The Crooked God Machine (18 page)

"I don't know why," I said, "it came on slowly, so slowly I didn't even know what was happening until it was too late."

"I don't understand," Jeanine said.

I swallowed softly.

"I mean, you see things that shouldn't have happened, that should have never been brought into existence, and it all corrodes your brain a little more each day.

"And then it happens that you see something really terrible, something so profoundly awful, that you realize you have to get out. You think you will tear apart or go insane if you see another moment of it.

"That this isn't just the way things are supposed to be. That something's gone wrong. There was this force set in motion from the beginning that was destined to go wrong. And we're all caught up in the wheels of it, unable to escape, because it's a mechanism so much more powerful than any of us."

"Wow," Jeanine said again.

"And it's controlling each of us, driving us toward this ultimate outcome which none of us can comprehend, even though we're stuck right in the middle of it. It's bigger than the black planet, it's bigger than God. It's probably even bigger than the stars and the places beyond the stars. It's this mechanism at the center of the universe, which decided our destinies a million billion years before we were even born."

Jeanine said nothing.

"I first felt it when my baby brother died," I said quietly, kneading my palms down into the bed until I touched the box springs, "and I've felt it pulling me, driving me, ever since. Like I could have been nothing but a heretic. Like nothing I could ever do would change that."

I tried to catch my breath and I pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw bursting phosphenes. Momma appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Her hair cracked and broke between her hands. I looked up.

"Your sister's gone," she said.

Outside in the swamp, someone screamed.

I ran past Momma and down the stairs. I yanked open the front door. I ran down the porch and toward the tree line. The front door banged shut behind me.

The sky pulled down over me like a blind. I reached the swamp and the swamp rose up to grab me. It sucked the shoes off my feet.

Out here I heard the nearby machines pulsing and grinding their silver bullet limbs in preparation for another plague. I ran blindly, listening for another scream, but I could hear nothing except the machines and the wind barreling through the trees and swelling up like a wave to wash over me.

"Sissy?" I called out into the swamp, "Sissy, where are you?"

I slowed down. The map of twisted branches underneath me scratched tiny symbols into my skin.

"Sissy?" I said, softer this time.

I brushed back a low hanging curtain of Spanish moss. Through the trees I saw the woman of the swamp, Jolene, waist deep in the chilly water. Lichen grew on the north side of her face, obscuring half her nose, one eye, a lilt upturned corner of her mouth.

She held out her hand to me and the skin on her fingers curled away like burning paper.

"It's been a long time, Charles," Jolene said.

She smiled and the fireflies in her teeth trembled. I stood immobile in the bower of trees, holding the curtain of moss between my fists.

"Did you bring another knife to try to murder me?" she asked me, “do you remember our special time together?”

I took a step backwards.

"Come here, Charles," she said, "there's no running away. You've known that for a long time."

I said nothing. I could only look at the glistening and trapped fireflies.

"Charles," she said, and her voice darkened, as if grinding glass, "come here."

I stepped forward out of the trees and the curtain of Spanish moss fell behind me. I approached the edge of Jolene's pond, like I had done when I was a child, swallowing softly, my eyes stuck to the bones lying at the bottom of the water where my dead baby brother still rested.

"I'm looking for my sister," I said, "I thought I heard her scream."

"There's no one here but you and me," Jolene said, "and soon there won't even be that."

She reached out and buried her dripping hand into my hair. She forced my head up, exposing my throat to her sharpened teeth. Her breath smelled of rotting and wet lost things - feathers, sorghum, blackened leaves.

It was as if time brought me back into a circle to this moment, as if I had become old and bitter and doomed, only to find myself a young child again.

Jolene forced me down to my knees in the seeping dirt.

"Look down into the water," she said.

"I can't," I said, with tears streaming down my face, "please. I can't."

She pushed my head closer to the tepid water. I dug my hands down into the muck, shaking, my spine tearing itself from my back, my jaw unhinging itself from my face.

