The Crooked God Machine (8 page)

***

"She doesn't remember me," Jeanine told me as we walked together down the road from my house.

"What?"

"Theresa. Your sister. When I was a little girl she gave me a flower from her garden, this purple hibiscus, and she showed me the place where the swans lived. Now she's so angry and sad she's trapped in that house, like a bug that keeps hitting the glass over and over and over again."

I said nothing.

"What happened to your mom?" Jeanine asked.

"She's always been like that," I said.

"She's lucky, in a way," Jeanine told me, "your sister, I mean. If she had stayed that little girl in her garden, the shuttles would take her. The shuttles always take people like that. The kind of people who tend gardens and give flowers to strangers. She's safe this way. She'll live in that house until the end of the world."

"Jeanine,” I said quietly.

“What is it?”

“What am I going to do when you're gone?" I asked.

“You’ll think of something,” she said.

I thought of Momma’s question. “When are you two kids going to get married?” I thought of Jeanine and I sitting in the corner of the kitchen eating dinner together. Jeanine dressed in Momma’s housewife clothes, feeding me whiskey and cutting off the tips of my cigars. Jeanine straddling the kitchen sink. Jeanine pulling her lion’s hair down over her eyes, naked, falling down with me into a bed full of raw steak.

"How do you manage to stay alive?" I asked, "everyone we've ever known has died or gone crazy."

She pulled the hair back from my eyes and pressed our hips together. She pressed my fingers into her stomach, that empty space where my hands never touched bottom. I kissed the curve of her jaw.

"I don't know," she said, "we're all afraid of dark spaces, you know, but every time I see a dark space, like a shadow, or an empty corner, or a black hole - I just think there's a man of smoke sitting in that dark space, filling it up. And his legs are open and his arms are open, real wide like, ready to take me in. And he says, 'I'm here for you, Jeanine, I'm waiting for you in every space you're afraid of.' And that's how I can go into the woods at night and why I don't get stuck to the floor waiting for my prophet brother to come home. Because of the man of smoke. "

"That kind of sounds like God," I said.

"It's nothing like God," Jeanine responded, "it's just another way to fill the empty spaces God left behind."

Jeanine told me goodnight and I headed back the way we came through the woods.

A monster chased me the entire way back home. It chased me through the woods felling trees as it went, stomping so hard I thought it might knock stars out of the sky. I ran up to the porch and yanked open the front door and slammed it shut behind me. I slid down to the floor and the monster whispered my name as it insinuated its thin, brown fingers through the bottom of the door.

Sissy, sitting on the couch and watching television, said nothing as I slid down to the floor and the monster whispered my name. It insinuated its thin, brown fingers through the bottom of the door. I tried to push my fists into my mouth.

It whispered my name once more before slinking off in the night to wait. It never tried too hard to catch me. It had all the time in the world to wait for when I would be ready to be caught.

Chapter Nine

During high school graduation my class sat in the auditorium in blue rows and the principal walked onto the stage for his speech like he was being pursued by a merciless ghost. When he got to the podium and looked out toward the audience the soft, blue veins of his face squirmed. He spoke into the microphone at a tense whisper.

“This is a very important day for you all,” he said, “you’re about to go into the world and try to make something of yourselves. Well, all I can say about that is don’t try too hard. Be good, and don’t draw any attention to yourselves. The most successful kind of person is a quiet and obedient person. Before you pursue your dreams, you should ask God what he wants instead.”

The principal looked behind him. He turned back to the audience with his eyebrows wide and his mouth sloped to one side, and he coughed into the microphone like there was gravel in his lungs.

“Good luck, kids,” he said, after he’d regained his composure, “without God’s protection, it’s a vast and cold universe out there. And before I let you go, we have a special guest speaker from the capitol. One of the saints employed at the Bureau of Salvation. Give him a good welcome.”

I sat between Jeanine and Ezekiel. Jeanine gripped my knuckles. Ezekiel leaned over to the girl in the other seat and whispered, “God tells me death is near.” He kissed her all over her face and neck. The heated center of the sphere on the back of his head pulsed.

