The Antichrist of Kokomo County

by David Skinner

  The wife passed me utensils crusted with vile casserole, but I choked down the rage their dirtiness filled me with and slid them into the dishwasher anyway, which was now almost full.

  “All I know is he was limping before the service and he wasn’t limping after,” the wife said. “No task is too small for God.”

  “Well, praise the Lord then for one less ingrown toenail. I’m sure all the starving children with AIDS in Africa are rejoicing.”

  Off went the faucet. Dishes done. The wife dried her hands with a towel, her lips pursed in irritation.

  “I don’t know why this situation has brought out all your old bitterness. You promised me that was past.”

  I put the final salad bowl in the dishwasher and waited patiently for the wife to finish with the towel, as I, too, wanted to dry my hands.

  “That was before Reverend Phipps went bonkers and raved a bunch of crazy crap about our kid,” I said. “Crazy crap you’re seriously considering all because of Aaron Coker and his big toe. Can I use the towel now, please?”

  With a sneer, the wife whipped the towel across the kitchen where it landed on the stove. I, ever resourceful, dried my hands on my pants.

  “You know,” the wife said, lifting her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation, “it’s like Jesus said—I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You heard me.”

  “Hon, that wasn’t Jesus.”

  “Oh. Well, who was it then mister smarty-pants Bible expert? Paul? Peter? Elijah? Moses?”

  I turned on the dishwasher.

  “Darth Vader.”

  2

  It would seem I have finally come across some Church of E wall art—a mural, to be exact—in this room that I’ve been told is the Inner Sanctum.

  Unlike the other unforgettable mural in my life—the one still violating the nursery walls of Little Hat Pentecostal—this one is excellent. In a background of almost blinding sunlight there is a young, muscular, blond-haired, thoroughly naked man with mischievous blue eyes, holding the Earth in his left hand and gazing at it thoughtfully. The Earth is in the shape of an apple with a large bite taken out of it. It even has a stem.

  Evidently, this is a revisionist, Satanist rendering of Adam, though in this case Adam is a dead ringer for a young Robert Redford.

  Because of my admiration for Robert Redford, I immediately like this Adam and am interested in what he plans on doing with the rest of the Earth-apple, despite the fact that if he finishes it—gulp, no more Earth.

  On his left is a lady, same golden hair, same mischievous, mysterious eyes, same nakedness, with a snake wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl, which tastefully covers her breasts. She is regarding Robert Redford and the apple, waiting for him to share, or, if one is to assume quasi-Biblical accuracy here, waiting for him to take his bite.

  She is a revisionist, Satanist adaptation of Eve, and in this version she looks a lot like Danica, who I might have mentioned looks a great deal like Jane Fonda.

  At first glance, it is difficult for me to discern whether or not the mural Eve is meant to look like Jane Fonda or Danica. Not even the Robert Redford Adam can help me with this as, despite his being Fonda’s co-star and love interest in Barefoot in the Park, he is also featured on Danica’s desk in two picture frames.

  So the question remains: Is it Danica or Jane Fonda?

  Little mysteries everywhere.

  3

  Shortly after I spilled the beans about Sparky, a man’s gravelly voice came through an intercom informing everyone that we were to be escorted into the Inner Sanctum.

  Finally, the moment we had all been waiting for had arrived. Danica told the goons to escort Sparky and me, the goons obeyed, and Sparky and I allowed ourselves to be escorted to the Inner Sanctum, where we are now.

  I must say it is rather spacious and cozy in here. A lot of mahogany—mahogany desk, mahogany bookshelves, though a tad too much red, I’m afraid, and dark, sacrificial red at that. You know, like bloody walls. Way to embrace those stereotypes, kids.

  The couch in here is of the blackest black, like the skin of a panther, and even more comfortable than the one in the foyer, so despite my overall feeling that the design scheme is a tad on the derivative side, I still can’t help but like it in here.

