“Why, these are your old stomping grounds,” said Gamble. “The farmstead. Home sweet home. C’mon, where’s your sense of nostalgia?”
“It eloped with my appetite,” Chris confessed, taking another step backward.
Gamble deliberated a moment, then said, “I’ll bet that if I turned you into a crotch louse, and equipped your eyes with parasites, you’d find your way in easily enough. Or you’d slide right on in as a speculum.” He inspected a thumbnail. “I could turn you into a dickhead, but that would be rather redundant.”
“Okay, okay,” he barely conceded. “But, like, can I have a towel first?”
“Not even if she’d shit on you, which I can arrange if you don’t get moving!”
Chris started walking. Every step was an ordeal, as if both legs had turned into sacks of wet sand. And the pitch of the floor wasn’t helping things. Ten feet out, he stopped. “I can’t go any further, dude.” He was shivering. Fear had pulled his breaths into taut, wheezy strings.
Gamble walked up, tapped him on his shoulder. “Look behind you.”
Chris slowly turned his head and, nearly fainting, fell to his knees. Immediately, he was crawling on all fours toward the vagina, skidding and floundering on the tilting, piss-covered tile. “Make it go away!” he pleaded in the pinched, stifled cries of a night terror. “I swear I’m going, I’ll do anything, just make it go away!”
Almost upon the opening now, Chris forced himself to look just far enough to the side so that only his peripheral vision would be assaulted should it still be there. It was gone.
A nearly inaudible whine was escaping through his clenched teeth. His nostrils were flaring with each hot, eruptive exhalation. He got to his feet and, like a doddering old man, started for the opening.
“Careful,” Gamble said, “that first step’s a doozie.”
Chris pulled himself up and in. He sank into the knobby, velvety tissue, then released a cannonade of sobs.
Standing just outside the entrance, Gamble gloated. “Bet you’ve never seen anything quite like that on the Friday Night Frights. Hmmm?”
A thread of saliva was pulling down from his bottom lip. Still sobbing, he wiped it away with a shaky hand. “No.”
“I’ll give you credit,” he said, “not many people could have survived that, which only confirms what I’ve come to suspect about you.”
“That I’m already dead?”
“Hardly.” As he stepped up and in, Gamble pointed out a landmark. “Now that is one big clit,” he observed. “Your old lady’s got quite the buzz button.”
“I’ll make sure it’s included in her biography,” Chris said, recovering his poise. The urine-soaked surplice no longer a threat, he wiped his nose on the sleeve. “What do you think you know about me?”
“Let’s walk and talk,” Gamble said. “After you.”
Chris pushed himself away from the wall, carefully balancing each wet, spongy step as he entered the dankness.
“Let’s begin with your rudimentary theories of the cosmos,” Gamble began. “We’ll dissect a few bellies and yank out the necrotic organs, okay?”
“Figuratively speaking, this time, right?”
Gamble sighed. “If you wish. Now, you’re of the belief that the heaven and hell of the dominant denomination only exist in man’s collective unconscious, or some stratum thereof.”
“Basically, yeah, but—”
“Mr. Kaddison, you don’t have to explain the whys and therefores to me. When I started on this place it was nothing but a few pillared mansions, a marble birdbath, and acres and acres of fucking daffodils and daisies. Oh, and a pretty hefty furnace in the basement. And now look at it. Where else can you take a walk of innocent discovery through a bearded clam the size of Mt. Rushmore? I doubt that either of the other places have attractions like this,” he boasted.
Chris stopped. “Whoa, other places? Like, are you saying that not only heaven and hell exist in Wonderland, but there’s also a real heaven and hell...out there?”
“I assure you that, as modestly as your mind can comprehend such things, an original heaven and hell do indeed exist, but nothing like man has imagined. Granted, theologians have led you down a farcical path of ignorance, distortion and misrepresentation, but man hasn’t been acclimatized to the greater truth for one very simple reason—and I’ll be asking you for that answer after this review, so take notes. The same goes for my horn-bearing counterpart, whose real face has likewise been just as surreptitiously withheld from your puny little intellects. Now, take me for a good example. Man would view even the potentiality of my existence—his own creation, for the most part—as implausibly absurd, even if I flame-kissed Manhattan and afterward invited everyone down for ribs. He’d blame it on old Beelzebub—a myth, for the most part— before he’d ever consider hearing the truth. Now, the real ‘heaven and hell’ exist on a plane so vastly inexplicable that even my cable provider can’t guarantee clear reception most of the time. Yet, that’s where man will put every ounce of his faith. Why?”
