The Not

by A. R. Braun

  The only answer was an echoing scream from outside that made Don and Fay jump and woke Georgia.

  CHAPTER 37

  Almost broke and tired of room service, Rick walked into the hallway, locked his room and went to the elevator. Starving, he walked out of the elevator, then heard the stairwell door open behind him. Somebody reached around and put him in a headlock. Rick felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressed against his ear.

  “You stole my truck, you son of a bitch,” the madman growled. “Now you die!”

  Without thinking about it because he practiced MMA often, Rick grabbed the arm around his neck and flipped the crazy man onto his back. He landed with a crash and dropped the gun.

  The madman hurled an insult Rick’s way that the latter couldn’t make out.

  Obviously stunned by the horrendous fall, the madman gasped for breath. Then the nut sat up and looked at the weapon, but so did Rick, a monumental moment passing between them. Breathless, Rick went for the gun, but the crazy man snatched it up before he could. Rick slid forward, batted the nutcase’s hand, snap-kicked the weapon away from the assailant. Rick followed up with a series of karate punches, leaning into the blows like a boxer. He desperately wished his other arm wasn’t in a cast. He would’ve knocked the madman out by now.

  “Shit,” the nutcase cried. “You fucking cornholer!”

  The madman eyed Rick as he was about to go for the gun, then dove on top of it.

  Rick broke for the glass doors while the wacko fumbled with the gun. As he did so, Rick craned his neck and caught the eye of the young lady sitting behind the checkout desk. “Call the police! And go to the back of the office,” he shouted before she could react.

  Rick crashed face-first into the glass door, cursing his cast. Excruciating pain spiked through his bad arm and nose, and he wondered if he’d broken the latter. How could I be so stupid? But how could one think straight in such a situation? Rick ran outside into the black hole of night, moving into the parking lot. Panic and exertion threatened to suck the air from his lungs as if he’d been buried alive.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot the back of your motherfucking head,” the madman cried from behind him.

  Rick stopped, putting his hand up.

  “Oh, who am I kidding?” the crazy man said. “I’ll shoot anyway.”

  “You don’t have to do this, man,” Rick cried. “Our group had encounters with that god of yours. He screws you in the end.”

  The madman laughed. “Why, I didn’t know he cared.”

  Rick finally found the strength to turn around. The nutcase lurked behind him, then stepped forward, aiming the gun at his face.

  “Goodnight, Irene,” the unhinged man with a light of madness in his eyes said.

  The blast deafened Rick. An excruciating spike of pain between his eyes was the last thing he ever felt.

  ***

  The Not had told Charles that the young man who stole his truck was staying at the Quality Inn. Charles watched for the kid through the stairwell door’s small window. When he saw the punk come out of the elevator, Charles crept out the door.

  Thank The Not the puke isn’t looking over his shoulder. Stupid fucker — there are times when paranoia’s good thinking.

  Charles took off his shoes to ensure he’d make no sound and picked up his pace. He grabbed the kid around the neck and held the gun to his head.

  When the damn kid flipped him, it seemed surreal. He came crashing down onto his back with such intense, throbbing pain that he called Rick the Whore of Bibletown as he rose and spun around to make a second attempt. Balefully, he’d dropped the gun.

  Goddamn karate fucker!

  They both stared at the weapon. With supernatural strength given him by The Not, Charles grabbed the gun, but the fucking punk batted his hand away and kicked the weapon out of it.

  Son of a bitch! The Not is going to wipe me from existence, goddamn it!

  “Fear and blasphemy don’t work well together, paleface,” the booming voice of eons spoke in his head. “And it’s Pishunidamn it!”

  Your real name’s “Pishuni”?

  “Never mind that. Get the kid!”

  As the little twat went for the gun, Charles dove on top of it. Then a great thing happened: the kid just ran! Charles bolted after him and invoked Pishuni.

  “Don’t let me fail, my dark lord!”

  “I’m already working my magick. Now blow that palefaced Bible thumper’s head off!”

  Charles sprinted faster with his god’s blessing echoing in his ears. Then he saw it — oh, the glory — the stupid kid ran into the door, but not before he told the clerk to call the cops, the bigmouth. The puke righted himself and ran into the parking lot, but not fast enough. Hot on his heels, Charles yelled for the thief to stop or he’d shoot the back of his motherfucking head.

