Bald New World

by Peter Tieryas Liu

  “I’m here to answer the call of God!” I declared.

  “The Devil cometh in many forms!” a man at the front altar declared. “Arrest him!”

  “No no no, you don’t understand. I prayed for a miracle. I prayed for this—”

  “Beware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. But this wolf doesn’t even bother with his clothing!”

  A bunch of men rushed towards me and tied me up, afraid I was going to corrupt their womenfolk. Had I just exchanged one prison for another?

  5. Thou Shalt Not Live on Bread Alone

  I.

  I never missed sleep so much. They had me tied up against the wall with rope. The room was freezing and lit by candles. It smelled of befoulment and blood. A bony man approached. His lips were dry and I wished I could use lip balm to get rid of the dead skin hanging from his mouth. He didn’t have a wig on, though he wore a hooded cloak like a wizard from those MMORPG games I used to play. The skin clung tightly to his cheeks and the jaw muscles stretched when he spoke, giving him a skeletal facade. He had large blue eyes even though he appeared Asiatic, and he leaned on a staff, elderly in age.

  “My name is Elias Mardi,” he said. “Most people call me Mardi. What’s your name?”

  I figured I’d make one up. “Terrence Kang.”

  “Mr. Terrence Kang. Why are you here?”

  I explained briefly about the North Korean spies, the labor camp, and my escape into their church.

  Mardi pounded the ground with his staff. “I’ve heard a lot of crazy stories, but none like that. Let’s try again. Why are you here?”

  “I told you, I was—”

  The old man flung his wrist with a speed I didn’t expect. A thin whip sprang out of nowhere and slashed me across my chest. Red ripped apart my skin and the piercing sensation forced me to howl.

  “What are you doing?!” I demanded.

  “The first step to absolution is confession. You have lied to me twice already. I won’t tolerate a third.”

  “What am I lying about?”

  “Your name is Nicholas Guan,” he said. “Why are you here?”

  Had they checked my fingerprints? Had they scanned my blood? There were a hundred ways they could have checked my identity and now they had me at a disadvantage. What kind of answer was the old man looking for?

  I decided to ask him directly. “Why do you think I’m here?”

  He lifted his staff and pressed it against my neck. “You’re like all the other sinners, hoping for a moment of perverse pleasure by corrupting our innocents with a display of your genitals!”

  They took me for a flasher? It was such a strange accusation I didn’t know how to reply.

  “How did you find out about our service?” Mardi demanded. “How much do you know about Yillah?”

  “What’s Yillah?”

  A lash came for my arm and it felt like it tore off flesh. “Don’t pretend to be ignorant! I know you’ve heard of our village. You’re not the first to try and corrupt our maidens! What stories did you hear? That we were a village of women ready to be taken for your carnal desires?”

  I recognized the glow in his eyes all too well, the illogical fury, the insecure fear of being proven a fool, and the small-brained idiocy. It was what I’d grown up with, saying whatever I could to stop the beatings my biological father inflicted. Something inside of me hardened. “That’s right. I came to steal all your women. I knew once they saw me, they wouldn’t be able to resist. So what? You think you could provide pleasure for them, old man?”

  He seemed taken aback by my change in tone. “At least now you’ve spoken the truth.”

  “Where are all the ladies? I can’t wait to introduce them to the ways of the world.”

  “Is that why you made films that were pornographic and a corruptive influence on the innocents of the world?”

  “I never filmed a porno,” I said, realizing that if he knew my name, he could have easily searched the movies I made.

  “Your recent film,” and he consulted a list. “Rodenticide featured a prostitute in the leading role, did it not?”

  “She was a good prostitute,” I said. “She helps the main character in his protest to save the lives of rats.”

  “You would value the life of a rat more than a human being?”

  “The movie wasn’t putting a value on rats versus men, but saying when you devalue any life, then—” but I was cut off by another lash.

  I gritted my teeth.

  “The list of your films goes on as does the sexual explicitness and gratuitous violence. You are a man that specializes in beautifying violence and shamelessly exploiting what should be kept private between a man and woman. Are you a married man?”

  “I was.”

  “So you divorced your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it for marital infidelities?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you divorce?”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “Don’t you even know why you divorced your wife?”

  “I know why I divorced her, but it’s none of your business.”

  “I already know why. All you movie types are the same. Lust, desire, envy. You wanted other women, did you not?” My fists tensed as he continued. “It is against the laws of God and Yillah for man to be with more than one woman! Marriage is a sacred oath you take before Heaven and you desecrated it. For that, you deserve death a million times over.”

  “Don’t bring my ex-wife into this.”

  “What do you care? You divorced her.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Does the truth bother you?”

  “What do you know about the truth? You’re a coward who hits a man that’s tied up,” I said. “You don’t deserve my breath.” I tried to spit but my mouth was too dry and all I could do was make the gesture.

  Inside, I was fuming, so angry, I could barely contain my breath.

  I guess my gesture pissed him off because his whip lashed me again. I wanted to scream, but I bit my lip and glowered at him. He whipped me again and again. I guffawed as hard as I could. “Go ahead. Kill me if you have to. I’ve already corrupted all your women. Secretly, they’re fantasizing about me. Oh, Nick, take me now.”

