Dead & Godless

by Donald J. Amodeo

  Crumbs sprayed from his mouth as he ravenously attacked his scone.

  “So, are we moving on to my third hope?”

  “Not yet. From the way you humans talk about the meaning of life, you’d think that all creation began and ended with yourselves.” Ransom raised his eyes to the star-studded ceiling. “There’s a whole universe out there! Behind the question ‘Why am I here?’ lies the bigger question ‘Why is anything here?’”

  “Aren’t they ultimately the same question?” deduced Corwin.

  “They’re closely tied, and the best answer is one that holds true for both.”

  “Or maybe you’re just over-thinking things. Life is fleeting, so live each day to the fullest! Isn’t that all the purpose that most people need?”

  “To live as though there is no tomorrow may mean love and charity to one person, but rape and thievery to another.”

  Ransom opened his palm and one of the ceiling’s phosphorescent stars dropped into it. Flicking his wrist, he hurled the ornament back. As Corwin looked upwards, the glow-in-the-dark constellations shifted. Greenish-white stars beamed brilliantly and receded into a fathomless abyss, the cold silence of space stretching for untold light years above their heads.

  “Consider the Question of Origins, the dawn of space and time.”

  Farther and farther the vista pulled away. Billions of stars coalesced into galaxies, clouds of galaxies into super clusters. Then Ransom clenched his hand and instantly the vastness of the heavens compressed into a single shining spec of light.

  “There are two logical stances that one can take. Either essence precedes existence (which is to say, there is a preexistent meaning behind the universe) or existence precedes essence (that is, the universe simply exists and humans make up a meaning after the fact). Atheists by definition claim the latter.”

  His hand sprung open, unleashing the Big Bang. The universe exploded forth in a dazzling burst of energy. Space rippled and shimmered, newborn stars gleaming in the hearts of nebulae and quasars whirling with molten fury.

  “The problem you face is that a made-up meaning is just that: make-believe. Man doesn’t yearn for an imaginary meaning. He yearns for a true one, for something worth dying for.”

  Corwin didn’t dispute the sentiment. The Question of Origins spelled out the dilemma faced by those who sought meaning in a godless universe with sobering clarity. There was a time when he had thought it a simple matter to find purpose, but now he was beginning to see why so many atheist thinkers before him had struggled so arduously with the task.

  “It’s not that I don’t understand, but without proving that a true meaning exists, your line of argument is just as likely to sway me towards nihilism as it is towards Christianity. Maybe human life truly is absurd.”

  “So be it.”

  Ransom drained the last dregs from his mug and reached into his breast pocket. He withdrew his flask and began unscrewing the cap.

  “A good philosophy is like a good bourbon: best when not watered down.”

  “On that note,” chimed Corwin, “I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I think I need to use the restroom.”

  “It’s no surprise,” said Ransom. “That vessel doesn’t just look like your old one. It can bleed, sweat, and leak other fluids as well.”

  The restroom was tucked away in the back corner of the café, a cell of square white tiles that was kept cleaner than most. Corwin still found it odd, feeling relieved as he looked himself over in the mirror while the sink’s sensor issued a few seconds of water. He punched the drier and stuck his hands under the roaring blast of hot air. For the first time since he’d met Ransom, Corwin was alone.

  Turning to leave, he stopped. From floor to ceiling, the door was covered in black and red graffiti. There were cultic symbols, vertical eyes and words harshly scrawled in some indecipherable language, and he could have sworn that none of it had been there when he came in. Compared to the rest of the pristine room, the door felt jarringly out of place.

  For an anxious moment, his hand hovered over the knob. Then the lights flickered and fizzled. Just as the room fell dark, he pushed his way out.

  “What the . . ?”

  Corwin wasn’t in the café anymore. A dingy, derelict alley stretched before him, brown bricks tagged with gang signs and crinkled newspapers littering the ground. A narrow strip of brooding clouds hung overhead, giving no clue as to the hour. His eyes were drawn to a fire that blazed in a rusty iron barrel, where three homeless old men in ragged jackets stood basking in the warmth.

