The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant (31 page)

“What the fuck was that supposed to be?” said Christ, catching his breath as he passed us each a cigarette.

“Your old man is out of his mind,” said the Devil. “It's all getting just a little too strange.”

“Tell me about it,” said Christ. “Remember, I warned you back when they first walked on the moon.”

“This is some really evil shit, though,” said the Devil.

“The whole ball of wax is falling apart,” said Christ.

“I actually had a break-out in the ninth bole of Hell last week,” said the Devil. “A big bastard—he smashed right through the ice. Killed one demon with his bare hands and broke another one's back.”

“Did you get him?” I asked.

“One of my people said she saw him in Chicago.”

“Purgatory is spreading like the plague,” said Christ.

The Devil leaned up close behind me and put his claw hand on my shoulder. I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. “His old man is reading Nietzsche,” he whispered, his tongue grazing my earlobe.

“What's he saying?” Christ asked me.

“Which way am I supposed to turn to get out of this development?” I asked.

Just then there was an abrupt bump on the top of the car. It startled me and I swerved, almost hitting a garbage can.

“You gotta check this out,” said the Devil. “Saint Lumley of the Bad Trips is flying over us.”

“Punch the gas,” yelled Christ, and I floored it. I drove like a maniac, screeching around corners as the pastel ranches flew by.

“We're starting to lose her,” the Devil called out.

“What are you carrying?” Christ asked.

“I've got a full minute of fire,” said the Devil. “What have you got?”

“I've got the Machine of Eden,” said Christ.

“Uhh, not
The
fucking Machine of Eden,” said the Devil, and slammed the back of my seat.

“What do you mean?” said Christ.

“When was the last time that thing worked?”

“It works,” said Christ.

“Pull off and go through the gate up on your right,” said the Devil. “We've got to take her out or she'll dog us for eternity.”

“I don't like this at all,” said Christ.

After passing the gate, I drove on a winding gravel road that led to the local landfill. There were endless moonlit hills of junk and garbage. I parked the car and we got out.

“We've got to get to the top of that hill before she gets here,” said Christ, pointing to a huge mound of garbage.

I scrabbled up the hill, clutching at old car seats and stepping on dead appliances. Startled rats scurried through the debris. When I reached the top I was sweating and panting. Christ beat me, but I had to reach back down and help the Devil up the last few steps.

“It's the hooves,” he said, “they're worse than high heels.”

“There's some cool old stuff here,” said Christ.

“I saw a whole carton of
National Geographics
I want to snag on the way out,” said the Devil.

Off in the distance, I saw the shadow of something passing in front of the stars. It was too big to be a bird. “Here she comes,” I yelled and pointed. They both spun around to look. “What do I do?” I asked.

“Stay behind us,” said Christ. “If she gets you, it's going to hurt.”

The next thing I knew, Mrs. Lumley had landed and we three were backed against the edge of the hill with a steep drop behind us. Her blue skin shone in the moonlight like armor, but there were tufts of hair growing from it. She had this amazing aqua body and an eight-foot wingspan, but with the exception of the gills and fangs, she still had the face of a sixty-five-year-old woman. She moved slowly toward us, burping out words that made no sense.

When she came within a few feet of us, Christ said, “Smoke 'em if you got 'em,” and the Devil stepped forward. Tentacles began to grow from her body toward him. One managed to wrap itself around his left horn when he opened his mouth to assault her with a minute of fire. The flames discharged like a blowtorch and stopped her cold. When she was completely engulfed in the blaze, the tentacles retracted, but she would not melt.

As soon as the evil one finished, coughing out great clouds of gray smoke, Mrs. Lumley opened her eyes and the tentacles began again to grow from her sides. I looked over and saw that Christ was holding something in his right hand. It appeared to be a remote control, and he was furiously pushing its buttons.

The Devil had jumped back beside me, his hand clutching my arm. He had real fear in his serpent eyes, yet he could not help but laugh at Christ messing around with the Machine of Eden.

