Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series

by Michael Herman

  “Jesus,” I mutter. “I’ve lost it.” Then a giggle escapes from my mouth. My right-hand jumps up and dances around in front of me. “Neener, neener, neener,” he taunts.

  “You are the devil,” I admonish him.

  “There is no devil,” he scolds.

  I nod. “Only ourselves,” I agree. “Only ourselves.” When I look up from the table I realize the drug has given me acute tunnel vision since I had not noticed that the woman in black had returned. She is standing at the window watching thoughtfully. Our eyes meet and I smile. She shakes her head ever so slightly and frowns. She raises her hand to the switch I cannot see and flips it on. I hear static and then what I assume is her foot tapping the floor.

  “You’ve been through a lot,” she says sympathetically. Her eyes are sad circus-clown eyes now.

  I smile stupidly in drugged-out bliss. I wonder where the lion tamer is, or the dashing trapeze artist and the acrobats.

  “Do you feel pain?” she asks me.

  “Not as much now. Not like it was before your drugs.”

  She nods her head approvingly. She looks sideways, pulls a chair to herself and then sits so that we are on the same level, eye to eye. “Where is the Messiah?” she asks in a way that I know she is referring to my little game and not really asking me where he is.

  “It’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? It’s what you are here for, isn’t it?”

  She shakes her head “no.” “My interest is in you, David.”

  The drugs continue to take effect and I get sillier. “Me?” I respond in faux surprise. “Itty bitty me? Well, ask away...” I falter, not knowing how to address her, then in all goofiness, I finish with, “your majesty.”

  She barks a sharp laugh of surprise. Then says, businesslike, “Jane, David. Jane.”

  I bow my head towards her. “Then Jane David Jane it is. Not the Plain Jane from Spain or Maine or a Train...or... I guess I have no idea where you are from. You probably know more about me than I know about you. You have me at a disadvantage, in more ways than one.”

  I stop and look around at my small new cell. I count out loud the number of concrete blocks on the bottom course of the wall to my left. One. Two. Until I count out seven and a half. I do the math of 16 inches times 7-½ and announce my find. “Ten feet.” I perform the same exercise on the other wall and announce, “8 feet.” I beam at her like a child who has performed some heroic feat. I observe stupidly out loud, “No bio suit for you? Only this hermetically sealed glass to separate us?”

  “Your isolation is for the good of your handlers. You know that.”

  “Ah, the infection. Wouldn’t want to be brought over to the other side, would we?”

  She almost laughs. “I have been told that your inquisitors have had a way of dying, one by one. You would know nothing about that, would you?”

  “I plead innocence, Jane from Tulane.”

  “They video you during the course of interrogation, you know. They play the videos back. They realized, after three of their men committed suicide, that you had whispered to them just prior to their deaths. The mics couldn’t pick up your words. What did you say to them?”

  I know my words have power, but delivery is everything. My telling her the words could do no harm. In somebody else’s hands, that’s all they are, simple words. “I told them what I tell all sinners. I told them to repent. Do you need repentance?”

  “Are we all sinners?” she queries.

  “Some more so than others.”

  “Does repentance help?”

  “It can solve problems.”

  “Did it solve yours?”

  “You’re suggesting I killed those men in revenge?”

  “You had to have been in an extreme state.”

  “I did not kill them.”

  “Ah yes, they died by their own hand, one man at a time over a period of a few weeks. No connection to you, only your words.”

  “Possibly they were in more of an extreme state then I was.”

  “Of course. That is what suicide is about. Extreme state of mind.” She pauses. “Each one died by a self-inflicted gunshot. Did you know that?”

  “It was never spoken of. You are the first.”

  “You did not tell them to kill themselves?”

  “I told you my words.”

  She is silent for a long moment, maybe gathering her thoughts. “David, let’s get down to business.”

  Here it comes, I think, the standard “Where is the Messiah?” drill. It was screamed at me session after session, but no, instead, she surprises me.

  “Tell me of Samuel, when you first met. Was he presented as the Messiah?”

  This is a new direction. I was a 14-year-old child when Samuel moved into the house next to ours. We were the same age. “You want me to go into the way-back machine? Is that what you want?”

  “I do,” she responds, amused.

  I could do that if it bought me time away from torture, if it kept me here longer with her. If it kept me warmly dressed, fully fed, and on pain meds. Anything is better than the cell or the interrogation room. “We were both kids. Same neighborhood. Same high school. There was no Messiah back then. Only us. Kids—teenage boys.”

  “You were infected immediately?”

  I frown. The use of the term “infected” bothers me when others say it. “I was ‘called,’ and unlike someone like you, I was ‘selected’.”

  “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

  I nod. “That is the way of the ‘calling.’ No one pretends to understand it. It just is.”

  “The Messiah, I mean Samuel, infected you,” she guesses.

  I shrug. “The ‘infection,’ as you call it, could have come from contact with his parents or even the young African girl they brought back with them to the states. I have no way of knowing. All I know is I was ‘called’ and accepted and we all now share the bond of the ‘calling’.”

