God Drug

by Stephen L. Antczak

  They stopped to poke through the rubble of a convenience store, finding some candy bars in blackened wrappers, a carton of orange juice. Tom handed out candy bars, and they passed around the orange juice. A moment of peace.

  Hanna couldn’t help but notice Tom watching her, staring unabashedly at her face, or her breasts, or her legs. Men had always stared at her like that, with obvious desire. She had never thought of herself as particularly attractive, at least not to the extent that men had any reason to stare at her and want her. Her wedding ring had never made on bit of difference. They tried anyway, whispering in her ear, getting a little extra squeeze in during a hug, rubbing her arm during conversation, acting like lascivious puppies when they were around her. She remembered that much about her previous life. Had what’s-his-name, her husband, been jealous? She didn’t know. She didn’t care, now, anyway.

  “What are you thinking about?” Tom asked her. He looked at her as if Lena wasn’t also there with them.

  “Reality,” Hanna answered.

  “Reality sucks,” Lena said.

  “Does it?” Hanna asked her. “Why?”

  “It just does.”

  “You think this is better?” Tom asked.

  Lena merely shrugged.

  “What don’t you like about reality?” Hanna asked.

  “It’s all bullshit,” Lena replied. “Reality always lets you down. Always.”

  “What about your friends?” Hanna pressed.

  “Sometimes I forget that friendship is a temporary thing,” Lena said. “It always lets you down, in the end, too.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Tom said.

  Lena didn’t look at him.

  “You don’t really mean it,” Hanna said. “I can tell.”

  Lena seemed about to reply, but then stopped and listened. “Do you guys hear something?” she asked.

  They stayed quiet and listened for a few seconds. “You’re imagining things,” Tom said He started to get up. “Let’s go.”

  “No, wait,” Lena said. “Listen.”

  Tom and Hanna got up, but then Hanna frowned and held her hand up. “I hear it.” She pointed across the street. “It’s coming from there.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Tom said. “Is it… that thing?”

  Hanna shook her head. “No. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t that.”

  They headed in the direction of the noise, crossing Second, cutting through an empty parking lot, going around a corner. Tom was in the lead, and he heard it halfway there. “Sounds like a truck motor idling,” he said, and sure enough as they rounded the corner they saw a brown United Parcel Service truck parked behind a row of businesses, still running. There was no one around. The driver’s side door was pulled back, so Tom climbed in, found the key, turned it and the engine shut off.

  Chugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchugchug…

  “Oh no,” Lena said. “It’s coming, you guys!”

  Then Tom got an idea. “You two distract it,” he told Lena and Hanna. “I have a plan.” He cranked the UPS truck back up.

  In the sky, the heli-dragon came into view, grinning with bulbous eyes that gleamed like mirrorshades, only now it had features added to its twisted marriage of myth and machine, dragon and helicopter… now it had arms and legs that dangled down from its body. The arms and legs ended in metal claws. It now sported the smirk of the General.

  It cackled like ripping metal as it bore down on Lena and Hanna. The UPS truck was just out of view. Hanna stepped forward, held out one hand.

  “Stop!” she ordered. The heli-dragon did, and hovered above them. “Go away!” she ordered. “Go back to where you came from!”

  The thing cackled like a collapsing building. “That’s what I’m trying to do,” it said, the words spewing out like shrapnel, sounding like a jackhammer drill eating into concrete, a machine devil voice.

  The General/heli-dragon descended toward Hanna, metal teeth gnashing and sparks flying from its mouth. When it was low enough, Tom slammed the truck into gear and jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, pushing it all the way to the floor. The truck lurched forward with surprising power. The heli-dragon whipped around, and Hanna ducked in time but Lena didn’t. The buzzsaw tail sliced her in two at the waist. She didn’t have time to scream. Tom dove out moments before the truck slammed into the heli-dragon, knocking it to the ground and continuing forward, grinding the heli-dragon into the road and then ramming it into the wall of a furniture store across the street. Something ignited and a moment later both UPS truck and heli-dragon exploded.

