by Mick Farren
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You lost your memory on the way to the orgy. You don’t remember the death trauma. You may have left it in the cab.”
“Left it in the cab?”
“A figure of speech.”
“Oh.”
“You really don’t remember, do you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“And you certainly don’t remember the next stage, hanging cursed and discorporate, one of the million tiny, anonymous pods in the Great Double Helix.”
Jim shook his head. “Are you kidding me?”
The stranger scowled. “Why should I do that?”
Jim shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The stranger turned his head and looked directly at Jim for the first time. His eyes had changed from merely hard to downright dangerous. “You wouldn’t be about to suggest that I’m a damned liar, would you, sir? You wouldn’t think of suggesting some slanderous thing like that?”
Jim half-smiled. “Oh no. I’ve done some dumb shit, but nothing that dumb.”
The stranger nodded. “I’m glad to see that at least your animal cunning and instincts for self-preservation haven’t deserted you.”
For a while neither man spoke. The stranger tapped his right foot gently in time to the relentless drumming. Finally Jim decided that he should prompt the stranger to go on with his story. “You were saying . . .
The tapping foot stopped. “I was saying what?”
“I was a discorporate pod hanging in the Great Double Helix.”
The stranger nodded. “Indeed you were. We all are directly after death. And some of us like it so much we pay repeated visits, just to start again.”
“So then what happened?”
“You began to find that you had the capacity to make this stage of the Afterlife practically anything you wanted it to be.”
“I did?”
“Damn right you did. The pods dream.”
“The pods dream?” The drumming or the wine sloshing in his stomach, or maybe the ongoing confusion, was starting to give Jim a headache.
“The pods dream and find that their dreams might become their reality. The pods think and thoughts become things. A few, the really unadaptable, go the disembodied route, hanging around waiting for a séance to happen or spooking out and haunting some of their lifeside mortal hangouts. Those of a more Hindu mind-set take the Canal and get busy reincarnating themselves as kings or cockroaches, entirely according to their level of earthly self-esteem.”
“And the rest of us?”
The stranger unscrewed the cap on his flask. “The rest of us? Indeed, Jim Morrison, what of the rest of us? The rest of us create an environment out of our previous realities and fantasies.”
“You mean that, after death, there are people who take on the identities of the famous and notorious?”
“Why the hell not? Maybe on Earth you were some sorry, no-class, turd-shoveling creature of insignificance, but you don’t want to go damned from here to eternity like that. Oh dear me, no. What happens is, after a couple of incalculable timeless aeons hanging in the Helix, you realize that you can be Alexander the Great or Catherine de Médicis or the Old Whore of Babylon if you so wish. And so you wish and, presto, that’s exactly what you become. That’s what you are until maybe you think better of it and transcend.”
Jim frowned. “But surely you must retain some turd-shoveling memories?”
“Believe me, friend, they fade like a dream with morning in this wonderful new postmortem reality.” The stranger suddenly grinned. “Hell, I’m not even sure that I’m really who I claim to be.”
“And who might that be?”
Again the stranger turned and stared at Jim. “My name, sir, is John Henry Holliday, although many people call me Doc.”
He slowly extended a thin, rather feminine hand. Jim grasped it, noting that it was as cold as that of corpse, which, of course, technically it was. “So you’re Doc Holliday.”
“Indeed I am. To the best of my knowledge and belief.”
“I’m proud to meet you.”
“And so you should be, boy.”
“I used to watch movies about you.”
“They liked me in Hollywood. I was the perfect foil for the insufferable Wyatt Earp.”
Jim eased in a question before Doc Holliday could embark on a tangent of recollection. “There is one thing I don’t understand.”
“And what might that be?”
“I didn’t create you out of my fantasy. I’m certain I didn’t create any of this.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“So what am I doing here?”
“That’s a good question.”
“Is there an answer?”
Doc took a pull on his flask. “Even in death, no man is an island.”
Doc Holliday seemingly took a delight in elliptical conversations, and Jim figured that, for the moment, the best policy was just to wait out his loops. Eventually he would come across with something approaching an explanation.