  “Ransom! Hey, Ransom!” he hollered. “Why is it that whenever I actually need an angel, you righteous bastards are nowhere to be found?”

  One of the bums raised a bushy eyebrow, but the ravings of a madman weren’t exactly unheard of in these alleys that society had forgotten.

  “I must really be losing it this time.”

  He had begun to believe, just a little, that maybe there was an afterlife. A part of him wanted nothing more than for the angel to prove him wrong, to throw back the curtain and reveal a higher reality, one where suffering was no more and life was everlasting. But as tantalizing as that hope was, the cracks were showing through, cracks like Mary’s wake-up call and this sudden, seemingly random detour through the limbo of a dismal alley. No, the more likely truth was that his brain, or what was left of it, was finally running out of juice.

  Corwin heard the door swing shut behind him and spun for the knob. Its lock rattled to no avail.

  No way to go but forward.

  Past the crackling flames, the alley showed no sign of ending. Plumes of steam ghosted through a grated sewer lid. Chain-link fences barred alcoves and side streets, and wall lamps framed retractable doors in cones of stale yellow light. Eventually he came upon a crossing where another long alley intersected his own. Corwin turned a slow circle, gazing in all four directions, but one way looked as unpromising as the next. No hints of a main street, no gap in the dreary industrial sprawl of high-rises.

  Catching a slight movement out of the corner of his eye, he snapped a quick look to his left. Corwin had already scanned that alley, but now the steam drifting up from the sewers was parting. A dark figure appeared, and then another. In moments the path was crowded by wall of silhouettes marching his way, and something told him that these strangers weren’t here to make friends.

  As one, the group halted, standing deathly still. Seconds passed in tense silence. They were almost a block away, and yet Corwin could feel their eyes upon him. A cold sweat tingled against his skin.

  Why should I be worried? A dead man has nothing to fear.

  The stillness broke as the sinister mob burst into a dash, and in that instant all of his rationalizing meant nothing. Everything in Corwin’s bones screamed out for him to run. This time he didn’t debate.

  Adrenaline propelled his limbs, his body moving on pure instinct. A nameless fear gripped him. Who or whatever these people were that happened to be chasing him, he knew that he couldn’t afford to get caught.

  There are fates worse than death here.

  Corwin pumped his legs like a machine, splashing through puddles of muck. In the overcast sky, storm clouds rumbled threateningly, as if the whole world had set its will against him. Spotting a fire escape that zigzagged up the right-hand wall, a spark of hope enkindled his heart, but his leap fell short. The ladder was hoisted hopelessly out of reach.

  “Damn it!”

  He darted around the following corner, rubber soles skidding as he leaned hard into the turn. Too hard. Something snagged his foot and for a brief moment Corwin tumbled, weightless, through the air. Then the ground came rushing up to meet him. He crashed in a heap of trash and scrambled to find his feet again. But it wasn’t garbage that he had tripped over.

  “Crazy bastard!” cursed a gruff voice.

  Corwin beheld the cause of his spill: a vagrant with a scraggly black beard who, until just now, had been fast asleep on a makeshift mattress of cardboard. Recog
nition dawned and his eyes went wide.

  “It’s you!”

  Glaring back at him was the same haggard drunk that he had rescued from certain death on the subway tracks. He thought to give the ungrateful bum a well-deserved piece of his mind, but the stampede of rapid footfalls was growing louder by the second.

  I don’t have time for this!

  Pushing the questions out of his mind, Corwin vaulted upright, and in another instant he was bolting down the alley at full stride. The vagrant stared after him with a bitter scowl.

  “Don’t nobody in this town watch where the hell they’re going?”

  Corwin swerved left at the next corner, right at the one after that. The dreadful sound of pursuit was never far behind. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his chest heaved with gasping breaths. Adrenaline numbed the aching burn in his legs, but for how much longer?