  A mushroom cloud erupted into the sky while metal debris rained down, twisted pieces of heli-dragon and UPS truck burning. A pillar of fire rose from the wreckage, propelling the mirrorshades straight up. Hanna and Tom were knocked flat by the shock of the explosion. They recovered quickly as they fire rained down all around them. Everything around them was now ablaze. Hanna knew this was not ordinary fire. It was primordial fire, burning objects at the core of existence. If it touched her, she would flare up like a match and cease to exist.

  “Tom! We have to get back to the Blue House!” she yelled, but Tom had crawled over to the upper half of Lena’s severed torso. Her eyes were wide open, staring blankly, and it was obvious she’d died instantly. “There’s nothing we can do for her now,” Hanna told Tom.

  “Lena, I’m sorry!” Tom yelled. Hanna pulled him away from Lena’s mutilated body.

  “Let’s go!” Hanna shouted at Tom. She led him through an inferno, back to Second and toward the Blue House. The rubber soles of Tom’s sneakers began to melt, his clothes were singed, and he imagined his blood was beginning to boil in his veins and arteries. Maybe Lena was right, maybe they were in Hell.

  He ran blindly as fire continued to rain down all around them. He followed Hanna, it was the best he could hope to do. And then, just ahead, he saw the Blue House. It stood untouched by the blaze while all around it the world burned. Flames swept along behind them as he and Hanna raced for the front porch, leaping up three steps at a time, and then to the open front door. They stumbled inside and slammed the door shut behind them, then stood gasping for air.

  Outside, the Blue House kept the flames at bay, protecting them the way it had protected them from the heli-dragon. The flames didn’t merely burn everything else, though, they devoured. When something, a tree or a car or a building caught fire, it was gone in a matter of minutes. Completely gone.

  “There won’t be anything left!” Tom cried.

  “You might be right,” Hanna said. She sounded entirely too calm.

  They watched through the windows as the flames consumed what remained of the house next door. Even though the Blue House itself was a firetrap of dry wood and insulation, the flames could not touch it. It stood amid the conflagration unscathed.

  It was an unnatural fire, a dream fire that didn’t merely destroy, but erased. There was no smoke at all. Nothing, not even the microscopic ash of smoke, survived the all-consuming flames. Tom pressed his hand to the glass of the window overlooking the yard. Flames licked the glass but could not hurt it. It was cold. No heat.

  Suddenly, Tom remembered they’d left Sparrow alone in the house. A quick dash to her room, followed by Hanna, found Sparrow asleep in her bed, oblivious to the situation outside, blissfully unaware that the rest of the universe was going up in… nothing. She looked okay although her hair was slicked back as if she’d been sweating. He felt her forehead. Warm, but not burning up.

  “Is she all right?” Hanna asked.

  “I think so,” Tom said. Sparrow stirred at the sound of his voice. “Let’s leave her. Sleeping is good.”

  He and Hanna went back into the living room.

  “Now what?” Tom asked. He fell into the sofa.

  “We wait,” Hanna said. “It can’t last forever.”

  “How do you know?” Tom asked her. He sounded almost suspicious.

  “It’s part of me,” Hanna said. “Like the General,
like the heli-dragon. That doesn’t mean it can’t destroy me. It can. But I feel it. I know it will end soon.”

  “And then what? Everything will be gone.”

  “It will appear that way, yes,” Hanna told him. “But it’s an illusion. It’s only real if you believe it’s real.”

  “How can you not believe it if its happening right before your eyes?”

  Hanna shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s just fucking great,” Tom said. He felt sick to his stomach. Lena was dead, that was what he couldn’t believe. Yet, it was true. She was dead. He’d killed her, too, with his stupid plan. The flames outside were also the result of the plan. Ram the heli-dragon with the UPS truck? He looked at the front door. He would never see Lena walking in again. Never. It made him want to cry, but he had nothing left for that. All he could do was ache at the core of his being.

  “Look at me, Tom,” Hanna said. He looked at her. She stood straight up, in the center of the living room. “I’m not who you think I am.” She took off one boot, then the other. “I’m not real, anymore than that cold fire out there.” She slipped her dress off, letting it fall around her bare feet. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. She stood there, naked. “Look at me, Tom. I’m perfect. I know I am. I’m not bragging or anything. I just know.”

