by Nathan Allen
His whole life had been in service to God, and now he feared it would all be for nothing. His entire existence may have been meaningless. At the rate things were going, the world will have moved on from religion within a decade. It would all be forgotten, a relic of a bygone era. Fr. Gerdtz’s legacy would be that he was part of the generation that allowed spirituality to wither and die like a neglected pot plant.
A moment passed, and a sense of helplessness took hold.
He did what he always did during times of uncertainty and soul-searching. He bowed his head and clasped his rheumatic hands together in prayer.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” he whispered solemnly. “Am I wasting my time here? Should I give up and simply accept this is how the world is today? Is there anything I can do to make a difference? Or are there better ways for me to devote my energies towards helping people?”
He was silent for a long time.
“Please, Lord,” he said, a ripple of emotion entering his voice. “It’s rare that I ask for help. I know there are many more in much greater need than I. But I just need a sign. I need to know if there is something I can do.”
There was a knock at the door.
Fr. Gerdtz froze. He opened his eyes and looked up at the clock. It was 9:38 p.m. Much later than he thought. His time spent on the internet just sucked the hours away.
He was conflicted about what to do next. Should he answer the door? This was an odd time for visitors, and he wasn’t expecting anyone. But the knock occurred immediately after he asked the Lord for help. Was that a coincidence, or was God actually listening? He often told his followers there were no coincidences in life, and that everything was part of the Almighty’s divine plan. Whoever was on the other side of that door – even if they were unaware of it – would be able to provide guidance in his hour of need.
He rose from his seat and tentatively approached the door. His eye moved to the peephole. There was no one out there. Probably just some kids playing tricks. Tonight was Halloween, after all.
He turned the lock and unhooked the chain, then stepped out into the dark night.
The security light came on, and the area lit up. Funny, he thought. Whoever knocked somehow did so without activating the sensor. He looked left and right, but he could see no one around. Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe his mind was going in his old age. Or maybe it was nothing more than wishful thinking.
A light breeze blew, and a sharp chill brushed against his skin. Today had been a day of unseasonable warmth, but the night air had turned unexpectedly frigid. A shiver rippled through his body.
Then he saw the parcel.
It was right in front of him, inches from his feet. By now he had been outside a couple of minutes, but had only just noticed it. It was almost as if it had materialized out of thin air. A more logical explanation was that it had been there all along, but he had failed to notice until then. He recently had the prescription for his glasses updated, but his eyesight was still poor once the sun went down.
The parcel was about the size of a shoebox. It had no note, or anything else to identify the sender. It was wrapped haphazardly in pages from a softcore pornography magazine.
Chapter 2
Krystal Blayze dropped into one of the plush velvet sofas inside the VIP section at the Aubaine Manor nightclub. She tugged at the hem of her Halloween costume – a skimpy nurse’s outfit that a ten year old girl might struggle to squeeze into – then checked the time on her Sony Xperia 25 Premium phone. It was just past midnight, which meant she still had another hour to kill before her contractual obligations were fulfilled.
She was exhausted from another arduous day of work. She’d had to grimace her way through her fifth meet and greet in the past three days to promote her new book #YOLO, Bitch!. When that was over she reviewed the script and rehearsed her lines for an upcoming episode of Blayze of Glory, her “reality” television show that was about to start filming its third season. Next was a magazine photo shoot and two hours of phone interviews, then on to her appearance at Aubaine Manor. She had been pulling sixteen hour days for the past three months, with no letup in her schedule anytime soon. And there were still ignorant haters out there who had the nerve to dismiss her as “famous for being famous”.
More than anything, it was these nightclub appearances that drained her. So many people assumed it was easy money, but they had no idea what the job really entailed, nor did they understand just what she had to endure night after night. Tonight she had been trolled by a group of basic bitches looking to score their own fifteen minutes of fame, as well as being hit on by about a thousand guys who thought that telling her they’d seen her hacked photos constituted a pickup line. No matter how much she got paid, she was totally made to earn every cent.
The financial rewards weren’t even that great anymore. She had missed the golden age of the celebutante by just a year or two, a fact she lamented every time she turned up to one of these things. She still took home around $70,000 for a single appearance, which could be bumped up to $100,000 if she DJ’d as well (DJing was a process that involved connecting her phone to the console, loading a Spotify playlist, then waving her arms in the air for an hour). But it was a far cry from the quarter of a million some venues were paying not so long ago. Appearance fees had plummeted in recent years as the number of fame-wenches approached saturation point. Now there were miscellaneous “personalities” with the tiniest amount of celebrity status, all these YouTube vloggers and viral news subjects, turning up to clubs for ten grand or less. They were dragging the price down for legit stars like herself.
Her manager Nigel sauntered across and sat down next to her. “Great set, babe,” he said. “You really had the crowd moving.”
“Whatevs,” Krystal said. “This place is dead tonight, anyway.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re totally right.” Nigel was reading a message that had just appeared on his phone and wasn’t paying attention to a word Krystal had said. “By the way, I spoke with the owner of this place. I let him have it over those posters. He apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again.”
