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by Lucian Bane

  “Hoooooly shit,” Bill muttered while Sam and Isadore gasped.

  The fire consumed every bit of the table and smoke hovered in the air.

  “I think we’ll be going now,” Isadore whispered, pulling him up.

  Bill and Sam stared at him with huge eyes now and Ruin headed for the door at feeling it. The power wasn’t done but gaining momentum, reloading.

  “I’ll get you another table, Bill,” Isadore called from just behind him, “I’m so sorry.”

  Ruin was relieved she followed, he didn’t know what would happen if she hadn’t and didn’t want to know. By the time he reached the steps, the power was rearing again. Ruin paused at the dogs and obeyed the urge to judge something. “Sleep,” he said to them. Power shot into the dogs and arrested their hearts. And they slept. Soundly and without corrupted breathing.

  He hurried to the truck, feeling like the storm inside him still wasn’t satisfied, that it was again gearing up. “Let’s hurry up and get out of here before I do something else.”

  “Then stop it!” Isadore cried, climbing in the truck after him.

  “I would if I could or knew how!” Ruin yelled. “Do you think I like not having control?”

  She fumbled her keys with trembling hands as Sam came out of the house and stared at the dogs.

  Isadore started the truck and began to turn it around. “What did you do to the dogs?” she squealed, fighting with the shift until Ruin wanted to torch the wretched truck right from around them.

  “I put them out of their misery.”

  “Oh my God!” she cried, stepping on the gas and tearing out. “You can’t do that! Why did you do that?”

  “I had to, the power made me; it’s out of my control.”

  She regarded him with worried eyes, sending the heat swirling faster.

  “You’re not helping, Isadore,” he barked.

  “Well I can’t help it! Are you going to explode my head accidentally or what?”

  “I don’t think I can hurt you.”

  “You don’t think?” she shrieked. “You strangled me!”

  “It’s different. I think.”

  She barely looked both ways at the end of the driveway and they hit the pavement doing thirty miles per hour. A half a mile later, they came on a hitchhiker.

  “Oh my God,” Isadore whispered. “Isn’t that the Caliber man from the other night?”

  “Keep driving,” Ruin said, wanting to get as far from him as he could. He was the reason for this power. Ever since that night, it was much more awake.

  “Are you sure? He looks like he needs a ride,” she whispered.

  “He’s not human Isadore, he doesn’t need a ride!”

  “Not stopping, not stopping!” She gripped the wheel tight with both hands and focused her eyes on the road, passing the man with his thumb out.

  “Damn bastard,” Ruin growled. “Turn around!”

  “What? Why?!”

  “Because I’m blind!”

  Isadore hit the brakes and threw Ruin into the dash. “Hold on! Backing up now, JD.”

  “Warn me before you slam the brakes, Isadore!”

  “Sorry,” she squealed, “I wasn’t thinking. Too busy processing the hysteria threatening to shut my mind down.”

  Ruin forgot how fragile she was. “Dammit, I’m sorry.”

  “Don't worry. I’ll make you pay later.”

  Right in the middle of the power rage, in total darkness, images of Isadore having an orgasm brought the fire and ice from mind-crushing screams to a deadly, idling growl. Wow. He gasped in awe and the passenger door opened.

  “Scoot over, asshole,” Caliber ordered, sliding in with a shove. “Do that again, and you’ll be crawling to your next assignment. Raise your shirt. I need to get at the keyboard.”

  Keyboard? Is that what it was? Ruin removed it altogether.

  “And that little trick I just had to do alerted every Olethros to our location in this vicinity, thank you very much.” He pressed various locations on his body. “So don’t come crying when you find you and the pretty little lady in a jam.”

  “Jam?”

  “I sure as hell don’t mean jelly, son.”

  “Oh great,” Isadore whispered.

  “Well, that’s it for me,” he said. “Stop the truck. And tell Grim they’re waiting for his report."

  Isadore came to a screeching halt and he opened the door, muttering, “How complicated can it be, ushering judged souls? I’ll never understand that bony being.”

  Ruin’s sight returned just as Caliber shut the door, grinned, and vanished.

  “Ooooookay,” Isadore sang lightly. “He disappeared.”

  Ruin regarded her and pointed forward. “Go. Fast.”

  “Yes sir.” She fought the shift and punched it, making the tires squeal on the pavement. “Going fast.”

  Ruin steadied his breathing the best he could but to no avail.

  “You don’t sound okay.”

  “I’m not! Fuck!”

  “Ohhhh no, you’re cussing,” she whispered. “This is bad.” She reached and rubbed his trembling hand on the seat and Ruin latched on to it.

  “I need to touch you,” he gasped.

  “Okay, touch me, come closer." She slid his hand on her leg. "Is it helping?”

