Travel Bug (50 page)

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Well, almost…”

There was so much more to be seen by me, the old man and the bug. What a team! When fate comes, it’s amazing. Time of your life, kid, for sure…

“We’ve had hallucinations, Andrew.”

“Yes.”

“Andrew, that means it’s time for…”

“Revelations, you mean?” I asked the old man.

“Yes,” Harold answered.

“I thought so.”

“Well, Andrew, yes and no…”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s a revelation, one single revelation, that’s all there will be to it, honestly.”

“How do you know, Harold?”

“Son,” he said laughing. “I know somehow.”

“How do you know?” I asked him.

“I know from a great quote that all of this will have a satisfactory ending.”

“What quote is that?” I asked, grimly.

“We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them alone on our picnics.”

“Bill Vaughan?”

“Yes,” he answered me.

“That’s not funny,” I said, not laughing.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Harold, what was your point?”

“That this must have some conclusion and to pull your leg, son, Christ, you haven’t lost your sense of humor, have you?”

“Yes, at the moment, I have to some extent. Dead parents can do that, old man.”

“Don’t allow our dark travels to poison you. There will be a revelation, I am sure of it as that crazy fucking bitch thought that the Bible predicted the end of the world like an instruction manual.”

“I see.”

“Andrew, there is work to be done.”

“Yes, Harold, I agree.”

“Indeed, kid.”

The mystery of the bug was more… dear reader… than we could possibly tell you. I should be afraid that my two best buds are a dead old man and a prehistoric bug. It wasn’t until the last inning that we learned the unnamed species was essentially playing for the Godley team.

Horrible noises from the big stomach…

She, it, hissed again…

“She knows, Andrew…”

“What does Jezebel know?” I asked.

“That we forgive her, for her real forgiveness is the worst form of torture that could ever be endured, Andrew.”

“I see.”

“She’s in purgatory now, not hell.”

“Old man, for a woman from Rapture, Tennessee purgatory is hell!”

“Yes,” he answered me.

“That doesn’t mean all faith is bad…”

“No…”

“Hers sure was and the death of her faith could have meant the death of all things…”

“Well said,” Harold said, sarcastically.

“You’re not funny,” I said, laughing.

Our time with the maiden of perpetual suffering was probably almost over now, I thought. The madness of the maiden, hidden deep inside the monster swallowed up whole in fact…

“You can keep writing in that damned book all you want to when we get back but…”

“Nobody will believe, it, right Harold?”

“Right,” Harold answered.

“You know, I know that you’re probably correct in that assumption, old man.”

“Look, he’s already talking assumptions and he ain’t even a priest yet.”

“Don’t you mean the ascension?” I asked the old man.

“No.”

“What?”

“Andrew, Holy Mary, Mother of God assumed her way straight to Heaven…”

“Oh,” I answered the old man.

“You see?” he asked me.

“Now I do, Harold.”

She was not the blessed mother; she was the cursed mother of the devil. The mother of all lies… and yet… she was still just little terrified Jezebel watching her father feast in front of her when she was a little one. That scared little girl became a terrified woman who became an ungrateful bigot who became disillusioned with reality. Then she became a murderer. She became someone who wanted to murder the world.

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“Damn, I can’t get her out of my head!” I shouted.

“It’s her, doing it to you on purpose, boy. Soon there won’t be anyone else to torment.”

“Harold?”

“Andrew?”

“How can she see us? I mean if we’re just on another adventurous psychedelic bug meat trip?”

“Andrew, I don’t know. Perhaps she can’t. She might just be guessing we’re here from time to time.”

“Oh.”

“Well… or else there are things that make reality and time different from inside of this creature’s stomach.”

“I see.”

“That might explain why you keep hearing her voice, when she was in her most monstrous evil form.”

“Yes.”

“When we forgave her, her heart was more filled with hate than ever. It probably made her want to end all life that exists anywhere.”

“Harold, that seemed like it was pretty much her original goal as it was…”

“Yes, Andrew.”

