Calamity

by J. T. Warren

  After the shower came the clothes. He set them aside last night under his bed wrapped in a plastic shopping bag he had taken from the kitchen pantry. The clothes were clean and neatly folded and he had to make sure that none of the dust under the bed tainted them. The Romans had been very careful to always wear clean clothes (or togas) on Saturday because the gods found soiled garments displeasing. It was important not to anger the gods, the writer of the book (Jack Carter) had warned. When gods were offended and then got angry, horrible things happened. The baby’s death had been a horrible thing, at least for Mom and Dad, but maybe they had done something to anger the gods, and in response the gods had taken a sacrifice.

  Brendan knew death was a terrible thing, but he also knew it was part of life. He had learned that three years ago when the family dog Dasher had gotten sick and couldn’t walk anymore. They had taken him to the vet where the doctor injected the dog with something that made him sleep forever. Delaney cried. Brendan asked why Dasher had to die, couldn’t the doctor help him? Mom explained that all things died and it was okay to be sad but it was a natural part of life and we should be happy for all the memories we have of Dasher.

  By the time the baby died, Brendan had read maybe 100 pages of the book. After the death, after the funeral with the tiny coffin, Brendan read the next fifty pages or so in a two-night sprint. The Romans believed in immortals. They knew that some people lived forever, if that person pleased the gods. A family that didn’t show the proper respect to the gods could be punished and punished repeatedly. And severely. None of his family had observed the sanctity of Saturday. Everyone slept late and then went off to do their own thing. Tyler drove somewhere, Delaney texted friends, his parents watched TV and cleaned the house, and even he went bowling in the youth league and then played arcade games with his friends. They enjoyed themselves because they thought it was the weekend, but they were wrong and the gods had made them suffer. Dasher had been a warning so many years ago. The baby was punishment. Brendan hadn’t wanted a little brother, but he also didn’t want his mother sleeping all day and staring into space like her brain was turned off when she occasionally managed to get up.

  In light of the baby’s death, Brendan rose early on Saturdays, showered, put on clean clothes, and planned the sacrifices. Chapter two of Finding God was about sacrifices and was mostly boring, ironically enough—a lot of scholarly-sounding gibberish like from his history book or science text, but a few passages had been particularly intriguing. Brendan used a yellow highlighter to mark them and then stuck Post-It notes on those pages so he could turn to them immediately whenever he needed. He had been reading them over yesterday on the playground.

  The passage on page 34 read: In order to appease the gods in times of hardship or win their support in times of ambiguity or simply maintain their blessings in times of prosperity, the Romans (and, presumably, the Greeks before them and the Mayans and Aztecs before them and the authentic primitives before them) staged often elaborate animal and—horrifying though it may be to us today—human sacrifices. These were conducted on ornate altars with priests and priestesses bedecked in glamourous gowns speckled with gold conducting these official rites from ancient texts, most of which are (sad to say) long lost through the chaos of time.

  However, there is some record of how such sacrifices might have been carried out. After the traditional prayers and invocations of the gods, the animal (or human) was held down upon the stone altar (pictures depicting several people restraining another man—the sacrificed—on the altar are well-documented throughout many of these early “civilized” cultures) and the priest or, much more frequently, the priestess raised the chosen talisman in one hand and the Holy Blade in the other. A precise slice across the neck ended the life of the animal or human.* The blood was collected in a ritual bowl and then sanctified. The corpse was then eviscerated and the major organs removed. The priest or priestess then began the very important, and bizarre, practice of Haruspicy. This method of diving the future by examining the entrails of the dead will not be discussed here, but it should be noted that these ancient cultures believed this practice to be an authentic viewing portal into the future and the whim of the gods.

  At the bottom of the page, the astrex from earlier was answered:

  *Human sacrifices, as legend holds, often involved heart extraction, which will be discussed later on page 45.

