by Peter Foley
“Excuse me, I’d much prefer the kitchen,” Courtney says, “not that I mind the housekeeping duties, but you see, I was a chef, and I think I have some skills to offer in the kitchen.” In her flowing red gown, Courtney stands like a rose, its color adds warmth to her cherry-red lips and her china-blue eyes.
Peering over to the kitchen, Oscar calls out. “Hey, Sid, what do you think? She’s got kitchen experience…” Oscar points to Courtney, as a farmhand might to a cow.
Sid peaks out of the serving hatch and nods. “Sure, if she can chop carrots, then yeah. She can start tomorrow.”
Courtney’s knees feel heavy, her balance is unsteady and her breath becomes shallow. Nervous and isolated, she turns away from Sid and falls silent.
Does he recognize me? Does he care? I have to be patient. I have to choose my time well. I have to choose the right place…
32
Go to bed
Another day passes as the night closes in. Hazel’s spent most of the day trying to source a sliver of cell service. With her phone in her hand, she divined a route across every square inch of every available room, checking then rechecking in due course. Eventually, her criss-crossing raised some eyebrows.
“Don’t be making problems like yo friend Drew,” Charlie told her. This comment didn’t register with her for more than a second before it slipped from her mind. In its place she recalls dancing with Drew and her lips curl to a smile.
What a terrible dancer…
Her smile is made weak by the memory of all the disapproving looks she and Drew caused in the Common Room, it’s weakened further by her recollections of the Pastor’s mania in the Sermon Hall and fades completely with the idea that she must endure another day in this place.
Despite being one day closer to the end of the hurricane, tomorrow, she feels, can bring her no good thing. Only dread and worry swollen by the clashing fear of hidden forces not yet revealed. At this late low point she slumps on her bed with both the battery of her phone and her personal resolve running low.
“What’s that you got, dear?” Barbara, Hazel’s roommate, asks politely.
“My cell phone,” she responds without looking up from the screen’s glow.
Swipe down > airplane mode > on / off > wait… Still no signal.
Kill all apps > Power off / Power on > try to make a call > make an emergency call… Nothing.
“Your cell phone, again,” Barbara says, plainly. “Is there somebody you want to call, dear?”
“Yes. Are there any windows at all in this place? Or stairs? Or a landline?” The last idea brightens Hazel, as if she had just remembered an old confidant.
“I don’t know, dear. Sid knows a lot about this place. He helped set it up. Why don’t you ask Sid? He helped Father set it up, him and the other lady. Sid is the one to talk to.” Barbara appears to think in circles. Hazel winces.
“Barbara?” Hazel’s voice pitches to a question, “Do you ever… I mean… are you…?”
“What’s that, dear?”
“Are you happy here? With the Pastor? In this place?” She cranes her neck over her phone to gauge Barbara’s reaction. Barbara blinks beneath spectacles so thick she looks like a seal behind a block of ice.
“I am very happy, thank you very much. Thank Father we are here. I am very happy. Thanks to Father.” Her words are plastic. She sits still, with her hands on her thighs. Hazel breaks her gaze, turns off her phone and slides it beneath her pillow. Barbara’s watchful expression remains fixed on Hazel, like a child waiting to be dismissed by a teacher.
“How many days have we been here? It’s all starting to blur together,” Hazel says, running a hand through her hair.
“Two full days and this is the third night and every minute of it has been Heaven. Thank Father.” Barbara is older than most and Hazel assumes she learned to thank Father long ago in better days, when it was perhaps more apt.
The two sit looking at one another from their opposing beds. The room, like all the others, is a small concrete cube. The light from the ceiling is harsh but not quite strong enough to properly illuminate. Diagonal shadows smear across the walls from the beds. Here and there a few flecks of stone are embedded in the ceiling, they glint like glitter. Hazel strains to hear the outside world, for the sound of birdsong or traffic, but there’s nothing.
I want to leave. I want the hurricane to be over. I want to be in any other place. Don’t worry. Relax, just one more day and the hurricane should be over. Just one more day and maybe I can leave. Just one more day and I can be free of this place.
