The Apocalypse Reader (20 page)

There is one other thing I shall say in my defense: What takes place beyond the borders of the known world is not to be judged against the standards of this world. Then, you may well inquire, what standard of judgment should be applied? I do not know the answer to this question. Unless the answer be no standard of judgment at all.

I WAS ORDERED to write an honest accounting of how I became a Midwestern Jesus and to the best of my ability I have done so. I regret to say that at the conclusion of my task I now see for the first time my actions in a cold light. I have no faith in the clemency of my judges, nor faith that any regret for those events I unintentionally set in motion will lead to a pardon. I have no illusions: I shall be executed.

YET I HAVE one last request. After my death, I ask that my body be torn asunder and given in pieces to my followers. Though I remain a heretic, I see no way of bringing my cult to an end otherwise. Let those who want to partake of me partake and then I will at least have rounded the circle, my skull joining a pile of skulls in the Midwest, my bones shattered and sucked free of marrow and left to bleach upon the plain. And then, if I do not arise from the dead, if I do not appear to them in a garment of white, Finger beside, then perhaps it all will end.

AND IF I do arise, stripping the lineaments of death away to reveal renewed the raiment of the living? Permit me to say, then, that it is already too late for all of you, for I come not with an olive branch but a sword.
He smiteth
, and when he smiteth, ye shall surely die.

SQUARE OF THE SUN

Robert Bradley

PETRA'S PRESSED FOR time. She has obligations. She's being torn, muscle from bone, in every direction. Pensive angel. I have my hands on her lower back and I'm pressing into her. She has a tattoo of a magic square above her sacrum. Inscribed above it, "Here is Wisdom."

I tell her, I say, "Lift up a little." Her vocal chords are straining, now. She vocalizes, "One hundred and ninety three. Eleven." They're numbers from the square. I track them with my eyes as she recalls them aloud.

"Eighty-three. Forty-one."

"Relax," I say. "It'll come."

She's spitting out mathematical formulas, trying to prove, I believe, that time doesn't, in fact, exist. That this pleasure never stops beginning and never stops ending. Short, sharp breaths. Elbows on the bed, her head in her fists. "One hundred and three. Fifty-three."

She's always been a proponent of the power of whole numbers. Extraordinary ability to focus. "Do you feel me?" I say.

"Thirteen," she says, "One hundred seventy-three."

I do the math. The sum of each line, column, and diagonal etched into her skin is six hundred and sixty-six. I slow my stroke. So any new arrival would, literally, be born under the sign of the Beast. It starts to snow again. A black dog trots across the salted road, sniffs around a bundle of split wood. I feel my whole body come together like a puzzle. She trembles. Then I'm wiping the spray off her back with a tissue. Like the tomb of the resurrected Christ, revisited, she is empty. A panoply of emotions plays upon the features of her face. She turns and hits me once; a feeble down stroke, then collapses onto her legs and says, "Fuck. It's always the same thing." It's possible she hasn't completed her calculations. But that's the problem with Petra, she's always on the verge.

I tell her. "All good things flow from ..."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she says, "now, I'm late." She pulls her jeans up and gives me the finger as she walks out the door.

BEFORE SHE GAVE up on me Petra used to scold me. "You're not wise," she'd say. And, "Where's the rigor? Where's the grit?" And, "You have no inner fortitude." Or, "No resolve, no rigor: what do you expect? You're a monument to disappointers everywhere."

Foreplay: you can't take it personally.

She finally decided that I was doing it on purpose: dashing expectations to the dirt and then wallowing in the chaff.

"What's chaff?" I said.

MY WIFE Is at the window looking out at the yard. "Why don't you offer to rake," she says. "It would be a nice gesture."

"She has people for that," I say.

"Go ahead. It's supposed to be relaxing, like meditation."

"Raking isn't meditative, as people say. It's, Look, I have all these problems and now I have to rake."

PETRA TOOK A different tack. She said once, "Do you understand that Nature is an extension of your being?"

I looked at my feet.

"You heard about the Mayans, right? They're a nature-based culture. They created a calendar charting the evolution of consciousness."

"I heard that, yeah."

"Yeah? You know about it?"

I tightened my eyes, worked the muscles in my neck.

"Listen ..." she said. "Do you feel it? Time: it's speeding up."

"Give me a minute," I said.

"Take two," she said. Then, "Have you noticed that more and more is happening in less and less time?"

"Not me," I said. I felt innocent around her. I don't know why.

"It's true," she said.

"What's going to happen?" I was practically gaping.

"The Truth will be revealed. And all things, all structures, mental, physical and spiritual that have been built on and supported by lies will crumble, because everyone will be able to see it for what it is."

"Uh-oh."

"That's right, fuck boy, complete exposure. No more lies."

"I don't lie."

"Oh. Does your wife know that you're fucking me?"

"For all I know she's fucking you, too."

"Don't be surprised."

"WHAT ARE YOU doing indoors?" says my wife. "It's such a beautiful day."

"Spare me your lesbian cliches," I say.

"What?"

"Reading."

"Let's go out." She's holding her coat. "You need the exercise."

"This is exercise."

I get my coat. It's unseasonably warm. I stand framed in the doorway, the sun at my back. Petra says that galactic energies are constantly bombarding the earth's surface and that we're all being primed for what she calls The Unveiling.

"A worldwide apocalypse, you mean," I said.

She said, "It's not what you think."