"Look or you drown," she said.

"Please," I whispered.

But just like the first time, I looked.

The dust settled at the bottom of the swamp and the black moon hit the green waters, illuminating the bones underneath. The bones unchanged, bones molested, gnawed, and broken. Bones that went down into the dark forever. The history of all humanity. Our origin and epitaph. Bones.

"I know," I whispered, "I know that I am nothing, all right? I've been learning that my whole life."

I couldn't breathe in the overwhelming smell of her rotting tea green dress. She traced my forehead with her sucking fingers, fish gut thumbs.

"I'll tell you a secret," Jolene said.

I said nothing. I could say nothing.

"That girl passed through my swamp the night she left you. She was being chased by a big bad thing."

"What?" I said. Down in the water the bones formed into the shape of long decayed bodies, Sissy and Momma, Daddy, Jeanine, Smarts. The animal bones twisted into their familiar faces. The animal hooves became their gut wrenched hips.

"Are you saying Leda's alive?" I asked.

"Maybe," Jolene said, "maybe not."

She released my hair. I fell back, gasping.

"Do you remember you're mine?" Jolene asked.

"I haven't forgotten," I said, swallowing big cold rushes of air, "I can't forget."

I crawled away from Jolene's pond and back toward the bower of moss.

"If you find her,” Jolene said, "tell her I said hello."

I didn't look back as I crawled away, but I could imagine Jolene's smile well enough, crawling with bugs, trapped wings, gritty red.

Chapter Twelve

When I got back home from the swamp I found Sissy hiding in the cupboard underneath the sink.

“What are you doing under there?” I asked.

She put a finger to her lips.

“Shh,” she said.

I sent Sissy back into the living room and went upstairs to the bedroom, where Jeanine stood by the window looking out over the trees.

"What happened to you?" she asked me when she saw me bare-footed, red in the face, covered in swamp mud and slime.

"I think Leda might be alive," I said.

"What makes you think that?"

"A monster told me so," I said.

I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower faucet, and sloughed off my clothes. While I stood near the shower naked, covered in grit and mud, Jeanine knocked on the door.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

"Hold on," I said.

I got into the shower and closed the curtain.

"Okay," I said.

The door opened and closed. Jeanine closed the toilet lid and sat down.

"What was her name?" Jeanine asked.

"What?”

“You know what I asked.”

"Leda," I said. I swallowed.

"Did you love her?" she asked.

"Why?"

"Can't you just tell me? Did you love her or not?"

"Yes," I said, "I loved her."

I heard the bathroom door open and close a second time. I breathed a sigh and cleaned myself off, then got out of the shower. I changed into clean clothes and went back into the bedroom. Jeanine sat in the chair beside the window with her legs splayed out in front of her. She buried her fingers in her blue and orange hair.

I turned the light on, as I had done every night since Leda's disappearance. Jeanine didn't move.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

Jeanine said nothing.

"Why did you get a slip implant?" I asked, "I thought you would be the last person to ever do anything like that."

Jeanine shifted in the rocking chair. I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me."

"I don't," Jeanine said.

"I can make up Theresa's bed for you," I said, "She never sleeps it in anymore."

My limbs burned with fatigue, and I ached to close my eyes.

"I'm sorry if I upset you," I whispered, "you know I never meant it."

I lay down into bed because I could no longer support my body, and almost instantly I fell asleep.

I woke a little while later to find Jeanine hovering over me, her knees pressed into the sheets, the curve of her back shooting off like a bow in the dark.

"Isn't it strange, the sort of things that come back to haunt you?" Jeanine asked, "the memories that we are doomed to repeat over and over again?"

I reached out to touch her exposed thigh. The cold burned my fingers.

"Yeah," I said.

"You were right, what you told me earlier," she said, "that we were destined to be wrong from the beginning."

I thought Jeanine might collapse. She leaned down and the orange colored tips of her hair brushed against my mouth.

