The Crooked God Machine

by Autumn Christian

  It was nighttime, the air cool and the black moon small. The dust blew across my clothes I sucked in the fresh air and breathed out slow. In the distance I saw the bus from Sodom, busted and broken down, its wheels missing. People wandered off into the distance like melting shadows. The black moon pooled around their feet, swelled halos on their heads.

  Two figures in black masks stood nearby. One was a man holding an assault rifle. His God mask was cracked, exposing his blacked out eyes and forehead. Beside him was a dark skinned woman stood, wearing a purple taffeta dress with a butterfly bow.

  “There’s something I don’t like about running around in these ‘fuck you’ masks,” the woman said, “it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Cults are popular these days,” the man with the assault rifle said.

  “It’s the principle behind the thing,” the woman said,

  “You’re going to talk to me about principle?” the man continued, “you just shot a woman seven times in the chest because she said she didn’t like your dress.”

  “Who are you people?” I asked as I approached.

  The two stopped arguing and turned toward me. The woman hitched her back like a snake.

  "We're friends," the man said.

  "Why did you break into that place? Why did you save me?"

  "We know what you've been through."

  I stood there at the entrance of the slave trader's labyrinth for a long while, watching the paint flakes fall off the man's face. I thought then of Smarts and his number six, and the unknown woman with the machine gun that followed after him.

  "You're heretics, aren't you?" I said.

  "We're friends," he repeated.

  The lean man came out of the slave trader’s labyrinth and now stood beside me, his black God’s mask cradled in the crook of his left arm. On his face he had one mechanical eye with the pupil dilated to the size of a coin.

  “You could go with us if you wanted,” he said, “we could help you.”

  "Charles!"

  Jeanine ran toward me. Her sheer gauze clothing was torn, her lip busted. She looked cold and hard without the light bouncing off her skin.

  "Charles," Jeanine said, breathing hard, "Charles. They freed us all. We’re free.”

  She reached out to touch the collar of my shirt and it crumbled in her fingers. Only then did I realize my clothes were streaked in blood.

  "I'm sorry," I told the man with the mechanical eye, "There's somewhere I have to be."

  Jeanine took my hand and we walked away from the slave trader's labyrinth.

  Chapter Five

  While Jeanine and I wandered in the desert, we told each other about our perfect worlds.

  "No more clothes," Jeanine said, "we could fuck on the streets. While in line at the grocery store. On the porch steps while our grandmothers are making lemonade."

  "No more corpses," I said, "no more dead skin and bones. When something dies it just disappears."

  "No, we need bones. A record of what we lost."

  "We can have bones, then. But no blood."

  Jeanine and I walked in the desert for days following the black cloud on the horizon. Jeanine said the black cloud would take us to the capitol city. In the day we burned, and in the night we froze. We sucked the moisture from our clothes buttons to keep from dying of thirst, and as we walked pieces of our clothing fell off and dissolved in the sand.

  As we walked the black cloud on the horizon became more defined. It grew hard edges, and the haze disappeared.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “God’s castle,” Jeanine said.

  I measured our progress across the desert by the details that formed out of the black cloud. Parapets and windows encased in spider-webbed iron bars towered over the desert. The castle rose above the rest of the city, making the tallest buildings appear diminutive in comparison.

  "When we get to the city we'll find my brother," Jeanine said, "he can help us."

  “If we ever get there alive,” I said.

  My eyes nearly sealed shut with the sweat and the heat. My face cracked with a sunburn. We passed the bones of animals laid to waste, cracked and picked apart by birds. We passed bones of men and women holding hands and curled inside of each other like cold and fused fossils.

  Jeanine touched my face. Her fingers came away slick with my sweat.

  “In my perfect world it would always be dawn,” Jeanine said, “A thousand sunsets every moment.”

