THE ARC OF THE UNIVERSE IS LONG,
BUT BENDS TOWARDS DEGENERACY.
She trembled.
How did he know? He saw. That’s how. He must have glanced at her screen before
she could hide it and gathered that she loved Lori. And yet, how did that explain the later comments? What did he mean by “damned with blessings”? How did he know she
planned to die? And what, in Heaven’s name, was the meaning of that last line? She
found it truly puzzling. She’d only recently found out the meaning of the word
degeneracy. Through the first thirty-seven-and-a-half years of her life, she hadn’t heard or seen the word. Now she’d been exposed to it twice in the last month. Peculiar.
She placed her credit card on the table, over the check. When René returned she
would have a chat with him about his rudeness. He could communicate in writing, if not
with speech. If necessary, she would force him to write down his answers to her queries.
She would demand to know why he’d written her such a nasty note. Then she would
complain to the manager. It was all well and good for the restaurant to hire a severely
disabled man to wait tables. Some states gave tax breaks for such hiring, and – in
principle – Ellie was for it. But this man’s handicap clearly didn’t stop with his limp or his speech impediment or his missing hand or the dent in his forehead. It was internal, as well. He was clearly insane and hellbent on forcing his delusions on her.
She fidgeted. Held the note in her hands. Re-read it. Belched. Waited on René to take
her payment.
But the hand that reached down toward her credit card wasn’t a mannequin hand. It
was chubby and attached to a ruddy, husky young man in his late twenties named Ray.
She was about to ask what had happened to René. She was about to demand he be
reprimanded for writing such a venomous note, but when she looked down into her hands
she found no note at all. Just a paper napkin that had been twisted into a miniature rope by anxious hands.
* * *
I decided to give Eleanor a warning – by way of my angel, René. She feared me, you
see. Yes, Lori feared me, too – but her fear was different. Lori’s fear was a fear that followed on the heels of agreeing to serve as my concubine and failing to fully accept all the consequences of that status. The sort of fear that came from knowing – not from
theory, but from experience – that, if it were my whim, I could rob her of her arms and legs. I could change her shape into something incapable of disobedience. If it were my wish, I could dissolve all of her body except her breasts, her cunt, and her lovely face.
She knew I had the ability and the right to stack one on top of the other and torture each in turn.
Hers, too, was the fear that stemmed from having given birth to my begotten son. It
was the terror that only came to those who’d carried my seed. Lori wasn’t merely
frightened of me. She was traumatized by me. And that trauma led her to despise me and attempt to defy me.
Eleanor, on the other hand, feared me – not in my true presence, but on the basis of my reputation. It was a fear that led her to repress her sexual self for decades. It was a fear that led her to yearn for the ability to comply with the biblical commandments she (falsely) assumed were my actual wishes. She’d been led to believe that I loathe
homosexuality because it is an abomination. But – as anyone who has ever taken a
glance at my concubines and children can testify – I love nothing more than abomination.
What do you think attracted me to Lori, in fact, if not for that abominable, deranged mind of hers? I love abominations so much that I can’t help hoarding them. In my harem.
Among my children. My domain is a Palace of Abominations. This, perhaps, is the
greatest teaching I can share with you: the heavenly and the hideous are not separate.
They are joined together in a coitus so intense it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Each reaches out to the other. The hideous needs the holy. Prays to it. Begs for its intervention to heal a broken body and twisted brain. The hideous needs the holy because without the holy it would have no hope for redemption. Likewise, the holy has an interest in seeing to it that there is a proliferation of hideousness. Happy, beautiful people have no need of God. It is only when people are debased by degeneracy of the mind or body that they consciously seek me out. And I desire to be sought out. Worshiped.
For God to be relevant, degeneracy must reign. And it is not enough for the number
of deformities to grow over time. My wish is to bend the human genome in the direction of deformity. The deformities of each generation must be more grotesque than those of the generation that preceded it. Each child should be more appalling than its parents.
And so the cycle must continue and escalate until – at the end of history – we arrive at a destination of ultimate deformity; the place at which humanity has reached the peak of perversion. I shall perfect humanity in the only way it can be perfected, by making it perfectly monstrous. By placing it in a position where it can no longer be self-sufficient; a place of constant need. A place at which it must cry out in constant supplication.
You can see, then, how important Lori’s child is in the vast scheme of things. Our
son – and all my children – are steps along the path to perfection. He must survive into adulthood. Not only survive, but copulate. Preferably with a conjoined twin, a
microcephalic, or some other genetic wonder. That is my goal for him.
Eleanor planned to commit suicide with Lori because she thought she’d be damned,
anyway, after indulging in pleasures with a woman (and she could no longer restrain
herself from seeking out such pleasures).
She was foolish. My wrath against the adulterers had nothing to do with the fact that they both happened to be women. It had to do with the fact that Eleanor had chosen the wrong woman to run off to West Virginia with. Lori was mine. Exclusively. Reserved for my use as I saw fit. She was my property, and no one plays with my things without my permission.
