The Gods of Color

by Gunnar Sinclaire

  “Hey, doc,” Rick laughed despite his nausea, “has anyone who’s taken this fuckin’ thing been pronounced sane?”

  “Of course, Patient Wilkerson.” The surgeon general chided. “My staff and I have tested its rigor and accuracy by undergoing the test ourselves. All but a few of us registered deep in the climes of sanity. I, personally, set the apogee.”

  Mangallah saw the goggled man roll his head to him and raise his lip.

  “All right, clear your mind,” said the doctor. “We’re starting in five seconds.” Then he covered Rick’s ears with an antiquated, ear-muff style headset.

  On cue, an image crystallized before the young man. It was of a modestly sized, but happily decorated single story house on a street whereon were located dozens of similarly floorplanned dwellings. His field of vision was pulling him toward the house, as if he were levitating. He looked to his left, then his right, and noticed that the virtual environment sustained—he was in a true-to-life parallel world. But he discovered that he was not an autonomous presence when he attempted to stop his approach to the house. He could not cease the movement; it was as if he were restricted to a car in a fun house.

  The sun was shining, and birds warbled in his headset. The virtual environment was so compelling that Rick yearned to stay with the birds and listen to their music. Before passing through the open front door he eyed a sweet robin perched on a nearby branch. It studied him intently, little breast ruffled and posturing.

  “I love suburbia,” Rick mumbled drowsily as the realism of the movement reawakened the nausea that had been held at bay by wonder. He spectered through the halls, into a living room, then into the kitchen. A white family of four was seated there at a dinner table replete with nicely prepared meat, potatoes, and vegetables. In sync, they all clasped hands and said a prayer before the meal. While their heads were slightly bowed, Rick studied them closer. The father looked to be in his early forties, as did the mother. The girl was probably in her mid teens, and the boy seemed to have lived in this virtual world for about a decade.

  Mangallah eyed a rising green line on a monitor, and frowned. He punched a button, and the movie materialized in front of the doctor so that he might better track his patient’s responses. As the meat was apportioned, and the mashed potatoes were passed around the table with smiles and light banter, Mangallah’s eyes winced, and he looked away. Rick was smiling, and so far loving this escape from the mad house. He wished he never had to take the glasses off.

  “Honey, this meal is delicious,” the father complimented.

  Mangallah soundlessly lip-synced the video with a bitter look.

  “Thanks, hon. I’m glad you like it.”

  “It’s so nice we get to spend time together like this—one big happy family,” the mother said. “Tina, Bryan, how is it?”

  “Ah, it’s great Mom,” Bryan said.

  “Yeah, it’s awesome,” his sister agreed.

  “How was your day at the office, Mom?” the son asked. “How did that presentation go?

  “Great—everyone loved it. Hopefully I’ll get another promotion within the year.”

  “You, Dad?” Tina inquired.

  “Went well, had a conference call—nothing too extraordinary.”

  They continued to eat for several moments, munching away heartily.

  “Hey guys, that new guy in class wants to take me for ice cream tonight after dinner, is that okay?” Tina probed.

  “Sure, just be back before ten—it’s a school night.”

  “And I wanna go play video games with Donny and Brett,” said Bryan.

  “All right, just finish your supper first.”

  Suddenly, Rick’s vision hazed. The family bent and twisted, and the phrase, “Time Slip—35 minutes” appeared. Gradually, the message faded, and Rick found himself in the living room. Tina and her parents were seated on a couch, and the girl was looking expectantly toward the front door. Rick reached his fingers out toward the immateriality—this was the most relaxing, pleasant time he had experienced in months.

  “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting this young man.” The father grinned.

  “Oh, he’s handsome—he walked Tina to our car when I picked her up the other day from school.” The mother nodded.

  The doorbell rang. Tina walked briskly to the door and opened it with the delight a young girl has while opening a Christmas present.

  A tall, jet black teenager walked in with a swagger. His pants were voluminous, and were worn low around his crotch. His lean, ebon upper body was displayed under a green, sleeveless sports jersey with big numbers.

