I Am the New God

by Nicole Cushing

  As certain as I was of my path, there were so many aspects of it that were still uncertain. I understood, at that moment, how Christ must’ve felt. How, even in the Garden of Gethsemane, he didn’t know exactly how shit would go down. How maddening it is, to be a god (or to know that one will, presently, be one) and to still have certain aspects of the future hidden from you!

  For example, despite my rising divinity, I hadn’t had any premonition that Arihiro would try to get out of the closet.

  When I arrived on the second floor of the dorm, I heard a middle-aged woman mumbling muffled Japanese out of our answering machine. When I opened the door, I saw that Arihiro had managed to wriggle, wormlike, out of his new home in the closet. He was half-conscious, but the sound of the woman’s voice over the answering machine seemed to have stirred him nonetheless. I turned down the volume on the machine, then worked on wrestling him back to where he belonged.

  He wanted to wriggle on the floor like a little caterpillar. But I wasn’t content to let Arihiro stay any mere caterpillar. He was due for a transformation. So I wrestled him back into the closet, his snug cocoon for the duration of his metamorphosis from a creature of the old god’s to one of mine. He wasn’t able to offer much in the way of resistance. (Indeed, had I been in the room, he would have never managed to escape from the closet.)

  Still, I wasn’t comfortable with him being so mobile. I removed the duct tape once again.

  “You need more sleep,” I said, “so you won’t fight what’s happening to you. You need some serenity in your life, friend. There’s no serenity at all to be found in trying to fight a god.” I grabbed another Stelazine and pried Arihiro’s mouth open. It reminded me of when I was back home with Mom and Dad and we had to give the family cat a worming pill. In both cases, the poor creatures needed the medicine but fought against it. They didn’t know what was best for them.

  Arihiro tried lots of different things to fight me. He clenched his jaw, pursed his little lips together, shook his head first to the left and then to the right. I slapped him again. Hard. Just to remind him who was boss. I liked slapping him. His new eyes still weren’t working very well, it seemed, because he didn’t see the blows coming. I enjoyed that aspect of his punishment quite a bit.

  I had to get on top of him, my knees on his shoulders, to start to take control. I grabbed his upper jaw and lower jaw again and tried dropping the pill down his gullet. But the damned infidel wriggled his head loose from my grip and bit me!

  As a vengeful god, I could not let this go unpunished. I stood up, put my hands on my hips, and considered my options. If I’d had a pair of pliers, I would have considered taking out those teeth he liked to bite with! That would have been the very essence of justice!

  But it would have been justice left untempered by mercy. And, as the hierophant liked to remind me, I was to become a vengeful god but also not a god without mercy. On contemplation, I decided I had some share of responsibility for the rebellion on my hands. I had expected Arihiro not to fight against the sedation. And, for several hours the night before, that had proved the case. But I’d not been careful and had left the answering machine turned up so that he could hear someone from back home leaving a message for him. I didn’t know exactly what religious beliefs crawled around his mother’s brain—whether she was a Christian or a Buddhist or an atheist or even into some sort of Shinto shit. But it made no difference what she believed. Whether she knew it or not, she was still a subject of the old god’s kingdom, still firmly entrenched in his definition of reality.

  She was a bad influence on Arihiro. The mere sound of her voice emboldened him to rebel against me. The mere sound of her voice had acted as a door to the old god’s reality. Arihiro had forgotten just who and what he was.

  I had to make certain he never heard her again. I considered making Arihiro new ears, but my experience with creating new flesh and bones was, at this point, confined to breathing life into the old god’s sand and rocks and shells. As none of these were currently around me, I had no alternative but to seal off the old ears to minimize their effectiveness.

  I moved so that my knee was placed right on top of Arihiro’s jaw. He looked mighty uncomfortable, but I had no choice. It was the only way I could hold his head still. I tore off another piece of duct tape, crumbled it up into a ball and stuck it inside his left ear. Then I tore off yet three more pieces of duct tape and crisscrossed them over the outside of his ear.

