I Am the New God

by Nicole Cushing

  For hours, I heard the whispering. Then it abruptly stopped, its noise replaced by the sound of Arihiro stirring in the closet. Once again, I could hear chattel. Once again, Arihiro was alert. He was mumbling something. I wasn’t about to take off his gag to hear what it was. At least, not yet.

  Instead, I removed the duct tape from his ears, so he could hear me. “Do you accept me as your Lord and Savior now?”

  He groaned, then started—slowly—to nod.

  “Do you see me with your new eyes?”

  He nodded again. This time, more quickly.

  “Excellent.”

  Then I heard the voices once again: the gods of other galaxies. “You belong with us,” they said. “Belong…won’t be long…belong…won’t be long…” The voices faded away once more, and I despaired. But I took joy in knowing they’d be back, and I took joy in knowing I’d made my first disciple. My reality was gaining a foothold, with at least one person. If I could do it with one, I could do it with another.

  This called for a ceremony. A commemoration of this moment. A rejoicing. The old god set forth the ritual of baptism in water. In time, the water of this world would be loyal to me—but at the present it was controlled by the old god. Baptism in water would be sacrilege.

  Therefore I baptized Arihiro in fire. I knelt down to meet him. (A kind gesture, I thought, a god literally lowering himself to the level of his worshipper.) I grabbed Arihiro’s Bic lighter and brushed his black hair away so I had a space on his forehead. I lit the flame and pressed it to the skin. Hop-frog rolled around on the ground excitedly.

  “This may sting a little—but the pain’s not the point. Not now,” I said, “since you’ve come to obey my will. The point is, Arihiro, you need to be marked as mine—forever. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to burn you enough to leave a scar. A scar deep enough to never go away. It will be a way of deputizing my disciples—a way of always reminding you, and the world around you, that you belong to me.”

  Even over the sound of his whimpers, I could hear his skin sizzle. Smelled it, too. I felt high. I was high. I was god. When I was through, I turned off the lighter and placed my lips upon his forehead. “There,” I said. “Sealed with a holy kiss.”

  He started to mumble something through his gag. I took a risk when I took it off, but I am a merciful god. I wanted to hear Arihiro’s confession of faith. And how was I to hear his testimony if I didn’t allow him to speak? I took off the duct tape, took the slobber-soaked underwear out of his mouth. He gulped in mouthfuls of air.

  “I worship You, god.”

  “Yes, you do. And your god is pleased by your worship.”

  “Please, god. I need…use bathroom.”

  “But I brought you a piss pot. You can use that.”

  “I must…defecate.”

  Defecate? The kind of word taught to those learning English as a second language, but never used by native speakers. The kind of word used by someone who didn’t know much in the way of slang (and who overused the one piece of slang—“sucks”—that he did know).

  “You mean, you have to shit?”

  “I do not wish…to…shit….in front of You.”

  “I’m not letting you out to use the bathroom. Not yet. If you’re seen out in the hallway by the lacrosse players, that will ruin things. You can do it here. Then I’ll get rid of it, somehow. Hell, maybe just toss it out the window.”

  “May I…” He trailed off, unable to articulate exactly what he needed to say. He wriggled his wrists against the duct tape.

  “You want out?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, since you’re not wearing a diaper, I suppose that would only make sense. But when you’re done, back in your bondage. Deal?”

  He nodded quickly. “Yes, god.”

  I brought over the pitcher I’d offered him before, this time to use as a chamber pot. Then I grabbed a pair of scissors and—gently, so as not to accidentally cut his wrists—released my chattel from his bonds so that he could do his business.

  He fell to his knees. “Oh, god,” he gasped. “God, god, god, god, god!” Groveled at my feet. Put a clammy hand on my calf, raised my jean leg, kissed it. Such worship felt pleasant. More than pleasant.

  Exquisite.

  Then the sensation of something hard clasping onto my calf. Teeth. Clenching down. Grinding.