  “Hi, sir, my name’s Cedric.” He extended his hand to Tina’s father, and as he spoke, the grill in his mouth twinkled.

  “Ah, so nice to meet you, Cedric. You can call me Adam.”

  “Oh, it’s so nice to see you again, Cedric!” Tina’s mother’s eyes were wide, and her hands were clasped. “You remember me, right? My name’s Cynthia. Can I get you anything—a slice of apple pie, a glass of milk?”

  “No, I’m fine—we gotta be goin.” He nodded at Tina, and she stepped out the still open front door.

  “Well, bye young man. It was certainly a pleasure to meet you—hope to see you around here again soon! Have fun, Tina!” called Adam after the teens. The door shut, and both parents were all smiles.

  “I’m so proud of our daughter,” the mother said. “That boy must be sought after by all the white girls at the school—but our Tina is the one who gets to spend the evening with him.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, honey. I’m so glad she’s bringing some diversity into our provincial lives.”

  “Diversity . . .” She said the word with reverence and sentimentality, as if she were recalling the name of her first lover. “Wow, maybe this summer we could send them both to Africa. What a great cultural experience that would be for Tina!”

  “That’s a wonderful idea!” exclaimed the father. “I think I’ll share it with the Valuing Diversity committee at the office—promotion here I come! Well, what should we do tonight, baby—it’s just you and me.”

  “Uh . . . I kind of promised Laura and Jackie I’d go grab a drink with them. Do you mind?”

  “Oh, of course not. Maybe I can convince Bryan to skip out on his friends so we can spend some quality father-son time together tonight.”

  “That would be great, sweetie,” she replied, and the time slip box appeared again, this time registering the passage of one hour.

  Rick found himself in a sullen, dank parking lot. The glare of neon played on sprawling puddles of rainwater, disturbed only by the tires of Cynthia’s car. She got out, her face uplifted with anticipation, and marched toward a miserable building lit by bending neon that read “Frankfurt Bar.”

  As she entered, and removed her jacket, her body was scrutinized by a hundred eyes that lingered in the dark recesses. For a moment she scanned the denizens, her doe’s eyes unfrightened. Then, with a bright white smile, she advanced toward a table in the corner.

  A half score men were seated there in a tense game of poker. The collective smoke billowing from their cigarettes and cigars rivaled the effluvia from an industrial chimney. Cynthia withdrew a long, slender cigarette from her purse and enflamed the tip before striding to the table.

  “Hey there, Tung.” She ran her finger along the scarred neck of an Asian engrossed in play. “I’m free tonight. Are you gonna sit around with your cards or do you want some real action?”

  “No family night tonight?” He glared at her, then exhaled a rush of smoke into her face.

  “That was last night.” She coughed. “I . . . I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately . . . how you satisfy me.”

  She said it louder than she had planned, because the other men at the table laughed.

  His eyes were pendulous over his cards, then drifted to her low-cut blouse.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” he said finally, and laughed.

  Cynthia’s eyes blazed, and she inhaled her ci
garette until the end smoldered.

  “But I need you now,” she protested, returning the courtesy of filling his face with toxic vapor. Then she leaned over and nibbled his ear.

  “Too bad for you.” He snarled, and jerked away. “Stupid white slut—I will see you at work tomorrow—maybe if you are good I will give you some meat on your lunch break.”

  The men laughed hardily, and Rick looked on with disgust as Cynthia scraped her thumb against the table’s rough corner. It was as if she were trying to pick up a splinter. Her mind was racing.

  “You remember Tina?” she asked desperately. “My sixteen year-old daughter?”

  “Ripe.” His response was envenomed and monosyllabic.

  “Well, I’ll see that you have her. Pleasure me tonight, and you can have Tina this weekend.”

  “You sure you can convince her?” He eyed her skeptically.

  “Of course I can—I’m her fucking mother!” she stated emphatically, then seized a longneck off the table, took a swig, and slammed it down.

  The laughter was its loudest yet. Tung’s companions goaded him on with pumping fists and obscene gestures.