  Page 45 read:

  The ancient practice of human-heart removal as a means of sacrifice to the gods is a legend of mythic proportions, but is not without its supporting evidence. Human sacrifices were not common, nor uncommon—they were reserved for only the most reverential of ceremonies, or the most dire. Almost without fail, a human was sacrificed when either plagues, famines, or wars besieged a society. When things were their gloomiest and most desperate, the Greeks and the Romans offered up one of their own to try to turn the tide of despair.

  The chosen one, often a volunteer soldier willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to help his people and, ostensibly, earn a one-way ticket to Elysium, the blessed place for the honored dead, laid upon the altar and was held in place by other warriors and, much like the animal sacrifices described earlier, the priest or priestess invoked the gods and bestowed the final blessing rites. Using most likely talons (or metal spikes fastened to his/her fingers), the priest or priestess then pierced through the chest cavity and the breast plate to seize the heart. Once removed, the heart became the new consecrated talisman for future ceremonies.

  The practice of human sacrifice is not purely confined to the ancient societies; even the Bible details various such ceremonies. The most famous is, of course, of Abraham and his son Isaac, whom God demanded be scarified as proof …

  Brendan didn’t care about Abraham and Isaac—he cared about what he could do to protect his family from further punishments. Brendan wouldn’t—couldn’t—sacrifice an animal on some altar, or even the coffee table. He could certainly never remove a beating heart from someone’s chest, never mind that to perform it accurately, he’d need several helpers. He wasn’t a murderer: he only wanted to get the gods back on his side. So, he had to find alternatives.

  He wrote them inside a marble composition book, like the one Miss Tuyol made him have for grammar exercises. He created the list while watching Saturday morning cartoons, so Dad wouldn’t get suspicious and ask him what he was doing. Dad probably thought he was writing some story about Bobo and BooBoo Bunny, who always had the bad luck to get their carrot supply stolen. The cartoon was mildly funny, similar to SpongeBob, but Brendan only watched parts of it, usually the segments where the bunnies found the carrot thief and concocted some way to punish him. The punishments were things that would kill someone in real life, though they only left the carrot thief dazed and apologetic.

  Brendan hadn’t performed any of the sacrifices he’d written down (and always worried by Saturday’s sundown that he had angered the gods even further because he was too chicken to do what they wanted), but he felt things were getting better. Mom still slept most of the day and had that empty expression on her face when she did get up, but Dad had resumed making breakfast for everyone on Saturday and that was at least some recognition of the day’s importance. And nothing bad had happened to anyone in the family since Brendan had dedicated himself to their protection.

  That, however, changed last night.

  Brendan woke when Tyler came home from his date with some girl who Delaney said was a weirdo. Instead of going right to bed, Tyler called his friend Paul and told him something horrible had happened. Brendan had discovered a while ago that when Tyler wanted privacy on his cell phone and didn’t want to go outside and sit in his car to get it, he would sit in his closet instead. He must have figured that it was the safest way to prevent Mom and Dad from hearing through his bedroom door or Delaney from nosing in his business from her room which bordered the opposite wall. He probably assumed that Brendan was too busy playing with action figures to care about his big brother’s priv
ate conversations. Brendan did care. He had to—or else how would he know if the gods were pleased or not?

  Their closets shared a wall and if Brendan sat in his, carefully balancing himself on top of a pile of stuffed animals, while Tyler sat in his, Brendan could hear every word. Brendan listened last night and knew that the gods had had enough of him stalling for courage. They were threatening to ruin Tyler’s life (his brother had fucked up really bad with that weird bitch and now he could be totally fucked) and the only way Brendan could help him would be to man up and finally give the gods the sacrifice they wanted.

  While Dad cooked eggs in the kitchen and Bobo and Booboo donned Mexican hats and pursued the weekly carrot thief, Brendan reviewed his list of sacrifices.

  1—kick person down stairs

  2—push person off roof

  3—set person’s hair on fire

  4—burn person’s house down

  5—drown person

  6—make person choke on carrots (ha!)