  “Shut your blasphemous mouth or I will rip your tongue out!”

  “Go ahead! You think I’m afraid of death!”

  He was about to lash me again but stopped. “Your will is still strong. Let’s see how long it lasts.” He put out the candles, leaving me in darkness. He slammed a door shut as he left. I was relieved until I thought of Linda and I tried to remember why exactly our marriage had fallen apart. All that came to me were memories of the good times we enjoyed together. Her fingers used to quiver when she slept. She’d watch Chinese drama shows until six in the morning, addicted to the historical whimsies of some ancient dynasty with princesses and consorts vying for power. She didn’t like pillows and sometimes in the morning, she used her hand to make a small pillow for her head. Often, she’d be smiling in her sleep, and every morning, she had an unusual tale to tell from the meanderings of her subconscious during the night. I wished I could hold her the way I used to, feel her legs against mine, rub her back and hear her breathe softly. At least Mardi’s exit meant I could dose off.

  II.

  The itching and my burning stomach woke me. I had to use the bathroom really badly and the mosquito bites over my body were tingling. I wanted to scratch them but I had no way of relieving the itch. As for my stomach, it felt like it was going to explode. I hadn’t eaten anything in a while and I could feel the chemicals in my stomach burning their way through excess. There was no other option other than to piss on the floor in front of me. My bowels pushed and tugged and I tried to hold back. But eventually, the muscles in my stomach couldn’t contain themselves and a stream of diarrhea splattered down the wall and my legs. It was disgusting and smelled terrible, the liquid waste forming chunks along my calves. But it warmed my cold legs so I was
grateful for that reprieve. Countless others must have suffered the same fate here if they were imprisoned in the same manner.

  Now that my stomach had relief, the itchiness aggravated. There were bumps all over my skin and the allergic reaction was causing me to tremble. I shook and twisted and tried anything I could do to make it stop. But that only made things worse. These tiny blood-sucking insects made my life hell by a hundred itches. I had to think about something else, had to divert my mind. Except the only question that came to mind was, are you ready to die, Nick Guan? I didn’t know the answer. Yes, earlier, when Mardi had been whipping me, I didn’t care and would have invited it. But now that I was immersed in darkness, I wondered about the things I should have done in my life. The pain from his lashes stung bad enough. The cold numbed the lacerations.

  My stomach grumbled—hungry. You just took a dump, I protested. But the growls made its grumpiness evident. I was also thirsty. I tried to remember the torture-preparation classes we had in the army. It was a classic technique to enervate prisoners, deny them food and water to weaken their will. I could probably handle a day or two of this, but more? What would happen, covered in this pitch black? They’d warned about hallucinations. Who would I see? The last time I ate was that crab and the memory of that sauce still brought back the burning sensation. Larry, man, what am I going to do? But Larry was dead. Would anyone be looking for me? Maybe some of my photography crew. Then again, they knew I tended to go on trips with Larry and vanished for long periods of time. After they found Larry, would they search for me? But who would think to look out in the middle of nowhere? It was times like this I wished they’d have allowed the credit agencies their way, adding computerized chips under our skin to track us. The religious groups had fought fervidly against their implementation, certain it meant the mark of the beast, 666, the sign that a person had turned against the Church. It was meant to make shopping easy but so many of the fanatics burned themselves and committed sacrificial suicide, the companies gave up. Is that what John dreamt of two millennium ago when he wrote Revelations? At least with the chip, anyone looking for me could have found me with a simple scan.

  If I were to die, was there anyone I would contact, anyone I would have anything left to say to? It relieved me to know the answer was a no. Even with Linda, nothing had gone unspoken. We’d said too much to each other, which had always been the problem. We analyzed everything to death, every stupid word.

  It was too bad I didn’t have a child. There were so many things I could have taught him, like how everything everyone tells you growing up is bullshit. Don’t believe anyone except your own experiences. I could tell him about how insane my biological family was, how cruel and selfish they were and how even after all they did, they still couldn’t let go, only thinking about themselves. He wouldn’t have to have a chip on his shoulder about family the way I did, ashamed of the way I was, eager to please, afraid of censure. He’d be more confident, do things with ease that I struggled to achieve. He would know how to treat family with respect and thoughtfulness, the little things I never knew when I married Linda because no one ever treated me with kindness and respect. Instead, I grew up learning family was a terrible thing, wanting never to go home, wishing they would all disappear so I could have my freedom. I even resented elderly people in my youth because they rebuked me for my terrible family, telling me to stay away from their children (my “friends”) as I was from a bad family. When I first met Linda’s family, I was so taken aback by their kindness, I got suspicious. Why were they being so good to me? They were much wealthier than I was and there was nothing I could give them. Had they mistaken me for someone else? Were they secretly going to get rid of me while smiling in my face? Linda laughed at my wariness and assured me, “This is what family is.”