“The first thing you learn when you start building an existence here in the Afterlife is that a billion other sons of bitches are doing exactly the same thing. In my father’s house there are many mansions. Unfortunately, they all have walls as thin as a cold-water walk-up, interconnecting doors and unending corridors. You start colliding, overlapping, banging into each other, and setting up a general interlocking confusion.”
Jim framed his next words cautiously. Now he knew that the stranger was, at the very least, an analog of Doc Holliday, his survival instincts still told him it was probably unwise to piss him off, real or not. “That doesn’t quite tell me how I got here.”
“I can tell you why I’m here.”
Jim figured that this was better than nothing. “So why are you here?”
“The truth is I was already here.”
“You were?”
Doc gestured airily to the eruption behind them. “I was up on the volcano disposing of a power ring that had turned out to be singularly destructive. It’s the only way to get rid of those damn things. You bring them to life and after a while you find they’re not only taking on a life of their own but also taking over yours. You have to burn them up in either an active volcano or the breath of a dragon. I imagine that, in your case, you were probably wished here by whoever’s throwing this al fresco wingding.”
“Me?”
“You may not know it, but you’ve got something of a rep around the hereafter.”
Jim groaned. It seemed that history had been repeating itself. “And my memory got scrambled in the process?”
“You got it. Unless you’ve been hitting the absinthe or ingesting alien fungoids.”
“I’m afraid I’m still confused.”
Doc chuckled. “You’ll be even more confused when you find out about the other problems.”
“Other problems?”
“Like how the bit players in the fantasy also take on a life of their own.
“Would you care to explain that?”
“I’m not sure there’s going to be time right now.” Doc gestured to a point above them, a rocky promontory higher on the slopes of the volcano. “I fear Moses is come upon us to smite the fornicators.”
Jim turned and looked where Doc was pointing. A tall bearded figure, angular and bony in a tattered and dirty woolen robe, and with a mass of gray hair that hung well past his shoulders, was standing on the rocks, glaring down at the orgy around the Golden Calf with the disapproving stare of patriarchal wrath. Jim glanced at Doc. “That’s really Moses?”
Doc shook his head. “I very much doubt it. Just some turd-shoveler putting on the style. In point of fact, Moses was bicameral and he couldn’t make a move without his right brain telling his left brain that it was the Voice of God. He probably transcended millennia ago, and now he’s sitting on what he fondly believes is the right hand of Jehovah.”
Jim saw that the Moses figure was
actually carrying a pair of stone tablets like miniature headstones. “He seems to have the Ten Commandments with him.”
“Of course he does. They go with the costume.”
“So what does this turd-shoveler want?”
“Like I said, he’s most likely here to smite the fornicators.”
“Can he do that?”
“Sure, that’s probably the reason he set up this rat-shit drunk, buck-naked hoedown in the first place. Nothing these Bible-thumping retards like better than smiting a mess of sinners in flagrante. Doubtless that’s why you were dragged here at the unfortunate cost of your memory.”
“Moses set this thing up?”
Doc was getting to his feet. “Sure he did. A pristine piece of ego tripping. His mission is to punish sinners, so he has to create a few sinners to punish. He also buses in outside talent like you to give the proceeding a measure of heft.”
Some of the celebrants below had broken off from their fun and games and were staring up at the figure on the mountain with its stone tablets. The drums faltered and stopped together. Jim also scrambled to his feet. “Are you saying we’re going to get smitten?”
Doc pushed back his coat, revealing a nickel-plated Colt .45-caliber automatic with a mother-of-pearl handle inlaid with a gold lightning flash. “Not if I can help it.”
As Doc spoke, the Moses figure braced his legs, drew himself up to his full height, and raised the stone tablets above his head. His voice, monstrously amplified and heavy with unnatural and highly electronic reverb, roared out and echoed around the mountains, “I SAY TO YOU, OH ISRAEL, YOU HAVE CORRUPTED YOURSELVES!”