  I yelped. Tottered. Stumbled.

  Arihiro may have been butt naked but he didn’t care. He scrambled on all fours past me. He pinballed around the room on his hands and knees. He’d lied to me. His new eyes hadn’t really taken. His old-god-designed body was rejecting them. I suspected this was because he lacked faith.

  He’d figured out that I stood between him and the door. Once he crawled past me, it was only a matter of milliseconds before he found it.

  He’d betrayed me, first with a kiss. Then with hoarse screams. “Help! My eyes! He’s crazy! Help!”

  Then I heard the sound of a dozen dorm rooms opening. A few giggles. Then curse words. Then more shouts from Arihiro. “He took out my eyes! He’s crazy! Greg! Greg!”

  Hop-frog rolled around the room, pinballing around in imitation of Arihiro. “Don’t do that!” I hissed. I grabbed him, my car keys, my wallet, Arihiro’s wallet, and the last letter from the hierophant. Both wallets went in my back pockets. The letter went in my front pocket. Hop-frog rested in my hands. He seemed a little nervous. I had to restrain him from rolling out of my grasp while I ran out of the door and down the stairwell.

  I went down the stairs two and three at a time. I heard lacrosse players scream. As I reached the bottom landing and flew out the door, I heard heavy footsteps echo through the dank stairwell, pursuing me. A pity I had to flee. The air seemed—for the first time that year—imbued with autumn. I couldn’t enjoy it.

  It may seem bewildering that I, a god, had to flee. But I wasn’t a god yet. I hadn’t gone through the Sevenfold Path to Godhood. I hadn’t yet had my apotheosis. And, the time for learning how to become a god through correspondence courses had ended. I needed to pay the hierophant a visit, in person.

  The First Phone Call

  “Mrs. Bryce?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Sergeant Bache of the St. Edward’s County Sheriff’s Department. I’m afraid I need to ask you a few questions.”

  A pause. “Questions? Greg? He’s in trouble?”

  “Do you know where he is, ma’am?”

  “What’s this about? Did he get caught drinking? He never drank here, but I was afraid he’d take it up when he went away from home. Is he okay?”

  “Please answer my question, ma’am. Do you know where he is?”

  “He should be there at the college.”

  “He fled from there, ma’am. At this time, your son is a suspect in what would be—at the very least—a serious assault.”

  A tremble in the woman’s voice. The sound of quick breaths whipping up the crackle of static on the line. “Greg…he hurt somebody?”

  “He’s a suspect in an assault, yes, ma’am. A felony. When’s the last time you spoke to him?”

  Sniffles. High-pitched whimpers. “It’s…it’s been a while. He told me not to call him. Said he wouldn’t come home for Thanksgiving if I kept calling him. So I thought, you know, I’d give him some space. And then, well, our other son has his own problems, too. And—”

  “So, he was disagreeable the last time you spoke to him?”

  “That’s not what I said…is this being taped?”

  “Not at this time, ma’am. Although I will be making a written report of our conversation.”

  “He’s a sick boy, Officer. That’s all. If he doesn’t take his medicine right, he gets edgy. And I didn’t know assault was a felony. I mean, what did he do, give the other boy a black eye?”

  A cough from the officer. “I’m afraid it’s quite a bit more serious than that, ma’am. Your son is suspected of holding his roommate prisoner against his will and maiming him. His room
mate is lucky to be alive.”

  “The foreign boy?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Takahashi.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t one of those athletes up there? I’ve always worried about Greg and the foreign boy having a room so close to them. There are news stories all the time about hazing.”

  “At this time, there are no other suspects.”

  “Well, Officer, maybe you should do some investigating and look for some other suspects. You’re targeting Greg because he has emotional problems, aren’t you? The same old stereotypes. You should know that not everyone who’s violent has a mental illness.”

  “Your son’s mentally ill?”