“Because he’s afraid of the truth, so the more out of reach it is, the more faith he’ll invest.”
“Well, without putting too fine a point on it,” Gamble grudgingly agreed. “But yes, ignorance is the safest place to hide. Understand, man is not so much afraid of truth as he is change.”
“So what you said back in the church, that you were once a figment of man’s imagination—then that would mean that you’re the, um...the...” As if he might have stirred a hornet’s nest, he started walking again.
“The Ultimate Fraud? In a manner of speaking.” Then he sighed. “But, it’s a living.”
“So are there, you know, like lakes of fire, brimstone, molten waterfalls?”
“Yet more props created by man.” He sighed again. “No, I did away with all that, along with chariot races, those obnoxious halos, and St. Peter’s guest book.”
Chris was actually smiling. “I was right, then. You have evolved…are evolving.”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” he crowed. “You see, what I can do in Wonderland is survive independently from my negation, my flip-side. With true states, however, like the proverbial Good and Evil, there are no compromises, just polarity, existing apart but behaving conjointly when defining one another. It’s really not that difficult a concept. For instance, how would you know right if wrong didn’t exist? How would a woman know to blush if she hadn’t been taught that having her ass tweaked on the subway was an unchaste act? You can’t, in popular theory, have one without the other. But unlike the original Good and Evil twins, we don’t rely on disparities here in Wonderland to justify our existence. Like yourself, I can show moments of compassion, but I am by nature an evil motherfucker. The original Evil can’t do that. It only knows evil. It wouldn’t know a warm fuzzy from a Valentine. And true Good could no more drown a cobra than it could a kitten. They can imitate, but they can never fully appreciate.” He held up a finger. “Remember, I’m referring to the literal, genuine articles, not the counterfeits.”
“That’s you,” Chris confirmed, “the counterfeit.”
“That’s me. I don’t need Good to perpetuate my existence because I already have its very essence flowing through my veins.” He grabbed Chris by the shoulder, turned him around and, impersonating Bob Barker, said, “Now, Mr. Kaddison, for six-thousand-dollars and the Admiral side-by-side, can you guess—no help from the audience please— who gave me that transfusion?”
Chris rolled his eyes. “Man did.”
Like Mr. Bo Jangles, Gamble jumped up and clicked his heels. “That’s right, baby! I’m a certifiable chip off the old block!” He put his face up to Chris’s. “I’m madness personified, and that would have to be the scariest fucking thing I could ever imagine happening, if I were man.” Suddenly, the lighting dimmed, and Gamble was standing in a spotlight wearing a white tux and top hat, spinning a mother-of-pearl cane. Then, sounding just like Frank Sinatra to the tune of “I Did It My Way,” he sang, “A
nd now, the horns are gone, they’re gone for good, of this I’m certain, my friends, the red suit, too, it’s really true, they’re finally curtains, my tail is but ruse, I’ve even tossed the cape and shoes, but more, much more than this, I did it myyyy waaaay.”
Was he trying to top Liberace’s flair for the dramatic?
Not even close.
Gamble was suddenly back in his gray suit and white ball cap, the spotlight gone. “Get my drift?”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “But is it the suit that makes the man, or the man who makes the suit?”
“It’s the man, baby! Give me Tweed, Seersucker, Gabardine, Worsted, it doesn’t matter—I’m bad! The pretense is itself corrupted by the wearer. For instance, in the guise of a hitchhiker, true evil can run out in front of a Mack truck and heroically push a deaf and blind child out of harm’s way. But if you did a thorough investigation, you might find that the hitchhiker’s true intentions were to make sure the driver and his truck weren’t diverted from killing a family of six in a minivan ten miles down the road.