  He rounded another bend and lightning pealed, the flash splitting the sky with a deafening crack. Corwin froze. Less than a block ahead, a horde of shadowy figures was charging in his direction. Somehow they had cut him off. He pivoted, thinking to double back, but the view behind was no better.

  “Shit!”

  From somewhere nearby, a girl whispered in an urgent tone.

  “This way!”

  She was hidden in a side street, a gap in the left-hand wall that had gone unnoticed. Without waiting for a response, she fled down the path.

  A second lightning bolt crashed and sheets of icy rain began pelting the city as he dashed after her into a shady alley that was even more claustrophobic than those before. The girl was prying back a loose span in the corner of a chain-link fence. Corwin couldn’t see her face, but there was something about the bounce of her auburn hair . . .

  “Mary?”

  “Through here!” she called and disappeared through the hole.

  Corwin crouched, pulled open the fence and hastily squeezed through, the chain links clinking as they sprung back into place. Soaking wet, he hugged his knees to his chest and huddled behind a length of sheet metal. No sooner had he gotten out of sight than the alley swarmed with thugs. Boots stomped past his hiding place, close enough to splash him. There couldn’t have been fewer than twenty men.

  “He had to have gone this way,” shouted one of them.

  “Find him!” snarled another.

  Corwin held his breath. Not moving a muscle, he waited as their footsteps faded into the night, until the only sound left was the incessant patter of the rain.

  When all had been calm for several minutes, he let out a long exhale and finally turned to take a measure of his surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. Whether or not his savior had truly been Mary, she was gone now. Corwin stood alone in the dank recess of a dilapidated building. It extended for maybe twenty feet before dead-ending beside a pair of tin trash cans. A lone doorway loomed in a pool of golden lamplight.

  Might as well give it a try, he figured.

  Every other door that he had come across in this bleak maze of alleyways had been obstinately locked, but for once the knob didn’t resist. Corwin eased open the door and stepped through . . . into the rear corner of The Cosmic Cup.

  9

  Apples and Razor Blades

  “Well, what do you know?” Ransom poked his head through the restroom door. “There really is an alley back here!”

  Corwin followed him and stepped out onto a cobbled road. Wintry daylight shone down, snowflakes drifting lazily in the frosty air.

  “No!” His gaze darted left and right. “This is all wrong!”

  “You were expecting a different alley?”

  “A whole different city!” said Corwin emphatically. “For one thing, it was a stormy night. All the buildings were modern. There was concrete and graffiti and that bum whose ass I dragged off the train tracks!”

  The foreign city in which he found himself now bore little resemblance to the one that he had just escaped. The architecture reminded him of something out of a Victorian era, with elegantly masonry, steep roofs and smoking chimneys everywhere on display. Tall, narrow windows were crisscrossed with strips of black iron that fashioned the windowpanes into exquisite patterns. A light blanket of snow dusted the rooftops and windowsills, but along the center of each road the ground was curiously dry. So too were his clothes. As a frigid breeze nipped his skin, Corwin noticed gratefully that he was no longer sopping wet.

  “I hadn’t expected them to make a move so soon,” muttered Ransom.

  “Who is them?”

  “The prosecution. It was no lie when I told you that your trial would be a close one. The other side is convinced that your soul belongs to them, and demons aren’t known for playing by the rules.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Corwin. “There’s a demonic law firm out there that wants me condemned to Hell, and they don’t particularly care about the finer points of the afterlife justice system?”

  “If they were to get their claws on you, well, let’s just say that it wouldn’t be pleasant.”

  Corwin felt like pulling his hair out. It was all just too much.

  “What would they do? Tempt me? Torture me? Give me the Hell sneak preview?”

  “It would be torturous, yes, but not merely in the physical sense. They’ll show you every dirty, ugly, sinful part of yourself, everything you keep hidden below the surface. You’ll see every person you’ve ever hurt, everyone whose life you could have touched with love, but didn’t because you were too lazy or miserly or vain. They’ll replay the greatest hits of your worst moments over and over until that’s all you believe there is to yourself. And when finally you beg for the torture, then your soul will be theirs.”