"We should go look for her. Your Leda." Jeanine said quietly,” You know my brother? He's a prophet. We can find him at the capitol. He knows things. He can help."

"Why?" I asked.

"You said she might be alive, didn't you? That the monsters told you she might be alive. That's more of a chance than most people ever get."
She scratched her stomach. Flakes of gray drifted down onto my nose.

"I don't have anything left to live for," she said, "but you still have a chance."

I heard shouting outside. Jeanine and I both turned toward the window. Out in the distance, lights like swamp gas drifted through the trees. Living pale fire.

Jeanine moved toward the window. She pressed her hand against the glass.

"It's the Apocalypse Brigade," I said, "they always come around right before a plague hits."

“Those motherfuckers are still around?” she asked.

“Well, you know. It’s always the end of the world.”

I got out up bed and moved toward Jeanine. I looked out the window.

The fire in in the woods drifted closer. Figures emerged from the woods. Apparitions of men, with distended limbs and vegetable shaped heads. They were chanting something about the death of all humanity. Out beyond them I heard the machines gearing up for another plague.

As they came closer, I saw they were being led by the old man and the girl in the wolf mask, both bearing butane torches and knives.

“Charles!” the girl called out, “we’ve come back for you.”

I pulled Jeanine away from the window.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” I said, “let’s go look for Leda.”

I ran to the closet and grabbed two bags. I threw one at Jeanine.

“Time to pack,” I said.

I stuffed clothes into my bag, and then ran downstairs. I nearly ran into Sissy standing at the bottom of the stairs, smoking a cigarette and lugging her IV stand like a carcass.

“Hey Bubba,” she said, and smiled.

Jeanine ran down the stairs behind me, carrying her bag.

“Wait,” I said, “I forgot about Momma and Sissy.”

“Dead meat,” Jeanine said.

“We can’t just leave them here,” I said.

“Yes,” Jeanine said, “we can.”

She pushed Sissy out of the way, then grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me into the kitchen. She opened the window above the sink.

“They’ve only got three years left,” I said as Jeanine opened the refrigerator and stuffed our bags with all the rations left.

“They have nothing left.”

“Where are you going, Bubba?” Sissy asked, standing behind me in the kitchen doorway.

“Come on,” Jeanine said. She crawled through the open window and jumped down into the grass below.

“I wish I could’ve helped you,” I said to Sissy.

Sissy grinned. Then once more, she spit in my face.

The windows shattered in the living room. Through the kitchen entryway I saw the girl with the wolf mask climbing through the window with a hatchet. Momma screamed.

I turned and followed Jeanine through the open window.

As we escaped through the woods machines grew louder and louder.

I waited for the lightning to come down, for the blood to flow through the rivers. For God to come out of his four sided box and tap tap tap over what was left.

Part Three

Chapter One

The night Jeanine and I left Edgewater our former classmate Lucy Pele set herself on fire while waiting for the hell shuttles to take her home. This was the same Lucy Pele who used to secretly chew on the ends of her wrists and stick dandelion heads in the open wounds. The girl who once opened her coat in the auditorium and half a dozen white pigeons flew up into the rafters. Now she stood with the rest of the prisoners as they pushed against the guards to ask passersby for last cigarettes.

Instead of giving her a cigarette, a passing priest pushed a quart of gasoline into Lucy’s arms. Lucy spilled the gasoline so that it pooled into her sunken eye sockets, the crumpled half of her beaten head, her stomach and navel. The priest held out a lit match. Lucy grasped it in her fists and she went up into flames. Jeanine and I saw Lucy set herself on fire.

We sat on the other side of the street at the bus stop with our duffel bags, waiting for the first morning bus out of Edgewater.

"Burn pretty, baby," one of the guards told Lucy as she became a living column of smoke, "you know what you're good for."

"I'm having second thoughts about this," I said to Jeanine after the burning Lucy Pele collapsed in on herself. The shuttles approached and the guards tossed her smoking bones in the gutter before herding the remaining the prisoners inside.