Futile Efforts (14 page)

Well now.

She is luminescent, luxurious, star white, and nude in her complete splashing madness.
 
Insanity can't hide behind a disguise to someone who can smell it.
 
She
sways
her arms and kicks out, arching through her own ripples and waves.

Exotica.
 
Maybe this is only a dream made real by the force of his own will—it's happened like that on occasion.
 
You can find what you're looking for if you're hunting for the right thing.
 
Usually he's not, which is what brings him to parties like this.

She is as full of sexuality as he is stuffed with carefully folded and compressed layers of fear.

Here we go.

She glows in the lake with a healthy, enormously erotic energy.
 
It weaves and braids around her like the glistening coils of blonde hair.
 
Fog rises from the water and wraps itself around her throat—once, twice, spiraling tighter—as the gust of her breath parts it, gently swirls and takes it in, eases it across her beautiful chest and blows it back into the twilight.

"Were you looking for me?" he asks.

"Yes," she tells him.

"Why?"

"Does it matter?"

"Sure."

Of course it does.
 
This is when you tend to hit the wall, when you pretend that such things don't actually carry weight.
 
Church snags the inside of his cheek with his teeth.
 
She senses his resistance and coos, "I want you."

He tries not to say
Ohboy
with that frantic excited lilt, but he can't help himself.
 
He can so rarely help himself these days.

"
Ohboy
."

"What do you need?" she asks.

It's a big question, even more mammoth for him than most folks.
 
How do you put your desires into words on a night like this?…you have to figure out your need, maybe that's where the problem is.

Somehow, Church knows, he went off the rails in a slow but steady progression from the time he was about four.

"Do you need to make love to me?" she asks, kicking back in a savage sweep so the lake water bubbles and boils around her.
 
She keeps her legs open for a moment, showing him the glory of her goodies.

"That would be nice," he tells her, aroused and feeling the standard dirtiness fill his mind, the chilling sweat prickling his scalp.
 
There's a dock twenty yards away, and he imagines himself rushing towards it, taking off his clothes as he moves with sudden and complete grace, flinging his sneakers into the woods, catching the rhythm as he touches the first board, then running faster and slicing into the air in a power dive that takes him into the dark.

Until he rises from the murky depths to meet her on the lake's surface, clouds of mist in her hair.

But it's already going bad.
 
Church has a pretty good intuition when it comes to naked gorgeous women in the water who want to make love to his pudgy ass.

Something is amiss.
 
Ohboy
.

He glances at the dock again and sees a black blur of subtle motion beside it.
 
He takes a step towards it, and the girl, back-lit with moonlight fire, harshly whispers, "No, don't go over there.
 
Stay with me."

"Huh?"

"Please, I want you to stay here with me."

Jesus, now she's pleading?

There are times when you call down the wrath of fate by not looking just a little farther to the left.
 
Or taking the time to check under the bed for the dwarf holding a scythe, waiting to cut you down at the ankles.
 
Or looking in the closet to see if her crazed lesbian lover is in there with a garrote.
 
Or investigating the slight reflection near the dock, the odd suggestion of circling movement.
 
Just for not averting your eyes.

Church frowns down at the girl again, knowing he draws these kinds of troubles to himself.

She grins and aims her nipples at him like blow darts.
 
It doesn't take much to ruin a perfectly wonderful fantasy.
 
He slips off and carefully makes his way over the rocks and weeds to the dock, wondering how it could've gone so wrong so quickly.
 
In some strange fashion he always asks for too much.

The corpse in scuba gear spins in a slow eddy.
 
One flipper glides along the surface tension of the water, moving back and forth as though the diver were still alive.
 
The guy's rubber suit is torn in places, great jagged rips as if a shark has mauled him.
 
The girl begins to languidly swim closer, giggling as the fog swells and lolls.
 
She clicks her teeth loudly, repeatedly.
 
Church tries to hold back a scream but can only half restrain himself.
 
A wounded goat's bleat escapes him.

"I want you," she tells him.

"Why me?"

"I need you, honey bunch."

"Uh huh."

"Get in here!
 
Swim with me!"

"Play with your friend some more, he won't complain."

"Come back," she insists.
 
"I want to bear your children.
 
Hundreds of them.
 
Thousands!"

"
Ohboy
!"

Church scrambles up the path towards the cabin, groaning and grunting, tasting blood and wondering if he's actually dying somewhere, gut-shot, dreaming all of this.
 
He's been in jail before but he can't recall for what.
 
Did he used to rumble and knock assholes through plate glass windows?
 
Did he ever rob banks?

As usual, he's screwed up what should have been simple.
 
A wrong turn in the woods and now he's lost, wandering through the brush and having the shit scratched out of him by cat-claw briars.
 