  “Deal!” He held out his hand, and she shook it with a firm grip.

  The scene instantly hazed, and when it clarified again, Rick found himself standing near Adam in the living room. He was browsing news on the internet, the screen projecting into the center of the room. Bryan stepped surreally through the virtual newspaper, and stood in front of his father.

  “You’re not going out with Mom tonight?” he asked with a smile.

  “Naw, she’s out with her girlfriends. I thought maybe you and I could share some special time together.”

  “I’d like that—I’d rather spend time with you than my friends anyway.”

  “Great, what would you like to do? Wanna break out the football and play catch in the front yard?”

  “Uhm, maybe.” Bryan pondered. “Hey, why don’t we get out the video camera and film ourselves naked like we used to do when Mom wasn’t home. Remember, like when I was little?”

  Adam’s face was ashen. “I . . . I thought I told you never to mention those times—ever.”

  “But I know you want to act like that again, Dad.” Bryan persisted. “I can tell by the way you watch me—like the other day when I got out of the shower and you were standing there staring at my . . .”

  “That’s enough, son!” demanded Adam.

  “But Dad, it’s okay.” Bryan stepped nearer. “Because I want you to touch me again—I kind of like it.”

  “You do?” asked the father, dumbfounded.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, I’ll go get the camera. Then we can film in your bedroom.” Adam winked at his son.

  Suddenly, Rick gagged, rolled to a side, and vomited liberally upon the doctor’s shoes and pants. The captive shook his head violently until the goggles were dislodged and hanging loose around his neck. Then, his eyes bulged as a fresh torrent of puke shot from his mouth and on to Mangallah’s bloody coat.

  “You fucking bastard. You want to twist and destroy everything,” croaked Rick, eyes bloodshot and glaring. “I’ll kill you . . . oh God, if I only had my hands free I’d kill you. I’d kill you. I’d kill you,” he repeated.

  The doctor rose imposingly, and snapped off his jacket with a growl. Even with the enlarged sleeve on his malformed side, it still caught on his hand. Grunting, he tore it free.

  “I inject this hand daily with Teratol-7, you psychotic blasphemer.” He towered over Rick, the hand splayed wide like a tarantula. “How I would love to squeeze your diseased brain to mush with it.”

  “Do it!” Rick challenged. “Fucking do it! I hate this place—I hate the world that you created—I hate this fucking world. Kill me! Kill me!”

  “We must review your results, first.” The doctor grinned. “You didn’t finish the test, but I believe it’s safe to assume your score would have continued to worsen.”

  Rick noticed that a linear mountain graph had supplanted the video feed several feet in front of him. He saw that the radiant green line arched initially, then declined precipitously. At the end, the line was plunging vertically.

  “In laymen’s terms the green line is your collective response to the visual-audio stimuli. Where it rises you were happy. Where it drops you were disturbed or repulsed. Your score is negative five-thousand, seven-hundred and sixty-three,” reported Mangallah with a sigh. “You are the most insane individual I’ve ever tested—and you managed to achieve this without even viewing the final segment—my favorite segment, I might add, featuring incestuous sodomy.”

  “That’s because the only people you’ve tested on this thing have been yourselves and a bunch of guilt-ridden white idiots!” said Rick.

  “No, that’s not entirely true. Your black cell-mate scored almost as low as yourself.”

  “Well, good for him—we’re the only sane people in this whole God-damned place. Did he watch the same video?”

  “Nearly—but a black family was featured instead of a white family, and Tina’s date was white in his film. Same scenarios, though.” Mangallah beamed a laser pen onto the screen. A second, gray line appeared near the green one. But where the green line crested early then plunged, the gray line plunged then crested. “As even your afflicted intellect will grasp, your insanity is the reflection of my sanity—nearly to the decimal.”

  “You’re the gray line? Well look how fucked up you are,” Rick dug.

