Just a Couple of Days

by Tony Vigorito

  It was a horrifying noise, yet it made everyone smirk. Many of the howls sounded like uncontrolled eruptions of ferocious laughter. It was the laughter of the Furies, the hilarity of hell, the roaring guffaw of pure terror. It sounded like a high school gymnasium full of people literally dying of laughter, shrieking and convulsing and reverberating. Though distant and somewhat muffled, it was surely the soundscape of the lake of fire, the annunciation of damnation.

  Since the dogs were rattled beyond recovery, General Kiljoy instructed Agent Orange and Volt the Chauffeur to await our return and tend to the dogs, an order they responded to with snappy salutes appropriate to a top-secret mission. After they’d tugged the growling dogs away, General Kiljoy led us into the safe with no explanation.

  “That noise?” I inquired at last.

  “Those are the boys.” It was Miss Mary who spoke, a perversely maternal gleam in her eyes.

  “Those, Doctor,” General Kiljoy began, hitting a button on the remote that caused the vault door to boom shut. “Those are the subjects you’re here to observe.”

  58 General Kiljoy led us down a stark concrete passage reminiscent of the back service hallways in shopping malls. Every surface was coated with a glassy polymer of astounding smoothness. When I attempted to inquire about it, the sound of my voice made me cower at once, for I was shouting in my own ears. My vocalization reflected off the walls and was amplified back at me with such immediacy that I could not speak a word without having the disquieting sensation of yelling at myself. This was the case for everyone and, barring our thunderous footsteps and the fading reverberations of the subjects, we walked in fanatical silence. Later, in more congenial acoustics, I learned that the resin coating the walls made the compound virtually seamless and therefore ideal for testing biological agents.

  In any case, we soon came to a modified golf cart sporting a plastic bubble enclosure. We packed ourselves into it like circus clowns, exceptionally asinine though not at all silly. Initially, Tynee had made a move to get in the driver’s seat, but General Kiljoy jostled him out of the way. Miss Mary already occupied the passenger’s seat, so Tynee was obliged to crawl in the back with me. All of this occurred without a word, though with considerable scowls and frowns. Once everyone was inside and the doors were closed, we would have been able to talk with a more comfortable degree of resonance, but I didn’t discover this until my next ride. For now, a sulking silence prevailed in our party.

  After I was thoroughly lost in the maze of passages, General Kiljoy turned the cart into a dead end where an identical cart was parked, across from an ornate door that looked like it had been stolen off a Victorian mansion. Seeing the door was like coming across an antique reading chair illuminated by a Tiffany lamp under a highway overpass. Its presence there was as incongruous as a singles resort in a Third World nation, yet it was appealing. After doing our best to exit the vehicle without grunting at ourselves at top volume, we entered a spacious room with hardwood paneling, which softened the acoustics and the mood nicely. A library occupied one side, opposite an elaborately decorated living room, complete with houseplants, a bar, a bearskin rug, and an elk’s head mounted on the wall. All of the furniture faced a curtained wall. The lighting was especially attractive, compared to the fluorescent labyrinth from which we’d come, and my eyes could not help but voice their gratitude.

  “Sunlight, Doctor,” General Kiljoy informed me. “We get it piped down through fifty feet of optical fiber.”

  “It’s wonderful for the plants,” Miss Mary croaked as she took out a cigarette.

  “Members of the CPC were down here quite a bit, observing, and we weren’t getting enough sunlight,” General Kiljoy continued. “That’ll make you half crazy, you know.” He paused to chuckle for no clear reason. “But it’s not the lack of sunlight that’s making our subjects crazy.” He gestured to Miss Mary and Tynee. “Shall we initiate our neophyte then?”

  Tynee rolled his eyes, still pouting. Miss Mary smiled a conspirator’s smile from behind the flame of her lighter, then nearly coughed the cigarette out of her mouth. General Kiljoy rubbed his hands together and herded us to the sofas. When he was sure we were all comfortable, he pressed a button on his omnipotent remote control. The curtains parted swiftly and softly, revealing a wall of glass—a two-sided mirror, I was informed—which separated us from a barren room on the opposite side. The room was empty except for a toilet, a sink, and a small round table. The table was set for tea, complete with a Gothic silver teapot and matching teacups. Around this table sat a tremendous stranger, Brother Zebediah, and Dr. Blip Korterly, sipping tea and playing cards.