With a clunk, the lights go out and Hazel fumbles into bed. The silence of Salvation keeps her awake. So too do thoughts of the Staples Center, the radio interviews, the terrible coffee at work, her blank office décor, the girls and the sunshine, and California’s usual blue. It lies just beyond these walls, and it’s all being ripped apart by Hurricane Jason. She stares at the ceiling and lets the darkness hold her gaze.
33
Monsters are real
The darkness of Salvation’s night pulls like the heart of a black hole. In the distorting, twisting, inescapable abyss, a young girl sits and stares into the vortex. Desperate for a release from the tide of night, she gasps for light with wide eyes. Perched on an uncomfortable wooden chair, she listens for any sound, her breath is shallow. Breath after breath the night draws deeper. She makes no attempt to speak. In fact, she makes every attempt to be as still and as silent as a clear winter moon. She closes her eyes and prays for the calm of day.
Her mind flashes back to another time, to a sermon at the Simmons Street Temple, where, in Sunday light, she first learned about death and its irreversible consequences. It broke her kindergarten heart to learn that death is a certainty and that one day it will come. One by one everyone will fall, and everyone she loves is doomed. After that sermon she grappled with death’s silent idea and, after fact-checking its credibility in the playground, she learnt that death is real and she is mortal now. At this present moment, in this bleak blind dark, as big and as empty as eternity, she wonders if this is where death lives.
A crackling deviling contorted voice shatters the void.
“Little Miss Rosie Porterrrr…”
Rosie Porter pushes herself against the back of the chair. Fear tenses her body. She wheezes. Her nostrils flare. The darkness sings.
“Ring around the Rosie… a pocket full of…”
The night cracks in a flash of light, a hot blue ball fizzes over Rosie’s shoulder then vanishes. She doesn’t dare turn her head.
“No posies for you, Miss Porter, you’ve been badddd…” creaks the monster. “I’m going to give you something to frown about…” The beast’s ecstatic cackle trembles Rosie.
“Please! Please! I didn’t mean it! I will be good! I promise! Please let me live! I’m sorry!” she begs.
Closer, closer the Blue-eyed Monster moves. Rosie Porter’s heart thumps and bursts. She screams, but as the beast’s brilliant blue eye leans nearer, her voice vanishes. The monster’s eye crackles over her tear-stained cheek, illuminating an artwork of misery. She whimpers in shivers. Heat from the blue light reaches her in waves. It blazes in front of her, growling a fiery blue. She sees lightning bolts at its center.
“Ashes, ashes… We all… fall… DOWN!”
The monster takes its first terrible bite, striking her below the throat. Her body shakes and shivers, her muscles lock and spasm in cycles. She feels like the tip of a knife has been pushed through her back and out her chest. Her jaw locks and every fiber in her fragile body hardens to steel. After what feels like a lifetime of pain, the Blue-eyed Monster discards Miss Rosie Porter’s body to the floor.
Echoes of ugly laughter and blurs of blue dance in the darkness as the beast returns to where evil beasts come from; the immortal black smog.
34
Where force rules
Submerged in the oppressive blind, Drew’s thoughts, usually swirling and uncollected, are hushed into a dea
thly quietude that carries him into a dreamless sleep. All of Salvation’s people sleep in the undisturbed dark as if buried in ancient tombs, until the timeless jet is broken by an alarm. Hundreds of weary feet leave their beds and make their way through the corridor. The movement rouses Drew. It’s so light and so early so suddenly.
It can’t be morning already…
Through the PA system comes the alert, on repeat.
“I say again, all must report to the Sermon Hall immediately. No exceptions. That is all.”
The pillow pulls at Drew and a heavy sleep hunger makes him quiver. He finds a reserve of mental energy and joins the crowd in the corridor.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“No idea. Some sort of emergency,” a fellow Red Gown says.
The Pastor waits inside the Sermon Hall. His black gown flows over his body like a shimmering quilt. His chair is placed on top of a large wooden box. The pews are not set in their usual uniform parallel rows, as we have seen in the daily sermons. Instead they’ve been placed to form a crude semi-circle facing the Pastor’s chair. The blue-gowned Planning Committee sit a few meters from his side. Without fanfare, the Pastor speaks deliberately and dispassionately to the gathered.
