by Borne Wilder
Finally, RJ’s attempt at mind over matter broke through the full armor of God Martha was wearing and she drank up.
So much for Jesus Juice, thought Ron. Martha had tried to hide the evil beverage with a little hand wall as he passed.
It soon became apparent to Charlie, that Alice could see Nolte. She was white as a sheet and staring at the diapered apparition. Charlie winked at Ron and nodded his head toward Alice.
“Look at the stupid bitch, trying to wish me away.” Nolte chuckled at Ron and Charlie as if he had abruptly switched teams and was now their little buddy.
Alice’s head spun on her shoulders toward Ron and Charlie, You see him too? She mouthed the question.
Ron smiled and nodded for the both of them. Charlie was already smiling. In fact, it looked as if he would burst into laughter at any moment. It was obvious that the witch’s lawyers had failed to make contact with Alice. It looked as if she might be struggling to put the unholy mess right in her mind.
“What’s the matter, Miss Scarlet? You look like you have the vapors.” Charlie asked. “Have you seen a ghost? Perhaps, you should slow down on Granny’s Tennessee Tranquilizer.”
“What’s the metal detector for?” RJ interrupted, pointing at it with his beer. RJ was one of those idiots that couldn’t pass a tool, without commenting on it. He either had one just like it at home or knew a guy who knew a guy.
“Detecting metal,” Charlie answered dryly, shooting him a go-to-hell look, as passed him on the way to the living room. He threw his elbow into Nolte’s chest on the way by.
“Faggot” Nolte grunted after he had waited for him to pass out of arm’s reach. He threw his arms up to protect his chest as Ron passed. He’s even a bigger chicken shit dead than he was alive, Ron thought.
The metal detector beeped several times when Charlie turned it on. He quickly handed it to Ron, he wasn’t going to pretend he knew how to work the thing, and he damned sure wasn’t going to ask RJ for his expertise.
The beeping caught RJ’s attention as if it were the human version of a dog whistle. He leaned forward and looked at them through the doorway, his eyes wide and lively. Charlie imagined he was probably, at that moment, bursting with metal detectin’ know-how. “I don’t think those things work real good indoors.” He offered, pointing at the gadget again, with his beer bottle.
“That’s okay, Jethro, we’re pretending,” Charlie replied.
The beeping also got Alice’s attention, though her curiosity was due to her meddlesome nature. Holding her drink above her head for its safety, or her balance, she forced her unsteady legs, to transport her to the living room. “What are you doin'?” She asked. The creepy old man was scaring the shit out of her with his stares, but she wasn’t about to let the asshole brothers search through ‘her stuff’ unsupervised. Nolte had slipped in close behind her and stepped on the back of her shoe. “Flat tire!” he shouted.
Alice screamed, her margarita sloshed, but refused to spill.
This time, Charlie laughed. It was pretty funny when it happened to someone else.
Alice wiggled her foot against the carpet until her heel slipped back into her shoe, staring at Nolte with a mix of caution and hatred. “I asked you, what you think you are doing.” She tried to shake off her embarrassment and replace it with indignant bitch.
Charlie’s laughter stopped abruptly and his expression changed to one of exaggerated concern. “We’re checking the house for nunyas.” He replied, tilting his head from side to side. “Nunyas fuckin’ business. Shouldn’t you go outside and check on your retards, one of them wounded himself?”
“You truly are a horrible person. Why can’t you ever say anything nice?” Alice asked, giving Charlie the finger.
“You don’t sweat much for a fat girl.” Nolte offered kindly, he was still trying to become part of the team. The metal detector had him worried.
“Let’s check his bedroom.” Ron glanced at Nolte, looking for a reaction. Nolte quickly looked away. “The bedroom it is.”
“You guys need to wait for the will reading before you take anything out of here,” Alice said hurriedly.
Ron flashed her, a ‘don’t fuck with me’ look. “Maybe we should check everyone’s car outside, just to make sure that nothing fell out of the house on accident and landed in your trunks.” Ron waited for a reply. When Alice offered none, he turned and walked up the stairs, the metal detector twisting out beeps and chirps.