  Tom looked, he couldn’t help it.

  “Do you think I’m perfect?” she asked.

  “Uh, well…”

  “Why do you think I’m perfect?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice sounded dry.

  “Let me ask you this, then. If a group of guys imagined the perfect woman, if their most erotic fantasies could be made real, do you think that woman would look anything like me?”

  He nodded. Yes, he thought. She was every man’s fantasy. He wanted her, yet he knew he could never have her. The smell of sex filled the room as she slowly slid the palms of her hands over her body while he watched. She looked real, she smelled real, but something about her was too good to be true. There wasn’t a single flaw, anywhere.

  “You can touch me,” Hanna said, smiling. “I won’t bite. If you touch me, Tom, you’ll make me real. To you, anyway. That’s all I need, though. Then, maybe, I’ll have the strength to do what needs to be done.”

  Tom leaned forward and reached out with his right hand, and his fingertips just barely touched Hanna’s smooth stomach. She grabbed his hand with both of hers and pressed it to her skin. “I’m real,” she whispered.

  “Sorry to interrupt.” They turned, and there stood Sparrow in the entrance to the hall.

  “You’re not interrupting,” Hanna said. She turned to face Sparrow. “I’m proving to Tom that I’m real.”

  “I see that,” Sparrow said. She looked at Tom. He was relieved to see there was no anger in her blue eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I just needed to move around.” She looked at Hanna’s body, from her feet to her eyes. “You’re very beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you guys were about to, you know… I can go back to bed.”

  “We weren’t,” Tom said quickly.

  “Too bad.” Sparrow grinned. “If I were you, I would.”

  “Thank you, again,” Hanna said.

  “You may be the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen,” Sparrow told her. “Falcons, whales, wolves, black stallions… they’re nothing compared to you.”

  Hanna just stood there, proving Sparrow right. No one said anything for a few beats. Tom and Sparrow each stared at Hanna. She didn’t blush, wasn’t embarrassed at all. She accepted it, accepted who she was, what she was.

  Tom looked from Hanna to Sparrow. He took a deep breath. Sparrow wasn’t perfect, but she was… Sparrow.

  “I think you’re both incredibly beautiful,” he told them.

  Sparrow laughed, then started coughing, then hacking, gagging. Tom was at her side when she started to sag to the floor.

  “Back to bed, I think,” he said.

  Sparrow shook her head. “No, I’m fine.” But she couldn’t stand up without his help. Tom and Hanna took Sparrow back to bed. As soon as she was in bed she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  “Want me to stay in here and watch over her?” Hanna asked. “I can stay awake the whole time. I don’t need to sleep.”

  “No, I think she’ll be fine,” Tom said. “She wouldn’t appreciate us watching over her like worried parents, anyway.”

  They went back to the living room.

  “Think you could put your clothes back on?” Tom asked Hanna.

  She smiled. “If that’s what you want. I’ll do whatever you want me to. That’s what I am.”

  “Just putting the clothes on would be great,” Tom said. “I can barely think straight as it is.” Hanna complied with his request. Tom looked out the window at the slow burn of the world around the Blue House. In the back of his mind he still maintained a stubborn hope that this was all just the drug, a trip through Wonderland gone awry. Even though it was all happening, something about it felt unreal.

  As he watched, the flames changed. They went from a yellowish orange to a deep, deep red.

  “This can’t be good,” he commented.

  “I don’t know what it means,” Hanna said. Then, the flames turned green, then purple, then blue, a deeper blue than the Blue House. The blue grew lighter and lighter, though, to sky blue and the hue of faded bluejeans, fading away until there was nothing outside but grey. “You’re right,” Hanna told Tom. “This isn’t good.”

  “At least the fire’s gone.” Tom couldn’t distinguish between the ground and the sky anymore. It was all the same dull grey.

  “I know what this is,” Hanna said. “I’ve been here before.” Tom looked at her, waiting for more. Hanna reached up, touched the window with her fingers. “I was born here.”

  “Where’s here?” Tom asked.