  Perfect — the kid turned around so Charles could hit him between the eyes. He stepped forward and fired, and the kid fell down with a thud. There was no question: he was dead. The blood and grey matter leaking from his cracked skull spread over the parking lot.

  A peace came upon Charles’s mind like he’d never encountered before. The kid must’ve been his dark lord’s arch enemy for such a reward to come upon him. Yet Charles couldn’t even bask in the glory of his god’s presence before police cars stormed into the parking lot and screeched to a halt. The cops piled out of the squad cars, with the officers’ guns drawn.

  “Freeze,” they yelled. “Drop your weapon. Down on the ground! Down on the ground!”

  “Enough of this pussyfooting around. The town of Castle Rock — give it me, and I’ll bring you back from the dead after they shoot you. Remember all the pussy I promised! Invoke me over this city.”

  “I said drop it!” one of the pigs went on.

  There was no way Charles was going quietly. The Not had made him invincible, and no one could take that from him. He was a force of fury.

  “Fuck you, bacon fat!” Charles raised the gun. The deafening shotgun and handgun blasts went off, and the bullets took the wind from him as they ripped into his frame. Charles fell to his knees under the barrage, the gun slipping from his hand. The fiery pain caused by the bullets felt like a swarm of pissed-off hornets in his guts. He began to grey out as he felt his blood drain, sticky and wet, down his torso. His lifejuice soak his pants.

  Warm tears of joy soaked Charles’s cheeks as he spread his hands above his head. “Yes, Pishuni, t-t-take it! T-take Castle Rock!” He felt a gate to Pishuni’s realm open up through his soul.

  Then he fell onto the ground, and all light left him.

  ***

  Don turned the TV on, and Mary Faith’s voice filled the room. Still sitting before his laptop, he gingerly lifted Fay from his lap, then watched the television. The hashtag and Twitter address of Mary’s show appeared in the lower-right corner of the screen. Don went on Twitter and read all the messages. Mary had replied to one person with her Twitter addie. Don copied it into Microsoft Word and saved it. Fay had lain down beside her mother. Now they were both sleeping.

  Don scratched his head as he mused over the WEIRD MESSAGE GOES VIRAL BY ITSELF article.

  “Wait a minute,” he muttered; “‘Weird message’? They’re not taking us seriously.” He looked in the comments section of the article. People were assuming this was the work of a crazy person because a hacker had done it. Don heaved a heavy sigh. “Wonderful.”

  Just then, he heard the news report on TV about a shooting at the Quality Inn here in town.

  “Holy freaking shit!” Don stuck the laptop under his arm and grabbed Fay’s and Georgia’s hands. He yanked them off the bed. “Wake up. We’ve gotta get out of here, right now! Pishuni told that nutcase where Rick was, so he damn sure knows where we are.”

  Don didn’t have time to tell the women it would be all right. They were racing for the stairwell in short order, Don in the lead. Georgia huffed, complaining about the stairs. Ignoring her, he ran down the remaining steps, taking them two at a
time — dragging the women with him — and they rocketed into the glass-lined lobby.

  Red, yellow and orange waves of heat radiated from the sky upon the city.

  Don’s mind swam. “Oh shit! Pishuni is going to destroy the city, and because we don’t worship him anymore, we’re going to die with it!”

  ***

  Erica, the clerk at Days Inn, blinked at the red, yellow and orange waves of heat reaching down to the city as she cowered behind the check-in desk.

  She trembled and hyperventilated.

  It’s the end of the world!

  Then it was. Cars and chunks of pavement were thrown around, but she couldn’t see a storm hurling them. Suddenly, a huge invisible hand picked her up and threw her at the entry doors like a ragdoll.

  ***

  Don, Fay and Georgia gawked at the young lady behind the desk as she flew headfirst through the doors with enough force to make them explode into shards of flying glass. Don covered Fay’s and Georgia’s heads as they crouched. The lady landed on the concrete with a thud, like a wet bag of cement. Her arms, legs and neck were at impossible angles for survival. Don blinked and shook his head. This couldn’t be happening, but he knew it was.