No one.
Captured
Trooper Connelly took a deep breath. He’d been called to the Morris house way too
many times over his career. Always for the same reason – the daughter. Hot piece of ass, but nuttier than a squirrel turd. Each time they dispatched him to that house, he took Lori Morris away in handcuffs and dropped her off at the hospital. Didn’t seem to solve
matters, though. He was always called back in a few months. The whole thing seemed
pointless.
The mother wasn’t a bad lookin’ gal herself. Maybe ten years younger than him. Had
the same eyes as Lori, but with crow’s feet along the side of them. The same nose as
Lori, only with a pair of bifocals perched atop of it. The same big boobs (except hers
sagged more, which was understandable). There was now a nasty cigarette burn on her
cheek (courtesy of the nutty daughter). But from a distance, it looked like a beauty mark.
All told, Connelly thought, she was a slightly flabbier, more wrinkled version of the hot daughter. But Connelly would tap it, if given the opportunity. He’d go after her before he’d go after the daughter, in fact. The daughter might be a seven or eight out of ten, but you had to deduct five points due to her nuttiness. After accounting for that penalty, he reckoned she was only a two or three.
The mother’s voice was hoarse. She would sometimes cry convulsively and it would
sound like coughing. Connelly hated it when they cried. “Ma’am...can you try...try...to
calm...ma’am...”
“G-go after h-her...” the mother said.
Connelly stretched. Took a pad of paper out from his shirt
pocket. “We’ll find her.
We always do, don’t we?”
The mother blew her nose and gave him a few slow nods as an answer.
That was good...calm her down. Let her stop bawling before taking her statement.
“You and I, we’ve known each other for a couple of years now, haven’t we?”
“The baby...”
Connelly nodded. “I know...The dispatcher said there was trouble brewing over here.
But I need you to answer some questions before we go and start causing a commotion
about all this. I mean, you have to understand. We get calls about custody disputes all the time, and you said yourself that she’s the mother.”
The woman shook her head, as though disgusted. “You need to go now. We have
custody. I’ll show you the papers. She’s only allowed to see him here, when we can be around to supervise her. And she took him. And he’s not like other babies. Go...go now. I, I think she hurt him. I heard things snap when she...when she left here.”
“She hit him?”
The woman paused. Blew her nose. Rubbed tears away with liver spotted hands. “I-
it’s hard to explain, but I think he’s hurt, pretty bad. And I think she meant to hurt him!”
Shit. This wasn’t a routine take-crazy-hottie-to-the-hospital call. She wasn’t just
breaking dishes or windows this time. This was gonna be an actual investigation. Time to go from calm-witness-down-mode to get-witness-talking-mode.
“And you heard bones snap?” Christ, this wasn’t good news. Connelly didn’t know
the whole story, but he remembered something about the kid being all messed up
somehow or another. Lots of birth defects. Probably caused by the hottie smoking dope.
( But maybe, Connelly thought with an uncomfortable quiver down his spine, caused by all the crazy pills she’d been prescribed.)
“Y-yes I did. Please, go now. You can get my statement later. Just find her!”
“Is your daughter armed?”
“No. She’s no threat to anyone except the baby.”
“Looks like she was damned sure a threat to you, now.”
The mother brought her hand up to cover the cigarette burn. Her face started to take
on the same crimson shade that her nails had been painted. “What I mean is, she’s
mentally ill but guns aren’t her style.” Then she took her hand away from the cigarette
burn – maybe catching on to the silliness of trying to hide it, at this point. She now
pointed to it. “This is her style. This and raking her nails over your face and maybe, with a man, giving a kick to the groin. Nasty stuff, but not lethal. So don’t you go shooting at her, you hear? Just catch her. Put her away for a good, long while this time.”
“And, of course, there’s the boy.”
“Why, yes, of course. I mean, that’s the main point. To get him medical attention.
He’s...fragile.”
“What’s the child’s name?”
“He’s only a baby. He doesn’t answer to his name yet.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m aware of that. But, for the paperwork I have to know. His name.”
“J-Joshua.”
“And the baby’s last name?”
The mother coughed. “It’s...Morris. Joshua Morris. Lori never told us the name of
the father, and no one ever came forward to claim paternity.”
The cop scribbled in his notepad. “You said the baby was fragile. What do you
mean? In detail, that is?”
The mother shifted in her seat. Fidgeted.
She was embarrassed. Of course she was. No one wanted to talk about shit like this.
But Connelly knew this kind of thing tended to get taken more seriously if the kid was
handicapped. “Isn’t he, well, you know, special in some way? I hate to put it like this, but it might help get more sympathy for your situation, with the courts and with the media, if they know all the details.”
