The Crooked God Machine (12 page)

“You seem nervous,” the girl said.

I didn’t respond.

“If you’re telling the truth, then you wouldn’t mind if we searched your house” she said.

“No,” I said, “you’re not allowed in.”

“Are you sure about that? You may be making a very dangerous mistake.”

I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw popped.

“Missy,” I said, “go away.”

“I think we're finished here,” the man said before I could speak again.

The man pulled himself upright and struck his cane against the porch steps. Missy struck her heels into the porch as if she to bolt herself there, but a sharp look from the old man made her relent and follow him down the steps.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back,” the girl said over her shoulder, “Oh, and Charles? Don’t go outside tonight.”

As if in response, the plague machines in the distance groaned.

That night I sat at my desk underneath a broken halogen bulb, holed up while torrents of ice battered the shutters and the sides of the house. My room rocked from side to side. The paper in front of me remained blank. Mixed in with the sound of the ice storm was the shouting of the Apocalypse Brigade on the television. I couldn't make out any individual words. It was all a muted stream, except for “End of the world,” and “God,” and “Repent.”

It was so loud I almost didn't hear the knock on the door.

When I opened the door I found Leda standing there, shivering, ice stuck to her skin and eyes pink with blood. She crossed her arms in front of her dress for warmth, and her hair was lashed to her fingers.

She opened her mouth to speak but her tongue was laced down with the cold.

I took her by the shoulder and pulled her inside, then shut the door behind us. I embraced her, rubbed her shoulders, touched the back of her head.

“Charles,” she whispered.

“What is it?” I asked

“Did you know there’s a storm outside?” she said.

I pulled away so that I could look at her face, with its cracked blue lips and tree skin. She smiled. I laughed and pulled her close again.

“Come here,” I said, “come upstairs.”

I guided her up the stairs with the storm pummeling our ears and when we got to my room I set her down on the bed and gathered a blanket over her shoulders. Some of the color returned to her face, but she continued to shiver.

“Hold on,” I said, “I'll be right back.”

I went downstairs, tiptoed past Momma and Sissy, and entered the kitchen. The lights were out because of the storm, but I felt my way around in the dark until I reached Daddy's liquor cabinet. From inside I retrieved his bottle of whiskey and took it back upstairs.

“Whiskey?” Leda asked when she saw it.

“It'll make you warm,” I said, and handed the bottle to her. “Here. Drink.”

She unscrewed the bottle and tipped it to her mouth. Swallowed. Grimaced. She lowered the bottle between her knees and scratched away at its gold label.

“Something's after me,” she said.

“You too?” I said.

Leda took another drink of whiskey.

“Two members of the Apocalypse Brigade came over tonight,” I said, “I think they're onto me.”

“Why? What did you do?” Leda asked.

“I don't know,” I said, “I'm sure I've done something.”

Leda grew quiet. The blue left her face, and the blood spilled back. She stopped shivering, but drew the blanket tighter around her.

“What about you?” I said, “what's after you?”

Leda said nothing. She scratched at the gold label with her cold swollen hands. I sat down at my desk. My head felt like a dense cloud.

“Leda,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“How come I don't know anything about you?”

Leda took another sip of whiskey.

“And I mean that. I don't know anything,” I said, “I don't know where you came from, or how you got here. I don't know who you are.”

“You don't want to know,” she said.

On an impulse I crossed the room toward her. She flinched at my sudden movement, spilling some of the whiskey on the front of her dress. I knelt in front of her, and rested my palms against her knees.

“I think I could love you, but not like this,” I said, “What do we do? We lay together, we dance. Sometimes we kiss, as long as I'm careful to not touch you too much. None of that means a damn thing. We're just biding our time. So, yes, I want to know.”

Leda raised the whiskey bottle to her lips, and let it hover there for a few moments. The whiskey shone in her eyes like a soft film. She took a sip and lowered the bottle back between her knees.

“Fine,” I said.

I rose and headed for the door.

“The ocean,” Leda said.

I stopped.

“What?”