  No yelling, no beating me when I didn’t want to do something, no castigations saying I deserved death for not listening. Instead, an inexplicable kindness and thoughtfulness, calls asking after my health. I’d endured a poverty-stricken childhood and thought I could bear anything. But I wasn’t prepared for this sort of kindness. I felt undeserving, unworthy. Was that the beginning of the end of our marriage?

  My unborn child, you’ll never have to worry about my illogical fear of death. You’ll never have to grow up being told every day that if you didn’t please your biological father, you would be beaten to pulp and die a dog’s death. You’ll never have to have a dumbly narcissistic mother who only chased after other men and didn’t care what happened to you as long as she was happy. You won’t have to have a brain-damaged sister who took pride in lacking common sense and never listened to the fact that I wanted nothing to do with my biological family and insisted on bringing them back into my life even though I asked her a thousand times not to do so. You won’t have to rely on fake friends you thought were family because your definition of family was so pathetic and then get disappointed when they left you over nothing and then came crawling back when they found out you were famous. You would think me pathetic for the way I sought so eagerly to call people who didn’t have the faintest idea about relationships family. It’s all right though. I won’t hide my foibles. You should know the truth about your father.

  Linda broke my heart, but she also liberated me in ways you couldn’t imagine. She’s my only family. Larry was family too, but he’s dead now. In the end, I failed him just like I failed Linda. I let him go alone when every instinct in me told me not to let him go by himself.

  I deserve everything I’m going to get for the next few days.

  III.

  “Have you no shame?” Mardi asked as the light caused my eyes to cringe. I hadn’t slept, but I hadn’t been awake either. “Get a hose in here.”

  Two men entered with a hose and fired water at me. The spray hit me like a kick to the chest and they wiped the feces away with the water blasts. I stuck my tongue out, trying to get a lick. The water was sweet and tasted better than any nectar.

  “This is a special town,” Mardi told me. “Divinely inspired 30 years ago to be a bulwark against the madness of this world. Yillah was our prophetess, the great messenger who brought us hope by creating a village here to be protected from the outside world. She taught us that the only chance for salvation was cutting away the cancer, chopping off our arm if we needed to protect ourselves against iniquity. There’s no hope in the world you’re from. Nothing is sacred. Everyone would damn the world rather than sacrifice just a little bit of themselves.”

  Like all zealots, he was a preacher and he loved hearing himself speak. He went on and on, first about the strange miracles Yillah performed. Then he proceeded to lecture me about how evil the world was. According to him, Yillah was God reincarnated in womanly form and one of the proofs was that she never had a period.

  “Son, I have a job today, a mission if you might,” Mardi explained. “Have you heard of the Inquisition?”

  “Don’t call me ‘son’,” I said.

  He ignored me and leaned on his staff. “The Inquisition was a nasty, but essential, part of the Church. Guillotines and other tortures were brutal, but nothing compared to the executions developed in China over 5000 years. There used to be a death manual for executioners and killing was an art. I have no interest in killing you. We are in the business of saving souls. But we’ve adapted various punishments to help temper stubborn spirits. Spare yourself the agony. Bare your soul before Yillah so that you can be forgiven your transgressions. That is the only way you will be allowed to stay.”

  “Stay? Who said anything about staying? I have to get back to Beijing.”

  “Out of the question. After you are redeemed, you will never want to leave.”

  “What if I don’t want to be redeemed?”

  “Either you seek mercy from Yillah through us, or you will present your case to Yillah directly in person.”

  “I have too many transgressions and I’m guilty of all of them.”

  “Let’s be more specific.”

  “How?” />
  “Why don’t you tell me why you divorced your wife?”

  “My relationship with Li—” and I hesitated, not wanting to tell him her name.

  “Linda Yu. I know her name. Don’t try to hide it from me.”

  “My relationship with Linda is none of your business.”

  “It is every bit my business. You come from a broken family, is that not correct?” he asked. “Families often get into a cycle they can never break. The children learn from watching their parents that marriage is not inviolable. They learn bad habits that they repeat. Even if you didn’t know it, they influenced you negatively. You divorced Linda because your parents never taught you that—”

  One of the most unbearable things for me was when people brought up my past to condemn my present. How many people had done that to me growing up? I could feel my teeth chattering and my fingers quivering. Breathe deeply, Nick. Breathe 1, 2, 3. “My parents had nothing to do with my relationship with Linda.”

  It had everything to do with my belief in the American Dream, the idea that any man or woman could reshape their destiny regardless of their background. In a world full of false idols, it was my one true belief.

  “If you had come from a healthy family, do you think you would have divorced Linda?” he asked.

  “Define ‘healthy family’,” I replied.

  He took his staff and poked me in the shoulder. “You were one of those clever lonely boys growing up, weren’t you? Compensating for your insecurities with a smart lip. I know your type. It’s sad that such intelligence is wasted. I’m not your enemy. I just want you to come to terms with who you really are.”

  “Who am I?”

  “A sinner. You were born into a life of sin. You were tainted by a life of sin. You perpetuated your life of sin.”

  “My marriage with Linda had nothing to do with my past.”

  Mardi appeared irritated that I’d given him an answer he wasn’t satisfied with. “Your whole life was predetermined by your past. Accept that first. Tell me more about them. Then we can work through it together.”