  The Jane Fonda/Danica portion of the mural probably has something to do with it. I could sit on this couch and stare at it all day.

  Sparky is not on the couch with me, but over in the corner near a glass door that leads to an outside balcony, seated on a squashy crimson-colored recliner. He is writing now instead of drawing.

  When the goons brought us in, they motioned for Sparky to sit on the squashy recliner and for me to sit on the panther couch. Handing Sparky a clipboard, they twisted the dial on a mechanical timer in the shape of a grinning Satan-head, and told him to begin.

  “What the hell are you making him do?” it suddenly occurred to me to ask. The mural had been too beguiling for me to pay close attention to what was going on at first.

  “He’s taking the Black Catechism,” one of goons rasped in a voice thick with saliva (he’s eating a piece of a candy). “So shut up. As you can see, he is being timed.”

  “This is insane!” I spat, though I knew it probably wasn’t. “You can’t make him take tests!”

  “Sure we can,” the other goon said.

  “And how’s that?”

  The goon without candy pulled my 9mm pistol out from the back of his pants and winked as he showed it to me. I could tell he was feeling a fresh surge of confidence, and who could blame him for it?

  “And no helping him there, bub,” the goon with the gun said, closing the door behind him as he followed the candy goon out.

  Clearly, he had no idea the sort of help this “bub” would have been good for.

  With nothing else in the room to keep me occupied except the mural, I decide I can stare at that and check my voicemail. Whoever it was that called me in the alley has pretty much ruined everything so they’d better have left something good.

  The first message up is a saved one from Little Nazi Eddie Reddingham, a message I had kept for his parents to listen to in the hopes of getting him into big trouble (but have so far not gotten around to doing). It’s Eddie singing along with a recording, not from The Producers, but one dearly loved by actual Nazi people. It’s the “Horst Wessel Song,” one of the most notorious of the evil anthems of Nazi Germany, and maybe I’m too dumb to catch the irony or the satire here, but Eddie’s singing along sure sounds like he means it.

  Which means I was right when I warned the Reddinghams of where all of this supposed innocent singing could lead. I’ve since caught Sparky humming snatches of the tune here and there and, to date, he has not answered me when I ask him what it is.

  The next message, the one that appeared after the ill-timed call in the alley, is from my father:

  Frankie, Frankie you need to call me back right away. The most wonderful, incredible thing has happened! Everything has changed! Everything! My life will never be the same and—

  Considering how things have been going for me the past, oh, thirty-eight years or so, you might think that’s about all I can take.

  And it is.

  4

  The first few months of Sparky’s life were difficult, which kind of goes without saying as newborn children are rarely the bundle of joy they’re promised to be. Yet I don’t think I’m wrong when I say there was, on top of the usual adjustments, an extra wrinkle added to our situation that the vast majority of new parents don’t have to deal with.

  (Psst! Antichrist.)

  The wife was really having trouble—trouble processing Reverend Phipps’s bizarre appearance, trouble with his subsequent disappearance; then there were the nightmares.

  One in particular, the m
ost influential:

  A crib on a tiny island in the middle of a frothing lake. Add to this island a nightstand, dresser, and queen-sized bed—basically, the contents of the Horvath master bedroom.

  In the crib was baby Michael, bawling his head off as hot, angry waves from the lake crashed around him. I was sitting on the bed by the crib, with what the wife insisted was a deranged look on my face, whereas she was traversing the boiling lake on a raft made from the closet door using a curtain hanger to pull herself along. From what she said, this traversing part took forever. The curtain hanger turned out to be a lousy paddle.

  When she did at last arrive ashore, she said I greeted her with loud whooping while scrambling this way and that.

  “He’s hungry!” I said, jumping and howling. “He’s thirsty!” I added. I then dove into the boiling lake.

  The wife, unmoved by my suicide, proceeded to lift Sparky out of the crib. She cradled him with one arm as she lowered her nightgown with the other and attempted to feed him, only to stop in horror when she noticed she was lactating blood.