“What's with the cosmic garage door opener?” he shouted.

“It works,” said Christ, as he continued to nervously press buttons. Then I felt one of the tentacles wrap itself around my ankle. Mrs. Lumley opened her mouth and crowed like a rooster. Another of the blue snake appendages entwined itself around the Devil's midsection. We both screamed as she pulled us toward her.

“Three,” Christ yelled, and a beam of light shot out of the end of the Machine. I then heard the sound of celestial voices singing in unison. Mrs. Lumley took the blast full in the chest and began instantly to shrivel. Before my eyes, like the special effects in a crappy science fiction movie, she turned into a tree. Leaves sprouted, pink blossoms grew, and as the singing faded, pure white fruit appeared on the lower branches.

“Not fun,” said the Devil.

“I thought she was going to suck your face off,” said Christ.

“What exactly was she,” I asked, “an alien?”

Christ shook his head. “Nah,” he said, “just a fucked-up old woman.”

“Is she still a saint?” I asked.

“No, she's a tree,” he said.

“You and your saints,” said the Devil and plucked a piece of fruit. “Take one of these,” he said to me. “It's called the
Still Point of the Turning World
. Only eat it when you need it.”

I picked one of the white pears off the tree and put it in my pocket before we started down the junk hill. The Devil found the box of magazines and Christ came up with a lamp made out of seashells. We piled into the car and I started it up.

I heard Christ say, “Holy shit, it's 8:00!”

The next thing I knew I was on my usual road back in Jersey. The car was empty but for me, and I was just leaving New Egypt.

I hope my use of the Judeo-Christian mythology in this remix of a contemporary legend doesn't upset anyone. It shouldn't since, according to the dogma, everyone is supposed to have their own relationship with Christ. Ours is a casual friendship. We like to party, and if horn-head is along for the ride, so much the better. Sometimes the Buddha joins us, but he insists on riding shotgun and too often lips the rope. In honor of Christ's teachings, we try not to be exclusive, for blessed are those who will suffer in his name.

New Egypt, New Jersey, is a town I pass through every night on the way home from work. I've never stopped there except in my dreams. It boasts a perpetual flea market and a convenience store where you can buy
The Weekly World Star—
a perfect location for the second, or even third, coming.

This story was originally published in the magazine
Aberrations.

Floating In Lindrethool

1

“Your profession, gentlemen, has a long and distinguished lineage,” was what the section boss had said when he stopped the bus, opened the door, and let them all out on the east side of Lindrethool. Eight men in black raincoats, white shirts and ties, and the company issued, indicative, derbies. They fanned out across the grim industrial cityscape, the soot falling like black snow around them. Each carried a valise in one hand and a large case with a handle in the other. Each walked away, mumbling his respective spiel, all of which included at some point the words, “for a limited time only.” In three weeks, the bus would be waiting at the west end to collect them.

Slackwell sat now, tieless, hatless, pantsless, at a small scarred table in his hotel room, sipping straight bourbon from a smudged tumbler. “A distinguished lineage,” he said aloud to the window-pane that beyond his reflection gave a view of the night and the myriad lights of Lindrethool. Every light stood in his mind for a potential customer. All he needed was one to part with forty thousand dollars in easy monthly payments spread over ten years and he would have fulfilled his minimal quota for the year. On that first day, he had covered three apartment buildings, lugging his case from floor to floor. “Not even a smell,” as his colleague Merk might say.

He couldn't imagine the door-to-door salesmen of the previous century doing what he did, having nothing better to offer than brushes, or vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, bibles. At least he had a real wonder in his case, a value that could change the lives of his customers. That's exactly what he told them while cajoling, reasoning, even threatening if necessary. While in training, he had practiced again and again like a martial artist the techniques of wedging a foot between the doorjamb and door, following through with the shoulder, and then achieving a look of homicide thinly veiled by a determination to please. The studies had shown that the novelty of face-to-face sales was what the consumer wanted. In the waning economy that had taken a nosedive ten years into the new century, people did not want to shop on-line or by phone for big-ticket items anymore. Or at least that was what they had told him during his training.