  7—bury person alive

  And the list went on and on for almost two pages until

  45—run person over with car

  Of his list, Brendan could cross off over half the options because there was no way he could steal a car, or drive one, or overpower someone enough to drown them or make them choke and he certainly couldn’t bury anyone alive. The rest of the options were possible, but not without their challenges. Number 33, for instance, required him to suffocate a person. That could be done if the person was tied up, but that required Brendan to come up with a way to strap someone down first without them fighting back.

  The solution was easy, of course. Their cat, Lizzy, who Dad called Lizzy Borden for some reason, would be easy to sacrifice. He could tie her up and suffocate her or drown her in the sink or even put her on the train tracks that ran behind the elementary school—hell, he could even try to remove her beating heart—but killing the cat would be pointless. His goal was to protect his family. Certainly Tyler’s life was more important than Lizzy’s, but Brendan considered the cat a good member of the family who always offered love and affection without complaint and never meowed in the middle of the night to be fed like his friend Kyle’s cat did. Brendan could snatch a cat from the neighborhood but the community rules prevented any pets from roaming freely or being left outside unattended, so a cat would have to escape for Brendan to get his hands on one. Catching a cat that didn’t want to be caught wouldn’t be an easy task. Besides, the gods wanted human sacrifices. As the book said, in really bad times when things were their most horrible, only a human sacrifice would work.

  The easiest of the sacrifices—kick person down stairs—also offered the other crucial ingredient Brendan needed: anonymity. Performing a sacrifice for the gods only to be caught and punished defeated the purpose. He needed to be able to get away with it without any connection to him or anyone in his family. He could kick someone down the stairs at school and run away but there was always a chance that another kid or a teacher would spot him. Falling down stairs didn’t mean death, either. He’d need a place with a lot of stairs and he couldn’t think of anywhere.

  Someone was knocking at the front door. Brendan didn’t move from his spot on the floor in front of the TV, legs crossed, composition book resting on his calves. Dad wouldn’t ask him to get the door; it could be a stranger, after all. Dad was protective that way, which was nice. Brendan needed to choose a method. It had to be done today. If he waited another week, Tyler’s problem might be even worse, perhaps deadly.

  Dad hurried through the family room saying, “Breakfast is ready—get it while the bacon fat is still hot and tasty” and answered the front door. On the TV, Bobo and Booboo had put down their rifles for large knives, which they used to dice up carrots while they interrogated the now captured thief.

  Brendan added to his list: 46—stab person

  Should have thought of that a while ago.

  He closed the composition book and went into the kitchen. On the front porch, Dad was talking to people he didn’t know, probably salesmen. Depending on Dad’s mood, the conversation could last a few minutes. Waves of heat bloomed from the pile of scrambled eggs, which were spotted brown from the bacon fat, just the way Brendan liked them. His stomach grumbled. His little white pill, what he called, “Pillie Billy,” waited for him on top of an upside down paper cup. That was Dad’s way to remind Brendan to not only take Pillie Billy but to take it with several large gulps of orange juice. Brendan grabbed the pill and swallowed it with only his saliva. He’d drink the orange juice later, in front of Dad.

  The Romans would have called Pillie Billy “a talisman.”

  He slowly removed a large carving knife from the block holding several of them. He held it up before his face and smiled at his distorted reflection in the blade. Mom and Dad had used this same blade hundreds, maybe thousands, of times to cut up vegetables or slice meat, especially on Thanksgiving, but it had never seemed so large before. The blade could stab right through someone’s face from under the jaw all the way through the top of the head. This image bothered him but he couldn’t shake it. A stab like that would be fatal, no doubt, but would someone die instantly from such an injury or would they bleed for a while? Blood was messy and could be used to catch him, at least according to CSI.

  Brendan touched the point of the blade with his thumb. The dimple of his thumb print indented with the fine point of the knife but the blade did not break skin. Even so, the tip was very, very sharp. It would only take a bit more pressure for the skin to break and the blood to flow. Just a bit more pressure …

  “Ow.” His thumb added the extra ounce of pressure and the tip of the blade pierced flesh. He hadn’t realized what his thumb was up to; he had been drifting with his thoughts. Pillie Billy hadn’t started working yet.