  A customer climbed out of his half-ruined car and ran for the “safety” of the hotel, but the felled woman crackled and rose, then caught him and turned him around till he was facing her. She reared-up and bit out his eyes, chewing them like grapes. The poor guy screamed. She must have had supernal strength, because the man tried his best to get free of her grip, but couldn’t.

  Did we pick the wrong time to run into the parking lot or what?

  The slight man continued to shriek like a stuck pig. She stuck her tongue into his wounds and lapped the blood and ichor pouring from the holes in his face.

  That is disgusting.

  She bit his nose off. Her face was covered in gore. She relinquished her hold on his arms, and the man fell down dead. She chewed the nose. When done, she swallowed hard.

  Then she exploded.

  Like Ben in Santa Fe, Don thought dumbly, watching a welter of gore and blood rush back to where she was along with her mostly intact body parts. Also like Ben, she came back together wrong. Her legs were where her arms used to be — her hotel uniform ripped to shit and laying in tatters on the sidewalk — and her arms lurked where her legs were. One breast was stuck where her sex had been — flopping around like a cock — and her head went where the breast had been. The other breast perched on top of her neck, the nipple becoming an insane eye, finally locating Don, Fay and Georgia. The former clerk’s big toe pointed at them while the breast made vocal noises like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

  This one can walk on her hands, Don observed, as the thing that had been the clerk inched toward Don and his family.

  Think fast!

  Don knew he needed to take action, now or never. “Grab my hands. Don’t hesitate, do it!” When he held Fay’s and Georgia’s hands, he decided to pull a Rick. It was their only chance. “Lord Jesus Christ, transport us to Denver before we die in this town!”

  The icky creature came through the doors and closed in on them. Don became dizzy as everything spun and whooshed as if he and his family were in the eye of a tornado. Colors danced before his eyes, then culminated in a horrid sound. Don knew in that instant that Christ could’ve prevented Pishuni from wreaking havoc on America, but like Rick used to say, he wanted Christians to suffer. What was the word he’d used? Martyrs, the ones willing to die for their faith.

  Suddenly, they stood in a huge downtown scene. Don knew they were in Denver because he could see the Rocky Mountains in the distance, as well as the Daniels and Fisher Clock Tower and the 16th Street Mall. He heaved a hearty sigh of relief, as did Fay and Georgia.

  Don and his family laughed nervously. It was either that or go crazy. The other people that were walking through the city had stopped and now gawked at them. When Don looked at the sky, he saw a fiery blast and a huge cloud of smoke rising into the air. It was what remained of Castle Rock… along with his car. Don knew other martyrs had just passed through heaven’s gate.

  Don, Fay and Georgia gripped each other in a group hug. Bereft, Don wept for Rick. The women cried for Rick also.

  ***

  More relieved than he’d ever been, Charles opened his eyes and sat up. He felt for the bullet holes, but they were nonexistent. As for his fellow denizens of Castle Rock, death and destruction were having their way with them. The thermal waves reached the police officers. Their eyes became crazed like cracked porcelain. They put their gun barrels in their mouths and fired. Gore covered the parking lot. As for the desk clerk, she’d been heaved through the now-broken glass doors and had risen up all broken apart, but still able to move. In fact, she dined on a policeman, a gross-out if there ever was one. Charles didn’t know a similar thing had happened to the clerk of Days Inn.

  “Rise and follow Don and his family to Denver,” Pishuni’s thundering voice spoke in Charles’s mind. “That God they worship transported them there. I’m sure it’s Jesus Christ now, for I heard their wishy-washy prayers. Why someone would worship that self-righteous Jew when his servants looked at my people like half-naked whores, I don’t know.

  “I can’t kill Don, Fay and Georgia by destroying a city. Their Gawd will salvage their worthless lives. I need you to shoot them over and over till they die, but it would please me more if you’d rip out their still-beating hearts and hold them in front of their faces, like in olden times.”

  Fat load of good that’ll do me, Charles thought, shuddering at the memory of where he’d just been.