He hadn't had a sale in two months, and the section boss had told him that the company was thinking of letting him go. “You're too tired-looking, Slackwell,” the boss had said. “Your complexion is as gray as your hair, and your spiel, though rabid enough, has all the allure of a drooping erection. Wrinkles are no comfort to our customers, it is power they want. You are selling status. And, please, your after shave is rancid.”

Slackwell cringed into his bourbon, thinking about how he had pleaded, whined actually, to be allowed one more chance. The boss took pity on him, and not only allowed him another shot at it, but also issued him the latest model to hawk in Lindrethool. “If you can't sell that,” the boss had said, “you can sell yourself to the devil.”

Slackwell lit a cigarette. With the butt jutting from the corner of his mouth, he stood and unlatched the case that sat next to the bottle of bourbon. The black metal carrier bulged at the sides as if it housed an oversized bowling ball. The front panel opened on hinges, and he reached in and brought forth a large glass globe with a circular metal base. The base had dials and buttons on it, two jacks, a small speaker, and, attached in the back, a wound-up thin electrical cord. Thinktank, the name of the company, was written across the metal in red letters followed by the model number 256–B. The globe above was filled with clear liquid and suspended at its center was a human brain.

The bourbon, having gotten the better of him, made him weave a little as he stepped back to view the illustrious product. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, and with the two fingers it was wedged between pointed at the globe. “Now that's a floater,” he said with a cloud of smoke. A floater was what the sales force of Think-tank called the organic center of their merchandise.

“Organic computing, the wave of the future,” Slackwell slurred, practicing his spiel. “Consider this—a human mind, unfettered by physical concerns, using not the customary piddling ten percent used by your Joe Blow from Kokomo, not even fifty or seventy or eighty percent, but a full 95.7 percent of its total cogitative potential. The limitations of microchips have long since been reached. The computing power of a human brain is vast. This baby can run your household appliances from your apartment's master control box, your lights, your phone. It can easily increase the power of your home computer 300 times, provide access to television from around the globe, all at a fraction of your present cost. Set it to pay your bills once and it will do so, on time, every month—it learns what you like, what you want, what you need. And the speed with which it runs will make your parallel processing seem like …”

Slackwell couldn't remember what bit of hyperbole came next. All he could think of was the boss's “… a drooping erection.” He took a drag on his cigarette and sat down to stare at the gray, spongy fist of convolutions. There was something both awe inspiring and lurid about the fact that an individual's consciousness was trapped inside that insanely winding maze of matter, an island lolling in a crystal bubble. Once, a few weeks earlier, Slackwell's thoughts took a dangerous detour, and he briefly glimpsed the analogy to his own existence—trapped, trapped, and trapped again.

This new model, though, this 256–B, had a feature that set it above all the others: a button on the base that when pushed would rouse the brain into consciousness. The customer could talk to it and the apparatus would break the spoken language down into an electrical impulse, send it to the floater by way of a remote transmitter in the base, and the brain would hear in thoughts. Then its response, sent out by the brain's language centers as its own electrical impulse of thought, would be picked up by another device which would translate it into spoken language. The voice that came from the speakers wasn't a stiff, robotic barking of words. The Thinktank technicians had patented a new development that allowed the device to emulate the tonality, resonance, inflection, and even accent of the original donor's voice.

The corporation had cut deals with certain indigent families, and there were a lot of them these days, to allow their loved ones' brains to be extracted before actual clinical death set in. The legalization of certain types of euthanasia had opened the door to more liberal organ donation practices. Hence, the individual personality of the brain was kept intact. These deals involved cash in rewarding quantities and the promise that the dying family member would live on, remaining a useful member of society and a catalyst for change in the new economy that was ever on the verge of dawning. Slackwell wondered which, the cash or the promise, was the more comforting to the bereaved.