The inculcation of the young is what made a mountain of skulls. Harold and I would leave this belly of the beast after this vision and make things right. It was hard. Damn hard. We could do it though. Someday we would receive a revelation and perhaps even a call to arms. Personal responsibility and liberty would surely lead the way. Freedom is not just another word for nothing less to lose. It’s too complex to do a word association game with.

“Freedom is not slavery,” I said.

“It’s also not security,” Harold said. “There is no guarantee of safety with freedom. It’s simply the only way to become better and make progress for the human race. It’s dicey but it’s worth the risk,” said Harold.

“It sure is.” I smiled.

“Good to hear you agree. I sure knew you would.” He smiled back at me.

Our dear family member’s stomach growled its fierce growl once again, making quite a remarkable noise…

“Fantastic journey,” Harold said.

“It was,” I answered him.

It had been that and a whole lot more, I thought, here in the belly of the beast. It was like being in some kind of obscene fairy tale but yet here we were. Nothing miraculous about seeing a mountain of skulls, that was long the trade mark of humanity. One might think that Jezebel might have known more about right from wrong but apparently that was not true. Everyone knows someone who had an appalling childhood but that doesn’t excuse becoming the daughter of the devil.

“Do you think she’ll change, Andrew?”

“Harold, I don’t know.”

How could I? I didn’t know how this thing would end, what our last vision would be. Was this a time travel adventure? Perhaps something more sinister, like a perverse fairy tale, it was or could be. The kind that was grim and uncensored before the water downed version passed on from childhood to childhood for the filtered bedtime stories of most children. The witch ate the kids who found the gingerbread house. The magic lantern was rubbed but it wasn’t the adorable genie who granted wishes that came out of it, all subservient. Instead, it was the wicked and manipulative Jinn. Those evil ones who would trick humanity by the way they worded their wishes. The Rapture woman ate the sacred meat of the bug and opened up Pandora’s Box. She wasn’t ready for what it revealed and perhaps neither was my great grandfather and me.

“Amazing,” the old man said.

“What?” I asked him.

I didn’t have to ask twice. He looked at me and smiled and pointed. The travel bug’s internal organs were as out of this world as time travel itself. Everything looked like bright lights, like some crazy outer space show at a carnival. It was more psychedelic inside the beast than there was in the outside world of man’s grim and turbulent history. The real monsters of the world were not werewolves and vampires, they were Hitler and Stalin.

“His insides are so beautiful and strange,” Harold said.

“They really are.”

“Hell, Andrew, how do I know it’s a male… ?”

“I don’t know, did you look underneath him after she cut off my head?”

“That’s not funny,” he said, laughing.

The travel bug was not the Jinn and did not grant wishes. If it did, I could have saved my mom and dad from being murdered. We could have stopped countless and endless bloodshed and genocide but we were powerless to do so. Well, I hoped we saved our country from ruin but that had remained to be seen or envisioned as it were. The evils of fascism and communism and religious fanaticism seemed like they were not going away just because me and an old dead man from the family had some psychedelic trips on some prehistoric bug meat.

“Where does it end?” Harold asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I at the moment,” he said.

“How’s our girlfriend doing?”

“Andrew, take a look and see the incarcerated witch.” She was in a fetal position; she was healing and deeply, deeply suffering. The woman from Rapture wanted so desperately to kill us but our old friend, born long before the dark ages, would not allow that now.

“How’s the rehabilitation going? Do you think you’ll ever be eligible for parole?”

The thing hissed, well, it tried, then began weeping, regenerating and ultimately retreating into the womb of the travel bug’s tremendous stomach once again. She could be regenerated, her tissue, her mind until the end of the world inside our old pal’s big stomach. Her redemption seemed possible but somehow unlikely. History’s lessons would come and go; finally she could find redemption and ultimately salvation. There was a spirit of grace in the belly of the beast.

“Your ax is gone, time to weep for your sins, you miserable sociopath,” Harold shouted.

“Harold?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t torment her; there is no higher purpose to it. It’s vindictive and even cruel…”

“Yes, Andrew and it’s not very Christian, is it?”

