by Rudy Rucker
Stacked on the table beside the barbeque wagon were the headless butchered corpses of Lulu Anders, Louie Levy, Lucy Candler, and Rick Stazanik, ready to be cooked. The aliens—or devils—crossed the terrace, their large bodies rocking from side to side, their green abdomens wobbling. Danny swung up the barbeque wagon’s curved door. There in the double-hog barbeque grill were the bodies of Les and Ragland, already well crisped.
Sweating and grinning, Danny wielded a cleaver and a three-tined fork, cutting loose some tender barbeque for the giant mantises. The monsters bit into the meat, their jaws snipping out neat triangles.
Danny’s eyes were damned, tormented, mad. He was wearing something strange on his head, not a chef’s hat, no, it was floppy and bloody and hairy and with big ears—it was poor Les Trucklee’s scalp. Danny was a Pig Chef.
Over by the parking lot, early bird golfers and barbeque breakfasters were starting to arrive. One by one the mibracc beat them to death with golf clubs and dragged them to the barbeque wagon’s side. Even with the oily smoke and the smell of fresh blood in the air, none of the new arrivals thought to worry when the five familiar men from the back room approached them.
“The end of the world,” breathed Gretchen.
“I have to see Mom,” said Jack brokenly. “Get my suitcase and see Mom. I have to leave today.”
“I want to get Daddy,” said Tonel.
The three looped around the far side of the clubhouse and managed to hail down a pickup truck with a lawnmower in back. The driver was old Luke Taylor.
“Can you carry us home?” asked Tonel.
“I can,” said Luke, dignified and calm. “What up at the country club?”
“There’s a flying saucer with devils eating people!” said Gretchen. “It’s the end!”
Luke glanced over at her, not believing what he heard. “Maybe,” he said equably, “But I’m still gonna cut Mrs. Bowen’s grass befo’ the sun gets too hot.”
Luke dropped them at Vaughan Electronics. Jack and Gretchen ran around the corner to the rectory. The house was quiet, with the faint chatter of children’s voices from the back yard. Odd for a Sunday morning. Rev. Langhorne should be bustling around getting ready for church. Jack used his key to open the door, making as little noise as possible. Gretchen was right at his side.
It was Gretchen who noticed the spot on the banister. A dried bloody print from a very small hand. Out in the backyard the children were singing. They were busy with something; Jack heard a clank and a rattle. He didn’t dare go back there to see.
Moving fast, Jack and Gretchen tiptoed upstairs. There was blood on the walls near the Langhorne parents’ room. Jack went straight for his mother’s single bedroom, blessedly unspotted with blood. But the room was empty.
“Mom?” whispered Jack.
There was a slight noise from the closet.
Jack swung open the closet door. No sign of his mother—but, wait, there was a big lump on the top shelf, covered over with a silk scarf.
“Is that you, Mom?” said Jack, scared what he might find.
The paisley scarf slid down. Jack’s mother was curled up on the shelf in her nightgown, her eyes wide and staring.
“Those horrible children,” she said in a tiny, strained voice. “They butchered their parents in bed. I hid.”
“Hurry, Mrs. Vaughan,” said Gretchen. She was standing against the wall, peeking out the back window. “They’re starting up the grill.”
And, yes, Jack could smell the lighter fluid and the smoke. Four little Pig Chefs in the making. A smallish alien craft slid past the window, wedging itself down into the backyard.
Somewhat obsessively, Jack went into his bedroom and fetched his packed suitcase before leading Gretchen and his Mom to the front door. It just about cost them too much time. For as the three of them crept down the front porch steps they heard the slamming of the house’s back door and the drumming of little footsteps.
Faster than it takes to tell it, Jack, Gretchen, and Jessie Vaughan were in Jessie’s car, Jack at the wheel, slewing around the corner. They slowed only to pick up Tonel and Vincente, and then they were barreling out of town on Route 501.
“Albert was saying we should come to the Casa Linda and help him,” said Gretchen. “He said he’d be watching from the roof. He said he needed five pure hearts to pray with him. Six of us in all. We’re pure, aren’t we?”