“I grew up by the ocean,” she said.

I turned back around to face her. Suddenly, I felt very tired. The cold from the ice storm seeped in through the walls, straight through my head.

“Go on,” I said.

“What do you want from me? A list of my tragedies?” Leda asked.

“That'd be a start,” I said.

“My mother was a florist, my father worked for the mayor.”

She paused.

“Don't be scared,” I said, “not around me.”

“Why does this matter to you?”

“Because I want to know you,” I said.

She sighed.

“I spent my childhood learning how to make flower arrangements and dress the way a girl should dress if her father works for the government,” Leda continued.

“Your father worked for the government?”

“Small time official, not like a prophet or anything,” she said.

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

“They put the fear of God in me and I learned all the right words, the proper way to dance and talk to boys.”

She started to talk faster. It seemed as if the words had been bubbling underneath her skin for years, and at this moment she'd rupture if she didn't let them escape.

“My mother got taken by the hell shuttles when I was about fourteen. After that, well, I had this best friend, I called her Cat. Her father worked for the government too. We'd go to dances together. I remember being extremely jealous of her. She had this allure that I felt I could never have. If we were together the boys would always gravitate to her, and why not? She was gorgeous. Even as a teenager, she had this slim waist, hips that hit you like bullets. Pale blue eyes, blond curly hair. Pouty mouth, that sort of thing.”

I sat down beside Leda on the bed, though I was almost afraid that any sudden movement would catch her off guard and she'd grow quiet again.

“We were both sixteen when she was raped. The boy was named Wilco, someone we knew at school. Her father tried to cover up the scandal, but she became pregnant. The hell shuttles took her and her father soon enough. I never understood why. I still saw Wilco in school every day, untouched, unpunished. I watched him in class with his button straight back and perpetual smirk and I kept thinking, any day now. Any day they'll take him. But they never did.

“I don't know why I started talking to him during school. I became curious, I suppose. He seemed disinterested, but I was sick with it.”

“Sick with what?” I asked.

“That wanting to know. Like I had to know. Why did he do that to Cat? And what was it about her that caused him to do such a terrible thing?. We talked about everything except Cat, everything except what I wanted to ask him. The weather, our homework, when he thought the next plague would hit.”

Leda sighed.

“I got impatient. One night after a party I followed him out into the back while he was taking a smoke break. I still remember what I was wearing, one of those silver dresses that look like they're liquid, you know, and flared out at the bottom. Cherry lipstick. Smoky eyes. While he was taking out his lighter I asked him how he felt about Cat.

“He laughed. His cigarette drooped in the corner of his mouth. I had to ask him again. How did he feel about Cat? He seemed to regain his composure, and he lit his cigarette and put his lighter back in his pocket. He told me that she used to be a good friend. Then he smirked, his signature expression.”

I put my hand on Leda's arm. She'd nearly drained the bottle of whiskey by then. Her skin shone with it.

“I asked him if I thought she was pretty. He said she was “hot as fuck,” and I felt the heat in his words. I'd been getting to him closer all the while, and before I knew it I was touching his arm and asking him if he would do to me what he did to her. There were cat scratches on the inside of my chest. Seizure marks. He dropped his cigarette and grabbed me by the shoulders. Shook me until I stopped grasping at him.

“'Baby,' he said, 'oh baby, you're just not pretty enough for me to waste my time.' Then he left me there, propped up against the wall. I can still feel the static of his jacket clinging to my hair, my makeup smeared on the back of my hand. I think that's when I knew it didn't really matter if we were sinners or not, good or bad. We were all cursed the same.”

I took the bottle of whiskey from between her knees and set it on the nearby bed stand. I gathered her up in my arms and she folded in my lap, each of her limbs a strand about to fall away.

“Leda,” I said, “You shouldn't think of that anymore. You're beautiful.”

“It's still there,” she said, “It never goes away.”

“Leda,” I said, “I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve been there. I wish I could’ve done something.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

She grasped my hand and breathed into my palm. Kissed it. Whiskey soaked each of her syllables.