  He whimpered.

  I then did the same to his right ear. I knew it wouldn’t keep sound out completely, but it would at least muffle it.

  I took my knee off of his jaw and pivoted his chin upward so his new shell-eyes looked right into mine. “Mark my words,” I said, “the next time I hear you listening to creatures made by the old god, I’m gonna tote your ass outside so I can make you new ears that won’t be able to hear such nonsense.” Arihiro started to tremble. Grimaced. If he’d still had tear ducts, I think he’d have been crying. He started to whisper words in Japanese, but seemed to have caught himself about halfway through and started speaking in English. “God,” he said. “God, god, god, god, god…”

  Was he praying? Praying to me? For mercy? I decided to take a gentler tact. Softly (almost tenderly), I took the little blue Stelazine and slipped it between his lips. I placed my hand over his mouth and pinched his nostrils together until I heard him swallow.

  Finally.

  I dragged Arihiro back to the closet. I sat down with my back against the closet door, to barricade him in as much as possible while the pills did their work. I guessed he’d be out for at least ten hours (probably more) considering that I’d given him yet another pill.

  It was a relief when, about an hour later, I heard the first snores.

  I was tempted to use this time to get some rest of my own. Part of me sensed it would be wise to get some sleep now, while I could. I was aware I was on the verge of leaving the college for good, and I would be traveling soon. The truth was, though, I was feeling a decreased need for sleep. Obviously, some of this had to do with the fact that I’d cut back on the Stelazine. But I think much of it had to do with the fact that I was steadily becoming more confident in my burgeoning godhood. Gods don’t need sleep. It only made sense that, as I came closer to realizing my destiny, I would require less sleep.

  I got up off the floor and padded my way over toward Hop-frog. I decided it was time to give him some attention. It’d been such a hectic day. I knew Hop-frog didn’t have consciousness, but that didn’t stop me from worrying about it possibly becoming jealous of all the time I was spending with Arihiro. I petted it, and it let out a raspy, choking purr. Not quite like the more soothing purr I’d heard come out of its mouth days before, before its injuries. But still, not a bad-sounding vocalization at all. I felt grateful I’d been able to resurrect this little beast and reshape it. I felt grateful the man responsible for its initial destruction was now on the verge of rehabilitation. And, with those happy thoughts swimming through my head, I did slip into a dulled state of consciousness. Not outright sleep, but perhaps a gentle dozing.

  The next thing I knew, sunlight had penetrated the room (creeping low, low, low under the drawn shade, but still managing to squeeze inside the dorm). I heard a knock on the door. Arihiro groaned inside his closet-cocoon. I didn’t think anything good could come from answering it. I stayed put on the ground.

  Then the sound of fingers entering the combination lock code on the outside door handle. A click. Then the sound of the heavy metal door squeaking as it was opened.

  “Mr. Bryce?”

  I looked up and saw a buff-looking dude just a few years older than me, wearing the casual-cop attire of campus police. Sometimes the campus cops allowed senior criminal justice majors to serve as trainee/interns with them. “I’m sorry. I must not have heard you when you knocked. You see, I was here meditating.”

  “I’m here to do a welfare check on your roommate, Mr. Takahashi. His mother called. His grandfather in
Osaka died. His mother’s insisting on speaking to him personally, but there’s no sign of him. His physics professor said he didn’t show up for his eight a.m. class this morning. Apparently, that’s not like him.”

  “He went off with some girl,” I said.

  The campus cop got his notepad out of the pocket of his blue campus police T-shirt. “A girl?”

  “Well, a woman. She looked older than us. She looked like she came from town.”

  The campus cop cleared his throat. I think I heard Arihiro fidget in his sleep at about the same time. The cop didn’t notice. “This girl have a name?”

  “I didn’t ask. I walked in on them, well…you know… It wasn’t the kind of experience that facilitated introductions.”

  “Walked in on them?”