The saint walked onto the stage wearing a white robe stained with his stigmata. When he approached the pulpit I saw he carried a flamethrower and a can of gasoline.

“And remember kids,” the principal, “God believes in you.”

The prophet reached the podium, took the microphone from the principal, and smiled down at us to reveal his red stained teeth. The principal skittered off the stage, coughing. The prophet raised the flamethrower up over his head, and blood dripped from his stigmata wrist and onto the floor.

“Get this straight, kids,” the prophet said, “if you think you're anything but dirt, then you're in for a surprise. Ignore everything your principal said. It doesn't matter what you do now, you're still going to die. You're all sinners and scum of the earth. You've spent the last eighteen years of your life fucking, cussing, and spiting the Lord. Well, kids, when the end comes you're going to be wishing your mother aborted you with a coat hanger and ended your miserable existence before it ever began.”

He opened the can of gasoline and splashed it across the first row of students. Before they could move he whipped the flamethrower toward them and squeezed the trigger. A shot of fire erupted from the muzzle, setting the entire row of students up in flames.

Ezekiel, Jeanine and I stood up. Ezekiel and Jeanine ran down the aisle toward the doors. I went to follow after them, but the saint splashed gasoline down the aisle behind them and a tide of fire rolled past, blocking my exit. Fellow students caught in the rows in front burned fast, soon nothing but char smeared against the seats. I turned around with the heat bubbling on my skin, eyebrows and mouth seared, and ran the opposite way.

“Don’t worry, kids,” the saint called out from the stage, “it might hurt right now but soon you’ll realize this is the best thing for you!”

I turned my head back just for a moment to see him point the flamethrower up to the ceiling. A burst of flame hit one of the support beams above, which then cracked and fell, crushing a row of students below.

“Jeanine!” I called out, my voice weak from the lack of oxygen.

“The best life lived is the one not lived at all, you good for nothing animals!” the priest said, “Better to die now and get it over with!”

I ran to the back of the auditorium toward the door, tripping over my classmates writhing on the ground. I touched the door to attempt to pry it open, but it was so hot it seared my hand. I cried out and stumbled backwards. Another lick of flame shot above my head, catching my hair on fire. I put it out with my burned hands.

I ran across another aisle toward the window as I choked, unable to get enough air. I climbed up onto the windowsill, shoved my hands into the folds of my t-shirt and kicked the glass with my knee. Glass shattered all over me. I rolled out the window and landed hard on my back outside in the courtyard. The auditorium behind me groaned and shifted on its steel frame.

I heaved myself to my feet. I ran out to the street and the auditorium collapsed underneath its own weight with a demon crack. The heat of the fire struck my back and the aluminum and ash reared its head over me in a cloud. My classmates still trapped inside screamed, and then just as quickly, the screaming died.

I discarded my cap and gown in a trashcan by the street and wandered around looking to see if anyone else came out of the building alive. I found the arsonist saint torching all the trees.

“Did God tell you to do this?” I asked him, pressing my palms against my eyes to keep them from melting in the heat.

“Fuck you, kid,” the saint said, and disappeared behind the burning building brandishing his flamethrower over his head.

I continued searching for survivors outside of the building. Smoke cloyed in my throat. The heat and lack of oxygen made me dizzy. I called out for Jeanine but my voice sounded like a broken legged horse. I rounded the ruins of the school and found Ezekiel smoking a cigarette underneath a burning tree.

“Congratulations,” he said when he saw me, “you’re still alive. Thank God for that, because you won’t be alive for much longer.”

“Have you seen Jeanine?” I asked.

“Who’s Jeanine?” he asked.

The burnt tree limbs stretched overhead like Ezekiel’s halo. He tossed his cigarette into the burning tree behind him, spraying ash downwards.

“Nice graduation, right?” he said, and walked off.

