The Crooked God Machine (14 page)

“Tell me,” she said, “what did you see?”

“A six,” I whispered.

She jumped off the bed and ran across the room. I chased after her. By the time I’d caught her around the waist, snapping her flower chain, she’d already grabbed the handle of her suitcase and hauled it toward the door.

“No, let me go,” she said. Gasped.

She struggled to get away from me and her dress tore in my fingers. She dropped her suitcase and the back of her head hit the wall. Flowers dropped from her waist and scattered across the floor.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You’re going to turn me in,” she said, “have you known all along? Did you draw me?”

She pushed me away with such force that I fell to the floor and hit my spine with a cold crack. She rushed to my desk and started rummaging through my drawings. She tossed several of them onto the floor as she searched.

“What does it mean? A six?” I asked, still on the floor, “I don’t have any idea.”

She paused. Turned to look at me with my drawings crumpled in her hands, red veins popped in her eyes. For a moment, I thought of Daddy’s stuffed deer, hunched in the corner of the kitchen.

“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked.

“For what?” I said, “Of course not.”

She dropped my drawings and they scattered onto the floor. I got to my feet and embraced her. She was smaller than I’d ever remembered her, all tree knots and skinless bone. The dress drifted to the floor. At first she stiffened, as if she was going to pull away again.

“It’s waiting out there for me,” she said.

“For all of us,” I said.

“Promise you won’t turn me in,” she said, “Promise now.”

“Okay, I promise.”

Her body relaxed. I led her back to the bed, the smell of crushed flowers overwhelming.

“What does the number six mean?” I asked, “I don’t have any idea.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered.

“I promise,” I said, “I won’t tell anyone. Who would I tell? I won’t.”

When she went to sleep I got up, gathered up all my crumpled drawings, and tossed them away.

Chapter Five

“You're boring now,” Ezekiel told me, “How come we never have fun anymore? Let's go have fun.”

So Ezekiel finished damning souls for the day and we went to the Legion bar and strip joint.

A heretic bombed the slip clinic that night, so all the wannabe deadheads with their ghost lips and burnt out limbs were in the bar instead of a clinic waiting room. They stood at the edge of the stage clamoring for the three strippers. The strippers danced like insects jump nervous and cut off from the rest of the room. One of the strippers turned on a pole, revealing her backside. Someone wrote SLUT on her ass in red lipstick.

“I think I know that girl,” I told Ezekiel.

“Sorry,” he told me.

I edged closer to the stage while Ezekiel went to order a drink from the bar. The stripper colored her hair like the stage lights, orange at the roots, blue at the tips. Her PVC boots sparked against the stage when she walked. She slung her dirty hair back behind her shoulder and unclasped her brassiere, then let drop to her feet. She knelt down to collect money from the wannabe deadheads. A line of spit ran down her chin.

That's when I noticed the furious red sore on her forehead, the faint lines of the hot wire spider's legs just underneath her skin.

“She's a deadhead,” I said.

“They all are. Cheap labor,” a man on my left said, “and they don't complain. Why would they? They're asleep.”

I turned and saw Ezekiel with his arm around the bartender, a man with nicotine stained fingers and teeth and blacked out eyes like holes. His silver name tag read Eugene.

“Hey Eugene, this is my friend Charles,” Ezekiel said, “he doesn't come here much. He’s sort of a loner type, you know how it is.”

“I think I know that girl up there,” I said, “the stripper.”

“Doubt she'd remember you now,” Eugene said, “want a Bloody Mary? House specialty.”

“No thanks,” I said.

I turned back to the stripper on stage, who heaved like she had trouble breathing. Her fingers curled over her anorexic breasts and her hair rained down on the wannabe deadheads below the stage. They grasped at her crackling PVC boots and her raw white calves and smeared the red lipstick SLUT into an indecipherable mess.

“If you want to fuck her you're going to have to talk to her doctor,” Eugene said, “this one's been having bolts lately. Her implant is going all screwy.”

“No thanks,” I said.

"The strippers have been a real life-saver after business slowed down. End of the world and all, you know. Plenty of drunks in this town, but drinking just isn’t enough for these sad fucks anymore.”

"I see," I said.