  Hanna looked at him. Her smile had dimmed. “This is where Jovah went after a few years, or months, or however long it was, in the sensory depravation tank, after he had technically died and then his body dissolved. This is the Grey Nothing.”

  “You know, I don’t know what that means. I’m lost.”

  Hanna’s eyes were cold and serious. “Yes,” she said. “You are.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The steps that had led from the front porch of the Blue House down to the sidewalk now simply disappeared into the Grey Nothing. Hanna and Tom sat at the top step, Tom drinking the last beer. He was depressed.

  “Maybe if I’d been even one second quicker, Lena would still be alive,” he said.

  “Or you’d both be dead.”

  “Maybe I’d be better off dead.”

  “If Lena’s better off dead, then you did her a favor, so don’t beat yourself up over it,” Hanna told him.

  Tom finished his beer and tossed the can down the steps. It clinked on the last step, then bounced into the Grey Nothing, and disappeared without a sound.

  “That shit is spooky,” he commented.

  “It’s the stuff dreams are made of,” Hanna said.

  “Nightmares, you mean.”

  Hanna shrugged. “Same thing.” She leaned back, closed her eyes.

  “Are all your dreams nightmares?” he asked her.

  “War dream,” she answered. “Death, blood, fire, black smoke… I guess you could call that a nightmare, the same one over and over again. I don’t even have to be asleep, I just close my eyes and there it is.”

  “You mean, like now?”

  Hanna opened her eyes, looked at him, and nodded. “You want to see?”

  “I guess I might as well,” he said.

  She indicated the Grey Nothing. “That’s where it comes from. In there. Go take a look, but don’t go all the way in, or you’ll never make it back. Just stick your head inside and look.”

  Tom looked at the Grey Nothing. He couldn’t tell if he saw it as a wall that surrounded them
or as an infinite grey space. He got up and walked down to the last step. Beyond that…

  Tom reached out with his right hand, stuck it right into the Grey Nothing. His hand disappeared, and he couldn’t feel it. He tried to wiggle his fingers, but couldn’t feel that, either. He yanked his hand back in. There it was, whole and intact. No worse for the wear.

  “Go ahead, Tom,” Hanna urged. “Take the plunge.”

  So he did. He slowly leaned forward, sticking his face into the Grey Nothing…

  Montage of Hell: blazing Sun and peaches, the General in his face, screaming at him, all smoke and mirrorshades and the reflection of his own fear, heli-dragons approaching spitting fire lancing toward him, explosions and the Earth thrown into the air, limbs scattered like debris, insane laughter, “Look, Ma, no legs!” Swarm of butterflies biting, biting, biting, and Hanna naked and floating over it all like black smoke, beneath his God’s-eye-view, and the General severed head launched Heavenward, winking, chugchugchugchugchugchugchugchug heli-dragon with buzzsaw tail cutting him in two…

  Tom lurched back, pulling his face out of the Grey Nothing. He sat on the concrete steps, didn’t say a word. He sat there for a while before he could speak.

  “It happened,” Tom said.

  “It happened in my dreams.”

  “How many were there?”

  “How many what?”

  “People. In your nightmare.”

  Hanna frowned. “Honestly, I can’t recall.”

  “They’re not really dead, then?” he asked. “Galactic Bill, Io…”

  “No, they’re not really dead because they were never really alive. It was all in my head, see.”

  Tom pointed at the Grey Nothing. “It’s all out there, not in your head. It’s all right there.”

  “That’s where the nightmares come from,” Hanna said. “Yours are in there, too. Take a look.”

  Tom regarded the Grey Nothing for a moment, then shook his head. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “There are worse things than nightmares,” Hanna told him.

  “I know.” Tom remembered, once, while tripping on magic mushrooms, he fingerpainted a self-portrait, and then a few days later found the folded up painting in the pocket of his jeans. He unfolded it, looked at it, and it had scared the hell out of him. It looked like an eye-witness description of a demon, eyes ablaze, grinning crookedly, a burning halo. He remembered feeling just absolutely scared of himself as he ripped it up and threw it away, scattering the pieces into several different trash cans. He climbed back up to the porch, sat beside Hanna. “Damn, I wish we had more beer.”