  He moved next to her and the power changed gears again. But they were still eager, only for her now. “Isadore,” he whispered, breathless. “It likes you.”

  “What? What likes me?” she wondered, sounding worried.

  “This power, the fire, the ice—it wants you.”

  “What does that mean, it wants me? How does it want me?”

  “Stop being afraid,” he growled.

  “Well it’s kind of hard goddammit!”

  “It just wants to make you feel good. It doesn’t want to hurt you.”

  She glanced from him to the road, her brows furrowed.

  “I’m sorry. It’s the truth. I can’t make it different.”

  “Feel good?” she whispered. “Like how?”

  “I need to touch you.”

  “Oh my God, touch me? I’m driving. And no! No, it can’t touch me. I’m…I’m a Christian!”

  He drew back a little, the power threatening to get out of hand. “What do you mean you’re a Christian! What does that have to do with anything?”

  She gasped several times. “I can’t just let you touch me like that!”

  “You already have,” he snapped, not understanding.

  “And it was a big mistake!” She nodded with wide eyes, clutching the steering wheel.

  Ruin was boggled. “You liked it. No, you loved it.”

  “That has nothing to do with it. I’m not supposed to do that!”

  “Says who?”

  “God!”

  “God,” he whispered. “God says you can’t feel good?”

  “No! God says I have to marry before I engage in sex! It’s called fornication if I don’t!”

  “Marry.” He was confused, searching the data in his mind he’d obtained from the confounding book, mumbling quickly through the marriages he’d recalled reading. “What do you want from me? To pay your father money? I don’t have any!” But he sure had power quickly careening out of control.

  “Isadore, I need this.”

  More shocked and offended gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m not going to.” She regarded him and the road rapidly. “I’m not going to have sex with a man who isn’t in love with me.”

  “In love?” Ruin growled and shot to the other side of the truck, not trusting himself. What did ‘in love’ mean? Was that different than the nurturing and caring of another human? He didn’t even need her to care for him, just to let him care or take care of her pleasure. Which was healthy, and a good thing, not

  bad. Why did she set it up like a road block at a time he needed her to comply? “I don’t have time for these puzzles, Isadore.”

  “Puzzle? There is nothing puzzling about it, Mister!” she snapped.
>
  Her anger took the edge off and he ran for that angle. “Love… what can you tell me about love?

  You have wisdom about this? Knowledge?”

  She watched the road, and checked the mirrors, her face a mask of angry uncertainty.

  “You don’t, do you,” he accused. “You want what you have no idea of.”

  “I do have an idea!”

  “And so if I give you this love, then you would marry me,” he said.

  “How can you give me something you don’t even know!” she yelled.

  “The same way you apparently would, only without the guesses and hunches sucked from stupid poetic lies and fairytales. And this is what your God requires for you to be able to feel good? A love that you’ve never experienced or know? And out of all the so-called marriages I remember reading about, there was only one that mentioned love. The rest were merely arrangements, some after rapes, so how about we go with the majority and make the arrangement. Would you like it with or without the rape?”

  She slammed the brakes until the truck stopped dead in the middle of the road and stared at him, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. She proceeded to choke on gasps and such, making Ruin want to shake the words from her. “What about Samson and Delilah, huh? They were in love!”

  “And yet it never said they were married.”

  She retained hold of the steering wheel and squinted. “It was understood!”

  Ruin let a dry laugh rip. “Bullshit!"

  She let out gasp number ten. "Well, look at you. Learning your swear words like a big boy while on your fuck quest."

  "I have a great teacher," he said, derisively. "And the only thing understood was he was fornicating as you called it. Perhaps I should do as the Lord’s anointed and find a woman who is married and have her husband killed, and take her for my wife? Or maybe I should find a thousand women and marry just a few of those and keep the rest as my fornicating sex slaves like our noble Mr. King Solomon?”

  “Okay, okay look.” She turned in her seat, facing him. “The Old Testament is a bad example for all of this, and it’s not the testament I live by. We are under the New Covenant. And in there,” she pointed at him, “you are to have one wife. And love her. More than yourself even.” Her head bobbed with nods.

  “Enough to die for her.”

  The power was back to chaos and Ruin pointed forward, heaving through the waves taking him.

  “If you don’t move now, this thing inside me is going to come out and I won’t be able to control it.”

  Panic struck her, and she scrambled to get the truck in gear and shot them forward. “Going, going, don’t do anything crazy.”

  Ruin growled and leaned over. “Why is this force so furious?” Ruin pointed. “Right, turn right.”

  “Maybe it’s judging you!”

  He jerked to her. “Judging me!”

  “Yes, for trying to sleep with me without marrying me!”

  “Left,” he gasped, gripping the dashboard, ready to rip a hole in it.

