The Crooked God Machine

by Autumn Christian

  But I’d already pushed myself past what remained of the crowd, head down. The monster masks of the Apocalypse Brigade reared up. I turned away again and started walking in the opposite direction to escape them. Ezekiel disappeared.

  Maddy lolled dead in the ELECTRIC BABY 4000. Even when I looked away I couldn't escape the image of her tattooed breasts. "God is not real." Those words filled my mouth with their sharpened angles.

  “Hey, are you all right?” someone asked.

  She touched my shoulder. It was the flower woman from the week before. Except for not carrying any flowers, she was just as I remembered her, all knots and scars and bones weakened to the point of collapse. She wore gauze wrapped around her hands and a cloche hat pulled down over her face like a helmet.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I said, “I mean, no.”

  I looked around the square for Ezekiel, but he’d disappeared.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked me.

  “I remember what you said to me the other day, that’s what’s wrong,” I said, “I’ve never seen anyone not fall.”

  “Let’s get away from this, shall we?” the woman said to me. She slipped my hand into her fingers like a landmine. I seized up.

  “I don’t know you,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” she said, “I don’t know you either.”

  In the center of the town square Maddy’s executioner unstrapped her body from the electric chair. Maddy’s skin had cooled a light black, like honeyed tar. When the executioner dragged Maddy by the shoulders off the chair I expected her to snap her head back, grow sharpened legs like a spider and crawl away. But she remained limp except for the hair that the executioner tore from her burned skin.

  “Let’s get away from here,” the woman said once more.

  “I don’t know you,” I repeated,

  “Leda,” she said, “I’m Leda.”

  I expected her to have the eyes of every lonely woman I’ve ever known. I’d learn how lonely looked from my mother and sister, with their nicotine-ringed, hazy faces. But Leda’s wine dark eyes were fierce as teeth, and when she tightened her grasp on my hand I thought those eyes might snap and swallow me whole.

  “Where?” I asked her.

  “Away,” she said.

  I looked around once more for Ezekiel, but he was gone. Most of the crowd was gone as well, and the empty electric chair sat in the middle of the town square like a sad mother. The men with faces like pins and dressed in gray suits approached the execution platform once more and hoisted Maddy’s corpse up onto their shoulders to haul away.

  Leda’s hand slipped away from mine, and she motioned for me to follow her.

  She led me out of the town square and out the downtown alleyways behind the courthouse and the prophet headquarters. She took me to the back of a shop with a steel door, pulled a key out from underneath a storm drain, and unlocked the door. We entered the back of a flower shop, windowless and cool and musty. A refrigerating unit full of tissue paper bouquets hummed in one corner, but other than that the room was bare.

  “Do you need to sit down?” Leda asked me, “I can get a chair from the front room.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said.

  She tugged on the brim of her cloche hat, as if trying to pull the shadows down. She stood in the center of the room much like she’d stood in the street several days ago selling flowers; like a bent tree turned hard, sap frozen, limbs about to snap. I kept clenching and unclenching my hands. The memory of her hand in mine burned.

  “I can’t stay here,” I said.

  “No, of course not,” she said, and then, “Step away from the window.”

  “What?”

  She grabbed me and pressed my face into her shoulder. The windows burst, spraying us with glass. Shouts came from outside. Someone screamed, “Give us the dead whore!”

  The small explosion that happened seconds ago still orbited my head and ringed my ears. I pried myself from Leda and stumbled back, over the carpet of glass. She continued to stand in the center of the room, her face unchanged. Blood dripped from the glass embedded in her forehead.

  More shouting outside. I heard the snap of a gunshot, then the hollow silence that always followed.

  “Leda,” I said, and I couldn’t hear myself speak. “We can’t stay here.”

  I moved away from the window toward the inner door. I flung open the door and Leda and I entered the front room of the flower store. The irises and chrysanthemums and lilies looked as all ordinary objects did after an explosion, one-dimensional and dull as dog dreams.