“No,” I answered him. “It certainly is not, old man.”

“Okay, son,” he said, reluctantly.

Jezebel hissed like a trapped animal that knew somehow it was beyond escape but needed to show it was still proud. That was essentially what she was, Jonah with little hope of escaping the great fish until she swallowed her pride. Then her unlikely redemption might occur.

“She just might learn the truth that tribalism has been man’s real curse, Harold. It’s his ultimate original sin, actually.”

“Yes,” he answered me.

“I know this to be true more than most, perhaps more than who are still living.”

“Now, who taught you that?”

“The great beasts, our ancestors, they work through me now. They’re resurrected in my DNA, they were trapped and I think I can set them free once again.”

“A hell of a thing, decapitating a man…”

I looked at my neck and felt all around the edges. It was beyond strange; it was a bloody insane miracle. I had to save the travel bug, this great beast. I had no choice; it had literally saved my neck or head…

She smiled at us at the thought, obviously of what she had almost accomplished, cutting my head off. The witch would have had my head and my great grandfather’s on sticks if she would have her way. Fortunately, she didn’t. She was in hell now, not because it was a place where reason was not possible but because she loved death and hated reason itself.

“Sorry, lady, I still got my head on straight.”

“That’s more than we could ever say for you, sadistic, fiend…”

‘”Harold…”

“Yes?”

“Enough,” I said.

“You started it that time, Andrew.”

“Sorry.”

God, if there is one, is certainly merciful, I would think. He, she, it or they would not put man through this bloodthirsty meaningless existential torture without some type of good payoff at the end of all things. A happy ending, well, yes, I should damn well hope so. If you come in the middle of the movie it looks like either God is an extreme sadist who makes Satan look like a Disney villain. If you’re there from the beginning and until the end of the world, I would hope life begins to make a little sense. Please remember, dear reader, this wretched woman killed my mother. Prior to Harold, I had never loved anyone in the world more than her. No one even came close! Now she’s gone but her values of human freedom are not. They’re very much still with us and except for a few terrible future scenarios, they hopefully always will be. That’s why I choose to forgive instead of to hate.

“You think I’m wrong to hate her, don’t you, Andrew?”

“No.”

“Then why lay these little self-righteous judgments on me, son?”

“Well, frankly, because you’re better than that, old man.”

“How do you figure, young, future priest to be?” he asked.

“You lost your grandson, I lost my father. I lost my mother, you shouldn’t even fucking be here. You, Harold Godley, are a man who has cheated time. No, in fact, you have raped and pillaged it!”

“Yes,” he said.

“Oh, you agree,” I asked.

“I do.”

“Why is that, sir?”

“Well, I crossed the natural borders of time to help you out. That’s because I love family. I came here, cheated death, damn near cheated nature itself, well, because I love you, Andrew.”

I was stunned and silent. I was stunned. I was silent. I was ashamed. I knew he was right. This so called cheating of wicked, random nature allowed us to save the human race in a way that apparently no organized religion ever had to date in history. We forgave the woman who killed our family and damn near murdered the world. Is it too much to ask to tease her, just a little?

“I love you, too, old man.”

“Yes, Andrew, I know.”

We both smiled. The sounds inside the stomach of this prehistoric beast were beginning to sound like they were louder than a San Francisco earthquake. Well, they weren’t, he just had an active prehistoric tummy…

“Fantastic journey, Harold, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Andrew.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“I think cheating nature is always fantastic, Andrew.”

“There is no cheating human nature, though, is there?”

“No, son, it mostly seems to lead to a mountain of skulls,” the old man said.

I knew then that only the destruction of religious tribalism would lead to a better tomorrow. It was painfully obvious and clear. She would never “go home” to meet the lord; she would only be trapped to “know the bug.” Yes, the bug, surely the oddest member of the Godley family and that’s no small boast. The unnamed species, the travel bug, the strange member of the family locked in the basement, surely he’s had so many names, it would be ridicules to try and name them out loud.