  We made it to the city sometime in the early afternoon hours. Unlike Edgewater and Sodom, the buildings of the capitol gleamed metallic white. The streets lay austere, like the silver tongue of a machine. Flat faced televisions were bolstered onto the surface of buildings, on the sidewalks underneath thick panes of glass, in boxed windows.

  Our limbs lost their locomotion, our tongues swelled hot in our mouths. Jeanine knelt in the street to drink from a puddle. I licked the glistening faux rocks of the post office building. People gathered in the streets with ticker tape and colorful floats, talking excitedly as they held banners and put on grotesque white stage make-up. Banners for Slim Sarah's celebration parade, with Slim Sarah’s cat glasses and dog face blown up to huge proportions, were displayed prominently from nearly every building in the city. The Teddy and Delilah show broadcast from every television.

  “I'd almost forgotten about that,” I said, “the parade, I mean.”

  “That stupid show is still on?” Jeanine asked. “Whatever, it's not important.”

  I wanted to stop and rest but since we'd lost our bags after leaving Sodom, we had no money to rent a room. The people in the streets prepared for Slim Sarah’s celebration with a frenetic and claustrophobic energy. Jeanine and I continued on to the Prophet Headquarters, a white, silver fingered building sitting underneath the shadow of God's mountain. The silhouette of God's castle descended down upon the walls like a sharp edged tornado.

  The guard post to the Prophet Headquarters lay empty. Jeanine and I walked into the building unnoticed. We stood for a few moments in the empty lobby just so we could feel the cool air-conditioner blowing on our skin. Every surface in the lobby glittered and gleamed, as if cooling under ice.

  "Why wasn't there anyone at the entrance?" I asked Jeanine.

  "I don't know," Jeanine said, "let's go find my brother."

  We found no one else on the first floor. The receptionist desk was abandoned, the offices empty behind their glass walls. We explored the vast floor its cool and sprawling corners expanding like an echo chamber, looking for some sign of life.

  When we approached the elevator doors they sprang open and a guard walked out with a prophet in handcuffs. The guard pushed the prophet forward, and the prophet let out a small groan. His cheeks were swollen, his skin blue. His shiny sphere twitched like a bruised eyed.

  The guard walked past without acknowledging Jeanine or me. Jeanine and I slipped into the elevator before the doors closed.

  "Why isn't anyone here?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Jeanine said, "I didn't think the apocalypse was scheduled until next month."

  Jeanine took my hand and squeezed.

  When the elevator doors opened and Jeanine and I stepped out we found ourselves in the basement. A seemingly endless corridor, the walls lined with a series of doors that went from the elevator to perpetuity. Each door had a number written on it in red paint.

  "This is it," Jeanine said.

  She pulled me down the corridor and began checking door numbers. From behind the thin walls I heard clicking teeth and subdued crying. Occasionally I heard the rattle slam of furniture being thrown across the room, or people chattering hymns underneath their breaths. There was nothing left of the pristine, austere ice world above. The walls bled grit gray and smoke. The carpet underneath was stained and old and crawling upwards with dead insects in its undertow.

  "This is where the prophets work?" I asked, my voice a whisper.

  Jeanine opened a door and we entered her brother's off
ice.

  Jeanine closed the door behind us. Jeanine's brother sat in the corner of a room at an overloaded desk, underneath the brown claustrophobic wallpaper. At first I couldn’t tell the object he was hunched over, the only light in the entire room emanating from its case.

  “That’s a computer isn’t it?” I said, “I haven’t seen one in a long time.”

  He didn’t look up, but continued to type.

  Though I'd never mean Jeanine's brother before, I could see the family resemblance. They both had shiny wide eyes, dark hair, sharp bodies with railroad track bones. And like Jeanine, he was aged well beyond his years. His skin cracked melanoma sick and his face ran greasy and pale. His cheekbones threatened to slide down his chin. His typing hands bulged with throbbing, gnarled veins.

  "Jonah," Jeanine said.

  He glanced up, but he didn't stop typing.

  "Who are you?" he asked.