The impact of the sound was like a thunderclap, and, even inured as he was from his days on Earth to super-amplified noises, Jim flinched momentarily. The roar of Moses was certainly enough to bring the orgy to an abrupt stop. Drunks halted in their tracks and copulating couples froze in midthrust. Individual revelers broke away from each other, retreating for supposed protection in the shadow of the Golden Calf.
Moses advanced down the mountain, bearing the tablets of stone above his head. “YOU HAVE ERECTED A GRAVEN IMAGE AND MADE YOURSELVES AN ABOMINATION IN THE EYES OF GOD.”
Jim glanced at Doc. “I don’t even believe in God.”
Doc smiled grimly. “I don’t recall that ever giving one moment’s pause to any Bible-thumper.”
“THOSE WHO REFUSE TO LIVE BY THE LAW MUST THEN DIE BY IT!”
Threateningly bright and powerful streams of plasma energy undulated from the stone tablets and circled Moses, ducking and weaving but growing in strength. One suddenly darted out, swooped down into the amphitheater, and struck the Golden Calf, burning off one of its horns, and a large chunk of the idol’s golden head. It also totally vaporized the Debra Paget look-alike. This seemed scarcely fair or just to Jim. Bound and restrained as she had been, she was about the only one at the party whose participation in the depravity hadn’t been obviously willing. He could only assume that prophets and patriarchs still operated on the principle of guilt by association. If you’re there, you’re guilty, and damn the extenuating circumstances.
Doc growled angrily in his throat as a second plasma stream struck the Calf on its haunches, vaporized a dozen or more sinners in a single dazzling explosion, and scattered a fine rain of molten gold over the terrified crowd. Now the guests at the orgy were scurrying in every direction, looking for any way out or any available cover but finding none. A third plasma bolt struck home and the amphitheater began to resemble a battlefield more than a party.
“I think it’s time I did something about this.” And so saying, Doc Holliday drew the Colt automatic from under his coat and pointed it at Moses.
Jim looked at him as though he were crazy. “Surely you can’t kill anyone in the Afterlife? I mean, we’re all already dead.”
Doc grinned unpleasantly. “I can still fuck him up some. This piece was made for Elvis and the bullets are gold. It should have some effect.” He gestured with the gun in the direction of Moses. “Depending on that son of a bitch’s belief structure, a gold bullet going through him could trigger a bunch of possible responses. The Elvis connection should also make its contribution.”
“You’ve really got that thing loaded with gold bullets?”
The look in Doc’s eyes was starting to verge on insanity. “To be strictly accurate, the shell casings are only gold-plated, but the slugs themselves are pure twenty-four-karat. Soft-metal hollow points, guaranteed to make one hell of a mess of both bone and tissue. Now shut the fuck up, I need to concentrate.”
Steadying his right hand with his left, fingers extended in a way that was almost delicate, Doc took slow and careful aim at the figure of Moses. More plasma crashed down on the sinners in the amphitheater, but Doc didn’t duck or flinch. His focus was such that he seemed unaware of anything but his target. This being might not be the genuine and original Doc Holliday, but he certainly had a cold killer’s calculated detachment down pat and Jim had to admire him for that. When it came, the report of the pistol was unnaturally loud with an artificial echo similar to the intensified Moses voice. Doc allowed the recoil of the weapon to carry it up to a two-handed, high port with the gun beside his head. His gaze, however, was still locked on Moses. The simulated patriarch reeled backward for three faltering paces. His spine arched unnaturally, as though cringing somehow to accommodate the impact of the gold .45 slug, but almost immediately he appeared to recover. His body straightened, and it was clear, even from a distance, that his sinews were stiffening with righteous fury.
Moses slowly turned, as though searching for the heretic behind this blasphemous assault. “WHO DARES TO SMITE THE PROPHET OF THE LORD THY GOD?”
A silence so profound that it could have come directly from the gulf between galaxies fell over the amphitheater. The ex-revelers froze in their panicking tracks. As far as Jim could objectively tell, the silence lasted for five, maybe six seconds before it was shattered by the soft tubercular wheeze of Doc Holliday’s hollow laugh as he answered the irate Moses. “I guess I’m your boy, pilgrim. Are we going to make an issue of this?”