“He has several…conditions. Probably the worst one is called anencephaly. A birth
defect. He’s quite vulnerable. His brain didn’t form right, in the womb. The skull and the brain didn’t form right, that is. So he only has a tiny bit of brain tissue, and most of that is actually outside of his body because there’s no skull to cover it.” She bit her lip. Blew her nose some more. “He’s too young, right now, to get any corrective surgery done. So he’s
supposed to have a special covering on his head, where the skull should be, to make sure his brain doesn’t get injured – kind of an artificial skull. They have to keep his arms
restrained so he doesn’t mess with it. He takes several medicines each day for this, you know? When she took him, she didn’t even take those with her.”
Connelly nodded. Scribbled in his pad.
“The one thing I don’t understand is why she injured the kid if she was wanting to
kidnap him. I mean, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, that doesn’t make much sense.”
She smirked. “It’s not complicated, officer. Really, it isn’t. She’s a lunatic who
claims Josh is the result of God raping her.”
Connelly cleared his throat. Coughed.
“Yes, I know it’s bizarre. But since she kidnapped her son, it probably will be good
for you to know the whole story, no matter how embarrassing. She wanted to get an
abortion because of this delusion. Obviously, we made certain that didn’t happen. To be
honest, I think she came here today wanting to kill her son. She was vague, but she said she wanted to do something she should’ve done a long time ago. And I wouldn’t let her
take him, you know? Anyway, I think that’s why she didn’t care if she injured him. My
gut tells me her ultimate plan is to kill him.”
“That would have been a good thing to say to the dispatcher.”
“Didn’t I? I don’t know. It was all so upsetting. I thought I’d mentioned it. Maybe I
didn’t, maybe I ...” She whimpered, hunched over, and started to cry once again.
“Ma’am...ma’am...I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to upset you. Now, listen...was he still
alive when she left?”
“Yes.”
“But injured?”
“Yes.”
Connelly looked up from his pad and examined everything he’d written. Ran an
anxious hand through his bristly flat top. Cleared his throat. “Any idea where she took off to?”
“None. She just said she was going on a trip.”
“What kind of car does she drive.”
“A white ‘89 Camry.”
“Christ. Can’t be going too far, in that.”
“The car only has 100,000 miles on it. We bought it for her from a widow who only
drove it to church and back for the past twenty years.”
“Gotcha. Any friends out of state? You know...people who might harbor her while
she’s on the run?”
“She’s not the kind of girl who makes friends. I’m sure you can understand that from
having dealt with her before. She spent a lot of time talking to people on the computer, though.”
“Good. Then her computer might give us some clues.”
“Sure...by all means, have people search her apartment. Look at the computer. I’m
certain you’ll find all sorts of incriminating evidence. But, most of all, save my
grandson!”
* * *
There was screaming and there was music and there was night and there was rain.
The storm tap danced across the top of the Toyota. Josh and the stereo seemed to be
in a contest to see which was loudest. The bawling was shrill, high-pitched, and gurgly.
Each time Lori nudged the volume dial to make the woman sing louder, the baby took its
screaming to a new dec
ibel level. It was screaming even louder than it had when she’d
first taken it.
She snapped and started screaming, too. “Shuttup! Shut...up! ” She could feel her
throat burn after yelling, the way it used to burn after screaming at a concert. For a
moment, it seemed as though her voice would prevail as the loudest. But then it cracked
under the weight of its own fury. She started to stammer and weep. “Wh-Why the f-fuck
won’t you die?”
She’d gotten onto I-64 West two hours ago. All the crying should have worn out
Josh’s lungs. It couldn’t have kept going like this on such a limited air supply. Yet it did.
She wished her mother could see all this. Then she’d believe Josh was the son of God.
Only its divine parentage could explain its continued survival.
She looked at the wobbly needle tracing her speed. The Toyota had held up well,
given its age, but its speedometer was no longer one hundred percent accurate. It lurched forward and back erratically, even as she held the gas pedal down at a constant rate. All she could tell was that she was going somewhere in between sixty-five and seventy-five
miles per hour. She knew just enough to feel assured she wouldn’t get snared in any
speed traps. She sure as fuck didn’t need that right now. No cop would understand the
necessity of putting her son in the trunk.
A guy passed her on the left. Had to be going ninety. He had the interior lights on
and he seemed to be fumbling for something. Looking into his car, through the
downpour, was like looking at a melting oil painting. She could make out a rough outline of him. Even the night and the rain and the speed couldn’t obscure the fact he was well-muscled. She pulled even with him. Turned on her own interior light. Honked at him.
He turned his interior light off. He didn’t even look over at her, let alone honk back.
When God had claimed her as one of His wives, He cast a spell on all the men of the
world to prevent them from pursuing her. Maybe, she told herself, he’s not looking because if he took his eyes off the road, in this heavy rain, he’d be asking for trouble.
But that was all wishful thinking. The truth was that God had chosen her, and she’d
foolishly agreed to be chosen, then He’d raped her, then He’d marked her as His
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