by Gina Ranalli
Chapter 14
Lucifer leads our little parade out to the stairwell that we never would have found on our own, simply because it didn’t exist until he wanted to climb it.
We go up several flights in silence, except for Lithia’s huffing and puffing. When we arrive at a door marked 8th, Lucy swings it open and gestures us all forward. “After you,” he says with a bow.
I’m a little leery—who knows where he could be leading us—but Katina marches right through like she owns the place. Like it’s not the devil inviting her through, but a cute misunderstood boy. I suppose, in his own way, that’s exactly what Lucy is.
With thinly veiled trepidation, the rest of us follow Katina out into the hall and I sigh with relief. The place is sparkling and clean, a lush white carpet that looks as though it has never been walked on before beneath our feet. Brass lamps with frosted glass globes sit on expensive mahogany tables, glowing bright and welcoming. From somewhere, music is playing and the song sounds vaguely familiar but I can’t quite place it.
“Come along, my little piggies,” Lucy says, starting down the hall. “Follow the big bad wolf.”
We oblige, treading quietly, as if we’re trying hard not to disturb the patrons of this five-star hotel, lest they discover our presence and have us thrown out like the bums we are.
The music swells the further along the hall we travel and then it finally comes to me: the Beach Boys, singing “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”
Lucy stops directly in front of the door where the music is coming from and raps his knuckles against it loudly. He looks at us and smiles, looks at the unanswered door and frowns. He raps again, harder this time. “Open up, Jay. You have visitors.”
The door across the hall opens instead and we all turn to see several nuns peeking out at us. One of them spies Lucy, makes the sign of the cross and hisses something in Latin. Another one immediately begins singing along with the Beach Boys, clapping her hands in time with the beat, completely oblivious to us.
“That’s the Singing Nun,” Lucy tells us. “The Flying Nun is in there too.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” I say.
“Swear to God,” he says dramatically.
One of the nuns pushes past the other two and joins us in the hall. The sight of her makes us grimace: blood flows down her face, streaming from her bloodshot eyes. Lucy jerks a thumb at her. “The Bleeding Nun.” Then he pounds on the door with his fist. “For fuck’s sake, Jay, open the fucking door!”
The door opens abruptly and a young bearded man peers out at us, followed by a cloud of smoke. I sniff and look at Ago. “Mary Jane,” I say and try not to laugh.
“Jesus!” Ago says, his own nose wiggling.
“Hey, how ya doin’, man?” Jesus smiles cheerily. I notice his eyes are even more bloodshot than those belonging to the Bleeding Nun.
“These kindly folks would like to have a word with you, Jay.” Lucifer says patiently.
“No shit?” Jesus looks at us with his brown cow eyes. “Well, come on in!” He steps aside, taking a toke off the joint he’s holding. As I pass him, I can’t tell if I’m surprised by the way he’s dressed, or completely unsurprised.
He’s wearing worn out leather sandals (no surprise), torn dirty jeans (a bit of a surprise), and a tie-dye T-shirt with a big pot leaf on the front (a pretty big surprise). His shirt is decorated with various pins: smiley faces, more pot leaves, The Grateful Dead. His wrists are decorated with hemp bracelets and around his neck are several long necklaces, colorful beads glinting in the sunshine of his room.
“Sorry the place is so trashed, guys,” he says once we’re all inside. Even the Bleeding Nun has come in, trailing silently behind the nearly-silent Jane 62. Jesus starts throwing stuff around the room, clearing off the furniture for us to sit. He tosses clothes, comic books, a dirty pair of sneakers, empty soda cans, pizza boxes. All of it goes straight into a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed, which he promptly sits on, facing the TV. He takes another toke and points at the television which is playing a video game. “Mario Kart, guys,” Jesus says smiling, speaking loudly to be heard over the Beach Boys. “Anyone wanna race?”
Lucifer rolls his eyes. “I told you, Jay. These people want to ask you some questions.”
But Jesus isn’t listening. He’s started a new game, racing Mario around the track, trying to catch up to Luigi. After a moment, he says, “Yeah, there’s some cold pizza over on the…the…” He trails off, concentrating. When his little cartoon car crashes, he laughs like a child and smokes more of his joint.
Lucy clears his throat and says, “They want to know if they’re ghosts or zombies, Jay.” He speaks to Jesus as though the guy is a complete idiot and I’m starting to see why. I think he’s toasted a few of his brains cells in the last 2,000 years or so.
“Just say no,” Ago murmurs.
“Jay?” Lucy says, louder. “Can you please stop doing that for a minute?”
“I’m listening,” Jay insists. “Kinda.”
“Well, which is it?” Lithia demands. “Ghosts? Zombies? Spirits? None of the above?”
Jesus looks around the floor for an ashtray to stub out his roach. Once that is accomplished, he looks up at the rest of us with those earnest brown eyes and says, “That’s a pretty existentialist question. I mean, who are any of us, right, man? Maybe you’re not even here. Maybe I’m not even here. See what I’m saying?”
Katina has moved to the window and looks out. “Sunflowers,” she says softly. “An endless field of sunflowers.”
None of us are interested enough to look out with her. Instead, I look down at Jesus and say, “That’s not really helping, Jay.”
“Or,” he continues, as though I didn’t speak. “Maybe you’re the whole world. The whole universe. Did you ever think of that?” He pinches his thumb and index finger together to signify something very small. “Maybe the entire solar system exists only in the pupil of your eye.”
I’m beginning to feel a headache coming on and have no idea how to respond to the son of God when he is spewing such nonsense.
“Are you sure you’re Jesus?” Lithia asks suspiciously.
Jesus laughs and resumes his game.
“This whole thing is starting to get on my nerves,” Ago says. “I think I liked Purgatory better.”