  59 After watching me watch them gesture and move their mouths in silence for a few moments, General Kiljoy pressed another button on his remote control and we suddenly had audio for our movie. Full-blast stereo, actually. State-of-the-art fidelity, General Kiljoy boasted.

  “Let me tell you something, Padre!” The stranger leaned toward Brother Zebediah, his baritone voice booming over the sound system. It was a mellow bellow, for although he was speaking in a conversational tone, it was amplified to an affable roar in our ears. “God ain’t holdin’ this country together. Trucks are. Infrastructure.” A bar graph displaying the volume being lowered appeared on the window as General Kiljoy adjusted it.

  The Herculean stranger turned out to be none other than Manny Malarkey, the half-deaf, serial billboard terrorist truck driver Blip had mentioned earlier. Manny wore a sweatshirt that looked too small on him, but a king-size toga would have looked too small on his enormous frame. He made the chair he sat in look as if it were made for a first grader. He was a thick man, a true brute, an authentic strongman.

  Brother Zebediah wasn’t afraid of him. “Blasphemy,” he muttered as he tossed a card from the stack in front of him onto the table. “You’re locking your soul out of heaven, I hope you realize. Nothing can hold Babylon together.” He spoke with increasingly guttural thunder. “Babylon will be judged. Babylon will fall.”

  “Babble on, babble on,” Manny mocked him.

  “You’re right about Babylon.” Blip tossed one of his cards. “But the only thing holding this country together is an uncritical acceptance of the dominant, maladaptive, social paradigm.”

  “Don’t listen to this academic.” Brother Zebediah gestured toward Blip. “He’ll poison your soul.”

  “I think you’re both fulla shit, how ’bout that?” Manny tossed his card, cocky. “Besides, Brother, I’m already locked outta heaven, ain’t that right? And since the perfessor here ain’t talkin’ so much shit about lockin’ me out, I’m more likely to listen to him, though I still think he’s fulla shit.”

  “Well, the both of you can wallow in your sins. I want no part of it.” Brother Zebediah angrily tossed his card. “More room for me in heaven!”

  “Ain’t you the hypocrite?” Manny challenged him. “You tellin’ me you never sinned?”

  “The few sins I’ve committed have been removed.” Brother Zebediah straightened himself. “As far as the East is from the West, my sins have been washed away.”

  “What were your sins?” Blip asked, tossing his card.

  “Right on, yeah. What were your sins?” Manny tossed his card.

  “My sins?” Brother Zebediah frowned and bowed his head as he prepared to reveal his confession. “When I was young, I’m ashamed to say, I enjoyed looking at women in a sinful way.”

  “Shit,” Manny laughed. “Ain’t nothin’ sinful ’bout lookin’ at women, Brother. You ain’t even seen heaven till you’ve sat in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler while a carload of them college sweethearts in their short shorts on their way to spring break passes right under you. Lord!” He tossed his card, then moved in close to Brother Zebediah. “You see, Brother, the angle is just right, probbly designed that way. It allows us haulers a convenient view of their Lord-have-mercy legs, you know what I’m sayin’.” He patted Brother Zebediah on the back.

  “I do not know what you’re saying, perve
rt!” Brother Zebediah raised his voice and tossed his card. Blip smacked the table.

  “Goddamn,” said Manny. “How’d’ja get so good at Slapjack, Doc?”

  “You just gotta be alert, my friend.” Blip gathered his cards. “Just keep watching, keep watching, and when opportunity presents itself, dive into it with everything you’ve got, you know what I’m sayin’.” Blip, it appeared, had taken to imitating some of Manny’s expressions.

  “Amen to that. That’s why I’m cool with this experiment shit. Gonna get me an early release, be back out in no time.” He looked at Brother Zebediah. “I got this apartment lined up in Jersey, with a front window that’s just like I’m in the cab of a truck. It’s on the corner, with a stop sign, and all the women drive their cars right under me. You’d love it.”

  “I would not love it,” Brother Zebediah insisted.

  “Yes you would, yes you would, I know you would, Brother Jeremiah. Yes sir, a little monk like you, you could be a happy hermit in that apartment. Ain’t that right, Doc?”