  "It's Jeanine," she said, "your sister. Don't you remember?"

  His fingers stopped for a brief moment.

  "What did you do to your hair?" he asked, "it looks awful."

  "I came to see you."

  Jeanine walked closer to the desk. Jonah shrank into his chair. He wore a suit and tie that were too big for him, and the space that his clothes left behind seemed to accentuate the cold, small knot that remained of his body.

  "We need your help," Jeanine said.

  She reached out for Jonah's hand. He twitched when she touched him.

  “I'm kind of busy,” he said, indicating his computer monitor, “I still have to type up these salvation reports, and then I have a meeting with some of the other prophets to discuss our recent divine revelations. And then after that I have to catch up on my conversions. I'm behind quota.”

  He turned back to his computer and resumed typing.

  “Jonah,” Jeanine said. He didn't respond. He didn't look up.

  “Jonah!”

  “What? I told you, I'm busy. If I don’t finish this then I’m going to be in trouble. ”

  “We're looking for someone. Someone Charles knows went missing about a month ago. We thought you could help, seeing as you're a prophet and all. Like, you could check the shuttle records to see if anyone by her name was transferred, or if any residential transcripts came in.”

  “That isn't my department, Jeanine,” he said.

  “But surely you can do something. You're a prophet of God.”

  “People go missing all the time, we don't keep records on that anymore. Too much of a hassle.”

  “Please. I know it won't take long.”

  “Jeanine, I'm really quite busy. You don't know what kind of trouble I'm going to be in if I don't finish these reports. The high priests have been breathing down my neck because of my performance, and they've been getting rid of a lot of prophets lately."

  “Look, I'll write her name down for you. Do you have a pen?”

  “Jeanine.”

  She went behind his desk and started opening drawers looking for a pen and paper.

  “Jeanine, please.”

  She pulled out a pen and a legal pad and wrote Leda’s down on the top, then pushed the legal pad in front of her brother's keyboard. She leaned into him, her stripper body just as cold and hollowed out as his.

  "I missed you, you know," Jeanine whispered, "you don't know what's happened these last few years. Maybe if you'd been home you could have stopped all these horrible things from happening."

  Jonah said nothing.

  "Did you know at our graduation the guest speaker burnt down the school? And someone murdered my swans. And Daddy got executed after they found out he was a serial killer. Did you hear about?"

  "I don't have time for things like that anymore," Jonah said.

  He chewed on his bottom lip. There was a red split right down the middle of his lip where he dragged his teeth.

  "Why do they have you down here in the basement?" Jeanine asked, "you're a prophet. Everyone always said you were special. I thought prophets lived in high rise apartments and had harems full of beautiful women and drank vintage wine and ate crepes all day."

  "You're wrong," Jonah said.

  "Jeanine," I said, "we should go. I don't think he's going to help us."

  "That's what they always told us in school," Jeanine said, "that prophets got the best of everything."

  "Have I not made myself clear, Jeanine? I'm very busy and if I don't make my quota the high priests will probably get rid of me. I'm not just some small town prophet who can make a few salvation and damnation reports and then spend the rest of the day lounging on the porch. This is the capital Prophet Headquarters, and things are different here."

  Jonah tore at his hair like he would pull it out at the roots. In a nearby office someone screamed and swore, then threw a heavy object at the wall.

  "Let's go, Jeanine," I said.

  "I missed you," Jeanine said, "you should have been there with us."

  She traced a small pattern against Jonah's back.

  "I can't be there with you," Jonah said, "prophets always have to make sacrifices."

  "He's more scared than we are," I said, "he's closer to God than the rest of us and he's terrified."

  "I'm calling the guard to take both of you out of here," Jonah said.

  He picked up his phone and began to dial for the guard. Jeanine grabbed the phone out of his hand and slammed the receiver against the side of his desk with a crack. Jonah jumped out of his seat. Jeanine tried to grab Jonah by his tie, but when she tugged at the tie it unraveled off his skinny neck and fell limp to the ground.