Jack wouldn’t have stopped, but as it happened, there was a roadblock in the highway right by the Casa Linda. The police all had pointed ears. The coffee in their cups was continually swirling. And the barbeque pit beside the Banana Split was fired up. A gold UFO was just now angling down for a landing.
“I’m purely ready to pray my ass off,” said Vincente.
When they jumped out of the car, the police tried to take hold of the five, to hustle them toward the barbeque. But a sudden flight of the little angels distracted the pig-eared cops. The tiny winged beings beat at the men’s cruel faces, giving the five pure hearts a chance.
Clutching his suitcase like a talisman, Jack led Gretchen, Jessie, Tonel, and Vincente across the parking lot to the Casa Linda. They pounded up the motel’s outdoor concrete stairs, all the way to the roof. The pointy-eared police were too busy with the next carload of victims to chase after them. Over by the Banana Split, hungry mantises were debarking from the gold donut.
They found Albert Chesney at the low parapet of the motel roof, staring out across the rolling hills of Killeville. He had a calm, satisfied expression. His prophecies were coming true.
“Behold the city of sin,” he said, gesturing toward Killeville’s pitifully sparse town center, its half dozen worn old office buildings. “See how the mighty have been brought low.”
“How do we make it stop, Albert?” asked Gretchen.
“Let us join hands and pray,” said Chesney.
So they stood there, the early morning breeze playing upon the six of them—Albert, Gretchen, Jack, Jessie, Tonel, and Vincente. There were maybe three dozen toroidal UFOs scattered around Killeville by now. And beside each of them was a plume of greasy smoke.
Jack hadn’t prayed in quite some time. As boarders in the rectory, they’d had to go to Reverend Langhorne’s church every Sunday, but the activity had struck him as exclusively social, with no connection to any of the deep philosophical and religious questions he might chew over with friends, like, “Where did all this come from?” or, “What happens after I die?”
But now, oh yes, he was praying. And it’s safe to say the five others were praying too. Something like, “Save us, save the earth, make the aliens go away, dear God please help.”
As they prayed, the mothlike angels got bigger. The prayers were pumping energy into the good side of the Shekinah Glory. Before long the angels were the size of people. They were more numerous than Jack had initially realized.
“Halle-friggin-lujah!” said Vincente, and they prayed some more.
The angels grew to the size of cars, to the size of buildings. The Satanic flying donuts sprang into the air and fired energy bolts at them. The angels grew yet taller, as high as the sky. Their faces were clear, solemn, terrible to behold. The evil UFOs were helpless against them, puny as gnats. Peeking through his fingers, Jack saw one of the alien craft go flying across the horizon toward an angel, and saw the impact as the great holy being struck with a hand the size of a farm. The shattered bits of the UFO shrank into nothingness, as if melting in the sun. It was only a matter of minutes until the battle was done. The closest angel fixed Jack with an unbearable gaze, then made a gesture that might have been a benediction. And now the great beings rotated in some unseen direction and angled out of view.
“Praise God!” said Albert Chesney when it was done.
“Praise God,” echoed Jack. “But that’s enough for now, Lord. Don’t have the whole Last Judgment today. Let me go to college first. Give us at least six more years.”
And it was so.
A Greyhound bus drew even with
the Casa Linda and pulled over for a stop. BLACKSBURG, read the sign above the bus window. Jack bid the quickest of farewells to his mother and his friends, and then, whooping and yelling, he ran down the stairs with his suitcase and hopped aboard.
The Killeville Barbeque Massacre trials dragged on through the fall. Jack and Albert had to testify a few times. Most of the Pig Chef defendants got off with temporary insanity pleas, basing their defense on smeel-poisoning, although no remaining samples of smeel could be found. The police officers were of course pardoned, and Danny Dank got the death penalty. The cases of Banks, Price, Sydnor, and Rainey were moot—for with their appetites whetted by the flesh of the children’s parents, the mantises had gone ahead and eaten the four fledgling Pig Chefs.
The trials didn’t draw as much publicity as one might have expected. The crimes were simply too disgusting. And the Killeville citizenry had collective amnesia regarding the UFOs. Some of the Day Six Synodites remembered, but the Synod was soon split into squabbling sub-sects by a series of schisms. With his onerous parole conditions removed in return for his help with the trials, Albert Chesney left town for California to become a computer game developer.