  “I don’t know,” said Blip, as he tossed his card and smacked the table again, winning another round. “New Jersey’s a little crowded for anyone to be a hermit.”

  60 Manny threw the remainder of his cards on the table. “Man, I’m tired of this Slapjack shit.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out two dice. “Let’s play some craps.”

  “I’ll remind you again that Jeyzus hates cussing and gambling,” Brother Zebediah spoke woefully.

  “Jesus don’t have to play,” Manny said. “You game, Doc?”

  “I’ll play.”

  “Right on.” Manny looked at Brother Zebediah. “Now, how ’bout since you got your way and picked the last game, I get to pick this one?”

  “Jeyzus does not allow gambling, Lucifer.”

  “Who you callin’ Lucifer, goddamnit? I already told you, Jesus don’t have to play.”

  Brother Zebediah looked Manny up and down, then growled, “I’m the closest thing to Jeyzus you’ll ever see.”

  Blip guffawed explosively, loud and derisive, with no attempt to hide his mocking amusement. “Give us a break, will ya? If you’re gonna run around mouthing off about Jesus, at least know what he taught. He preached nothing but love, and all you keep saying is how he hates this and hates that.”

  “This is a holy hatred,” Brother Zebediah replied gravely. “‘God hates all workers of iniquity.’”4

  “Oh for crying out loud, man. I’m tired of this.” Blip leaned back in his chair and began playing with his long hair, tapping his foot. “You know what your problem is? You went on a Christ trip in the sixties and never came down. Don’t you understand anything, man? Don’t you see? You’re the bad guy here. Is that really the role you want in life? I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna convert you. How do you like that? Can’t you see it’s hate and fear that’s keeping us from heaven in the first place?”

  “It may be keeping you from paradise, but nothing’s keeping me.” Brother Zebediah raised his voice. “God’s already called me, but I said, no siree, not yet, I have to teach Your Word.”

  “You’re not teaching anything, you’re just condemning people.”

  “‘By thy words thou shalt be condemned.’”5 Brother Zebediah raised his fist, threatening to unleash God’s eternal fury on the beast seated before him.

  “How can you spend your days just damning people? Man, where do you think we are right now? Not just right here, but here, alive on this planet? This is hell, Brother, look around. It doesn’t have to be, but we make it so. I can even prove it. All life on this planet is carbon-based, right? Do you know what the atomic number of carbon is? Six. That means six electrons, six neutrons, and six protons, 666, the mark of the beast is the illusion of matter! Who was cast out of paradise? Lucifer, right? Well, guess who else was kicked out? We were, Adam and Eve, eating the forbidden fruit, the Tree of Knowledge, driven from the garden like varmints. We’re the beast. DNA is the coil of the serpent. Duh. Hell is separation from the Source, man. Dig?”

  “Right on,” Manny spoke up. “I can dig that.”

  Brother Zebediah raised his hand toward Blip and uttered a curse. “May the deepest levels of the inferno consume your soul.”

  “We’re already in the inferno, man! That’s what life is.” Blip turned to Manny. “Can I see your lighter?”

  “Sure.” Manny dug into his waist pocket and slid his Zippo across the table. Blip picked it up and flicked it alive with a flair off his pants leg.

  “Check it out.” Blip studied the motionless flame. “Fire is a process of oxidation, manifest here as a chemical reaction between butane and oxygen, catalyzed by a spark. No one would argue that this is fire, but we fail to see the flames when the oxidation process is slower.” He took a deep, demonstrative breath. “Respiration is an oxidation process. So is metabolism. We eat food and burn calories. And it doesn’t even stop there. Everywhere you look, things are oxidizing—decaying, rotting, rusting, metabolizing, burning, combusting, exploding. Everything is on fire, bro, we just don’t realize it. We’ve been splashing around in the lake of fire since birth. Do you understand? We are in hell right now.”

  “Shit,” Manny said.

  “Nah.” Blip waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. It’s all good. Hell isn’t permanent, and it certainly isn’t as bad as Brother Zebediah here thinks.” He snapped the Zippo shut. “Hell is part of the process. You know, yin and yang, and all that jazz. We’ll get ourselves back to the Garden eventually.”

