“Let us march!” Flood exhorted his followers through the leaping flames and smoke. “Remember: they walked in the midst of the fire, praising God, and blessing the Lord!”
The funeral pyre of pornography lighted the night sky. Charred bits of erotic imagery fluttered down on Christian heads.
Thomas Flood was lowered, and he climbed into his golf cart. With Hopper driving, and surrounded by a squad of Warriors, he approached the pagan front line.
Markus Bloom stepped forward to meet the invaders wearing only a formal smile but looking as regal as Atahualpa. He was accompanied by a lissom mocha pre-op with perfect breasts and an equally perfect cock. Behind them stood a tall dominant everyone knew as Lady Terrence wearing a corset and tall boots that were being shined by the tongue of a fat former Jesuit priest dressed in only a motorcycle cap. Nearby, leather dykes aired their Amazon chests and pretty boys in white jockey shorts were kissing. The outrageous tableau teased the cameras.
Thomas Flood stood in the golf cart so that he towered over Markus. He found that he was nervous before the sinful.
“Get out of my way. I’m going in there,” Thomas Flood ordered. Television crews scrambled, trying to record the oncoming confrontation between the powerful televangelist and the proud, naked pervert without showing forbidden skin.
“This is holy ground,” Markus said calmly. “It’s also private property. Fanatics and puritans are not welcome.”
There were shouts of approval behind him.
Flood decided to try another tactic. Sensing the potential in the confrontation, he played to the television cameras.
“The gates of Hell are guarded by the dogs of smut,” he proclaimed. “He challenges me because I just burned his children — the pornographic products of his twisted mind. He is of the party of Evil.”
Markus Bloom was at a loss for a moment, as if even his sophisticated mind could not comprehend the bullshit he was hearing. The television cameras focused on the way he chewed at the corner of his mouth, wondering how to respond to such craziness on national TV. After all, he was naked. Then it came:
“Hold it,” Markus said. “This is a simple case of attempted breaking and entering. A man in a suit with a gang of zealots trying to trespass on somebody else’s church and disrupt their worship.”
Markus crafted a good sound bite, radicals knew; but Thomas Flood was not prepared to be challenged. He had imagined the ungodly would flee before him. He squeezed the sow’s ear in his pocket and wished that he could kneel in his chariot and consult with the Lord. He sensed that it was the most crucial moment of his life, and he was unprepared. But how, after having led his legions to Sodom, could he back down from this clever, naked pornographer?”
“You profane the word church!” he began, but realised he was spluttering. The naked man’s debauched eyes bored into his like hot sensors. Flood had no choice but to return the intense stare. He knew that he had to avoid looking down at the man’s nudity in the eyes of the cameras.
“All right,” he said at last. “Open those doors and get out of the way!” His command was delivered in the deep, solemn tones he used during his televised miracles, but Bloom simply giggled.
“You’re not coming through us,” he said.
“I will roll right over you!” Flood thundered in vain.
“Go home now, back to your television life.”
Flood sensed danger. Why was this pervert so self-confident? Why wouldn’t he get out of the way? Why was he smiling like he had the upper hand?
Then Bloom was speaking again, pointing at Flood.
“Beware false prophets!” he said. “This man is a false prophet. His daughter is one of us, and she hates him — for good reasons.”
Flood felt the blood leave his head. What was happening? What was this pervert saying? Robin? Oh, not Robin!
Sensing that it was his finest moment, Bloom kept the story he told TV America simple and almost Biblical in its purity. His theme was the hypocrite unmasked. How the mighty holy conceal their crimes. Murder. Child abuse. Cruelty. Insanity. While he spoke, he fixed baleful eyes on Flood, who stood with bowed head, stricken — suddenly transformed from righteous crusader to accused criminal before a national television audience.
When Bloom finished, the cameras were turned on Flood and reporters yelled questions at him. He shook his head, disorientated.
“These are lies, of course,” he answered mildly. He shook his head again and looked around him, squinting into the lights. Behind him the flames were at their height. “I deny these filthy accusations.” But there was no conviction in his voice. He touched Hopper on the shoulder and the big man backed up the golf cart and turned around. The Warriors for Christ were silent as he passed through them, charred confetti raining down on him.
When the crowd of perverts saw Thomas Flood retreating, they set up a raucous cheer. They sent their champion forth, and he had conquered. Stunned that he had prevailed, Markus Bloom accepted their congratulations and kisses. Then, as their naked guerrilla general, he led them forward against the retreating enemy, chasing the crowd of Pharisees from his temple, brandishing no weapon but his rampant erection.
Laura Aurora
At almost the same moment, across the city at Fisherman’s Wharf, Laura Aurora led an unusual attack by pagans on the Crusade for San Francisco.
Laura’s strategy was lifted from what she had seen Sheba do with her dance. A small army of witches drawn from the thirteen major covens scattered around the Bay area converged after dark on the Wharf parking lot, where ten Crusade buses were parked and their occupants had set up lawn chairs and card tables.