  We moved through the maze of flowers toward the front door. Leda reached up and slid the bolt lock open, and we left the flower shop. Outside A bear-masked woman with an electric cattle prod stood in the middle of the street, fur flying, as she electrocuted a prone man wearing a gray suit over and over again. More of the Apocalypse Brigade stood outside on the courtroom steps on the other side of the street, watching the spectacle through the thin slits in their monster masks.

  “Where is she?” the woman in the bear mask said, “what have you done with that whore?”

  “Give her to us!” one of the other Apocalypse Brigadiers called out.

  The others took up the chant.

  “Give her to us! Give her to us!”

  The man in the gray suit tried to protect his body as he was electrocuted and beaten. He cried out, and as if it was a cue the rest of the waiting Apocalypse Brigadiers surrounded him and started to beat him. They pulled his body apart, a few running off with a leg, an arm, a fistful of scalp.

  Leda stood on the sidewalk beside me with her mouth tight and her body turning to stone.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  She didn’t respond at first. Only when I grabbed her shoulders and wheeled her around did she look at me, horse panic in her eyes. Several of the Apocalypse Brigadiers glanced in our direction, entrails strewn between their teeth.

  “Leda,” I said, “Listen to me. We have to go.”

  I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her down the street. We walked hurriedly, without looking back behind us even as we heard the shouting, the screams. I knew if I looked back behind me, or broke out into a run, then they’d descend upon us immediately.

  “Give her to us! Give her to us!”

  We rounded the corner and the voices died down. Leda breathed a sigh. Even as I tried to calm my limbs they ratcheted off my torso like bullets.

  “We can’t stop,” she said, “they might change their minds and come after us.”

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I took her home with me.

  As Leda and I walked up the porch steps to the front door of my house the heat of the explosion lacerated my back. I reached for the doorknob and blood dripped out of my sleeves.

  In the living room Momma and Sissy sat washed out in the glow of the television, their rickety bodies bent under a network of blankets and breathing tubes and IV stands. God’s horned head projecting from the television turned their pale skin reptilian. For many years they’d ceased to resemble the Momma and Sissy I used to know. Even their eyes, flickering with the movement of the screen, resembled the eyes of snakes.

  “What are those things?” Leda asked of the figures on the couch.

  “My family,” I said, “come inside.”

  I went into the kitchen and flicked on the light. I turned on the sink faucet, and peeled off my shirt. It came apart in my hands. I placed the shirt on the counter, smearing blood against the granite. Then I braced myself against a kitchen chair and started to pick the glass out of my back, piece by piece.

  “Iodine?” Leda asked from the kitchen entryway.

  I didn’t answer at first. I looked back at her, with the pink-tinged glass in the palms of my hands, my tongue ruched to my mouth. Everywhere she stood she turned into some surrealist painting. Not because she was beautiful, but because she knew how to stand still. Only her nose quivered as she stood, there like some sort of animal, trapped inside my soldered c
hildhood cage.

  “Where do you keep the iodine?” she asked again.

  “Down the hall. Bathroom cabinet, behind the mirror,” I finally said.

  She disappeared down the hallway. I turned back to the sink and wet a rag underneath the warm water, then pressed it against my shoulder blade.

  “So when are you two going to get married?”

  Normally I could hear Sissy sneaking up on me, but the water pouring out of the faucet concealed the clicking of her slip implant and the grinding of the rusted wheels of her IV stand.

  “It’s been so long since you’ve brought Jeanine over here,” Sissy said, “I’ve missed her.”

  I shut the water off. Sissy ran her fingers down the dirty IV stand and the needle in her hand strained against the tubing. All of Sissy’s features quivered. Her eyes and nose and mouth sunk into her emaciated face.

  “Jeanine’s not here,” I said.

  “We should have dinner together again,” Sissy said, “wasn’t that fun?”

  She smiled.

  I tried to walk past her out of the kitchen. She clamped her hand down on my wrist and pulled me toward her. Her fingers were leathery and thin, ready to slough off the bone.