  Pishuni was unaware that Charles had gone to hell for five minutes and that he’d had enough of evil. He’d raced through a tunnel, soaring downward through caverns that had grown hotter and hotter until his soul spied a huge fire directly below him. When he’d crashed onto the sulphury floor, his soul had erupted with flames. And in damnation, he was still an old man. Demons had descended upon him, rending his flesh with their claws. The creatures didn’t just have horns on their heads, but all the way down their tails like in those demonology books. Three horns adorned the crowns of their heads, and their red scaly skin had boils erupting out of it. Serrated teeth had gouged Charles’s eyes out. One demon even stuck its two-headed cock up his ass!

  “If you’re God, then why did I just come back from the Christian hell?” Charles yelled. To say rage toward Pishuni consumed him would’ve been an understatement. “Fuck you, demon! I’m a servant of Christ now!” He threw the gun aside and it clanked on the sidewalk.

  Apparently summoned forth by Charles’s anger and betrayal, Pishuni landed before him with a thud, and the ground shook. The deity’s hands balled into fists, the god trembled with rage, the wings radiated prisms of light that almost blinded Charles. The deity furrowed his brow and clenched his serrated teeth. “Then you die — again.”

  For the first time, Pishuni let someone see him as he truly was: he turned into a huge black serpent with large fangs to deliver his poisonous payload.

  “Aha!” Charles said. “The very snake that deceived Adam and Eve! I went to Bible class as a child, you moron. I know who you are.”

  The serpent’s mouth seemed to grin, and then Pishuni struck, biting his former servant in the face.

  Excruciating pain burned white-hot on Charles’s visage, then throbbed. Intense heat reared up inside his body. It grew hot, hotter, hotter still. His heart crashed against his ribcage, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow. Charles was slicked with perspiration. His breathing became labored. His dress shirt stuck to his upper body. He couldn’t catch his breath as his heart crept into his throat. With sudden dread, he knew he was going to explode.

  “Forgive me, Lord Jesus, for serving this wannabe god!”

  Then darkness took him.

  ***

  Don’s eyes surveyed the city, a weak sister to his hometown of Chicago. He had one hand on Fay’s back and one hand on Georgia’s as he moved them tow
ard the nearest hotel, a white square-shaped structure called the Comfort Inn Downtown. Above, the dark-blue sky was dotted with white clouds. A bus stopped by a small crowd of people. Young men acted hard, but the driver was polite. Don and his family moved away from the bus. Small dogs coughed and yipped, attached to their full-grown male masters by leashes. Don wondered why a man would settle for a dog that was smaller than a cat.

  He tried to curtail his sobbing because of Rick’s death and the loss of Castle Rock, but the women couldn’t. Don moved them through the doors of the hotel. He hurried toward the clerk to get a room.

  I’ve only got a few hundred dollars in cash left.

  Don paid with plastic and took the key card. He was getting tired of hotels and being on the run. He hurried them up to the room, ignoring the boring visuals that went along with most hotels. Once inside the room, he opened his laptop and fired it up.

  “How can you think about computers at a time like this?” Fay sobbed.

  “I’ve got to add Mary Faith on Twitter and send her the message I showed Rick.” Tears again threatened his vision as he thought about their dearly-departed brother in the faith. “Goodbye, old friend.”

  “Yes, that poor boy,” Georgia sobbed.

  Don looked up for a second as his wife’s mother collapsed with grief onto the bed.

  Fay sat at Don’s feet. “That Pishuni bastard!” Fay sobbed. “We can’t stop h-h-him!”

  “Yes we can,” Don muttered, not looking away from the computer as he logged into Twitter. “Besides, Rick’s in heaven. It’s better this way. He didn’t have to go to prison and get raped.” Don clicked the button to follow Mary Faith. Now all there was to do was wait for her to follow him back… or he could call the show. Don looked at his watch. It was five till six.

  He said, “I’ve got a better idea. I’m going to call the Mary Faith show. I mean, why wait?”

  Fay nodded. “Why indeed.”

  “And quit underestimating that dad-burned demon,” Georgia added.

  ***

  Pishuni soared toward Denver. How can they keep escaping, and escaping, and escaping? I rule this world! They’re nothing but meat sacks! Before long, the Rocky Mountains came into view.