“Fuck that,” Katina replies, finally turning away from the window. “If I’m stuck here, I at least want to be stuck on one of the higher floors where we can eat something other than opera pie.”
Now convinced that our question won’t be answered after all, I’m inclined to agree with her. “We may as well see what we can see. Evidently, we have nothing but time anyway.”
“I’m in no rush to get where I’m going, if you know what I mean,” Lithia says in her cracked voice. “They can be renovating Hell till the cows come home for all I care.”
“The renovations are almost finished,” Lucy tells her with a smile. “I’m looking forward to it myself.”
“I’ve been hearing that for as long as I can remember,” Lithia says, clearly not intimidated.
I say, “So, I assume we still have to take the stairs, right?”
“It’s not as impressive as you think up there,” Lucifer says. “The lower floors are where the fun is at.”
“I’m sure you would say that, but why don’t you just humor us for a minute.”
He sighs loudly and pouts out his lower lip. “Jay should take you. I hate it up there.”
We all look at Jesus, who has just lit up another doobie and is stroking his wispy beard in a thoughtful manner. He shrugs and says, “I’m down with that.”
Chapter 15
So, our parade has yet again increased, this time by two. Despite an endless stream of complaints, Lucifer has decided to tag along and he and Katina bring up the rear, whispering.
Ago and I follow Jesus up a flight of stairs, while Lithia, Jane 62 and the Bleeding Nun trail behind us. Jesus begins humming “Stairway to Heaven,” then laughs upr
oariously at his own joke. The rest of us chuckle politely but I know the others, like myself, think the messiah is a major dork as well as a hopeless stoner.
Eventually, the stairs end and we all crowd onto the small landing, waiting for Jesus to open the door. He places his hand on a highly polished gold knob and say, “Okay, you guys ready?”
There are a lot of groans but I say, “Yep, we’re ready.”
Jesus opens the door with a flourish and then steps back. Ago and I pass over the threshold first, completely astounded. The others follow us through and I can hear soft gasps behind me. We stare in silence for what feels like an eternity.
And then, Lithia’s voice: “What the hell is this? A joke?”
I blink at the vast whiteness of where we are. A bright blinding nothing. Absolute emptiness. When I turn around, I see my companions and not one other thing. We’re standing on air, it seems, and the door we just passed through no longer exists.
“I told you it was boring,” Lucy says.
“This is it?” Katina asks. Her voice is on the verge of breaking. “This is Heaven, where all the fucking good rich white people go? What the fuck?”
Everyone begins to talk at once, except for the Bleeding Nun, who stands silently, the blood on her face the reddest thing I’ve ever seen against all this white.
Suddenly I remember when I first met Salvadore and we began our trek to the Virgin City. When we first emerged from the electric forest—all that white space that crept up behind us with every step, wiping out the road, the trees, the sky. Everything.
I remember staring into that vast white space and struggling to see something—anything—and then I did. I saw some fleeting movement, too fast, too blurry to identify as anything but a trick of my imagination.
I saw something because I was trying to see something.
Looking around again, I see the faces of my companions and now they’re all silent, staring at me expectantly. “What?” I say.
“What?” They all reply at exactly the same time, in one single voice.
My voice.
Stumbling back a step, I shake my head. “What’s going on?”
Again, they all repeat my question, all their lips moving simultaneously, all their voices mine.
I look hard at Katina—young Katina, so much like myself when I was her age—and watch in fascinated horror as her head begins to melt like hot wax, her features slipping right off her face and dribbling down her neck and shoulders.
All of them are melting right before my eyes, each one of them a bubbling mass of flesh colored goop, their clothes melting right along with them and puddling on the floor of nowhere.
Jesus is the last to go and as I watch, his face doesn’t exactly melt, but morphs into mine. A masculine version of me, but still very clearly me.
“We were all you,” the Jesus-me says. “Every facet of you that ever was.”
“That can’t be,” I say, my voice undistinguishable from his. “No. No, no.”
Jesus-me begins to melt just as the others had and I quickly turn away, concentrating on the white. I know there is something in all that nothing, something alive and moving and if I just try hard enough I’m sure to see it. If I just concentrate…
My headache worsens but I see something, a brief flittering of silver light. I screw my eyes shut and open them again, focusing hard on the spot of silver.
The single dot of silver begins to bloom, spreading out and at first I think it may be a star. But then it grows fingers, long and spidery, reaching up and up and then the whole thing resolves into what is unmistakably a tree.
A sparking electric tree.
Once I’m able to see the tree, the rest of the forest is easy to create. I think and it is: it’s as simple as that.
I suppose I could have thought up anything. Maybe a city or a farm. A snowy mountain with a big lodge atop it, smoke curling up out of its stone chimney. A vast blue ocean and a warm welcoming sun.
I don’t know why I created the electric forest but as soon as it’s completed, I know that I made a mistake.
I know I have to try again, go back to the beginning, but I don’t know how. Erasing things is not as easy as creating them, though I try hard to do exactly that, to no avail. I can’t undo what I’ve done.
The rain is just starting to fall and there is a river of ice up ahead. I know because I put it there.
It seems important that I reach it before the black sky breaks open and electrocutes me where I stand.
And so I run.
About the Author
Gina Ranalli is an author of bizarro fiction, including the novels House of Fallen Trees, Sky Tongues, Swarm of Flying Eyeballs, Praise the Dead, Wall of Kiss, and Mother Puncher. Her short story collection 13 Thorns (with outsider artist Gus Fink) won the Wonderland Book Award for best collection of 2007 Her short fiction has appeared in Bits of the Dead, Horror Library Vol. 3, Northern Haunts, The Dream People, and Dead Science.
She often watches for fire plugs around town, noting their unusual colors and distinctive features. Visit her online at www.ginaranalli.com