  “Fucking.” The word tasted disgusting in my mouth, but I said it.

  The cop tightened his jaw. Scratched his neck. Cleared his throat again. Flashed a half-embarrassed grin. “So where is he now?”

  “They went back to her place…it wasn’t last night but the night before. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “What’d she look like?”

  “Skinny. Old. Bleached-blonde hair that looked bristly… Oh, and it looked like she had a tattoo on her boob.”

  The officer shook his head.

  “I mean, not to be crude, but I saw her tits.”

  “What did this tattoo look like. I mean, in case we need to positively identify her at some point?”

  “A rose, but it was faded so it was hard to tell. It could’ve been something else. She had this really dark tan, so the ink from the tattoo didn’t stand out as much as it would’ve if she’d been pale, you know?”

  “What about her eyes. Did you catch what color her eyes were?”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, Officer, I wasn’t exactly looking at her eyes.” I offered a fake grin. The officer nodded, as if in commensuration.

  The campus cop expected me to be nothing more than the typical hormone-fueled automaton with his seed-infusion device always ready to be stirred into arousal by even the scrawniest of bare baby-suckling devices. For the moment, I was willing to match his expectations because it gave me an advantage in the larger game (a game the poor, middlebrow cop didn’t even suspect was afoot).

  Sometimes, a god had to lie. When gods lie, it isn’t even lying, really. It’s changing reality itself, by the sheer force of words. Whatever words a god speaks, they must—by definition—be true.

  “How tall was she?”

  I thought about it. They looked like they were about evenly matched, in the height department. I wondered if she picked him out for that reason. Maybe she liked the idea of having a quiet little Asian as her John.

  “Well, again, I mean—with the way I saw her there—it’s hard to say. But I’m guessing she was just about the same size as Arihiro.”

  The campus cop took more notes. Flipped through his notepad at the previous notes he just took. Paused for a moment. “So I guess you don’t have an idea of what she was wearing, either.”

  “That’s correct, Officer. At the time, she was wearing nothing but skin and a smile.”

  “And I guess the same with your roommate, too, eh? No idea what he was wearing the night he went missing?”

  “There were clothes tossed around,” I said. “But, no, I don’t remember what they were—except they were shorts and a T-shirt.” I began to get bored with the questioning, and thought it might be fun to play a little game with the cop. “You know, some nights, here along the waterfront, it gets chilly. He might have been wearing his St. Edward’s College sweatshirt, too. If you want, I can check in the closet to see if it’s missing.”

  The cop waved me off. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, just yet. Like I said, this is just a welfare check. We have some idea of where your roommate is. When he comes in, though, have him give his mother a call, okay?”

  It took all my divine resources to not break up laughing at the cop’s folly. My lips were pursed tightly to rein in the giggles that oh-so-wanted to escape.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Bryce?”

  “I’m just thinking of all the shit poor Arihiro’s going to catch from his mom, you know? All the angry Jap-banter I expect to hear going a mile a minute when the two of them finally talk to each other on the phone.”

  The cop scratched his neck. “Uh-huh. Well, I suppose I’ll be heading out, then.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  Then the cop shut the door and his intrusion into my kingdom came to a halt. I went back to my place in front of the closet door. I pondered my next steps. The campus police would begin to make inquiries about the blonde. With luck, they would find her (and, when they did, it would be in circumstances that would lead them to correctly assess her as a figure of ill repute). Perhaps they were already aware of her as the kind of whore who liked to be hired by college kids. In a town as small as Concord Park (the town closest to the college), she would have been likely to have a reputation.

  I realized the cops weren’t really looking for information, they were looking for a story—a “just so” story that would make Arihiro’s disappearance make sense. “He went off with a whore,” was the sort of story their tiny little brains could believe in. They couldn’t even imagine the truth—that Arihiro had disappeared not only from classes, but from their entire, dying reality, altogether. They couldn’t even imagine that all of the rest of them would soon experience a similar transition.