There's a light in the distance.

A pyre has been lit against what they used to call a coven tree.

It has to rise from the direct center of the
covenstead
, that area where witches draw their power, the place where natural earth energy emanates from and is at its strongest.
 
The bonfire roars and consumes kindling, ladder-back chairs, old kitchen cabinets, torn mattresses, the widescreen TV, grandma's old steamer trunk, they're really tearing the place apart.

You can guess at what comes next.
 
Church catches another powerful whiff of blood.
 
They're out there with the redheaded girl that Malone was making a move on.
 
She's being bound to the coven tree with yellow nylon rope.
 
He recognizes it as the sort of line you tie to the back of a boat for water-skiing.

She's screaming and thrashing but Lucifer Jr. and the others have a good grip on her and she flails uselessly, the micro-skirt rearing to show off her thong.
 
Lucifer Jr. squawks and throws his arm over his eyes like she's flashed him a crucifix.
 
Church is oddly aroused by the whole display.
 
The frat boys stand around drunkenly gawking, holding their beer cans tight to their bellies and giggling quietly to one another.

Church may not be a hero, and he's almost certainly out of his mind, but he doesn't suffer from inertia.
 
With a cool flood of adrenaline coursing through his temples, he bursts out of the woods and rushes forward without any idea of what he's going to do next.

This is why you shouldn't draw your spirituality from Jackie Chan movies, unless you're willing to pay the price.

The burning girl shouts at him, "Here, take it!
 
Take it!"

"Take what?"

"The money!"

"What money?"

"Take it and go, please don't hurt us!"

"Me?
 
I'm not hurting you."

He sees that his watch is back on his wrist and knows that things are about to get bad.
 
He's either coming back into himself now or he's going even farther out.
 
Which is it going to be?
 
Which does he want it to be?

Church blinks and abruptly he's standing in the middle of a bank, staring into the faces of terrified tellers.

A short, middle-aged woman with hair the color of a four-day old bruise is shoving cash at him, and he notices he's got an open gym bag in his left hand and a sawed-off shotgun under his arm.
 
There's a haze he can't shake.

Malone is running around in cute puppy circles.
 
He's got a satchel tied around his back, stuffed with wads of fifties.
 
"The cops!
 
Let's go!"

Church thinks, Oh fuck.

Twin androgynous lovelies wheel towards him with new headgear on—ram's horns, a real wild spirit feel to them.
 
Mova
and
Asriel
are out of their robes and into some kind of ancient Celtic outfits now, looking half-fey, half-
Cormac
mac
Airt
.
 
Their cheeks are rouged to a high varnish
waxiness
.

On the floor between them is a security guard with most of his face blown away.
 
They eye Church with expressions of distrust and doubt.

Church goes, "God damn it," and turns into a tear gas shell smacking him in the chest, wisps of the smoke catching him full in the face.
 
He shrieks but the scream is as muted as his words.
 
He realizes he's got on goggles, his own breathing apparatus, a tank of oxygen strapped to his back.
 
The murdered scuba
diver's
rig has come in handy.

He grabs the canister before it spills too much gas and hurls it back out the broken front window.

Children float around the ceiling of the bank.
 
Their parents leap and try to catch hold of their ankles, bring them back down.
 
A moan works free from Church's chest.

He's really got to stop handing out his pills.

He tries to make a run for it, but only now understands that he's leaking all over the place—blood and black fluid spurt from his ragged stomach.
 
He sees that he had a burger and fries for lunch.
 
The security guard has clipped him, that's the reason for this shoot-out.

Shaking his head, Church feels the last chance for redemption drifting from him.
 
A murderer, he's done the final deed.
 
Man, this is what happens when you watch too many movies.

Always blame the movies.

He doesn't even know what he would use the money for.
 
There's nothing he's ever wanted badly enough to pull this kind of moronic stunt.
 
Nothing, other than his sanity.

Sure, all right.

An eight-year-old girl in a ponytail, standing up against the wall, breaks from the other hostages and begins to walk towards him.
 
She extends a hand and he hopes she's going to help him and not suddenly go shit-screaming maniacal on his ass.
 
He weakly struggles forward and then falls to his knees.

He'd given her a pink candy pill, and now she's passing it back to him, the little sweetheart.

Church yanks the goggles off and eyes his medication.
 
He holds out his palm and she drops the capsule in.
 
He wants to tell her thank you but his mouth is filling with wet copper.

Bullhorns and walkie-talkies squawk and cackle.
 
The cops are giving orders out in the street, about to bust in.

Laughing kids float higher, their parents wail.

Pugsy
Malone, with his corkscrew tail loosening and straightening for a second, scowls at him and snarls, "Think it through.
 
You certain you want to do that?"

Oh yeah, Church thinks.