  “Beast! Beast! Beast!” Brother Zebediah pounded his fists on the table in zealous fury.

  “Exactly! Now you’re starting to get the picture, Brother. But listen,” Blip smiled, “didn’t Jesus say the kingdom of heaven is within you?”

  “Oooo,” Brother Zebediah mocked him. “Mr. Big Shot, think you can quote the Bible now, eh?”

  Blip, not wanting to get into a Bible-quoting match, ignored him and continued to wax metaphysical. “I take that to mean that paradise is a matter of perception. We exist here and now only for a short time, yet we waste our existence on selfish endeavors, deluding ourselves into hell. The kingdom of heaven is right in front of our freaking faces, and we’re blind to it, man. Wake up!”

  “Heathen! You wake up!” Brother Zebediah turned to Manny, as if the argument he was having with Blip had become a contest for Manny’s soul. “You see where he’s going, don’t you? That immoral idealist has a first-class ticket to hell!”

  “Hell yes I’m an idealist,” Blip interjected, imitating Brother Zebediah’s pulpitine intonations. “Romantics of the world, rejoice! The return of the romantic reaction and triumph is at hand!” Ceasing his sarcasm, he continued: “Anyway, what’s the alternative? Realism? No thanks. I’ll take ideality over reality any time. If I were a realist I’d have to kill myself.”

  “Ain’t you the hopeless romantic?” Manny jeered, slapping Blip good-naturedly on the arm.

  “A hopeless romantic is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron,” Blip corrected him. “I’m a hopeful romantic.”

  “Either way, you’re going to hell. Paradise isn’t for you, Satan!” Brother Zebediah looked to Manny, who was rattling the dice in his hand. “Isn’t that right?” he asked, as if here, down in a dungeon in the bowels of the Earth, these three men had just reached the moment of reckoning, judgment day, revelation, and now, the word of Manny Malarkey would decide the profound fate of the universe for eternity.

  “Paradise?” said Manny, and he tossed the cubes upon the table. “Paradise is pair a’ dice.”

  61 “Snake eyes!” Manny hooted. “How ’bout that?”

  “They’re snake eyes all right, the eyes of Satan!” Brother Zebediah picked up the dice and hurled them across the room toward the mirrored wall, causing the four of us to instinctively duck and shield our faces.

  “Whoa!” General Kiljoy blurted as the dice bounced off the glass. “That looked real!”

  “It was real,” I said.

/>   “Well, yeah, but you know what I mean,” General Kiljoy laughed. “It’s like TV.”

  “Shh!” Miss Mary and Tynee shushed him.

  Back on screen, Manny was offering a cigarette to Brother Zebediah. “How ’bout a smoke, bro? You need to relax.”

  “Please remove that devilish drug from my presence. Only the vile and the wicked depend upon such things.”

  “Well, I was on the preacher’s side till that,” Miss Mary spoke up, exhaling defiantly. No one acknowledged her vomitous remark.

  “How ’bout you, Doc?” Manny offered a cigarette to Blip.

  “No thanks.”

  “You think it’s devilish, too?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’m just allergic to poison.”

  “Allergic to poison, eh?” Manny eyed his cigarette suspiciously. “I guess I’m addicted to poison then, this poison anyway. Everybody’s got a poison though. What’s your poison, Doc?”

  Blip smirked. “Me? I don’t really have any poisons.” He considered a moment, grinning to himself, then shrugged. “I do enjoy a little grass on occasion.”

  “Grass?” Manny laughed. “The perfessor likes the joy smoke.”

  “Devil smoke,” Brother Zebediah corrected, then added, “Potheads are going to hell, you know.”

  “I can just see you tokin’ up with your long white hair,” Manny continued. “Pot-smoking perfessor, how ’bout that? We gotta get together after we’re outta here.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Smoke that pot, you’re gonna rot!” Brother Zebediah reprimanded them both.

  “Man, shut up.” Manny turned to Brother Zebediah. “God made marijuana, didn’t he?”

  “God made poison ivy, too, that doesn’t mean you should roll around in it!” Blip joined Brother Zebediah in reciting his standard reply to that line of reasoning. Tynee shifted in his seat at the mention of his cherished botanical.