Travel Bug (49 page)

“He was family,” said Harold.

“Yes he was,” I said.

Sometimes it’s okay not to be okay. The travel bug was gone and without my rival, I felt on some subconscious level I was unprepared for their absence from my life…

“Holy hell, I don’t know where to start,” I said.

“Your life will change in fantastic ways,” Harold said.

“Will we ever see the travel bug again?” I asked him.

“Christ, what next?” I asked him.

“Andrew, I don’t know,” he said, honestly.

No one is poor who has friends.

“I’m right here and I always will be. I ain’t going anywhere,” said my best friend, my great grandfather, Harold Godley. “Easter is almost here,”

“I know, Harold.”

What would a good time be without resurrection? If Jesus didn’t rise from his tomb, we would have pretty piss poor excuse to party!

“I’m saved,” I said.

“Me., too,” Harold said.

“Really, Harold, are you really saved?”

“I think so.”

“We sure know how to have a nice time.”

“One more time for time travel trip, Harold.”

“No.”

“What?”

“Two more times, Andrew.”

“What?”

“One time to see if she’s dead and one final time to see what will happen in the future of our beloved America.”

“Let’s trip, Andrew, we to do what we got to do!”

“First we must know what happens to her, Harold.”

“Agreed…”

********

The unnamed species became her purgatory. We were in the belly of the creature now. She was being regenerated but she would never be allowed out now. She was in for life and possibly eternity. The travel bug moved in and out deep underground. We knew it would never be seen by human eyes again now.

“The beast is offering her grace,” said Harold.

“Someday she can be saved,” I said.

Someday she would return to being Jezebel again. The Rapture woman would become a memory. Like Jonah in the whale, she was swallowed up whole and remained alive.

“Soon we need to see the real future story. We’ll have one last look at her and then see a future without her,” Harold said. We did……

The time to be afraid would soon be over now. I was not afraid of many terrible nightmares per se. The worst may have in fact been over. Unlike the temporarily unfortunate Jonah, the mother of all lies was not coming out of the belly of the prehistoric beast any time soon.

They were pleased, I think. My ancestors who came to me on what had to be a grand beheaded revelation? Could it have just been a hallucination? I think not. Harold and I looked on.

“My God, she’s alive, regenerating but kept catatonic,” said Harold.

“Yes,” I answered him. “She sure doesn’t look like Sleeping Beauty.”

“No, Andrew. More like Maleficent.”

The spell she cast was breaking and now she was complete in her failure to try and murder the whole world. Simple enough it was.

She was regenerating though like an alcoholic liver abstaining from strong drink to ensure its own survival. She was alive but wounded. Her rotting flesh healed but she was a prisoner, Jonah not for three days but perhaps for all eternity. Rotting flesh and rotten apples…

The inside of the bug’s stomach was amazing. We saw all of this by simply eating the bug meat of the unnamed species. We saw this glorious vision, Harold and I. The Rapture woman was devoured but fully alive. Her spell was broken.

She was breathing, she was alive…

Now behind her were many diverse images, like the bright colors of a 1970’s coming attractions spot at any typical American drive in. Hey, pretty fucking psychedelic, hey……!!!

“Wow,” Harold said.

“Wow, indeed,” I answered him.

She was alive and breathing but damned far from well…

“What were all of these stories for, Andrew?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

Hers was right to the point; I’ll say that, Harold.”

“That it was.”

“Revelations perhaps…”

“Perhaps hallucinations, son, maybe…”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Yes, perhaps,” Harold answered. “By the way, something is bothering me, Andrew.”

“What is that, Harold?”

“Please stop calling female genital mutilation castration. There is no such thing. I read what you write you know…”

“I understand. I just wrote what came to mind. I’m just another human with a reptilian brain you know…”

“My God, look at her, Andrew.”

She was asleep, now, our little lady from Rapture.

“I think she’s hibernating,” Harold said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“That’s the only explanation that I can come up with.”

“It won’t kill her but it won’t allow her to ever hurt anyone, I think. The unnamed species is highly evolved and hates suffering, I think.”

“Oh, I agree, son.”

“If the bug can heal my fucking head,” I said.

“It can.”

“It did?”

“It did… son…”

“Wow…”

She was very much like an evil killer who would not be put down but would be forced into a humiliating life sentence. Our ancestors in evolution and the unnamed species were wise beyond their years. They deserved full credit for understanding human nature more than most human beings ever would…

Jonah and the whale…

Jonah and the whale…

Jonah and the whale…

A mountain of skulls…

A mountain of ignorance…

A mountain of intolerance…

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“Are you lost Harold?”

“What?”

“Lost like a stray cat?”

He paused.” I don’t think so, Andrew. Are you?”

“I don’t know old man.”

You see, dear reader, nothing made sense inside of the belly of the beast. When we left her on her own, there was a revelation. Some profound ones are to come before our book ends by the way. This was all nonsensical hallucinations. In fact, I would argue that we felt like we were on some type of psychedelic mushroom trip, ether hallucination or L.S.D. trip.

“No amazing grace for you,” said Harold. “Or will there be?” Harold asked out loud.

The thing inside the great beast snarled at him, like an animal in containment.

“Harold, it was always more like amazing Pharisee rules for her beliefs. Grace, faith and true forgiveness were never in heart at all.”

“No, I should think not, Andrew. There is no room for debate or sanity in fundamentalism of any kind.”

“No,” I answered.

“There is room for hate, suspicion, fear, violence and the total absence of reason,” Harold said, grimly.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Welcome to hell, bitch,” Harold said.

She hissed but then as she regenerated, she knew that she was only being kept alive as a personal guest of the great one, the bug.

“I think, I believe that our dear family member, this prehistoric insect, means to teach you some lessons in history. Perhaps when you have some revelations of your own, you will be rehabilitated and will be allowed to live again,” I said.