  “You know we never had a chance,” she said.

  “Let go of me, Sissy,” I said, “please. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Not until I tell you a story.”

  I sighed.

  “Okay, fine. Tell me a story,” I said.

  She spit in my face.

  My hands shot up to my face and my body jerked backwards. Sissy kept her grip on my wrist even as I pulled her halfway across the kitchen floor. The IV stand crashed with a rusted squeal, ripping the needle out of Sissy’s hand.

  Leda reappeared. When she saw what was happening, she dropped the bottle of iodine on the floor, spilling it. She grabbed fistfuls of Sissy’s hair and hauled her off of me. I pushed myself backwards against the kitchen floor, smearing sharp lines of blood. Sissy whined, a strained, cat sort of whine, as Leda pinned her to the kitchen floor by her hair. Sissy thrashed, throwing her head back from side to side, pressing her palms to her throat.

  “You’re hurting her,” I said.

  “Just like old times,” Sissy said, nearly breathless.

  I scrambled to my feet.

  “Stay there,” Leda said.

  The heavy cloud in Leda’s voice stopped me. The hot wire spider jumped inside of Sissy’s head, swollen as a tick.

  Leda bent down and whispered in Sissy’s ear.

  Sissy’s hands, quivering, fell from her throat and grew still. Her body stopped thrashing against the kitchen floor. Leda unraveled her hands from Sissy’s hair and petted her soaked forehead. Sissy’s eyes rolled up in her head, spit the color of glycerin shining on her lips.

  “Come on,” Leda said, “let’s get you back to the couch.”

  “How did you do that?” I asked, “what did you say to her?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Leda said.

  Leda pulled Sissy to her feet. Sissy, now docile, let Leda lead her back into the living room and position her by the couch beside Momma. Momma had continued to watch television throughout the whole ordeal. When Sissy rejoined her on the couch, Momma shifted inside her cocoon of shrapnel and gunmetal wire, and addressed Leda without ever glancing in her direction.

  “Jeanine,” she said, “where have you been?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Leda said, “I’m here now.”

  “Jeanine,” Momma said.

  “Yes?”

  Momma’s neck creaked as she turned her head.

  “You’re blocking the television, Jeanine.”

  Leda straightened up, as if unrolling out all her bones. I hadn’t taken notice of a woman in seven years, but I couldn’t stop looking at her. She stood tall, taller than me. I thought she might somehow manage to break through the boundaries of my house and carry the roof away on her shoulders.

  “Come upstairs with me,” I said.

  “How long have they been here?” Leda asked me.

  “Too long,” I said.

  Later as we sat up in my bedroom picking the rest of the glass out of our skin, I meant to ask her what she’d said to Sissy to calm her down.

  Yet I asked “can I draw you?” instead.

  I sat on my desk char. Leda sat opposite me on my bed barefoot, her dress hiked up to her thighs and her hair slipping rheumy down her shoulders in the faint light. Glass littered the floor in front of her. The blood on her forehead and fingers shone like light.

  “I’m not pretty enough to draw,” she said.

  “It’s not about that,” I said.

  “What is it about?” she asked.

  “Something that catches the eye,” I said, “something unusual. It’s all in the way the lines around us are drawn, you know. We think we’re in control of our eyes, but it’s really the lines that are.”

  The silence lay thick on her. Outside the insects ticked.

  “How come I’ve never seen you before?” I asked.

  Before she could answer someone knocked on the front door.

  “Charles!” I heard Ezekiel yell, “You son of a bitch, are you still alive?”

  I got up and went to the open window. Ezekiel stood outside in front of the porch with a deadhead woman on one arm. Freshly implanted, from the looks of her turpentine skin and puerile eyes still colored human. She clung to him with fingers that couldn’t keep still, braced herself against him with her knees, jumped into his skin with her clenched jaw.

  “Where the fuck did you go earlier?” Ezekiel said when he saw me at the window, “I wanted you to meet Boxy.”