Nolte flashed ahead of them with a quick, “Fuck you.” before he disappeared.
Nolte had nicknamed his bedroom Disneyland, he was proud of his sexual prowess and often bragged that he had never failed to bring himself to an orgasm.
The tool sang as Ron swung it back and forth in front of him. First, he covered the entire area of the floor; there was always a cleverly disguised ‘loose floorboard’ in the movies. He swung it over the bed checking through the mattresses, up and down the walls, and over the dresser, nothing was giving him a reading of the highly conductive metals that gold and silver were classified as. “Holy shit Charlie, there isn’t an ounce of gold or silver left in this room.” Ron started on the ceiling.
Nolte looked at Alice with what could only be described as hatred. “You thieving bitch, you’re just like your sister. You couldn’t wait to read the will before you harvested my shit?”
Every once in a while, Ron would glance at Nolte, as he swung the detector, to see what kind of reading the old man had on his face. Nolte had donned his women’s sunglasses and was twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers, like a tiny baton, trying too hard to look inconspicuous.
“Where are his coin collections?” Charlie asked Alice. “Did you rustle those out of the house already?”
Alice took a drink of her margarita and looked back at him sheepishly. “What are you looking for?”
“Larcenous fucking cunt,” Nolte mumbled.
“No, you wouldn’t be that stupid, would you Nolte? You knew that shit would be as good as sold before you drew your last breath, didn’t you?” Charlie posed the questions to Nolte but directed his scorn at Alice.
“What are you looking for?” Alice asked again, attempting to halt any further besmirching of her good name.
Charlie held his hands out in front of him in Alice’s direction; he used his thumbs and index fingers to represent the corners of an imaginary box. “It’s about this long, and yay high and is shaped like a nunyas.”
“The thieving cock munchers are trying to rob me of my nest egg!” Nolte could restrain himself no longer. “You’re all a bunch of thieving cocksuckers. Martha ripped me off five hundred dollars before my fucking body was even room temperature.” He whined. He was having a hard time getting over Martha’s pilfering of his emergency fund.
“This sounds like something that needs to be looked at during the reading of the will,” Alice said firmly. “We need to honor, Nolte’s final wishes.”
“I’m right here, you fucking cunt!” Nolte snapped. “You’ve seen the fucking will and you know you’re getting the contents of the house, you greedy, corn pone fuck hole! My final wishes are that you fucks quit stealing from me!” He stepped over to Alice and punched her in the mouth. “This fucking thing is mine and I will kill any sorry shithead that tries to take it.” He wasn’t really sure why he had hit Alice, maybe it was misguided anger over Martha’s theft, but if he had to hit someone, he knew it was safer to hit Alice, than one of the boys.
“Hit her again, Rocky.” Charlie urged, unable to keep from laughing.
Alice put her hand to her mouth. “Yeah, hit me again, asshole. I’ll blame these two fuckers.” Alice said with an unexpected calm. “So far, it seems that us three, are the only ones that can see this asshole and as far as Martha and RJ know, you two brought me up here to beat on me. I’ll call the cops and you boys are off to the crowbar hotel.” A wicked smile kissed her already swelling lips.
Charlie crossed over to Nolte and punched the old man squarely in the back of
the head. The connection was so hard; Nolte flew forward, blinking in and out of sight several times, flashing between dimensions, as he stumbled from one end of Disneyland to the other.
Ron was laughing so hard, the metal detector swung in the air and chirped crazily, as he staggered about. “Holy shit, he was flashing on and off like a fucking strobe light, you must have knocked a fuse loose in him.” The detector gave a bitter shrill when it waved past the spot where Nolte had been standing. Immediately, Ron stopped laughing and looked at the screen. “Bingo, buttercups, nonferrous, highly conductive.”
Having regained his balance, composure and whatever else Charlie had knocked loose, Nolte scurried over and stood in front of Ron. “You fucking twinks have no idea what I had to give up for my nest egg,” Nolte said, almost pleading. “I paid for this with my fucking soul. If I don’t have this when they bury me, I’ll be like this until they catch me and drag me off to Hell. Please, I’ve been there once, you can’t send me back.”