“There’re some matters that we need to take care of. I’ve had several reports handed to me today. Troubling reports that some people are causing difficulties and we cannot have that. We must cut this out, so we’re going to take care of it right now.”
He scans a piece of paper handed to him by a Blue Gown and reads a name out loud.
“Elsa Holt…” His eyes glare over the note. He scans the people then returns his eyes to the paper.
“Okay. It says here that on the first night Elsa was hostile. She did nothing to get on. In the morning, she claimed we’re all liars. She had a nasty bad attitude. Talks back. Says she can’t do this or that because of arthritis and cold. Grace Bell got mad and yelled at her. Elsa calls me Pastor and refuses to call me Dad or Father. Complained throughout the whole day.”
The Pastor searches the crowd for Elsa Holt and begins his cross-examination at a distance. “Why don’t you get yourself together?”
Megan pulls Elsa up by the arm and marches her into the middle of the room.
“Well, Father, I apologize,” Elsa says, facing the Pastor. “I try my best. If you remember, we talked a time ago, and you said it was all right for me to call you Pastor.”
“No. We changed that.” He waves a dismissive hand. “We passed a new law to get rid of all that talk, you just haven’t been listening, have you? Listen – You call me either Dad or Father. No exceptions, no in-betweens. Got it?”
The crowd eye Elsa with a glassy supercilious stare. Elsa’s stirred but calm. She begins her defense. “Well, the man–”
“I don’t give a shit what the man said!” says the Pastor. “Since then we changed the rules! Are you going to get your ass together? You can’t be nasty! You can’t be a smart ass!” he adds. “Why should we maintain an eighty-one-year-old woman who won’t show proper gratitude or follow instructions or respect her Father? Do you know how much your medications cost me? It costs more than your social security checks bring in. From now on you call me Father. That’s the end of it. This is your last warning. Now be seated!” Father retracts a pointed hand and rubs his temples. Peering underneath the shadow of his hand he yells, “Charlie!”
Wearing red, weighing in at 205 pounds and measuring six feet six inches, Charlie is a former LA gangbanger with a criminal record of firearms misuse, aggravated assault, aggravated mayhem, drug sale, robbery, motor theft, larceny and breaking and entering. He’s universally recognized as the former leader of the 606; Charlie Hoya.
Charlie doesn’t need Megan to lift him out of his seat; he stands on his own accord.
“Now, Charlie,” Father says, reading from another small scrap of white paper, “here’s the report; you’ve been argumentative. You have a bad attitude. Complaining constantly. Arguing with the Planning Committee. Asking people if they hate Dad. Saying you’re goin’ to fight one person at a time and get out of here – Oh shit! You’re a punk!” In the gallery of red-gowned onlookers, judgment feeds back into hate.
“Stop lettin’ your pride keep you so busy,” he continues. “Learn to co-operate and follow the rules!” Father turns to the room and gestures with open palms. “He thinks he can leave and survive outside in the hurricane – he probably thinks he can even survive the Blue-eyed Monster – just one touch of the Blue-eye, Charlie, and…” Father skips lightly over his words. “How about that, O’ Charlie-boy? Big ol’ gangland Charlie-boy? How about the Blue-eye, Charlie-boy? How about the eye? How about the eye?”
The crowd applauds the humor. Father continues in his normal voice.
“We might as well be free from you. How about it, Charlie? You wanna touch the Blue-eye tonight? You got my blood pressure boiling – he can handle anything, he says! He can even handle the monster – You punk! You wanna die? Do you, Charlie? I don’t give a shit tonight.”
“Look, Dad, um, I don’t wanna die, but I ain’t afraid to.” Charlie takes a deep breath and rubs his shaven head. “Dad, like I said. I don’t want to… like I said, I was pissed at the time I said those things, but I feel like I shouldn’t be on storeroom duty when I should be on the Planning Committee. I proved myself and I don’t think they told you right.”