  “You felt it right away?”

  “It moved slowly back then. Days or weeks before you knew you were ‘chosen,’ but once it took hold, the kinship was there. We became family in a good way. Not like some dysfunctional TV sitcom. We all felt the presence.”

  “Do you still feel the presence?”

  “Of course. It is part of you forever.”

  “And now you could read each other’s minds.”

  I laugh. “You have obviously bought into the myth conjured by those unselected. I read no one’s mind.”

  “Do you deny a group mentality?”

  “No. We of the ‘calling’ have always headed down the same path.”

  “The path of world domination, of one religion only,” she posits.

  “The path of a world not completely overrun with humans.”

  “Let’s go back a moment. Before you talk of Samuel, tell me about the African girl.”

  Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 6

  First Reading Continued

  “Kinshasa was a brown beanpole of a girl, twelve years old. Her skin was smooth as a Hershey bar. She was almost as tall as us, but she had a presence that made her seem seven feet tall. She was the oak tree in our acre—stoic and silent, but you always knew when she was around.”

  “’A child witch,” Jane interrupts.

  “That was what her impoverished parents accused her of, why she was cast out of her home to join the other homeless children wandering the streets of her village.”

  “Her village just outside of Kinshasa in the Congo.”

  “It was where Samuel’s missionary parents found her and rescued her from the tiny run-down church building she was living in. She was not doing well. The pastor there who practiced ritual exorcisms for small tokens took her into his care along with other ‘witch’ infants he managed. It was a desperate life for those children. Most children accused of being a witch didn’t survive.”

  “Of what crimes was she accused?”

  “Her parents had six or seven other children to feed. When the fa
ther lost his job, he needed someone to blame. The finger fell on her. She was ten or eleven at the time. She was not married off, so she was a burden. Once accused, neighbors also began laying blame for their misfortune on her. Quickly it escalated. She was beaten and banned from the home as well as the neighborhood.

  “In her homeless wanderings, a gang of teens laid into her. Her cries drew the attention of a passing policeman who rushed to her defense and struck the boys with his baton. But when they told him she had been accused by her parents of being a witch, she said his demeanor immediately changed. Fear came into his eyes. He knelt down to her and gently, using his baton, turned her head to the side, forcing her to look to his left. He pointed to a brown and blue building in the distance and told her it was a church. He brought his face to within inches of hers and quietly told her to run. Run as fast as she could to that building and if she made it before the boys got to her, she would be safe.

  “He rose and waited for her to move. When she hesitated, he kicked her and yelled ‘Run!’ She said she took off like a gazelle fleeing a pack of hyenas. The boys shrieked with bloodlust. When she looked behind her, they were in hot pursuit and the policeman was nowhere to be found. She says she ran until she thought her lungs would catch fire. A big stone hit her in the shoulder with such force that it almost made her fall. But she kept going.

  “When she got to the building doors, one was open and she raced through it. She ran until she hit the back wall and stopped there, petrified with fear. She turned to see the boys swing both doors wide open. She decided the policeman had lied and this was the end so she screamed at the top of her lungs in frustration and anger and defiance. The boys, laughing and taunting her, started towards her, but halted midway when a man appeared from the side of the building, yelling and waving his hands in the air, puffing himself up like a threatened animal. They yelled ‘witch, witch’ and then turned and ran back the way they had come in. When the man turned to face her, it was not with a face of welcome, but one clouded with anger. ‘Leave!’ he commanded, but she shrank into the wall trying to make herself as small as she could against this giant of a man. ‘Help me,’ she whispered. ‘Please, for the sake of the Virgin Mary, help me.’

  “She said he walked over to her, knelt down, took her chin in his hand, looked her in the eyes and then demanded, ‘Are you a witch?’

  “With all the great anger and frustration of one wrongfully convicted she protested, ‘No! And neither is the mother of God for having a virgin birth.’

  “Her answer shocked the man. His eyes widened and all anger left his face. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked in disbelief. She told him that she knew it in here, and pounded her breast.

  “Impressed by her answer, he gave her sanctuary. She stayed for more than a month, never leaving the building, slowly wasting away from being given just food handouts and being shunned by the people of the congregation.

  “That is until Samuel’s parents happened upon her. Samuel’s mother immediately took a liking to her. They removed her to the house they were renting and eventually adopted her. A bit later they left the Congo for good and moved to our city.”

  “She infected Samuel’s family?”

  This was what the unselected had been in search of for years. Ground zero of the “infection.” Find it, study it and then kill it.

  “Was she the source of origin of what you refer to as the ‘infection’? Is that what you want to know?” I laughed. “She may have been a carrier, but it seems unlikely. You see, she was not of the calling. I can tell this surprises you. You think families of the calling with unselected children always remove those unselected children from their households, so you assume she could not possibly have been one of the unselected. You know so little. This was the house of a Messiah. Would you expect anything less from a Messiah? Of course not.”

  “Yet, she fit in with the family?”

  “She never fit in anywhere. She stood tall and alone.”