I circled the collapsed building again, but I couldn’t fine Jeanine or any of Ezekiel’s girls. As I walked, calling out for Jeanine in my horse voice, the heat of the auditorium made my vision white and my feet stick to the sidewalk. I started to think that the smoke that roiled off the building were the angry feet of God. Black and defeating and crushing the ground underneath it couldn’t scream anymore.

I went home.

I stumbled into the living room with ash and oil scraping my face and smoking off my clothes. Momma and Sissy were sitting on the couch watching television. I dragged myself toward them, heels sunk low into the carpet.

“The school auditorium burned down.” I said.

“Get out of the way,” Sissy said, “you’re blocking the television.”

Without another word I crawled up the stairs and got into bed. I pulled the bed covers over my head with the smoke emanating off of me in waves.

***

That night Jeanine climbed through my bedroom window and crept into my bed. She smelled of smoke and burnt meat. She rubbed at her blackened face with the backs of her hands.

“I thought you died,” I said.

“Yeah?” she asked, and pulled her dress over her head.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she whispered. She pressed her dress against my mouth and slipped her hand into my pants. Her eyes were lazy, cloudy spots stuck to the ceiling. Her knees pooled and stuck to my sheets. She pulled off my pants. Wherever she touched me I burned.

“Why can't you get it up?” she asked me.

“I thought you died,” I repeated.

“I'm not dead,” she said, “get it up.”

“Are you all right, Jeanine?” I asked.

She slumped down into the bed, her hair falling over her face in one smooth, black sheet. She continued to touch my penis with her scorched fingers. She slipped the fingers of her other hand inside my mouth and her fingers tasted of meat.

“What's wrong?” I asked, spitting out her fingers. I pressed her close to me, touching our chins and noses together. My penis remained limp in her grasp until she released me.

“I thought some things were untouchable, unable to be harmed, even after all this time. But nothing is. Not here. Not in this world.”

“Are you talking about the fire?” I asked, “at Graduation?”

She pulled away from me. She found her dress where she dropped it onto the floor and pulled it back over her head. She smoothed out her lion's hair, trailing streaks of meat, and looked out toward the window. The black moon waited over the trees in the blacker sky, the distant stars, glowing weak, the only light left on the entire planet.

“Do you love me, Charles?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I love you.”

“Then why couldn't you get it up?”

“Jeanine,” I said, rising from the bed. I wanted her to look at me, look straight through me, like she did that time when she took me into her meat freezer – when she printed her fingernails into the hollow of my throat and suffocated me between her butterfly wings.

When she whispered, “if there were stars here they would be your eyes.”

But instead the stars outside the window caught her face in their claws and the sky threatened to pull her under. She shivered as she walked toward the window. I noticed for the first time she was barefooted, and the soles of her feet were blackened and scorched raw.

“Jeanine?”

“The swans are dead,” she said, “and I'm leaving.”

I tried to catch her before she left, but before I could reach her she crawled through the window and leaped down into the darkness below. She sprinted off into the woods, and then she was gone.

I chased after her. I ran down the stairs past Momma and Sissy on the couch and out the door and into the waiting arms of the swamp. I ran through the trees and the mud opened its mouths to suck me down.

“Jeanine!” I called out, but only the wolves and the plague machines answered in response.

I ran to her meat freezer and found the door unlocked. The butterfly wings and the suits of skin were gone. Nothing remained except the industrial whir of the freezer fans and the congealing puddles of blood stuck to the floor where the meat costumes used to hang and drip above.

So I ran to Jeanine's home and knocked on the door. I heard Jeanine’s mother drag herself in her wheelchair across the house, to the foyer, and then to the door.

“Who is it?” she asked behind the door.

“It’s Charles,” I said, “do you remember me?”

“Which one are you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “Is Jeanine there?”

“Jeanine’s not home,” she said through the bottom slit of the door, “she won’t be coming back. Just like her brother. He’s a prophet, you know. At the capitol.”

“Yes,” I said, “I know.”

“If you find her ask her if she knows how her brother's doing,” she said.

“And Jeanine?” I asked.

“That girl can go to hell.”

“Okay,” I said, “okay,”

“I think you better leave,” she said.