  “You didn’t know that? Yes, he has a mental illness. But that doesn’t automatically mean he’s your suspect. He went to community college up here. Got on the Dean’s List. We were very proud of him. His doctor was very proud of him.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, who is the doctor?”

  “Al-Refai. Here in Elkton.”

  “I’ll be needing his number.”

  “Why do you want to talk to him?”

  “It seems like it would be helpful to the investigation. I would think you’d want to cooperate with us on this. I mean, if it’s demonstrated he’s mentally ill, well—I can’t make any guarantees, mind you—but the court might take that into consideration.”

  “I’m not going to answer any more questions for you today, Officer. Not until I’ve gotten a lawyer for my son. It seems that there’s a witch hunt going on down there. Pick on the kid who’s insecure. Don’t you think it’s a little lazy to immediately jump to the conclusion my son did it, just because he’s the roommate? That foreign boy never looked quite right to me. How do you know he didn’t mutilate himself?”

  “At this time, we’re pursuing this as an assault investigation, ma’am. The state’s attorney may file other charges, as well, due to him holding Mr. Takahashi against his will for so long. You’re within your rights to obtain a lawyer, but we’re only doing our jobs. You see, his car is missing. He’s fled.”

  “He’s probably scared. When this all happened, he probably got paranoid.”

  “You need to know he’s a suspect. If he calls or visits, you’re to contact your local police department as soon as possible. If you don’t, you may be charged with obstruction of justice or harboring a fugitive.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you? My son can’t be guilty of this. People with mental illnesses are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators. He’s just a very shy, sick boy. You just wait until my husband gets home from work. I’m sure he’s going to have a thing or two to say about this, and he’s not as polite as I am.”

  “Ma’am, I can understand that you’re upset. I’m simply doing my job.”

  “Doing your job? Your job is to find out what happened to the foreign boy! Your job is to in-ves-ti-gate. Your job isn’t to target the first person who occurs to you as a suspect. If this is an example of what it’s like when you do your job, then all I have to say is I sure am glad I’m not a taxpayer in St. Edward’s County.”

  “Ma’am, that’s not necessary.”

  “It is necessary. You have to see you’re making an awful lot of assumptions about my boy. Sure, it’s easy to blame this all on him, but is it true? Do you even care what the truth is, or are you just interested in making up whatever story gets this case solved the quickest so you can finish off that plate of donuts in front of you!”

  “Ma’am…”

  “I can’t take these stories you’re making up about my boy seriously. My son’s too shy to do anything violent. When he gets sick with his mental illness, he keeps to himself, goes out to the middle of nowhere. He gets away from people. Doesn’t want anything to do with them. He’s not violent toward them. He wasn’t raised that way. I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but we’re a good Christian family, Officer. We’re not some St. Edward’s County white trash you can just bully around.”

  A sigh. “I’m going to be getting off the phone now, ma’am. Like I said, you need to contact your local police department if he contacts you by phone or by mail, if he shows up at your residence, or if you even think you see him anywhere around your town. I’ll be contacting the authorities up there. An officer from the Cecil County Sheriff’s Department may be contacting you to assist with our investigation.”

  “Well, you just listen here. We happen to know half the Cecil County Sheriff’s Department. We go to church with old Sheriff DeWalt and Corporal Anderson was best man at our wedding. So you just go ahead and call them and see what they s—”

  Click.

  The Exodus

  For the first stretch of the trip, I had no map besides the sun.

  I distrusted it (because it was the chattel of the old god). For all I knew, the sun wasn’t really a sun at all. It was, perhaps, a gigantic searchlight, roving around the planet in circles, shining on all the creatures of the earth to make certain none of us escaped the old god’s reality. Maybe that was the trickery involved: there is no “sun,” just a cosmic prison guard high in his shack, checking on us. Or maybe the sun wasn’t a searchlight; maybe the old god had repositioned it, so that it would set in the east. He could surely do that, and it would steer me away from my intended destination and right into the arms of my persecutors. Maybe that was the trickery involved.