  She took the turn and he held on. “I mean if you’re being good, the power wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Well there you have it, Isadore! I’m not good.”

  “I didn’t say that, I said you wanting sex before marriage is not good.”

  “And love,” he spat, furious with her and the stupid idea.

  “Look," she said. "I want sex with you too; it's not the wanting it that makes it bad.”

  “Road!” he yelled.

  "Shit!" She jerked the wheel, putting the vehicle back in their lane, narrowly missed an oncoming car. “I mean," she went on, breathless, "we can’t just have sex without taking responsibility.”

  “I just wanted to make you feel good, Isadore, not have sex,” Ruin whispered, shaking now.

  Of course this offended her. “Well tough shit buddy, playing with my privates is the same thing.

  To me!”

  He could only nod, his forehead pressed to the dashboard. The fire and ice was fully locked and loaded on what was coming. Judgment. Execution. Judgment. Execution. The words beat in his blood and screamed in his ears. “There, over there.” He pointed.

  “There where, this is far as I can go, the swamp is ahead of us!”

  He stumbled out of the truck the second she stopped, making his way to the water. What now?

  “I mean I’m not perfect," she said, slamming the truck door. "I let you do that because I wanted it, but I, as in me, need love to do that.”

  “Yes,” he gasped, holding his knees. “Love that you don’t know anything about, I get it.”

  “It’s real!" she said next to him now. "Just because you never experienced something doesn’t mean you don’t know it!”

  “Like God,” he muttered, dizzy.

  She shot her finger at him. “I have experienced God.”

  “Ah yes, faith." He straightened and leveled his burning gaze on her. "Believing in things you feel are true. Because that’s logical validation." He searched around. "I need to get across this water.”

  “Too bad you don’t have faith, you could pray,” she snapped.

  “Oh, but you do," he said, turning to her. "Why don’t you pray for something to get us across?

  Show me this God of yours.”

  “Why should I pray and help you?”

  “Because,” he chuckled feeling drunk. “You had that dream,” he shook his finger at her. “Your God said to help me.” He grabbed his head hissing. “What’s the matter… having second thoughts about your interpretation?”

  “Fine, I’ll pray. This time.” She closed her eyes briefly then opened them.

  “That’s it?” He looked all around. “What did you pray for?”

  “A way across,” she said exasperated.

  “Weren’t you specific?”

  “Oh come on! He’s God. I think He knows what to send.”

  “Did you let him know we needed it today, Isadore?”

  She searched along the water as though truly expecting something. “Again, He’s God,” she said lightly, “If He can tell the world to come into existence, I’m sure he can tell time. And don’t think we’re done talking about this faith thing and this sex thing. You don’t know about what you’ve never tried.”

  “I don’t need to stick my head under the tire of a semi-truck to know it’ll crush like a melon. But the sex, I don't know about. But I am willing to learn."

  "I bet you are. But you're not using your cock-a-doodle-doo just to turn on my body. Sex is more than pleasure, it's here and here," she tapped her temple then chest. "Your heart," she clarified harshly when he stared in confusion.

  "So now I'm to have sex with my mind and heart? Do they have cock-a-doodle-doos for this? I guess this falls under the faith principal, it's certainly as ludicrous."

  “Ohhhh-ho-ho you’d better watch your back in a lightning storm, talking like that.” She aimed her finger at him. "Your mind and heart are supposed to be engaged when you have sex, Mister. That's what I'm saying!"

  He stared at her, completely dumbfounded. "Are you reciting poetry? How in your God's name could my mind and heart not be involved? Both are required for my manhood to even function! He hurried to the water, ready to swim across.

  "I don't mean in that way!"

  A growl of frustration rumbled in his chest when another noise reached his burning ears. A few seconds later, a boat approached with Isadore laughing and waving them down.

  “Ohhhh,” she said when the boat made its way to them. “Who’s the awesome God now?” She added a funny little dance with her arms in a circle and her hips gyrating.

  It just figured coincidence would show up just at the wrong time and prove her right.

  The man, who was returning from checking his traps, loaned them his boat after Ruin killed all his catch with a word and threw him out for refusing to help.

  “You can’t just do that!” Isadore said, flying the boat across the water at top speed.

  “Why send us a ride we
can’t use?” he yelled over the scream of the engine. “It’s not like I killed him.”

  “You killed his fish!”

  “I likely prolonged somebody’s life, killing that batch of polluted paraphyletic.”

  “Why do you hate everything?”

  “I only hate the things that need to cease existing. It's not my fault so many things do.”

  Ruin ignored her continued conversation, focusing on what was just ahead. The evil was still a shadow, growing clearer and more vile the closer he got. When they reached land, he finally saw it in his mind. A woman had just given birth to a baby. A fire was prepared. And a god was invoked.

  “Child sacrifice,” he whispered.

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