  “You exhibited relatively mild displeasure upon seeing Tina’s date, whereas I registered mild pleasure. Cynthia’s trip to the bar caused you substantial revulsion, whereas that segment aroused strong pleasure in me. Finally, and most alarmingly, your insanity spiked during the segment leading to incest and pederasty, whereas that is where my positive feedback reached its acme. You see, for sane individuals, this film has a happy, erotic ending.

  “Patient Wilkerson, your mind is imprisoned in the strictures and conventions of a hateful, antiquated morality. You must free your mind, coax it out of its prison. You must try to remove all of your inhibitions—against everything. For example, there is nothing more beautiful than a man and a little boy sharing a romantic kiss and a night in each other’s arms. You must learn to accept this as a fact.”

  The doctor had drifted close to his patient, and suddenly felt the trickle into his eye of a blob of expectoration commingled with residual vomit. Rick smiled, pleased with his aim.

  “Fuck you,” said the prisoner. His lips were drawn back, and his bloodshot eyes were unblinking. “There’s nothing more repugnant than that. There’s nothing more repugnant for the simple reason that my gut—my deepest most primeval core—tells me so. And it tells me so unequivocally.”

  “But you must accept this as a fact,” insisted the doctor. “To be a proper celebrant of Divine Color, you must remove all inhibitions. You must invert your hierarchy of taboos. Those actions and images that are most vile to you must become the most cherished. Conversely, the indicia of health and wholesomeness that you currently hold dear must be reevaluated under a proper criterion. You must discover that those indicia really are the marks of morbidity and mental disease. For example, the initial segment of the movie bubbled over with three minatory themes—monotheism, family fidelity, and heterosexuality. Are you aware of the latest tracts on psychiatry being circulated in academia? Heterosexuality is deemed not just as an unsavory personal preference—it is now classified as a species of insanity. Moreover, your notions of marital loyalty and racial endogamy are hideous. In fact, the institution of marriage, of family, is a poison that must also be destroyed. So you see, Patient Wilkerson, your test results lead me to conclude that you are highly insane.”

  “Those Muslims are gonna eat your lunch, mother-fucker.” Rick laughed, straining against his bonds. “Ohhhh . . . holy shit, they’re gonna plough their blades right through your sorry ass! They’re gonna kill you all—wipe the slate clean. Nature—life—is gonna start off new. I w
on’t be here—but at least you won’t be either. Fifty years from now this country’s gonna be a new fuckin’ Islamabad—and you better believe it’s gonna be one fucked up place—but it still won’t be the perverted hellhole you intend for this country to become. You and your grays won’t even be a memory. You . . .”

  But the hand had closed over Rick’s head like an octopus from some murky deep. Mangallah’s face was twitching spastically, and his lip was raised.

  “Let them come! The Order of Tiamat will send them to their monotheistic hell!”

  The doctor seethed.

  Rick’s cries reflected off the titanic palm as pressure intensified along his skull.

  “I’m going to squeeze your face until your brain seeps between my fingers. Then I’m going to do the same to your black ally. Then I’m going to liquefy your innards and guzzle them down and use your skin for lamp shades and . . .”

  Mangallah jerked backward, releasing his grip. Rick spat out the chunk of palm he had incised and torn clean with his teeth, then throttled his arms and shoulders defiantly against the confines of his jacket.

  “You . . . you subhuman wretch!” screamed the doctor, face livid. He rushed to the collection of surgical blades while clutching his bleeding hand. “I’m going to carve you into hunks of meat and serve you in stew to the rest of the patients—this one will do!” He lumbered back with a wicked, curved blade.

  Rick scrunched down in his seat and rolled off the side of the chair as the blade rent the headrest in a fulmination of stuffing. He hit the ground hard, unable to brace himself, then rolled for the corner. But Mangallah, in one great stride, overcame him.

  “You have no idea of your iniquity—your perversion!” boomed down the doctor. “Your noxious evil is a bane to my holiness! Well, this is the end, wretch.” He raked the blade at Rick’s throat, but the prisoner scooted up at the last instant. Instead of tearing into his larynx, the blade cut a horizontal trench across his straight jacket. Blood guttered over the ridge of torn cloth.