Ron listened carefully to the old man; he had never heard Nolte beg for anything, other than pussy, ever. This was a side of Nolte, he had never seen, a frail old man truly consumed with fear. “You don’t say? Out of the way, Asshole.” He nudged Nolte aside moving the detector in long slow passes up and down the gun cabinet. The detector warbled quietly, because of the brass components of the guns inside, yet, his last pass along the edge and near the top, it let out another squeal.
As Ron reached for the small ceramic frog that sat on the top corner of the cabinet, the unmistakable series of clicks, made by the hammer of a gun being drawn back, filled the room. Strange that such a small sound always seemed to drown out whatever else was going on. Nolte had produced a small nickel plated derringer from his diaper and pointed it at the back of Ron’s head. “I warned you, Sweet Pea. I’ll show you hell first hand.” Ron recognized the voice. Nolte was trying to do his George Peppard impression.
Stepping lightly, Charlie crept behind Nolte and grabbed the gun from over his shoulder. Startled, Nolte pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on the loose skin between Charlie’s index finger and thumb, as he snatched the gun from Nolte’s grasp. The pinch was excruciating. Charlie jerked his hand and gun back with a yelp.
“Motherfucker, that hurts.” He said, as he frantically pried at the hammer, trying to free his hand. He glanced up to see Ron’s hands close around Nolte’s throat. Nolte began to fade in and out again. Then, poof, he was gone. No puff of smoke, just gone.
Alice had walked over to the gun case and was reaching for the frog on her tippy-toes. Once again, the sound of a hammer being drawn back filled in the room. She stopped and turned her head to one side. Charlie had the small pistol leveled on her. Charlie said nothing but shook his head no.
Ron shoved Alice out of the way and took the frog down, shaking it. Nothing rattled. He reached up and felt around the top of the cabinet, nothing, but dust. Looking again at the frog, he saw the duct tape on the bottom. Peeling it back, he scraped the ancient coin into his palm. A nauseating wave of dread washed over him the moment the coin touched his skin. Quickly he sat the coin on the floor and warned Alice to stay back with an ‘I will kill you’ look.
“What’s the matter?” Charlie asked, puzzled by the sickened look on his brother’s face. “Too much of Nolte’s rotgut?”
“That fucking thing is nasty. There’s something different about it from the last time I held it.” He said rubbing his palms on his jeans.
“What do you mean nasty?”
“I mean, whatever is trapped inside, is nasty as fuck. It wasn’t like this when he showed it to us. It feels hopeless now. It made me feel hopeless. Like really shitty deja vu. Bad fuckin’ ju ju.” Ron’s eyes darkened. “We need to find something to put it in.”
Alice leaned forward. She recognized the coin as the one Nolte had shown them, the night of his mother’s funeral. “What’s wrong with it?” she asked.
“Everything.” Ron told her, waving her back, “I’m serious Alice, we will hurt you if you touch that coin.”
Alice took a sip from her margarita. She hadn’t spilled a drop when Nolte had punched her; day drinking had developed drink awareness. “What are we going to do with it?” she asked timidly, suddenly wanting to be part of the team.
“We?” Charlie spoke up. “What do you mean we? Do you have a fucking frog in your pocket?” He stepped toward her, causing Alice to retreat a step. “There is no fucking we,” Charlie told her, his voice low and cold. “You sucked that old man’s nasty fucking dick until you had a chance to write your fucking name on everything he owned. If you taint this coin further by mentioning it in your foul dick sucker, ever again, I will kill your hillbilly ass so fast, your tube top will spin.”
“I just think we should talk about this during the reading of the w___”
Charlie put the barrel of the gun against Alice’s forehead. “Say will, one more fucking time.”
Alice’s mouth fell open, but no words came out. She didn’t think Charlie had the balls, but she wasn’t going to risk it. She was damn sure going to bring these events up at the will reading, she would show his ass.