  Sparky, at the sight of her bloody boob, began to squirm and fuss. The wife could not figure out whether it was to get away or because he wanted it. To add to the confusion, someone approached her from behind and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  Reverend Phipps.

  The wife said he looked at her, at Sparky, and then at her bloody boob. Somehow none of this was creepy to her.

  The water frothed some more and something terrible seemed about to rise from under the surface. Maybe me. I, every now and then, like the idea of being something terrible about to rise from under the surface.

  But Penny said she never saw what came out of the water, as Reverend Phipps suddenly clutched her bloody boob in what she swore was a completely non-sexual way, and said, “You don’t have to.”

  “Yes, I do,” the wife replied. “He’s hungry. He’ll starve.”

  Smiling, Reverend Phipps squeezed her boob, spraying blood everywhere. Why he did this never made sense to me. Same with what he said next: “No, he won’t.”

  The immediate fallout from all of this?

  The wife decided not to breastfeed Sparky anymore. A too-literal interpretation of the nightmare, I suppose, but not without cause. I mean, if you had the same dream, wouldn’t you at least consider doing the same thing?

  Even with that decision made, the nightmare continued to haunt her steps through the following weeks, to where the wife decided to get a bit more up to speed on Christian eschatology—specifically the doctrine of the Antichrist.

  Within a matter of months our home became something of a warehouse for every book, magazine article, recorded sermon, and third-rate horror flick even remotely related to the subject, and Penny consumed them all. From sober-minded, deliberately vague books by respected theologians—books that treated the end times with the utmost caution, refusing to guess when the Antichrist would come and who he would be—to shockingly exact, hysterical tomes that, depending on the year published, breathlessly pointed to whatever Hollywood star was at the peak of their popularity, or to whatever Kennedy was mulling a presidential run as the Beast prophesied so long ago.

  In the end, faced with so many crackpot theories and contradictory viewpoints, Penny decided to limit her scope and put all her eggs into the basket of one book. Gathering all Antichrist materials into a big pile in the living room floor, she stood in front of what I liked to call “Book Mountain,” closed her eyes, prayed God would guide her hand, and then plunged it into the middle.

  Here is the title of the book she pulled out (with or without God’s assistance):

  HE’S HERE!

  Its subtitle:

  666

  And that was that. The one for her. Penny reasoned that if she reached out in faith, God would not lead her to the wrong sort of information.

  Besides, she liked the name of the author, Dr. Demetrius Thesseloniki, and figured if Dr. Demetrius Thesseloniki didn’t know what was what with the Apocalypse, who did?

  “You can always trust the Greeks,” she said.

  A quick summary of Dr. Thesseloniki’s book:

  He’s here.

  As in the Antichrist. As in 666. As in alive and well.

  Watch your step.

  *

  More from Thesseloniki’s book:

  Who is the Antichrist?

  Ultimate evil personified.

  But he pretends to be a real swell guy for a bit. Then, right about the time you start feeling comfortable with him...KABLOOIE!

  According to Dr. Thesseloniki, the Antichrist, who will come to power, rule the nations, and destroy the lives of billions before suffering defeat at the hands of a very angry Jesus Christ, will be a charming, brilliant man.

  He will fix a lot of things that have gone wrong with the world. He will come from Russia or Eastern Europe. He will be born into wealth and position. He will be a homosexual. He will engineer a seven-year pact that will deliver world peace, economic stability, and religious freedom. Three and a half years into this pact, he will break it and start killing lots of people. He will then impose a new credit system, make everybody wear a mark in order to buy goods and services, outlaw all religions, and force everybody to worship him.

  Lots of people will. Lots of people won’t. He’ll kill the lots of people who won’t—and some of the others who will too, because, hey, he’s the Antichrist.

  Then, after another three and a half years of mayhem, murder, and destruction, God, who after thousands and thousands of years has finally had it up to here with all this nonsense, will send his Son down to destroy the Antichrist and his cronies and set up a new kingdom where He will rule mankind in Person forever and ever. Those who endure will be saved. Those who perish, refusing to bow before the Antichrist, will be brought back.