She, it hissed.

“That bug’s got its fucking work cut out for it,” Harold said.

“No doubt, old man, no doubt about it…”

“Yes…”

“Andrew?”

“Yes, great grandfather.”

“We’re starting to make sense again, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know, Harold.”

“Look around the belly of the beast, this thing’s stomach, let’s look…”

We did.

“We’re food for thought,” he said.

“That’s not funny,” I said, laughing.

“No.”

It wasn’t.

Okay, it was…

She, it hissed but the stench of rotten apples and rotting flesh diminished. Hell, the absence of reason was beginning to make just a bit more sense here, inside Jonah’s fish… or…… bug…

“The bug is offering her a second chance,” Harold said.

“Yes.”

“Andrew, it’s offering her……”

“Grace,” I said.

“Frankly, yes,” Harold said.

The woman from Rapture was offered grace, real grace for the first time in her life. It didn’t come from hypocrites or crooked preachers now. It came from the great beast who offered real grace. Oh, we how loved our great big old family bug! My God, how I knew this poor woman’s heart had been broken. She was worse than the young victim of a pedophile priest coming to confession as an adult victim, begging for mercy. No one ever gave this woman one inch of love…

“Perhaps he can change her broken heart, Andrew.”

“Yes, Harold, I hope so.”

“So do I, son.”

She was restored.

She was human again.

She was a prisoner until she repented from evil…

“Repenting from the evil desire to want to murder the world will take time,” Harold said.

“Yes, no doubt, Harold.”

“Our friend has that time.”

“Yes.”

“We love him, son.”

“Yes. He’s family.”

“Do you know why?”

“Well, because he’s family,” I said.

“Yes he really is,” he answered.

The Rapture woman, Jezebel, if that was her name, looked at us; she was pretty much completely healed up now…

“I forgive you,” I said.

She looked into my eyes, deeply.

“I agree,” said Harold. He paused. “I really do. This is the right thing.”

“Good.”

“Very good, son…”

“A time for real grace in the life of a woman whose heart has been broken, truly?”

“Yes, it really has. I know we can easily hate her but that’s not right. We need to provide the real example of forgiveness absent from both her faith and the one our family was brought up in.”

“Indeed.”

“We were in this together, Andrew.”

“She needs grace.”

“Grace is in extremely short supply in any church, Harold.”

“Amen,” he said.

The great big bug was incidentally part of the family. He, she or it was running of patience with the likes of us. It was almost time to go for sure. The travel bug had a tummy roar. In other words, its stomach was grumbling…

“Our lives have been blessed,” I said.

“Yes, son,” Harold answered.

“She might learn her lesson here among the phantoms of time but it could take almost forever,” I said.

“The unnamed species has been alive damn near forever,” Harold said.

“I have faith that she will be redeemed by learning the lessons of time and… hopefully… science…”

“Yes,” Harold said.

“Hey, I like redeemed better than rehabilitated, don’t you?”

The travel bug’s stomach growled a fierce ground that sounded like a Tyrannosaurus Rex and felt like a small earthquake.

“This is a fantastic journey,” Harold said.

“She has an awful lot of lessons to learn,” I said.

“It will be painful for her…”

No, dear reader, it would be excruciating. She would become the ultimate lady of sorrows for sure. Such intense suffering, for no one feels more pain than the prideful and perpetually ignorant. The world would no longer be under her spell and neither would she be. The truth of the bug, the truth of our wise and wild ancestors was coming soon to a theater near Rapture Tennessee.

The bug had another growl in its great tummy…

“This creature is beautiful, Harold.”

“Well, yes and no. It is beautiful but it’s also terrifying and grotesque.”

The woman, who was previously a thing and now a prisoner no longer hissed at my great grandfather and I. She was crying, great tears of sadness, too. Whether she was beginning to feel genuine sadness for her crimes or they were crocodile’s tears, I was not sure.

“She might not be sorry now, Andrew but someday she will be.”

“Thank God,” I said.

“She might the actual Jesus the worst man in history for her mind to actually spend time with, Andrew.”

“That’s what happened, sir. You see she crossed the line from harmless madness to genocidal maniac by meeting the man, so to speak.”

“Yes,” he answered.

She no longer hissed.

She cried.

We both looked at her and tried, in some strange way to read her mind to find out what she was experiencing, thinking even…

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“
A mountain of skulls
……”

“So this is what is still on her mind?”

“And in her heart, deep within it,” Harold answered.

“She has a long and bizarre journey ahead of her, Harold.”

“Yes, it might never be over until one of them dies.”

“My money’s on the bug, old man.”

“Yes,” he said, laughing. “So is my money.”

Our little banshee had murdered my parents, attempted to ruin the world by murdering it and wished eternal damnation on all. That was just her nature, I suppose.

Then she made us forgive her, pick up an additional family member (awful big one, too) and make me thankful for the insane membrane of the bug. I mean, after, all I would be headless without it. Dear reader, God I hope we have you at least curious as to where this madness will all end. After all, my dead great grandfather and I are in the belly of a giant prehistoric bug. An unnamed species that provided its flesh which possessed a magical biochemistry that gave one visions of the future or past. Sounds like a true story so far, right? I still consider it easier to believe than Ian Flick or any other Hollywood idiot having any kind of grasp of politics or the real world. Hell, only those who have seen the real horrors can really imagine them. The still of the night’s terrors are seldom seen by the western world, we are naïve to genocide and torture, yet we are so close to experiencing them, always closer than we will ever know.

Home again soon…

“Our little trip is almost at an end, kid.”

“Yes it is,” I answered.

“The great big cosmic joke has almost vanished, Andrew.”

“Thanks be to God.”

“It’s almost over, this nightmare.”