  I heard another knocking sound. Not on our dorm room door, but close by, out in the hallway. I got up off the floor, opened the door and peeked outside. The campus cop was next door talking to one of the lacrosse players.

  A little aggressive for just a welfare check. Was he going to work the entire hallway? Would he be coming back in this direction? What, if anything, had the jocks seen and heard over the past few days? I knew I had to be wary of this process. The success of Operation Arihiro depended on a little bit of luck. When they found the blonde hag, and didn’t find Arihiro with her, she’d have to handle the questioning poorly. She’d have to get out of sorts, seem upset. Look guilty. Look like a liar. The good news was, she was (probably) a whore. And cops knew whores were guilty already. She had one strike against her.

  They’d make up a story to fit the evidence. Arihiro, so far away from home and so socially incompetent, went out to buy some love. Prostie and John went on an extended drug binge afterwards. Arihiro started to get violent. Perhaps this happened when he ran out of money yet insisted on continuing the rutting. The woman, prepared for such eventualities, was armed with a knife. She attacked him in the same way she attacked men twice his size. Instead of merely disabling him, she killed him.

  That story would make sense to them. That was the reality they would come to accept.

  But to accept that reality, they would need a body, wouldn’t they? A body, sliced in just the right way by a little knife (the sort a whore might use for self-defense) and then placed into some remote Dumpster, or tossed into a river or the bay? Perhaps not. I never actually wanted to kill Arihiro. I didn’t want a corpse, I wanted a convert. But what if Arihiro’s body (a creation of the old god’s reality) rejected his new eyes (a creation of my reality)? What then? What if Arihiro refused to convert?

  There had been a few rays of hope. Those words he said, the last time I let him speak. “God, god, god, god, god.” Perhaps this was simply the first step in the conversion process. But how long would this take? How long would the police be satisfied by the story I gave them without searching the dorm room? How long would my supply of Stelazine hold out? If I kept giving Arihiro two to four pills a day, not long at all. It would be around three weeks before I could get another refill.

  Sedation wasn’t a long-term answer. More talks with the police weren’t the answer. Conversion was the answer, for Arihiro. Apotheosis was the answer, for me. I had taken the first step towards divinity. There were, according to the hierophant, six more to go.
Some of these steps would likely be given to me in a letter currently in transit from Indiana. I wished I had the time to wait for it to arrive, but that would take at least two more days. Two more days of Arihiro not going to his classes. Two more days of his mom and physics professor calling campus police. Two more days of talks with the police.

  The old god’s creation would fight against me in those two days. The campus cops were chattel, like the sand and the moon and the tide. They would work against me. They would try to prevent my apotheosis.

  I could no longer afford to delay. I didn’t have the hierophant’s phone number. But I did have his address. There had to be maps of Indiana in the library. In the worst-case scenario, I could simply drive west until I found Indiana, then drive north or south until I found New Harmony. If Arihiro was willing to convert, he could ride along with me as a disciple. If he was unwilling to convert, I would have to let him pass away into the sort of eternal sleep that only the rest of my Stelazine (taken in one giant dose) could prompt.

  I stood watch over him that day. I opened the closet door and did nothing but stand watch over Arihiro as he slept, tossed, and turned. I watched Arihiro and listened for sounds of the campus cop interviewing lacrosse players. I couldn’t make out the conversations. Maybe this was because my ears were starting to evolve into godlike ears. Too sophisticated to hear the chatter of chattel. While standing there looking over Arihiro, I heard whispers. Not from Arihiro. Not from the cop. Not from the hallway.

  I believed they were whispers from the gods of other galaxies. Psychic diplomatic cables, welcoming me to the club. “Hail, and well-met, fellow god,” one of them said. (Or perhaps it was “Have we met, fellow god?”; I can’t say for sure. It was still a distant sound. Like the sound of an ocean heard a half mile away). I was certain the whispers would turn into loud chants the moment of my apotheosis. The gods of other galaxies would cheer my overthrow of the tyrant, Christ.