  Delaney was laughing at the front door. He hadn’t heard her get up. Had she walked past him? Had she seen him with the knife? She might tell Dad and he’d be concerned and Brendan would have to concoct some lie (maybe one of his short stories) because Dad wouldn’t understand the pact Brendan had made with the gods or why it was so important to make The Saturday Sacrifice. Maybe one day he could know but not yet. As long as Dad kept making breakfast, he was doing his part to honor the day. The really horrible stuff was left for Brendan to do.

  He returned the knife to its slot among the other knives. He wrapped a napkin around his thumb and tucked it beneath his other fingers. When Dad and Delaney came in, Brendan was sitting at the table with a cup full of orange juice, eating his breakfast. They smiled at him and he smiled back—a perfect Saturday ritual.

  4

  He had not slept well. Sasha had wanted it. She hadn’t fought him. She could have stopped him, if she had really tried. He told that to Paul last night after he got home, hiding inside his closet and talking soft so his folks or his sister wouldn’t overhear him. Brendan was twelve, so even if he did hear he wouldn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. Tyler had almost driven over to Paul’s house but such a late visit would set off alarms (FIRE! FIRE!) to the parents and things would topple from there. Dad had been asleep on the couch while some infomercial blabbered on about the latest gadget designed to make life easier. Eventually, Dad would wake, see that Tyler’s car was in the driveway, and then make his way to the bedroom. Not that Mom cared; she had probably been well in the tank before nightfall. She took several pills a day and those pills were no joke. He had stolen two a while back and he and Paul had watched a Jersey Shore marathon for eight hours in a dreamy daze and then fallen into a fourteen hour stretch of sleep. One pill had nearly killed twenty-four hours.

  “I fucked up real bad with that weird bitch,” he told Paul last night. “I mean, she wanted it, you know, but after … she kept saying, ‘no, no, no.’ I could be really fucked.”

  “Oh, shit,” Paul almost screamed. “You boned her? You fucked that weird snaggletooth slut?”

  Tyler waited for the laughter and cheers to die before repeating th
e last part of the scene where Miss Snaggletooth curled into a ball and sobbed that she had begged him to stop. The bitch had even used the word rape. I told you to stop, she said. I said no, no, no, no, and you … you kept going. You raped me. Her tears had been endless.

  “Oh, shit,” Paul said, much quieter this time. It was a tone of complete shock and you’re-totally-fucking-screwed-now despair.

  “What should I do?”

  Paul was silent.

  “I mean, she’s going to tell, right? She’s probably telling her mother right now. She’ll call the cops and … aw, fuck.” Tears gathered in his eyes.

  “She won’t call the cops, that weirdo bitch is as crazy as her snaggletooth daughter. She does spells and shit. Like a witch. She’ll probably curse you so your balls rot off or something.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am. You’ve seen her at those gay Fright Fest things. She really believes that shit. She isn’t putting on a costume and having fun. She’s, like, worshiping her gods or whatever. Seriously, watch your balls. Wash them carefully in the shower, just in case.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m only trying to cheer you up, Jesus.”

  “What if she calls the cops?”

  Paul grunted. “Tell her what you told me. She didn’t resist. She let you take her pants off. You fucking fingered her, for God’s sake. She didn’t say stop when you pulled your pants off, right?”

  “Right,” Tyler said, but he wasn’t sure when Sash started saying no. He hadn’t heard her until it was over.

  “I mean, you’re not some rapist or something. But …”

  “What?”

  “It’s a ‘He Said/She Said’ thing, you know? And they always side with the bitches. It’s fucked up.”

  He wanted to vomit, have diarrhea, and pass out all at once. How could he have been so stupid? He only wanted to suck her breasts and maybe get a hand job. Why had he gone so damn nuts all of a sudden? He had raped her, he could admit that to himself at least, but he hadn’t meant it. Did intention even matter in cases like this? Were the bitches always right?