“No it doesn’t, do you want to know why?”

Without waiting for my answer, she grasped my leg and pulled herself up straight so that we were eye level.

“It’s what I told your sister the night when you first brought me to the house.”

And just like she did to my sister, she buried her fingers in my hair and rested her mouth in the crook of my ear. Then she whispered:

“Because the voice from the ocean whispered it to me, a long time ago. I stood in the surf as a child and the voice told me to not be afraid. It told me that help was coming, and we would all be saved. So we shouldn’t be afraid.”

She rose from my lap and crossed the room. When she reached the window, she rested her forehead against the glass and reached out, as if trying to push her fingers straight through. Her face reflected through the frost, the storm, back to me.

“They’re out there waiting for me,” she said, “one day they’re going to find me. Then it’ll be all over.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Can’t you see it out there?”

“I can’t see anything in this storm,” I said.

I lay down in bed, tilted my back so that I could see Leda in full view as she pressed herself against the window. The blue cold spread back into her skin and turned her veins into webbed crystal.

She turned back to me. She climbed on top of the bed. I jumped up and held her shoulders to keep her from falling over.

Kneeling, she kissed me with the storm lingering on her mouth.

"Draw me," she said.

"What?"

"Draw me. I'm giving you permission"

Downstairs the front door slammed open and the windows burst. Leda jerked her head back, eyes rattling. I gripped her hands. The storm barreled into the living room and kicked its legs, knocking over furniture and portraits on the wall, beating the stairs, shaking the television.

“Not again,” I said, and I sighed, stay here.”

I went down the hallway and stood at the top of the stairs for a few moments, shivering, all the blood drained out of my head, as I tried to make out Momma and Sissy somewhere below in the snow and fog. Momma howled like a rabbit, her voice trapped in ice. I ran back down the hallway, grabbed my father’s jacket from the closet, and then descended downstairs.

I found Momma and Sissy on the floor in front of the television, clutching at the screen with hands like bird scapula. Their IV stands were overturned and half buried in the ice. I pressed my hands to my ears as the cold pelted me, and shouted out their names. No response, except for the lazy movement of their eyes following the Apocalypse Brigadiers marching on the television screen. Their stoic faces sunk further and further into the carpet.

I hauled Sissy and Momma out of the ice and dragged them upstairs, my limbs burning with their weight. They lay down on the bed without protest. I waded downstairs and slammed the door shut, nailed the windows shut with boards we kept underneath the sink for that purpose. By the time I got back into my room, Leda had already fallen asleep.

I sat down at my desk and watched her for a long moment, trying to breathe with the cold enmeshed against my lungs. I got out my sketchpad and my charcoals, but my fingers were so stiff I couldn’t control them. I threw the sketchpad back against the desk. I accidentally dropped the charcoal onto the floor and it rolled underneath the desk and hit the wall. I crawled into bed with Leda, trying to pretend I couldn’t hear Momma’s screams.

That night we lay intertwined together. Leda slept as if falling from a great height, her hair wrapped against the iron bed rails, her fingers and toes braced against the sheets. I listened to the television static swelling outside our door. I wanted to wake her up and ask her when this help would come, because I could see God outside pulling down the stars to end the world. Instead I traced the scarred skin Leda's shoulders as she slept and I waited to die.

The bedroom door swung open and Momma and Sissy entered the room. As the noise from the television rose, I thought I saw Teddy standing at the foot of the bed with his slicked black hair and grey suit. Delilah stood in the corner and rose up on the balls of her feet to keep the black moon from slicing off her heels. She bashed her head into the wall until blood dashed her pretty curls.

Teddy clicked his shoes together and said, "are you afraid of what's coming for you, sir? Are you afraid of death, sir?"

He opened up his closed hands and showed me the wire spider he saved for me, clicking and trembling in his palm. All the while the television hummed and the floorboards rattled to the rhythm of Delilah's beating head. Momma dragged herself to the foot of my bed and her drool left a powder trail behind her.