Laura surrounded the first bus in line with a dozen of the prettiest lesbian witches, and their tactics were repeated around the other buses. The Crusaders who stood near the door of the first bus looked with horror upon Laura’s toplessness. She chose a woman her own age to approach first, thinking, be gentle, I might have had to lead her life... The woman looked more puzzled by the sight of Laura’s breasts than shocked.
“What do you want?” she asked. Laura replied by stepping closer and kissing the woman lovingly on the lips. The woman jumped back, rubbing her lips.
But there was to be no dialogue, no debate with the deluded and the fanatical. Kisses were to be the only communication, and there was no appeal from them. Soon all the Crusaders had retreated to their buses and locked the doors.
The witches made a circle and set up a powerful chant to make the buses disappear. They cast a spell that worked, for the buses started up, one by one, and slowly rolled out of the City of Perpetual Indulgence, followed by the hoots and cackles of the victorious witches.
Thomas Flood
As his helicopter rose into the night sky above the flames of the bonfire, Thomas Flood imagined himself jumping from it and falling into the fire. Then the Lord spoke to him.
— The flames of Hell. How appropriate.
— I told you I was weak.
— You’ve failed me.
— I pleaded with you to let me seek my own redemption. But you sent me here. I did my best.
— Flood, you will have to die to redeem yourself for your sins.
— I asked her to punish me, to forgive me...
— I don’t care what you did to her. I’m talking about this fuck-up. You’ll have to pay with your miserable life.
— I don’t care anymore. I am your sacrifice.
— Maybe we can make a martyr out of you. Maybe you can still be of use. Martyrs are always good as examples.
Flood bowed his head in surrender.
Timing is all. Hopper tapped him on the shoulder at that moment of utter resignation to his fate, a telephone in his hand.
“Reverend Flood, it’s your daughter. She saw the television coverage and wants to talk with you.”
Flood took the phone and put it to his ear as if it might contain a bomb.
“Yes?”
“Father, I saw what happened.” Her voice seemed far awa
y, although, he reflected, they might be flying over where she was. He couldn’t think of what to say to her.
“Father?”
“Yes?”
“I’m ready.”
“Ready?”
“I can forgive you.”
He was flooded with a wave of gratitude. He put aside suspicion.
“Can I see you?” he asked, fearing she might say no.
“Oh, yes. I’ve worked out your punishment.”
“What is it?”
“To follow in Christ’s footsteps to the cross.”
“To the cross?” His mouth was dry. She was his daughter!
“My forgiveness will follow.”
“I don’t know what to say. Where can I find you?”
“Come to 346 Saint Street tomorrow at 8pm.”
“What is there?”
“It’s a loft used by the Society of Spectacles. I’ll be there. You must come alone, without your goons.”
“And you will forgive me?”
“With all that’s left of my heart.”
“Why do I have to wait?”
“There will be an invited audience. People whose forgiveness you must also ask for.”
“No. I won’t do that. For you, I will suffer willingly. But not for the crowd. Please don’t ask me to do that.”
Silence on the phone. Did she hang up?
“Robin?”
“I’m here.” Her voice was colder than ice on an open wound.
“Let it be just us, Robin. Please.”
“All right. Come now.”
“Now?”
“I’ll be there in an hour. At midnight.”
“But...”
“No more excuses.” She hung up.
He looked at the phone, acutely conscious that he was held up — suspended in the sky — by a whirring machine, with a dead phone in his hand.
“Hopper!” he called, Hopper crept forward and knelt before his master.
“We’re putting down somewhere. I’m going to see my daughter.”
“That’s pretty sudden, sir.”
“I’m going to get out and take a cab, when we’re down. And you’re not to follow me.”
“Sir, why not?”
“You can’t go where I’m going.”
The silver bird lurched, and Hopper fell back on his ass. Flood suddenly felt light-hearted.
It was all to be, as he had foreseen. His life and his work had led him to the inevitable. He called upon the Lord.
— O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.
There was no answer this time.
XXXII
Exorcism
T here was nowhere to run to. Between the earthquake and the future coming up fast there was no alley I could duck down.
I walked uphill and downhill, and people were out in the streets looking jittery. There was a lot of smoke, and sirens wailing. Somebody said there were fires in Oakland, somebody else said North Beach. The sun was going down and it was choked with smoke. Ambulances and fire engines charged through red lights.
I was on the look out for Anyguy because I needed some luck now, not to mention advice. I walked over to the Mission to check out the El Capitan homeless dump, and who was sitting on my old spot on the sidewalk under the marquee but Big Mac, with a big dirty bandage over his leg where I’d shot him. I didn’t give a shit about Big Mac, but seeing him there helpless made me feel good. Like just by accident I’d done a good deed for him with that shot. I mean, I’d slowed him down. Now he didn’t have to scare people. He could enjoy life at crotch level.
When you get tired, you go home. But I was homeless, like Big Mac. If I didn’t go to Robin, there was no place for me to go. Maybe she would be waiting for me, maybe she wouldn’t.
She. She. She. She. She. She. She!
What happened to me? She did.
I was feeling so sorry for myself. I stepped into the street without looking and almost got hit, but somebody pulled me back by grabbing my arm. It was Anyguy, with a big grin on his face, just in the nick of time.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I said.