“What posters?”
“You know, the posters they had up promoting your appearance here tonight. The ones that promised ‘A special DJ performance by Krystal Blayze’, with inverted commas around the word ‘DJ’. I told him that was completely disrespectful.”
Krystal nodded along, even though she wasn’t entirely sure what the inverted commas implied.
“Also, the projections have just come through from the publisher,” he said, reading the message on his phone. “#YOLO, Bitch! is on track to shift a hundred k in the first week.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s ... great?”
Nigel made a face. “You’re not happy with one hundred thousand?”
“It’s just that I have, like, twenty million followers. I thought it’d be a bit more than that.”
“Trust me honey, one hundred thousand is a lot for a book. Nobody reads actual books anymore. And it’s almost double what Slut Puppy did in its first week of release.”
Slut Puppy was Krystal’s previous book about dating and relationship advice. It sold over one million copies worldwide.
“In that case, I guess I’m allowed to chillax a little,” she said.
A server passed by holding a tray of multicolored shots. Krystal reached for one, and Nigel gave her hand a gentle smack.
“Uh, I don’t think so sweetheart.”
“What, you’re telling me what I can and can’t drink now?”
“No, I’m reminding you that we have a meeting with the head of Parlux in eleven hours’ time to discuss bottle designs for your new fragrance. It’d be nice if you turned up to a meeting sober for once.”
Krystal let out an adolescent whine. “Do I really have to go to that?”
“If you want your name emblazoned across a bottle of perfume then yes, you really do have to go to that.”
“But I’m not even sure I want m
y own fragrance.”
“What part of having your own fragrance do you object to? Is it the part where you take a three dollar bottle of scented liquid and sell it for $110?”
“No, Nigel–”
“Trust me princess, this is one meeting you don’t want to blow off. Having your own fragrance is like owning a money-printing factory. If you’re not willing to take advantage of this opportunity there are plenty of other scene queens who are.”
Nigel’s phone chimed with an incoming call. He leaped up off the couch. “And put something new on Instagram,” he ordered. “It’s been seven hours since your last post. Leave it any longer and the press will start drafting your obituary.”
Nigel left to take the call in a quieter corner of the club. He plucked a shot glass filled with bright blue liquid from the bar along the way and poured it down his throat.
Krystal sulked for a few minutes – she hated it when Nigel ordered her around like she couldn’t make any decisions on her own – before eventually conceding he might be right. She needed some new content for her Instagram account.
She took out her phone and scanned the room for career advancement opportunities; namely, famous or semi-famous guys. A celebrity selfie was the surest way of enhancing your brand and keeping your name at the forefront of the public’s mind. She knew that better than anybody. A year and a half ago, a twenty second encounter with Justin Bieber saw her profile skyrocket. Rumors quickly spread that the two were romantically involved – rumors she did nothing to dispel – and Krystal’s rise from anonymous to ubiquitous kicked into warp speed. The picture received two hundred thousand likes, and she gained half a million new followers in a single week. Her entire career – the TV show, the modeling gigs, the books, the fitness DVDs, the endorsements – could all be traced back to that one cluster of pixels. But she wouldn’t be able to rely on it forever. She had to stay relevant or risk the ignominy of fading back to obscurity.
Even though, as a feminist, she knew it was wrong that a woman could become famous purely due to her association with a successful man, she didn’t let it bother her too much. As far as she was concerned, feminism meant that a woman should be able to do whatever she wants and not be criticized for it. Anyway, nothing said Girl Power more than exploiting a man for your own personal gain.
Sadly, the VIP section of Aubaine Manor was severely lacking in A-list guys tonight. What it did have was an oversupply of second-tier professional athletes, third-tier reality-famous douches, and no-name sub-Juggalo frat-rappers. In other words, nobody Krystal could benefit from having her name associated with. In fact, being seen with any of these dickwits could only damage her brand. The name Krystal Blayze was synonymous with exclusivity, and she’d prefer to keep it that way.
If there were no other celebs of her stature to leech off she would have to rely on her tried and true selfie fallback. She extended her arm, gazed into the phone’s camera, and snapped off a quick dozen shots.
Scrolling through the results, she was horrified by what came up. The pics were ghastly; she looked about thirty. The lighting in the club accentuated the bags under her eyes, her hair looked like it was a strong breeze away from falling out, and almost every shot gave her a double chin. She looked hotter in her mug shot than she did here. She tried fixing a couple of the better ones with filters, but this did little to make her any less of a hot mess.
She would need to bring her A-game if she was to post anything Insta-worthy tonight. So after a quick fix of her hair, makeup and cleavage she sucked in her cheeks, pushed out her lips, did that squint thing with her eyes that made her appear more alluring, and flashed a peace sign with her left hand.
She had taken a handful of shots when a dark figure appeared in her peripheral vision.