"Though it sure is a busy night tonight, with that slip clinic getting attacked by that heretic and all. You'd think they’d just kill themselves, instead of trying to grab tits and order drinks all night."

Lucky for you they don't," Ezekiel said.

"Right, man, right," Eugene said, "we’re not used to these busy nights. I had to get Millie to make drinks. You know she can't make drinks worth shit, but nobody here cares.”

Someone crawled over the bar and turned on the mounted television to the Teddy and Delilah show. Delilah smiled her crooked dog smile while Teddy addressed the camera.

"Well Edgewater folks," Teddy said, "we just got news of the firebombing at the slip clinic. Sorry to say, four doctors, three nurses, and six patients have died, and the heretic is still on the run. We didn't want you to have to wait to get your slip, so we've set up a makeshift clinic just down 5th street, in what used to be the Babel Tech building. And just like your regular clinic, this one will be open twenty-four hours a day."

Delilah bounced on the bed and clapped her hands. Everyone turned away from the stage and faced the television behind the bar. The strippers continued to dance in her stop jerk motions. That’s when I finally placed a name to the girl with SLUT written on her ass.

"Oh my God," I said, "that's Jeanine. That girl up there. Don't you remember Jeanine?"

"Can't say that I do," Ezekiel said.

"What is she doing back in Edgewater?"

"Shut up," Eugene said, "pay attention to the television."

I left Ezekiel and Eugene and began edging closer toward the stage.

"So come on down to the slip clinic tonight," Teddy said, "get your hot wire spider and turn your life around. I've been saying it for years, but you have to get it to believe it. You don't feel a thing."

They pushed past me and ran out of the bar, leaving behind nothing except empty glasses, singed hair, and bloodied scraps of clothing. Soon The Legion emptied out, except for a few regulars, Eugene and his staff, Ezekiel, me, and the strippers on stage.

"Rest assured that God will bring this heretic to justice," Teddy said, speaking to the empty bar, "even if he has to destroy this entire damned town to do so."

Teddy leaned down over the bed and kissed Delilah on the cheek.

"Fuck me," Eugene said, "look at the mess those bugfucks left behind. Millie, get out from behind the bar and clean this shit up. Good damn."

As I approached the stripper on stage she ceased to dance. She ran down like a toy and her hips stopped grinding a pulse against the air. She stood at the edge of the stage, shivering and naked.

"Hey sweetie," I said to her, "hey, you remember me?"

She didn't respond.

"Jeanine," I whispered.

She twitched and her head tilted toward me. Her wide white eyes shrunk down into her head.

"Come off down the stage, Jeanine," I said. "How did you get here? take my hand and come down."

"The show isn't over, baby," she said.

"It's over," I said, "now come here."

After a moment's hesitation, she reached out to take my hand. Her fingers were limp and wet, like paste.

"Yes sir," Teddy said from the television, "God always gets his revenge."

"Watch it!" Eugene said as I took Jeanine into my arms, "I told you, if you want to fuck her you're going to have to talk to the doctor. And looks like he's out on another smoke break.”

Jeanine continued to shiver as if stuck on a circuit, her bones shuddering like strung out nerve wire.

“Are you cold?” I asked her. I took my jacket off and draped it over Jeanine's shoulders, but she wouldn’t stop shivering.

“She's a damn deadhead,” Eugene said, “she doesn't give a fuck one way or the other. Millie, get your scrawny ass out from behind that bar and clean this shit up like I told you to.”

“Charles,” Ezekiel said, “we have to go.”

“What?” I looked over at Ezekiel, who stood by the bar holding his half empty glass of Bloody Mary. Heat came off the sphere in the back of his head in sharp, glass-cut red waves.

“God's going to wipe out this entire district. He's bringing in the machines right now. Don't you hear them? Eugene, turn off that television. Turn it off so Charles can hear the machines.”

When Eugene turned off the television, cutting off the Teddy and Delilah show, I heard the grating noises of the machines wheeling themselves through the streets outside, the clicking of their inner organs preparing another doomsday.

“We have to go now,” Ezekiel said, setting his Bloody Mary down on the bar and striding over toward me. He grabbed my arm and pushed me toward the exit. “Come on. Let's go.”

I closed my hand tight over Jeanine's wrist and pulled her away from the stage and the strip lights.