Jessie Vaughan got herself ordained as a deacon and took over the pastoral duties at St. Anselm’s church. At Christmas Jessie celebrated the marriage of Jack to Gretchen Karst—who was indeed pregnant. Tonel took leave from the navy to serve as best man.
Gretchen transferred into Virginia Polytechnic with Jack for the spring term. The couple did well in their studies. Jack majored in Fluid Engineering and Gretchen in Computer Science. And after graduation they somehow ended up moving into the rectory with Jessie and opening a consulting firm in Killeville.
As for the men in the back room of the country club—they completely dropped out of sight. The prudent reader would be well advised to keep an eye out for mibracc in his or her home-town. And pay close attention to the fluid dynamics of coffee, juice, and alcoholic beverages. Any undue rotation could be a sign of smeel.
The end is near.
GUADALUPE AND
HIERONYMUS BOSCH
AS an unemployed, overweight, unmarried, overeducated woman with a big mouth, I don’t have a lot of credibility. But even if I was some perfect California Barbie it wouldn’t be enough. People never want to listen to women.
I, Glenda Gomez, bring glad tidings. She that hath ears, let her hear.
An alien being has visited our world. Harna is, was, her name. I saw her as a glowing paramecium, a jellyfish, a glass police car, and a demonic art patron. This morning, when she was shaped like a car, I rode inside her to the fifteenth century. And this evening I walked past the vanishing point and saved our universe from Harna’s collecting bag. I’m the queen of space and time. I’m trying to write up my story to pitch as a reality TV show.
Let’s start with paramecia. Unicellular organisms became a hobby of mine a few months ago when I stole a microscope from my job. I was sorting egg and sperm cells for an infertility clinic called Smart Stork. Even though I don’t have any kind of biology background they trained me.
I’m not dumb. I have a Bachelor’s in Art History from San Jose State, which is just a few blocks from my apartment on Sixth Street. Well, almost a degree. I never finished the general education courses or my senior seminar, which would probably, certainly, have been on Hieronymus Bosch. I used to have a book of his pictures I looked at all the time—although today the book disappeared. At first I thought it was hidden under something. My apartment is a sty.
My lab job didn’t last long—I’m definitely not the science type. I wasn’t fast enough, I acted bored, I kissed the manager Dick Went after one too many lunchtime Coronas—and he fired me. That’s when I bagged my scope—a binocular phase-contrast Leica. I carried it home in my ever-ready XXL purse. Later that day Dick came to my apartment to ask about it, but I screamed through the door at him like a crazy person until he went away. Works on the landlord, too.
Now that I have a microscope, I keep infusions of protozoan cultures in little jars all over my apartment. It’s unbelievably easy to grow the infusions. You just put a wad of lawn grass in with some bottled water. Bacteria breed themselves into the trillions—rods and dots and corkscrews that I can see at 200x. And before you know it, the paramecia are right there digging on the bacilli. They come out of nowhere. What works really well is to add a scrap of meat to an infusion, it gets dark and pukeful, and the critters go wild for a few days till they die of their own shit. In the more decadent infusions you’ll find a particular kind of very coarsely ciliated paramecium rolling and rushing around. My favorites. I call them the microhomies.
So today is a Sunday morning in March, and I’m eating my usual breakfast of day-old bread with slices of welfare cheddar, flipping through my Bosch book thinking about my next tattoo. A friend named Sleepey is taking an online course in tattooing, and he said he’d give me one for free. He has a good flea-market tattoo-gun he traded a set of tires for. Who needs snow tires in San Jose? So I’m thinking it would be bitchin’ to bedizen my belly with a Bosch.
I’m pretty well settled on this blue bagpipe bird with a horn for his nose. It’ll be something to talk about, and the bagpipe will be like naturalistic on my gordo gut, maybe it’ll minimize my girth. But the bird needs a background pattern. Over my fourth cup of microwave coffee, I start thinking about red blood cells, remembering from the lab how they’re shaped. I begin digging on the concept of rounding out my Bosch bird tattoo with a blood-cell tiling.