  “A witch forever.”

  I shake my head. “Only to the ignorant. To us, she was strength and beauty and intelligence. She was our moral base. If she disapproved of an action, then we knew it was immoral. She always had her finger on what was right.”

  “You became close to her?”

  “As close as one can be with Kinshasa.”

  “You respect and admire her,” she suggests.

  “I will always love her for what she is.”

  “She was your lover?”

  “She is no one’s lover.”

  I hear a voice from her side of the wall. She looks to her left, shields her mouth from me and speaks low. She turns to me. “Tomorrow we will continue.” She stands and exits her room. Almost immediately I hear the lock on the door to my room being engaged. The door opens and there are my three yellow-suited friends. The one in front threatens me with the cattle prod while the other two walk around him and come to me. The first one reinstalls the hand shackles. The second bags my head. I am led out of the room and into a carpeted corridor.

  The carpeting is a dramatic change from what I was used to. Carpet is a good indicator. We walk some distance. Then I’m brought to a stop, turned and led into another carpeted room. The restraints are removed and the bag is pulled off. To my surprise, I’m facing what I can only describe as a bedroom suite with bedroom furniture. I hear the door close behind me. I am alone again.

  Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 7

  When I remove my hand from the man in the bed, I no longer think of him as just the naked man. He is now David to me. “David,” I say to Messenger. “That’s his name.”

  Messenger searches my eyes for a moment. “You look okay. You survived another episode,” he says with a gentle smile and then pats my knee.

  “He was tortured and held captive for a long time, just as Forbes said. But what concerns me is that his captors treated him as if he were carrying a communicable disease. They kept him in isolation and wore protective clothing when they were around him.”

  Messenger’s eyebrows lift. “Shit! And I’ve handled him. Forbes touched him. He walked through our house. You just made skin contact with him. Are we all infected now?!”

  “David didn’t think of it as a disease. He spoke of a ‘calling’ and being ‘selected’ or ‘unselected’ and of a ‘Messiah.’ He spoke of being infected since he was a teenager.”

  “So are we talking zombie apocalypse here? And he is one of the walking dead? At least he didn’t bite.”

  I give him a sharp look of annoyance. “This is serious, Messenger. It appeared there was a war going on in his time and he was a prisoner who had undergone extensive interrogation.” I turn to the sleeping David and say, “Our friend here is accused of causing three of his interrogators to commit suicide.”

  Messenger frowns in thought for a moment and then notes, “When Forbes touched him, he was overwhelmed by the pain he felt within the man.”

  “You’re thinking he was able to do the same to his interrogators to such an extent they committed suicide in remorse? He said he told each one of them to repent just before they committed suicide. If that’s the case, then that is one hell of an ability. And used in the context of what was going on, it became a weapon.”

  “In Forbes’ case, David was like a porcupine and Forbes touched his protective quills. So now we have the ‘selected’ and the ‘unselected’ and the ‘Messiah.’ Sounds like religion to me.”

  “David’s interrogator used a quote in reference to the ‘calling’: ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’”

  “Definitely religion. So David was one of the ‘selected.’ He was called and selected. Sounds ritualistic.”

  “We need more information. I’m going back in. Do you mind? Was I in long just now?”

  “Maybe five minutes. How long was it for you?”

  “Two days.”

  Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 8

  Second Reading

  I am walking up to a building with a sign off
to the left that reads, “First Baptist Congregational”. The air around me is summer warm. It feels like it’s around noon. Regularly spaced sidewalk cutouts with palm trees line the street. The man on my right, Samuel, is telling me about the people inside the church.

  “They’ve established something I’ve not seen in this area before. It’s a cross between chanting and singing. Very catchy. Draws you right in.”

  As we climb the steps to the entry, I hear a muffled tapping of wood against wood, like drummers doing a warm-up, tapping out a beat on the metal edge of their drums. Then the tapping stops and I hear a muffled chant. We walk to the closed entry doors. The sound becomes more pronounced when the tapping resumes. Upon opening the doors, we’re enveloped in a catchy rhythm that immediately makes me want to join in.

  “Feel it?” Samuel grins as we walk through the entry.

  I nod as the doors close behind us. We stop and watch. Unconsciously, my right hand begins tapping against my thigh to the rhythm. Samuel is tapping his foot and humming. Before us are about three hundred people who are standing among wooden pews. They all face the front of the congregation. Looking over the group as a whole, I see they are typical of the Chosen for this area. They consist of a mix of mostly Whites, some Blacks, some Latinos and Asians, men, women, and children. Some are formally dressed while others are casually attired. This is the norm for a Chosen congregation in that they reflect the community they live in. By all appearances, they are like every other Chosen group. Nothing about them stands out physically. No odd dress, no identifying tattoos, no unusual hats or clothes. They fit in with their local surroundings like all the other Chosen do. But what differentiates this group from others I’ve seen is the use of small sticks in each person’s hand, tapping out a rhythm. The chant is much more melodic than other Chosen ceremonies I’ve witnessed.