“I thought you might be, Buddy. I’ve been having dreams about you. So when I was driving around I kept my eyes open.”
There was a limo behind him, parked at the curb. I wasn’t surprised. Nothing Anyguy did would surprise me any more. He was powerful in ways not yet recognised by modern science.
We got in the limo and he looked at me and slapped his knees. “That was some earthquake, huh?” He sounded happy about it, like it was another one or his tricks.
“It shook me up. I’m still shook up. Everybody is.”
He chuckled. Heh, heh, heh, like that. “That’s fine, that’s just fine,” he said, and he slapped his knee again.
“You’re crazy.”
“I’ve been praying for an earthquake for years. All of this was Ohlone land once, and my people were happy here. Soon maybe, it will be ours again. Let nature rip it up and start over.”
“That’ll take a while.”
“Ghosts are patient people.”
We stopped at an intersection because the street was full of running people yelling things we couldn’t hear. The streets were jumping. It was a good time to be safe in a limousine.
“Where are you headed, Buddy?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you. I don’t feel very lucky right now. When the earthquake happened, I was in a tub with Robin and she was sucking blood from my neck. I think we got married. So I guess I’m going back to her.”
I told him she was at Markus’s and he leaned forward to tell the chauffeur how to get there. He knew the streets of San Francisco like the back of his wrinkled old hand.
“Buddy,” he said to me. “I’ve been watching your luck for a while now. I think you got some left, but tonight is going to be some serious agenda. You have a choice right now: get out of town, head for the mountains like your old man...”
I stopped him. “You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Women get a hold on you if you let them.”
The limo pulled up in front of Markus’s, but I didn’t see any lights on. I asked Anyguy to wait while I ran upstairs. My name was on the note stuck in the door, and an address. Saint Street. She’d signed it, and underneath added, “Come fast — Now or never.”
I showed it to Anyguy and he sighed. “You’re going to need all the luck you have left to get through tonight. I can see that. I’ll take you over there, and then I’ll just hang out.”
“What for?”
“Nothing better to do, I guess.” He shrugged. “I guarantee the luck I sell my customers — even if I have to cheat by helping out.”
He drove me to Saint Street and parked down the block.
I ran up the stone steps to the door. There were three buzzers, and one said ‘Society of Spectacles’. I guessed that would be where she was, and punched the buzzer a couple of times. The door clicked open and I climbed up a steep wooden stairway to another door.
I knocked, and pushed it open.
She was there in a white dress in the middle of a gigantic room lit with candles. There was a fireplace with a fire in it that threw big shadows on the walls and ceiling, and on a man hanging on a cross.
I could have turned around and walked out and walked downstairs, I could have gotten into Anyguy’s limo and scooted down the road. But I started walking toward her across the bare wood floor. We were married, weren’t we? I had promised...
When I got close enough I could see the resemblance between them. His mouth was where her mouth came from. Their blue eyes you couldn’t see into. There was a stool next to the cross. He’d used it to get on the cross, and she’d used it to tie his wrists with leather straps to the cross beam. She’d made him strip down to his white underwear, I thought at first.
“I started the party without you,” she said. Her jaws were set and her lips were tight. There was a big knife in her han
d, but no blood on it. Then I saw that she’d cut his suit off him after she’d gotten him tied up. It was a pile of rags.
I went over to look at him. I had to look up but it was like looking down on him, because I knew how this was all going to end, and he didn’t. He remembered me and he flinched.
“Buddy’s here now, father. We can start.”
She had set up a video camera on a tripod to record her father’s punishment. It was running the whole time we did what we did.
“My father believes he’s capable of sending earthquakes to San Francisco to punish us. He’s capable of convincing himself of anything.”
“I know somebody else who thinks he’s responsible.”
“Now he has convinced himself he’s here to earn my forgiveness.”
“Robin,” Flood said. Hearing him talk for the first time made me jump. He was human, after all, not just a shadow on television. Then I remembered his heavy hand pushing my head down on his show, holding it down in his lap. How Mr Hopper got me seeing crosses after that.
This was Thomas Flood. The famous, the powerful Thomas Flood I’d promised to kill. He was watching me, wondering what I was going to do. I made him nervous.
“Maybe she forgives you, but I won’t. You have my word on that,” I told him. It was fun watching him try to guess what my role was in his punishment.
He was a big one, all right. Like a football player. I’d want to take him apart piece by piece. I knew that I didn’t want to rush it.
“Robin, you said there’d just be the two of us.”
“Well, father. Buddy is my husband.”
I smiled at him like a good son-in-law and punched him in the stomach as hard as I could. He made a noise and puked over himself. It was satisfying to hear him try to catch his breath.
“Hello, father,” I said.
Robin was watching me like I was somebody not real, somebody she’d made up in her own mind. But she liked what she saw. She had that turned-on look I recognised. She put her hand out and I grabbed it and pulled her close to kiss her. She was naked under the white dress and I reached down behind to squeeze the cheeks or her ass and pull her pussy against my crotch, grinding it into her. She pulled down my zipper and out popped Chester the Molester half-hard already.
Dark Matter (Modern Erotic Classics) Page 21