  “Yeah, I’d say that sounds pretty unpleasant,” Corwin said dryly.

  “I doubt they would be foolish enough to try anything while I’m by your side, but you had best not stray too far,” the angel advised. “Be wary of doors, archways, anything that could serve as a portal.”

  “Well that narrows it down.”

  As Corwin took a stride forward, an electric crackle sounded from the road. Ransom gave a swift tug on the back of his coat.

  “Hold up.”

  Embedded in the cobblestones were three iron rails. They ran along the middle of the street where the snowy carpet ceased. Tiny ropes of lightning arced between the groove in the nearest rail, and from around the corner arose a high-pitched mechanical squeal. Corwin followed his attorney’s example and backed away, just as a steel carriage rolled into view, sparks leaping from its metallic wheels.

  Through the window’s maroon curtains, an aristocrat peered out. The lens of a monocle gleamed over his left eye, or was it an artificial eye? The oddly complex rim of the device appeared to be a permanent fixture on the man’s face. He spared them but a passing glance and then turned up his nose as the carriage trundled on its course.

  “I get the feeling that that strange fellow doesn’t like us,” said Corwin. “Of course, he probably thinks we look rather strange as well.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  Ransom was fussing with a jaunty black top hat that had somehow appeared on his head, adjusting its brim to tilt forward ever so slightly.

  “Where did you . . . Oh, never mind!” blustered Corwin.

  His attorney wasn’t listening. Ransom’s attention was focused just beneath Corwin’s collar, his gaze resting on a small cross that dangled from a golden chain.

  “I recall giving you this cross for a reason.” He lifted the necklace briefly, letting it drop back against Corwin’s chest. “You should have borrowed its power when you were in need.”

  “I was running for my life! Clutching your good luck charm wasn’t the first thought that came to mind.”

  “No, your first thought was probably that it was all in your mind,” groaned Ransom, his perfectly pressed suit snapping as he strode briskly across the rails, which now had stopped sizzling. “In any case, if the prosecution is stepping up their pace, then so should we. It’s time we
moved on to your third hope.”

  “People turn to religion because they hope for justice,” Corwin recited. “It’s something that’s rarely found in our world. Good people suffer while their oppressors grow fat and happy. Who wouldn’t want to believe that there’s an afterlife in which everyone gets what they deserve?”

  “But it’s not just about the afterlife.”

  “I’ll give you that. Whether they’re real or not, gods and devils can often maintain order better than soldiers and barbed wire.”

  “And most humans aren’t fond of lawlessness.”

  “Aside from a few crazy anarchists, most people prefer the comforts of a civilized society, and any functional society requires some semblance of a moral code. Unfortunately, the simple wisdom of the Golden Rule is seldom enough. The less-evolved among us need a bit more motivation not to brutalize the neighbors, and religion provides that motivation.”

  Listening and nodding, Ransom reached for another cigarette.

  “The threat of spending eternity in Hell can certainly be a strong motivator.”

  “Exactly!” exclaimed Corwin. “A moral choice holds a lot more weight if it means the difference between eternal bliss and eternal torment. And unlike an earthly king, an invisible god is all-seeing. He knows when you’ve been naughty or nice, so be good, because if you’re not, there’s no getting away with it.”

  “If legality is the measure of morality, then the only true evil is getting caught,” Ransom agreed. “But surely there’s more to religion’s role here. People don’t just seek to enforce justice. They seek to understand it.”

  “As you so elegantly put it while I was captain of the submarine,” Corwin said in a sardonic tone, “religion provides the why behind moral values.”

  “But you don’t think they need a why?”

  “I think some things are self-evident. I believe in doing good for goodness’ sake.”

  Ransom fought back a laugh, grinning as he coughed out a puff of smoke.

  “Your generation of atheists is certainly different from the last. If God is dead, are not all things permissible? Are not moral values simply another matter of opinion in the end?”