  And then, let the good times roll.

  No more pain, no more death, no more Democrats. Hallelujah, praise God, amen. Everything will be perfect and wonderful all the time and forever.

  Unless you’re the Antichrist. Unless you’re all of the people who threw their lot in with him. Then things won’t be wonderful or perfect all the time and forever.

  No, things will kinda suck.

  So do I think the above is true? Do I believe that Dr. Thesseloniki got it right on how to interpret all those foggy passages at the end of the Bible about how everything will shake out?

  Sometimes.

  In my younger years, I thought it true a lot more than sometimes; since then, I go back and forth. Sometimes it still sounds ridiculous, while other times, like today, it not only seems possible, but inevitable.

  Either way, one thing never changes: I really want it to be true. Don’t you?

  Somebody’s coming to save you! You’re going to live forever! Everybody bad will get their ass kicked! You’re going to be happy all the time!

  How could you not want that?

  Okay, but how could the wife believe, when Dr. Thesseloniki stated in his book that the Bible pointed to the Antichrist as being of Eastern European origin, born into an aristocratic family, gay, and all the rest, that Michael could possibly be a fulfillment of those prophecies?

  Easy: Ask and you shall receive. She wrote a letter to Dr. Thesseloniki asking if it was possible the Antichrist could be an American of humble birth who could rise to power from lowliness and do all that KABLOOIE stuff from America; and after a month, she received an answer from Thesseloniki that said while most reputable Christian eschatologists were in the same camp as he was and were following the traditional idea of the Antichrist being from Europe, there were some scholars, “cranks mostly,” who felt the Antichrist could come from America.

  So it is possible, Mrs. Horvath, though, in my opinion it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense and it doesn’t seem to fit with the scriptures very well. But perhaps God intend
s to surprise us.

  And that was all the wife needed. She loved surprises; so she ran with it.

  Better Safe Than Sorry.

  So after reading Dr. Thesseloniki’s book and spending copious amounts of time ruminating over what it all meant, the wife was able to come up with a final interpretation of her bloody boob nightmare, that being we could stop Sparky from becoming the Antichrist.

  For justification, she referred to a section in Dr. Thesseloniki’s book that compared and contrasted Jesus Christ, the true Messiah, from the coming false one, which led her to rediscover that part in the Book of Matthew where Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane asks God to let him off the hook with the whole torture/crucifixion/die thing.

  The wife deduced that Christ would not have asked this of God if it had not been possible. The wife further deduced that if Christ could get out of his calling, then Sparky could get out of his. Perhaps Mommy and Daddy could even lend him a helping hand.

  After all, wasn’t that why we had both been warned by Reverend Phipps and the dream? Why tell us if we weren’t supposed to do something about it? Perhaps we were the main line of defense here and perhaps it was all up to us if mankind would get a chance to delay the end of the world one more time.

  Her heart and mind exploding over finally having a decent reason to get up in the morning, the wife dashed off another letter to Dr. Thesseloniki, asking about the possibility of staving off the ascendancy of the Antichrist. To which the good Greek doctor responded that, although he agreed God would warn his people of the coming of the Beast, he was convinced nothing could be done to stop it.

  It all has to happen, Mrs. Horvath. Sooner or later. And it will be the worst thing that has ever happened. Hardly anyone will survive. That being said, it can’t hurt to do all one can to be a gadfly to the Antichrist wherever possible.

  And that was all the wife needed. She loved being a gadfly, so she ran with it.

  Thanks to Dr. Thesseloniki’s letters and book, the bloody boob dream, and scads of how-to parenting guides, the wife, with a little help from little ol’ me, began to develop what she thought would be as close as one could get to a foolproof plan that would ensure Sparky would never get the opportunity to have his Garden of Gethsemane Moment.