot he spoke again.
“The Greeks had legends about people becoming gods—about being lifted to heaven and becoming constellations in return for some special deed. Now Joe, what if I told you that there is a special, invisible world full of gods and goddesses… and they were all once human?”
Kate and Leslie both held their breath. This was the point, they felt, at which Joe would either be hooked, or dismiss Fred as a nut.
“Uh… well…” Joe swallowed part of a sausage patty. “I guess I don’t know.”
Fred could see that Joe hadn’t had the epiphany.
“Look Joe, I’m not surprised you don’t believe this. I didn’t at first either. Hell, you’d have to be pretty gullible to just hop on the bandwagon like that. I believe because I’ve seen proof.” His eyes got distant for a moment. “I’ve seen the Masterless Man continue to fight even with the roof of his head blown clear off. I’ve seen a boy sell his youth for seven thousand dollars and a scholar’s skill at translating cuneiform.” He blinked, mixed some grainy cooked egg yolk with hash browns and forked it into his mouth. “All this was done through attunement to the archetypes,” he said, mouth full.
“I’m… not sure I’m following you.”
“Think of it this way,” Kate said. “Superstitions? You know, break a mirror, seven years bad luck? Some of them work. They work because the action of the superstition brings you into alignment with a member of the Invisible Clergy.”
“That’s what the ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ are called, sometimes,” Leslie added.
Joe was silent. He took another bite of sausage.
“Look, you’ve known someone who hit a home run while wearing, I don’t know, a particular shirt, right?” Leslie said. “And afterwards, that was his ‘lucky shirt’? There’s no reason to assume there was a connection between the shirt and the hit, but people seem to intuitively know there is.”
“Most people, anyhow,” Fred said, narrowing his eyes.
“The connection isn’t logical, it’s symbolic. Symbolism is older and, in a lot of ways, stronger than logic.”
“Huh?”
It was Kate who answered. “With the exception of Jimmy Carter, every presidential election since the advent of TV has gone to the taller candidate. That ain’t logic. It’s symbolism. It’s obvious that symbols have psychological power. But if you get enough symbols, of the right kind, they have genuine objective power as well.”
“The symbols need psychology to power them,” Fred said. “The human mind and spirit is the engine that activates the symbols, but there is an objective reality to the symbols.”
“Is this making any sense at all?” Leslie asked.
Joe took a deep breath. “Not really.”
“I told you it was too soon,” Kate said.
“What, you think he’s too dumb to get it?” Fred replied.
“Hey!” said Leslie.
“Dumb has nothing to do with it,” Kate said. “Jesus, you said yourself he’d have to be a moron to buy into your half-ass explanation.”
Joe just sighed. “Do you two ever do anything except fight?”
“For your fucking information, we’ve done a lot of things,” Fred said, turning on him. “We’ve broken cults, cast out demons and… and done some things you’re not even equipped to understand. Oh, and don’t forget we had you.”
“Gee, thanks for reminding me.”
“Look Joe,” Leslie broke in. “I know you don’t believe in all this business yet, but can you at least accept that we do?”
“No skin off my nose, I guess.”
“That’s mighty big of you,” Fred muttered.
“Well, we’re not the only ones.” Leslie sighed. “Okay, remember what you asked me in the car last night?”
Joe shifted. “Yeah,” he said uncomfortably.
“Well, now I’ll tell you why. That’s how I was raised. One of the archetypes—one of the ‘gods’ Dad was talking about—is the Mystic Hermaphrodite.”
Joe’s brow furrowed.
“The Hermaphrodite is a particularly difficult archetype, but also a powerful and important one. It’s simultaneously male and female… it represents the unity of opposites, and the resolution of contradictions.”
“So… you uh… cross dress… because you want to be a man and a woman at the same time?” Joe felt sweaty, prickly and incredibly uncomfortable.
“It’s not a question of wanting to, I guess,” Leslie replied. “I’m supposed to. It’s like… like I’m a radio? And by doing certain things, I can tune in that station.”
“Okay…”
“Here, let me show you this book,” Leslie said. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a small volume, bound in cracked brown leather and missing the spine on the side.
“This is ‘The Marriage of Venus and Mercury,’” he said. “It was written in 1665 by Georges Schroeder, though he didn’t dare put his name on it… only a hundred copies were printed, and most of them have been destroyed. It’s a play, and if you understand what it means, it explains the Mystic Hermaprhodite—what it is, what it does, how to get in tune with it.”
Joe opened it about two-thirds through and read.
TIRESIAS: But by what do you swear your troth? For, though blind, I see truly, and in truth thou art false indeed.
MERCURY: Then I swear on the truth of my falsehood. I pledge on my honor as an oathbreaker, that I may marry this profane goddess, this virgin harlot.
VENUS: Yes, that is one oath he can never break, nor I. I pledge on my honor as an oathbreaker as well, that I might take as mine this honest liar, this messenger of occlusion.
He scratched his head and gave the book back. Leslie continued.
“Because I’ve gotten in touch with the Mystic Hermaphrodite certain… well, ce
rtain things happen to me. I have unusual perceptions.”
Joe just stared. He glanced at Fred and Kate. Leslie continued.
“I know it’s hard to believe, but my attunement puts me in touch with the larger, magickal world.” Leslie swallowed, cleared his throat. “Now, when I use these senses on you, Joe, there’s… something weird.”
“Really.” Joe said it flatly, and Kate exchanged a look with Fred. It seemed to her that the more they explained, the more skeptical Joe became.
“Well, the thing is… Fred and Kate raised me to attune to the Hermaphrodite. And they did that thinking I was their… uh, biological child. My birthday, Joe—our birthday, really—is a well-aspected time in Gemini, the sign of the twins. And their child would be half black and half white—another resolution of contradictions…”
“Wait, wait wait. You’re telling me I’m one of these… uh, radio people?”
“You’re supposed to be,” Fred said. He leaned forward, his eyes intense. “It’s what you were born to do.”
Joe was silent for a moment.
“You realize, this sounds all like horseshit to me.”
“Oh, and Christianity is any better?” Fred exploded. “Ritual cannibalism that makes you into some kind of holy zombie in two thousand years, when God comes back to kill some seven headed dragon? Or, how about microbiology? Yeah, we get sick because these invisible creatures get inside our bodies. You can’t see them because they’re so tiny, smaller than a pinhead, smaller than a speck of dust, but something that small can still kill a full grown man? Shit, the round Earth sounded stupid to people because they could see it looked flat, and heliocentrism was dumb because they could see the sun go up and come down. Every person alive believes a pack of implausible things, one way or the other. What’s one more? One that happens to be true, for once.”
“Calm down man,” Joe said. “You said yourself I’d be stupid to believe you.”
“Well, your choice is probably going to come down to ‘stupid’ or ‘dead.’”
“What?” Joe blinked, hard. “Are you… what, threatening me?”