“Hey kids, wait for me,” Eugene said as Ezekiel, Jeanine, and I left the Legion and went out into the back alleyway. The door swung shut behind us. Overhead the stark black moon swung low in the blacker sky, and the steely, silent heads of the machines loomed over the roof of the bar.

Ezekiel ran and I followed, tracing the curve of his shiny sphere through the dark as I dragged Jeanine behind me.

Fire came down from the sky and destroyed the bar and the surrounding buildings in a single flash. The heat tore at our backs. We kept running.

Chapter Six

Teddy's voice spilled out into the streets from every home in Edgewater. Soon it became indistinguishable from that of God's, all hard-edged and crackling at the corners.

“You should know by now what happens to you when you’re sinful,” Teddy said, “don’t you know by now that you never escape?”

As I ran after Ezekiel, I saw the Teddy and Delilah show on the television in every living room we passed. First Teddy leaning over Delilah on the bed. Then Teddy wearing a black, pig-snouted mask, his hands extended over Delilah's face like panic claws. Transforming himself into God. Next Delilah wearing the same mask. God again. Then the storm sirens blared. The curtains started closing. The doors locking. I couldn't see the televisions anymore. Fire scraped the sky in the shape of God's terrible face.

"This heretic will be found and punished for defying me," Teddy said in God's grinding voice, "I will not rest until I hunt him down and destroy him."

I followed Ezekiel down an alley, through a neighborhood rupturing in two, across a stretch of woods, and into a burnt out, bowel-shaped hovel on the outskirts of town.

Outside the sirens continued to blare. Neighbors spilled out of their houses.

“You’re the heretic, aren’t you?” one woman screamed, “I should’ve known when I caught you fucking my daughter!”

“Yeah?” someone said in response, “I think you’re the heretic. You don’t close your eyes when you pray!”

Apocalypse Brigadiers wormed their way out of tight spaces and started breaking windows and throwing rocks at the heads of passersby. One man screamed through a megaphone at every person that passed.

“Don’t you look away from me! I know what you’ve done! Don’t think you can hide!”

“Ezekiel?” I called, moving away from the corner, “where are we? I need to get home.”

“Quit your bitching,” Ezekiel said, “This used to be Job’s shack. We should be safe here until the storm passes.”

My eyes became situated to the dark and I took in more of the hovel, a single, dirt-covered room with a television pushed into one corner.

Jeanine convulsed and kicked her PVC boots against my shins. I winced.

“Be still,” I said, “be still.”

“The show isn't over, baby,” she said.

The sound of the machines grew louder, wider. A bomb exploded nearby and a storm of heat swept through the hovel's open entrance. Jeanine squealed and twisted in my arms.

Ezekiel turned on the television. Teddy and Delilah sat up motionless on their bed, their faces concealed in God's black masks. They remained silent, their legs straight, their hands crossed against their laps. Everything in their room became distant and the only sound emitting from the television was a loud emptiness, the sort of emptiness that spasmed and stretched and screamed.

"Don't you hear it outside?" I asked Ezekiel, "the machines."

"Yeah," he said, "I hear them. I'm not worried about them."

Jeanine tried to run out the door as the machines approached. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back inside as a machine stuck its bristling head through the open doorway and its eyes lit up the hovel red. It scanned the room and noticed Ezekiel, who rolled his eyes and tapped the sphere on the back of his head. The machine withdrew, casting the room back into darkness, and continued on down the street.

Another explosion came down from the heavens that rocked and ruptured the earth. On the television, Delilah's hands twitched. I held onto Jeanine to keep from falling down into the abyss at the bottom of Delilah's dress. I thought of Leda back home at the edge of the swamp alone with deadhead Momma and deadhead Sissy. I saw the swamp monsters rising from the green waters to crawl up to the porch steps.

"I have to get home," I repeated once more.

"Shut the fuck up," Ezekiel said, "God told me we would be safe here."

The sound of the machines clattering and grinding grew and grew, chewed my ears out, broke a heavy board against the flat of my ribs.

"Oh fuck," Ezekiel said, and he ran out the door. I grabbed Jeanine and followed him out into the street, where a full-fledged riot was taking place. A low piercing whine filled the air, and then the hovel exploded into flames behind us.