“Now, can virtue pose as evil? Can it commit atrocities? Perhaps, but I believe it will bend unto itself before it ever draws a sword, as long as the fight is for ultimate good. And you know what paves the road to hell, don’t you?”
“Good intentions?”
“It’s all just part of justifying their existence.”
“So, where are the good guys now?” Chris said. “The counterfeit heaven?”
“The boys in white? I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen such an ensemble of milksops in all my years.” He laughed. “Why, they folded like origami under cross-examination.” He slapped a knee. “Anyway, it seems I’ve been a naughty boy. As I’ve already said, the original Good will go to unimaginable lengths to avoid conflict. Man’s interpretations of goodness, however, are a bit...amiss. When he created his own little heaven, he gave it a blindfold and cigarette and little else. I whipped them like the dogs they were; whipped and beat them to near death, I tell you, and they still licked my hand all the way up to the moment I crushed each and every one of their weakling skulls. But man did a bang up job on old hell, didn’t he? If you humans have anything down pat, it’s evil. Backwards, forwards, and sideways. And may I just say thank you—it’s a wonderful fit.”
Chris just shook his head. “I know if that was me, I’d have bent unto thyself far enough to kick your sorry ass.”
Gamble laughed at the humor.
“And besides, I don’t believe you,” Chris said. “Man would have imagined ‘God’ as powerful—if not more so—than you. I don’t think you could have taken Him out.”
“How perceptive, Mr. Kaddison,” Gamble said, sounding truly impressed. “You are correct. I’ve so far been unable to destroy the clone god, as man created us as equal opposites.” Then he grinned. “But I can still bully the old buzzard.”
“Isn’t that an oxymoron? Equal opposites?”
“Now you’re catching on.”
Chris slipped, caught his balance. “Bully him how?”
A grin spread across Gamble’s face. “He’s drifting through a universe I opened just for him, a universe of mirrors. Now, like Narcissus, the supercilious prick can admire his reflection all he wants. But I wouldn’t count on him being transformed into any flowers, as I also have him in the continuous act of self-predation.” He giggled. “Talk about being full of yourself.”
Gamble folded his arms. “You could say that he has yet to bend unto himself. I’m still looking for his Achilles’ Heel. But I’ll find it, eventually.”
“He’ll eat you for breakfast, dude,” Chris bluffed.
“I think not,” Gamble said. “You see, little man—just as it is with the real God—it’s not in his nature.”
They continued walking; Chris taking small, cautious steps, with Gamble following his lead. “So, what’s in store for us? In the morning, I mean?”
“Funny you should ask.”
Instantly, Chris was hovering over a vast, green field of saw grass. As far as his eyes could see, armies of winged creatures were gathering; some already marching, others flying, their lines disappearing into the distance in every direction. From this height, the events below looked like the spokes of a wagon wheel. Chris could see much farther here than if he were standing on the Empire State Building. Here, there were no atmospheric distortions to hamper the view, no smog, no curvature of the Earth. If the ancient mariners had sailed their ships in Wonderland, their nautical maps would have been correct in portraying their world as flat.
And here there be monsters
Their numbers were staggering; their war cries deafening.
Then he was back inside his dead mother. “Holy shit!”
“Yes—and I imagine there will be tons of it when I’m through.”
Chris shook his head. “No way God’s gonna let that happen! Either of ’em. No way!”
“A believer now, are you? You fleshsacks are funny that way. Put an atheist on the stake and he’ll cry for sweet Jesus! How pathetic.”
Having just returned from the brightly lit scene, Chris couldn’t see. His right hand landed on a portion of vaginal wall that might have been scar tissue, dry and coarse.
“I’m blind as a bat, Gamble.”
“Presto!” Gamble said, and a dim, milky glow emerged, seeming to radiate from the skin itself.
“Thanks,” Chris mumbled, the way a ticketed motorist might tell a traffic cop. As he lifted his right hand from the wall, he found no scar tissue. Instead, stitched into the flesh was a veronica of Christ, with Calvary 4074 km, Ovaries 2 km painted sloppily below in what appeared to be menstrual blood.
“Jesus,” Chris whispered.
“Indeed,” Gamble said, then began laughing. “Up ahead, maybe dear old Mom will roll away the boulder for you, as well.”