Jim could only suppose that, at this point, Moses’ rage had simply boiled all the way out of character. He looked the same, he sounded the same, but the content was hardly from the Book of Exodus. “FUCKING-A RIGHT WE’RE GOING TO MAKE AN ISSUE OF IT.”
And with that, he hurled one of the stone tablets directly at Doc. Doc, however, gracefully sidestepped, and five of the Ten Commandments, streaming a rainbow plasma contrail, spun past Jim, just scant inches from his left shoulder. The stone burst on the rocks behind him like a divine hand grenade, with a blinding, phosphorus-white flash and a shock wave that all but blew Jim clear off the ledge. From that point on, all hell broke loose. Firing from the hip, Doc proceeded to empty the entire clip of the automatic into the figure of Moses, but this seemed to have little effect except to make him even more furious and cause him to hurl the other tablet at them—the one containing commandments six through ten—and then, when this second explosion failed to dislodge Doc and Jim, to call down the full-blown Energy Storm of God.
In fact, the Energy Storm of God was borrowed intact from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but Jim didn’t know this. Thus the plasma, howling past and threatening to engulf him with its screaming skulls, came at Jim like hallucination horrors. Moses, the amphitheater, even Doc, none of them were any longer visible. All Jim could see was a funnel cloud of vague disjointed forms spinning around him in the blaze. They all seemed to be flying. Or possibly falling.
Blood-ruby light streamed through the narrow, irregular slits in the high-domed ceiling of the chamber. They formed long unwavering beams that cut through the smoke haze and shafted down to the black marble floor below, creating a geometric design in three dimensions. When viewed from most possible angles, it resembled nothing more than an elongated, cat’s-cradle cage of brightness. A slightly larger, circular aperture at the apex of the dome produced a single and absolutely vertical column
of illumination, somewhat wider and more intense than the other pencil-thin rays.
The obvious stylistic influence and overall effect of the chamber was decidedly Islamic, akin in some ways to an anteroom in a huge and magnificent mosque. This had been Semple McPherson’s original intention when she had conceived the chamber and all of the other rooms in her extensive domain. She had been striving for an obvious counterbalance to her sibling’s overbearing, open-air Christianity. Where mosques, however, were places of cool holiness, the smoky red light and the abstract, vaguely flamelike mosaics, in black, scarlet, and gold, that adorned the walls and snaked up all the way to the apex of the dome whispered of damnation and punishment. The ever-burn chromium spheres floating in the convex space, moving about their randomly combustible sphere business, hinted at a cruel surrealism. The runic inscriptions and cabalistic symbols etched in gold on the black marble of the floor provided a louder literary confirmation that this was a place where sweetness and mercy had been banished, right along with faith, hope, and charity. If Semple’s creation was a mosque, it was seemingly a mosque in Hell where, rather than prayer and devotion and the worship of Allah, the primary focus was the practice of torture and subjugation. If any further amplification was needed, the way the central beam of light fell directly on a chained and kneeling winged figure crouched on the marble floor said it all.
That the light came from above tended to suggest that, somewhere beyond the dome, a larger world existed, perhaps even some semblance of a sun and a sky. In fact, that was not the case. Semple had never bothered to devise any greater reality to give context to the invented Hell in which she dwelled, amused herself, and whiled away a perfectly satisfactory Afterlife. Semple disliked the outdoors. Such niceties like earth and sky were the province of her sibling. If Aimee had her way, all of everywhere would be reconfigured in the image of her narrow, conservative, and boringly orthodox concept of a pastoral Heaven.
As with much in the Afterlife, the relationship between the opposing kingdoms of the two sisters was complicated. To think that Aimee’s Maxfield Parrish Paradise was somewhere above, and that Semple’s Arabian Hell was somehow below, was convenient but sadly nonsensical. Such relativities were merely handed on from the mortal coil, handy luggage from the earthly life. They had no factual basis in postmortem complexity.