  Maybe he’d do that for the sole purpose of preventing my apotheosis. Under the current circumstances, I couldn’t become a god unless I learned and completed the remaining tasks in the Sevenfold Path. I couldn’t learn the remaining steps unless I talked to the hierophant. The old god could prevent being overthrown by preventing me from reaching New Harmony, Indiana. I am quite certain he’d use all the tools at his disposal to interfere with the fulfilling of my destiny (including using the sun to confuse me). I had to put such reservations aside, though. (In the same way I had to shove aside my concerns that the air in the Honda might not really be air. The same way I had to shove aside any doubts that all of this was unreal; not just the car but also the road, the sky, the hierophant and—hell—even me.)

  I didn’t like trusting the sun really was in the west, but I had no choice but to act on that assumption.

  I drove north and west, up past Leonardtown. Up around Newburg. They actually have Amish around that part of Maryland. I passed some of their buggies. I passed kids carrying other kids in homemade wooden carts. I liked the remoteness of this stretch of highway. Just Amish and—between vast stretches of Amish farms—rusty, run-down trailer parks.

  I did not see any police officers on that stretch of road. At that point, I began to wish that I’d granted Hop-frog at least some scintilla of consciousness so it could act as a watchdog. I wished it could at least whoop or growl whenever it saw a cop car.

  The cops would not understand if I told them the truth. The cops were the most perfect example of chattel. They simply did as they were told. They’d been told I was violent, and they would most assuredly believe that. They would look at Arihiro’s new eyes and see not transcendence but, rather, mutilation. They would hear Arihiro’s testimony against me and believe his words to merit both belief and pity. No amount of explaining could make that right. Their little brains didn’t have enough room for my truths.

  They would be looking for me, for this car. And if they caught me, they’d throw me away in prison. I shuddered when I considered what they’d do to poor Hop-frog. Tear him apart, probably, the same way Arihiro did. Either that or keep him locked away in a drawer at the police station; keep him locked away as “evidence” of my alleged lunacy. My hand trembled as I petted my creation. It rolled around in the passenger seat, blissfully unaware of the danger we faced.

  “I won’t let them take you,” I said. “Not without a fight.”

  Did I need weapons? I’d been lucky, as Arihiro still had about three hundred dollars in his wallet even after his binge with the bleached-blonde. I didn’t know how mu
ch a pistol would cost. What sort of paperwork would I have to fill out? Would there be a waiting period? How big was the manhunt to catch me? If I walked into a gun shop, would the guy inside instantly know I was wanted for the maiming of Arihiro Takahashi? Was it the sort of news Al Sanders would be reporting tonight at 6:00 p.m. on Channel 13? Or was this going to remain a story primarily talked about down in the boondocks of southern Maryland…that dangly little peninsula too far away from Baltimore or Washington for newscasts in either city to care much what happened down there?

  I couldn’t take chances. I had to assume the worst. I had to assume everyone knew. I had to assume everything (the sun, the moon, the ground, the very asphalt I traveled over) was spying on me, at the old god’s behest. Yet, at the same time, I had no choice but to trust the sun would lead me west. It was a terrible position to be placed in—being forced into a corner in which you had to take some things for granted even as you had to suspect so many other things were not as they appeared.

  How could both be right at the same time?

  Somewhere, there, alongside a desolate country road surrounded on either side by tobacco barns, I pulled the car over. My throat was constricted and my face was tight and my teeth were clenched and tears started to wriggle out of my eyeballs like translucent maggots feasting on the grief of a god. All I could do was let them devour it.

  There were brown, dried-out places in the ground where tobacco plants had been before they’d been harvested. Thin remnants of stems, a discarded leaf here and there. I walked off the road and lay down in the harvested field. Flies taunted me with their perpetual buzzing. At that moment, I wanted to bury myself in the earth. At that moment, I didn’t want the responsibilities of godhood. I didn’t want to be on the run.