Megan breaks in on behalf of the Blue Gowns. “No! No, Charlie! You just don’t have a good attitude. What I don’t understand is, if you’re so goddam tough, why are you competing with us? Why don’t you get on our side?” Megan looks to Father. “You know what Charlie said? He said he could fool us and play along. He won’t be worthy until he co-operates and follows the rules. He’s a punk. You know what Charlie said about you? He said you’re a hustler – I’ve heard him say that, but his words don’t manipulate me. I see him, and I see nothing but a glare of hate in his eyes.”
The restless crowd break into their slow and rhythmic ululation, the same sound heard once before, when the rhetoric turned violent. The sound of war and justice bounces off the walls and echo around Charlie.
Father cuts over the noise. “You ain’t afraid to die, Charlie? I’d be ashamed to die if I was you.” He throws his words like daggers. “Everybody, get out of the way and let the Committee have him.”
In a flash of blue, the Planning Committee leap at Charlie.
With a ferocious lust the Planning Committee surround Charlie. The sound of their first successful blow elicits a unanimous “Woooooo” from the onlookers. The second dull fleshy impact stirs some into delighted laughter. En masse the crowd stand, cheer, jump and whoop, jostling Drew as bare knuckles rain down on Charlie. Fast and unrelenting, the attack gathers pace, but one Blue Gown is much less animated than his colleagues; he steps from one foot to another, gesturing a forward movement, but never taking one.
“Oscar!” shouts Father. “Get involved! Get your ass in there!”
With an apologetic grimace towards Charlie, Oscar springs forward and strikes. His fists make full contact, not once, but several times in a devastating flurry of lefts and rights directly to Charlie’s face.
“Come on, Charlie! Not so tough now!” Father smirks.
“I really do think he’s had enough…” says a trembling voice, almost inaudible above the noise of the shrill crowd. The Blue Gowns pause. The voice is Mother’s.
“God dammit, why do you always take their side?” Father says. “You know, that could be misconstrued, the way you do that?” Father turns back to Charlie. “Now somebody get that motherfucker!”
The Blue Gowns continue their work. Dull thumps, short full contact smacks, thwacks and thuds land on their tense, tender target. Charlie tries to swing but he’s forced to duck and shield from the ferocity and sheer number of blows. In the maelstrom of attack the Blue Gowns reach rhapsody.
Father lets the action run its course before he makes a final ruling. “Back up, Megan. Back up a minut
e. Why do you do this, Charlie? I saved your ass from worse than death – the Los Angeles cops didn’t make it easy with a gang record like yours. Why do you make it like this? Your toughness is doing nothing but making our lives a misery. You think that bravery is an end in itself.
“Let me tell you this, I’ve seen many heroes die. I have seen many heroes die for nothing at all. Bravery means shit unless it’s connected to something. Gangland Charlie against the world… show me that you can be useful to our cause, show me that you can be a nice guy and make up for this hellish blood pressure tonight. I’m sick of it, there’s no mercy in this place. I’ve suffered all night long. I hope you learn. I have to exert my power with a sense of justice because you stepped too far. When you are back in good health, I expect you to be on the job and doing your work with no problems.”
Thick ribbons of blood fall from Charlie’s nose. With split swollen eyes he’s assisted away by Nurse Chamberlin and Sid. The court is ready for its next defendant.
Reading from another fold of paper, Father moves on. “I have one last report about a… okay… Drew, Drew Samuel. Where is he? Bring him out here.”
Drew had averted his gaze from Charlie’s beating. In a powerful act of conscious self-distraction, he forced his attention to escape the room. Megan claws at his arm. What little energy Drew has drains away when Megan pushes him into the middle of the floor. Looking about, he sees Hazel. Her hands cover her mouth.
The floor around Drew’s feet is smattered with large drops of Charlie’s blood, some are messy and foot trodden, others are large, dark, viscous pearls that glint in the light. The crowd on Drew’s back is an intoxicated horde.
“I see this report of Drew asking about the whereabouts of unknown people. Asking questions of everyone. Making people uncomfortable. Questionable motives. Generally a little strange. All right. What the hell…?”