  “You left,” I said, “I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  “Say hello, Boxy. Charles, did you know Boxy’s an exotic dancer?”

  “No, I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

  I glanced back at Leda. She stared at her hands, palms full of veined debris. Her fingers twitched as if they were slipping into gloves of broken glass. “Those Apocalypse Brigadiers got all riled up after we electrocuted that girl in town square,” Ezekiel said, “rioting, blowing up the street, demanding her corpse so they can desecrate it. It’s great. Come down here.”

  He tipped the deadhead’s neck back so far I thought her vertebrate might reach out to brush her ankles. He kissed her and she screamed in the back of her throat like night thrush and swamp music.

  “I can’t,” I said, “I’m sort of busy.”

  He let go of the deadhead with a flourish, and she splayed out onto the gravel in front of him, wide-eyed, like a choked doll.

  “You know I know you better than that. Sort of busy? Long as I’ve known you, you do nothing but draw those little pictures of yours and meander around considering the lilies. And why, dare I ask, have you yet to find a job?”

  “Theresa’s sick.”

  “She’s a deadhead,” Ezekiel said, “there isn’t any other kind but sick.”

  I grasped the window casement above my head to steady myself. After a moment’s pause, Ezekiel sighed loud enough to make sure I heard.

  “Right, of course, I forgot. You’ve got one of those savior complexes,” he said, “well, good luck with that.”

  He threw the deadhead woman over his shoulder and left.

  “You should stay here if the Apocalypse Brigade is out,” I said to Leda once Ezekiel was gone, “Sleep on my bed. I’ll sleep in Theresa’s room. She never sleeps.”

  I walked toward the door to go out into the hallway.

  “Sleep with me,” Leda said.

  I paused.

  “What did you say?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard her.

  She got up with slow, heavy motions and crossed the room, and then lay face down in my bed. The bed sunk underneath her. The headboard and the posts and the frame groaned with her unfamiliar weight. Leda’s treacherous limbs stiffened, as if they would fall apart if she didn’t hold on tight enough.

  “Sleep with me,” she whi
spered.

  I crossed the room and stopped at the foot of the bed. For a long while she stood there. I watched her frail body shake with her breathing.

  “Charles,” she whispered.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “I’m so tired,” she said, “It’s been so long.”

  I crawled into bed beside her. I touched her shoulder and my muscles tensed. My head did not belong to me. My limbs did not belong to me. I seemed to be not inside the bed, but floating above it. I watched myself as if from a cloud, a television screen, as I wrapped my limbs around her body and pulled her close toward me. Her breath melted into my breath. I lay there with my eyes open, my mouth and chin buried in her short hair. But the pain lashing my back wasn’t what kept me awake.

  When her breathing slowed I crept out of bed and out into the hallway. My blood followed me like a second skin. It seeped through the bandages and mottled my back. It dripped down into the shape of a face and dried there, crusty and beaded, empty eyes, hole of a mouth. It trickled down my legs and pressed red imprints of my feet down into the floor.

  I got to the end of the hallway and went into Momma’s room. The window was open, blowing leaves and dust across the floor. It’d been years since Momma could even walk up the stairs. Everything was arranged as it once was. The bed, the dresser, my baby brother’s crib. I knelt beside the crib and pressed my forehead to the cool plastic railing.

  “Charles?”

  Without turning around, I knew Leda watched me from the entryway.

  “I’m over here,” I said, my mouth dry.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  I could still see the dried spot of blood on the wall where years ago my baby brother spit out his thumb.

  “I know,” I said.

  “What was his name?” she asked.

  I said nothing. She touched my shoulder.

  “You’re shaking,” she said.

  I didn’t notice until she mentioned it. I thought it had been the room tilting sideways, the bed and the baby crib and the dresser clenching their teeth, growing thin with anemia. But it wasn’t the room, it was me.

  “You’re making me remember things I don’t want to,” I said.

  She pressed her sharp face down into my shoulder. Her arms encircled me. I couldn’t remember the last time someone held me.