After taking a moment to examine the mystery package left on his doorstep, poking and prodding it in an amateurish attempt to determine if it was potentially dangerous, Fr. Gerdtz lifted it up off the ground and carried it inside his house. It was slightly heavier that he expected. He placed it on his dining room table, then carefully removed the crumpled magazine pages used as wrapping paper. Inside, he found a plain brown box with an envelope attached. The envelope contained two things – a VIP pass to a West Hollywood nightclub, and a handwritten note.
The note read: I trust you’ll know what to do with this.
He used a letter opener to slice through the tape sealing the box shut. He pulled the flaps open, just as the sky exploded with a sharp clap of thunder.
Inside was a .500 S&W Magnum revolver and a box of ammunition.
Fr. Gerdtz instinctively backed away. His hand went to his mouth in shock, and he collapsed into a kitchen chair.
He didn’t move for a full five minutes.
A range of possibilities raced through his head. A deadly weapon had just landed unannounced on his front door. Who on earth would do such a thing? Was this meant to be some sort of warning? A threat? A prank? If it was a prank, it was quite an expensive one. Even though he knew next to nothing about firearms, he did know that guns like this one, the type Harry Callahan used in all those Dirty Harry movies, didn’t come cheap.
He debated what he should do next over a strong cup of tea. This was such a bizarre event, coming so out of the blue, that he really had no idea of the correct course of action. He assumed he was supposed to report this to the police. He could see no other sensible option.
But then the note caught his eye. I trust you’ll know what to do with this. The words rattled around inside his head as he attempted to decipher their true meaning.
He couldn’t explain why, but something compelled him to reach inside the box and pick up the gun.
An otherworldly sensation ricocheted through his body as soon as his palm made contact with the rosewood grip. His entire being vibrated with a kind a euphoric energy. It was a phenomenon unlike anything he had ever felt before, and the closest he’d come to a purely religious experience in a long, long time.
A moment passed, and the pieces of this cryptic puzzle gradually shifted into place. There could be only one reason why this gun appeared on his doorstep at this exact time. He knew where it had come from, and he knew what he was meant to do with it.
Several hours later, he made his way to a nightspot on La Cienega Boulevard called Aubaine Manor. The name proved to be a slight misnomer; “Aubaine Manor” brought to mind a sophisticated establishment frequented by classy patrons, not an overcrowded and overpriced den of sin and sleaze that inflicted actual physical pain on him as he entered. He found himself surrounded by people one third his age, many outfitted in Halloween costumes more befitting the red light district than neighborhood trick or treating. Worst of all was the excruciating noise assaulting his eardrums. When he first came into the club he assumed a fire had broken out and they were sounding some sort of evacuation alarm. It soon became apparent that this was the actual music these people were voluntarily exposing themselves to. Fr. Gerdtz tried to maintain an open mind about what young people enjoyed these days, but this was one thing he’d never quite understand. The music, if you could call it that, was more like something riot police would blast in order to disperse large crowds rather than anything an entertainment venue might play to attract one.
As he wandered through the club he noticed just how much things had changed since he was a young man. The dances he had attended were a great deal more wholesome than the debauchery he was witness to here. In his day, a gentleman would signal his intentions by respectfully approaching a young lady and asking her to dance. Now it seemed acceptable for a man to show his interest in a woman by stumbling towards the dancing area and grinding his crotch against the unsuspecting target of his inebriated lust. The fact that this all occurred on the holiest day of the week only compounded his revulsion.
The VIP section was situated at the rear of the venue. He attracted a number of puzzled looks from the burly security staff, one of whom called him “bro” and complimented him on his “freaky dope-ass
costume”, before his pass granted him access beyond the hallowed velvet rope.
A different type of music played in here; one with angry urban males using deplorable language whilst shouting at one another over an abrasive instrumental track. After just a few seconds of this, Fr. Gerdtz was thankful that his failing hearing dulled the full impact of this odious racket.
His eyes scoured the room. The décor was kind of retro-futuristic. The bar was made from transparent fiberglass, and the lighting came from thin neon green fluorescent tubes running along the sides of the walls and tables. A black and white art house movie was projected onto one wall, although the VIPs – none of whom appeared to be of particular importance – paid scant attention to it. They were more interested in gulping down their brightly-colored alcoholic beverages and shouting into each other’s ears.
He spotted his target in the far corner, holding her phone out in front of her. She was dressed like an extra from a Carry On film and contorting her face into something that resembled a large fish gulping for air. This was Krystal Blayze; the woman symbolic of an entire generation with an excess of confidence but absolutely no justification for it.
He made his move, striding purposefully towards her. He expected her to look up, but her focus remained solely on her phone. He reached beneath his cassock and removed the Magnum. He wasn’t one hundred percent certain what was happening here. He couldn’t tell if he was doing this all on his own volition, or if he was being compelled by an unseen force. Possibly a combination of the two.
With little hesitation, he aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.
He was completely unprepared for the recoil produced by such a powerful weapon. He lost control the instant it discharged. The force propelled him backwards and his hand flew up, the gun striking him across the face. Clint Eastwood made it look so much easier.
When he regained his balance, he saw that Krystal Blayze was now missing the top half of her head.