  “Don't you dare call the guards on us,” she said, “I haven't seen you in ten whole years and you can't even give me five minutes? Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” Jonah asked. He jabbed a finger into her oozing head wound. Jeanine cried out and her body jerked backward. She hit her head against the wall. I rushed over to take hold of her, but she pushed me away and wheeled around, panting, to face her brother. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. Her hands clutched and dragged across her face, as if she was checking to see if she’d lost her head.

  “Who are you, Jeanine?” Jonah repeated, “you want to know who I am, but you're the one with a hole going straight to your brain. You think I've changed? As far as I'm concerned you're dead and all that's standing in front of me is some stranger wearing my sister's body.”

  “Will you be quiet?” the prophet in the adjacent room screamed, “some of us are trying to work!”

  “Shut up!” Jonah said in response. He grabbed his chair and hurled it at the wall, where it smashed into pieces.

  “Don't talk to her like that,” I said to Jonah, “you know she doesn't deserve that.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Jonah asked me, “get out of my office. This isn't a public forum where you can just walk in and voice your complaints.”

  He bent down to pick up the receiver once more. The shiny sphere in the back of his head turned heated red on the edges and white in the center, like a wound full of venom. Jeanine reached out for Jonah's arm. Jonah stiffened at her touch.

  “We'll leave,” I said, taking Jeanine's hand away from Jonah's arm. My voice came out slow and even, but instead my body “just put down the phone. We'll leave if you put it down. He isn't going to help us.”

  “You expect to make demands on me?” Jonah said, but when Jeanine and I moved toward the door he put the phone receiver back into the cradle. Before we went back out into the corridor, Jeanine spoke.

  “I'm telling Mom,” she said.

  Jonah slumped against the desk and groaned. I closed the door behind Jeanine and me and we headed back toward the elevator.

  "What a bastard," Jeanine said as we went up in the elevator.

  She leaned against the elevator wall. She pressed her hands against her eyes and tried to hide her tears from me.

  Chapter Six

  Jeanine and I walked out of the Prophet Headquarters to find Slim Sarah's cele
bration parade in full swing. Floats made to look like bloody fetuses, children's hair, and murder weapons lined the streets. Apocalypse Brigadiers and people streaked with fake homemade blood danced on top of the floats and in the middle of the roads. Others banged on drums and kettles, blew trumpets, brandished weapons, or carried signs with Slim Sarah's face printed onto them. Fathers carried on their shoulders their children smeared with blue and yellow powder to resemble the bruises of a corpse.

  “What is going on? Who is this woman?” Jeanine asked.

  We held hands to avoid getting lost in the crowd and walked as close to the sides of the buildings as possible.

  “She killed all of her children,” I said, “so God threw her a parade.”

  “My god.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “She's so ugly. Couldn't God have picked someone with a prettier face?”

  A loud speaker boomed from atop one of the floats.

  “Hello citizens of the capital city! Today we are here to celebrate the extraordinary devotion of Slim Sarah. Endorsed by God himself, not since Abraham has a woman shown such obedience to the glorious maker of heaven and earth. We could all take Slim Sarah as our role model, and learn to be more receptive to the commands of our supreme father. Let's celebrate for God!”

  A great cheer went up from the crowd. It spilled out onto Jeanine and me like a wave, and I found myself pressing my hands to my ears to try to block out the noise.

  “Where do we go now?” Jeanine said, screaming to try to be heard over the crowd.

  “I don't know,” I mouthed.

  “Slim Sarah! Slim Sarah!” the crowd took up as a chant.

  Jeanine pointed to the woods north of the capital, residing underneath the shadow of God's castle. I nodded. We headed into the street and moved toward the trees.

  A man wearing a bloody baby head mask slammed into my side and knocked me on the ground.

  “Jeanine!” I called out, but I’d lost her in the crowd.

  Costumed people assaulted me on all sides, knocked me down into the ground again and again.