Charlie, satisfied with Alice’s silence and confident his point had been made, slowly released the hammer on the derringer and put it in his pocket. He turned his attention to Ron. “Whatta ya say, bro, road trip?”
“Were you trying to do Lee Marvin, just then, with Alice?
“No, Charlton Hesston.”
“It sounded like Andy Griffith.”
9
Baal tapped his driver on the shoulder with his short gold-tipped walking stick, alerting the man to stop the automobile.
“This will do, James.” The drivers name was actually Juan-Jose, but Baal called all of his drivers James. “Move the automobile to the curbing, if you would.” Baal hated using drivers, hated all interactions with humans, in fact, but automobiles do offer a fine vantage point and draw much less attention than a rather small, well-dressed man on foot.
The fallen have few choices of incarnation. However, in recognition of his rank as an original Principality, at one time, Baal did have choices, though, that specific privilege had been suspended for the time being. Had he any say in the matter, Baal would have most definitely chosen a more maneuverable human form, than the one he presently embodied. At the bare minimum, he would have selected a manifestation that could comfortably reach the controls of an automobile, and thus, eliminate the need for a driver. He liked his privacy, but mostly, he hated human interaction.
His current physicality, the state in which he was sealed for the foreseeable future, was a machination of the archangel Gabriel, as a means to inflict punishment for a minor infraction on Baal’s part, regarding free will. A slight transgression, which Baal felt, was long overdue for review. The punishment, from Baal’s perspective, was rather harsh considering the misdeed was shared by human stubbornness. His role in the misunderstanding was merely a lack in judgment.
Mr. Charles Darwin, although well on his way to a position within the clergy, was an inquisitive fellow, a doubtful fellow.
Baal saw fit to present the curious chap with a unique perspective on certain alternative possibilities. How was he to know, the man would jump to such conclusions, but such is man in his need for validation. If man can’t create it, at least he could be credited with proving God couldn’t either.
It had caused quite a stir upstairs. ‘Man’s inability to detect irreducible complexity with available technology’ was the phrase that had been bandied about. In fact, the entire case against Baal hinged on the things man didn’t have access to. In the end, they had found him in violation of the terms of free will and scientific misdirection, therefore, the decision to give the angels direct oversight of his operations was made.
The original punishment was fitting for the offence committed, Baal could tolerate nosy angels. The more severe, more visible judgment, concerning his present form, or lack of, came from a simple and not unreasonable query on
his part. “If he desired a specific outcome, why was God sitting on this information?” He had asked in a tone that, he felt, was by no means confrontational, yet, in the next instant, Baal was sealed in a ridiculous human form, small enough to fit comfortably in a steamer trunk. Baal did not like Gabriel; he also did not like the fact that any justice administered by the archangel was pre-approved and unquestioned by upper management. Gabriel had permission to make his existence miserable.
In times past, Baal would often adorn himself with the handsome frame of an athletic young man, a much more suitable form for conducting business, gaining the trust of clientele and the seduction of nubile cabin boys. However, one must overcome and persevere. As inconvenient as his present form might be, this was what he had to work with, and he had made the most of it so far. His work performance remained impeccable, as far as he was concerned, although cabin boy conquests had fallen dramatically. There were a few hiccups during the Inquisitions, but other than that, his division had been running as smooth as the proverbial, ‘well-oiled machine,’ until now. Now he found himself in Oklahoma and the responsible party was going to pay dearly.
The dwelling that required Baal’s attention was located on a corner lot, fifty or sixty meters further down the street, from where his limo was now parked. He sat in relative silence watching, concentrating on both sides of the dimension of time. Several times he had to overcome the urge to stop the driver’s heart and quiet the infernal racket it was causing in the close confines of the automobile. Baal found it disgusting that humans allowed their bodily functions to pulse and course, without any measure of control, permitting their organs and systems to operate as unregulated utilities. Monopolizing and squandering resources was wasteful, not to mention revolting. It sounded as if hogs were devouring a corpse. And yet, they maintained the capacity to look surprised when they developed cancer or had a heart attack at fifty.