Chris coughed. There was now a ferocious stink coming out of the walls. “Careful, dude, you’re making it sound like I have a chance of getting out of here alive.”
“Perhaps,” Gamble admitted. “Let’s just see where the road takes us, shall we?”
“If I remember my high school physiology, it takes us to a uterus.” Given his mother’s present size and position, Chris felt it odd that there was no slope, and the canal had already turned out to be far longer than it should have been. A flat, slippery trek, so far. He didn’t know if Gamble had simply adjusted the angle for comfort, or if was part of the dream experience because Juanita (like himself) just didn’t have a whole lot of experience with the damned things.
Chris said, “You’re after something, dude. Something only the real heaven can offer.”
“Your insight continues to astound me, Mr. Kaddison. Absolutely correct. This is about a large piece of real estate known as the Shallows. It offers an unlimited supply of souls, among other things, and the key to eternity.”
“You’re not eternal?”
“No,” he said. “You see, I have a beginning; therefore, I have an end.”
“Any chance in the next five minutes?”
Gamble slapped him hard on the shoulder and laughed. “Even without the Shallows, I will forge on for millennia. And within that time, I will have likely found a cure for my terminal illness.”
Chris guffawed. “You think?”
“Even if I have to exhume Jonas Salk and turn him into a beaker-toting zombie.”
“Kinda like how we created your zombie ass?”
“Yes, up until the point when I began recreating myself,” Gamble said. “Now I have the brush, and infinity will be my canvas.”
“Yeah? And what if the real God decides to become an art critic?”
Now, like a ring announcer: “Then He’d better stay His ass out of the Louvre and start gearing up for some compelling surrealism, baby, ’cuz I’m ready to rum-bulllll!”
“What, you and the real hell are going to, like, gang up on heaven?”
“No, I’m afraid both parties find me and my minions unsavory. They’ll be joining forces
to try and outwit me. I’m sure of it. Quite honestly, though, between the two of them, I don’t think they could muster enough guile to trip up a one-legged giraffe.”
“Heaven and hell on the same team?” Chris laughed nervously. “There’s a concept.”
Chuckling himself, Gamble said, “Yes, well, I doubt they’ll be toasting one another at the victory party.”
“So, now it’s just you and your fake subordinates in Wonderland?”
“Not for long,” he promised. “We’re about to leave a vacancy.”
“And you—a man-made, soulless, thinking hologram—think you can defeat the real thing?”
“The ‘real’ thing? Don’t insult me, Mr. Kaddison. I’m more real now than you are.” He held out his palms. “Do you see these lines? They’re magnificent, aren’t they? When Lincoln was President, they were just beginning to emerge.” He stepped closer. Pointing with his right index finger, he said, “Do you see that one there? The one you call the Life Line? It’s not broken anywhere.” Then he offered his right hand. “This one’s the same way. Now, I don’t know about you, but it looks like I’m going to be around a long, long time. And look at my fingers! Man, I’ve got arches, loops, and whorls, oh my!” He held his wrists out to Chris. “Book me, Danno!”
After a short burst of merriment that consisted of odd dancing, whooping, and more of those strange animal sounds he’d made earlier in the church, Gamble said, “Now, take a look at your palms, Christopher-san.”
Bringing his palms to his face, Chris said, “What am I supposed to find?” But he already knew.
“Degradation, dear boy. Oh, you’ve still got a little time left before any significant changes begin to occur. Besides, you’ve had more lotion on your hands than Andie McDowell. Jerkin’ with the Jergens. Jesus. My point is, you’re not all here. I’m more real than you are now. You and every other ignorant asshole topside, along with your reality, have begun the process of vanishing. You see, just as man wished me into being, I’ve started wishing him away. Just your physical selves, mind you. Naturally, I have some disturbing plans for your eternal souls. You see, my hand prints were the last to show, so for you they’ll be the first to go.” He giggled at the rhyme. “Oh, and may I be the first to congratulate you on realizing that wonderful fact, even though it’s unwarranted, since you came about it not by brilliant deduction, but through an act similar to osmosis. Each time you visit Wonderland, you absorb its essence like spilled coffee. You’re a paper towel, my boy, not a scholar.”
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