To help visualize it, I pinprick my pinkie and put a droplet on a glass slide under my personal Glenda Gomez research scope. I see beautiful shades of orange and red from all my little blood cells massed together. Sleepey will need to see this in order to fully grasp what to do. I want to keep on looking, but the blood is drying fast. The cells are bursting, and cracks are forming among them as they dry. I remember that at Smart Stork we’d put some juice on the slides with the cells to keep them perky. I don’t know what kind of juice, but I decide to try a drop of water out of one of my infusions, a dark funky batch that I’d fed with a KFC chicken nugget.
The infusion water is teeming with those tough-looking paramecia with the coarse bristles—the microhomies. What with Bosch on my brain, the microhomies resemble tiny bagpipes on crutches. I’m like: Tattoo them onto my belly too? While I’m watching the microhomies, they start digging on my ruptured blood cells.
“Yo,” I say, eyeing an especially bright and lively one. “You’re eating me.”
And that’s when it happens. The image loses its focus, I feel a puff of air, my skin tingles all over. Leaning back, I see a bag of glowing light grow out from the microscope slide. It’s a foot across.
I jump to my feet and back off. I may be heavy, but I’m quick. At first I have the idea my apartment is on fire, and then for some reason I think of earthquakes. I’m heading for the door.
But the glowing sack gets there before me, blocking the exit. I try to reach through it for the doorknob.
As soon as my hand is inside the lumpy glow I hear a woman’s voice.
“Glenda! Hello dear.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Harna from Hilbert space.” She has a prim voice; I visualize flowery dresses and pillbox hats. “I happened upon your brane several—days—ago. I’ve been teeming with the microlife, a bit humdrum, and I thought that’s all there is to see in this location. Worth documenting, but no more than that. I had no idea that only a few clicks up the size scale I’d find a gorgeous entity like you. Scale is tricky for me, what with everything in Hilbert space being infinite. Thank goodness I happened upon your blood cell. Oh, warmest greetings, Glenda Gomez. You’re—why, you’re collectible, my dear.”
I’m fully buggin’. I run to the corner of my living-room, staring at the luminous paramecium the size of a dog in midair. “Go away,” I say.
Harna wobbles into the shape of a jellyfish with dangling frilly ribbons. She drifts across the room,
not quite touching the floor, dragging her oral arms across the stuff lying on my tables, checking things out. And then she gets to my Bosch book, which is open to The Garden of Earthly Delights.
“A nonlinear projection of three-space to two-space,” burbles Harna, feeling the paper all over. “Such a clever map. Who’s the author?”
“Hieronymus Bosch,” I murmur. “It’s called perspective.” I’m half-wondering if my brain has popped and I’m alone here talking to myself. Maybe I’m about to start fingerpainting the floor with Clorox. Snorting Ajax up my nose.
“Bosch?” muses Harna. Her voice is fruity and penetrating like my old guidance counselor’s. “And I just know you have a crush on him, Glenda! I can tell. When can I meet him?”
“He lived a long time ago,” I whisper. I’m stepping from side to side, trying to find a clear path to the door.
“Most excellent,” Harna is saying. “You’ll time-snatch him, and then I can use the time-flaw to perspective-map your whole spacetime brane down into a sack! Yummy! You are so cute, Glenda. Yes, I’m going to wrap you up and take you home!”
I get past her and run out into the street. I’m breathing hard, still in my nightgown, now and then looking over my shoulder. So of course a San Jose police car pulls over and sounds me on their speaker. They think I’m a tweaker or a nut-job. Did I mention that it’s Sunday morning?
“Ma’am. Can we help you? Ma’am. Please come over to the police car and place your hands on the hood. Ma’am.” More cop-voice crackle in the background and here comes Harna down the sidewalk, still shaped like a flying jellyfish, though bigger than before. The cops can’t see her, though.
“Ma’am.” One of them gets out of the car, a kid with a cop mustache. He looks kind, concerned, but his hand is on the butt of his Taser.
I whirl, every cop’s image of a madwoman, pointing back down the sidewalk at the swollen Harna, who’s shaping herself into a damn good replica of the cops’ car. She’s made of glowing haze and hanging at an angle to the ground.