I'm waiting for Leslie. That's what I'm doing. Right here, on her porch, where she can see me and the flowers and the candy I bought from Flora's Floral Arrangements six hours ago, but I imagine she can put them in the refrigerator and everything should be all right because the shadows are sharpening and the air is cooling and the street lamps are casting green light in her empty driveway where her car should have been parked and where a black stain of oil glibly shines, adjacent to the sunlight that touches it, losing its incorrigible hold; the orange fingernails of its delicate beams, tapping the cooling pavement of an approaching night; the eyelids of the sky, flickering from exhaustion, winking the steady hours away, and Jan Ivory-Weisumbaum -- Leslie's next door neighbor -- coming up to me a few hours ago and asking me what I was doing here, like I hadn't lived in this house before, or paid the mortgage notes, or went around fixing things when Leslie broke them -- just like I was a nobody, or a robber thinking of ways to break into the house. I guess when you're locked away for a while, people start thinking that a person's out to start trouble, and it doesn't matter if you were locked up for murder, or for psychological rehabilitation: you get the same look, like the look she was giving me, and the look her husband was giving me. He stood off to one side, with some grocery bags in one hand, and their daughter's hand in another, trying to look threatening, like a dog growling under its breath and foaming at the mouth, guarding its territory: the balding mass of fat that he was, pink fleshy-puddy, dangling over the rim of his pants -- like I was supposed to be scared of a John Candy look-alike -- but she called over her shoulder that she wouldn't be a minute and the two vanished inside the gray-black house, the porch light flickering on, the car engine still idling, and him staring back at me.
"Did you hear me?" she said. "I asked you a question: what are you doing here?"
"Waiting for Leslie."
"Well," she said, "I don't think she wants to see you anymore. She's moved on with her life: I suggest you do the same and get the hell out of here, before there's trouble."
The car engine slowly died and the car chirped briefly. It was one of those automatic deals Leslie was always saying we should get.
She stepped forward, her shadow crawling on me. "Are you listening to a word I'm saying?"
"I hear you, but I'm not listening."
She turned visibly red. "Well, you better listen, 'cause I'm not gonna allow you to screw her head up anymore. Can't you see when you're not wanted? If you cared so much about her, you'd leave her alone: you'd leave us all alone. Don't you think you've caused enough heartache?"
"Time is precious," I said. "This isn't any of your business anyway."
"You don't have a choice, reverend." Her voice climbed unsteadily, and her hands trembled like they wanted to find my neck and squeeze hard until something snapped, or broke loose. "I'll do whatever I have to, to keep you away from her. I'm not afraid of you, don't think for a moment that I'm afraid of you."
"Why should you be?" I said, calmly. "All I'm doing is sitting on Leslie's porch, waiting for her."
"That's not what I meant." She looked me over suspiciously, making note of the clothes I wore. "When'd you break out, anyway?"
"Last night."
"So you admit to breaking out?"
I said nothing.
"Don't tell me they cured you, I wouldn't believe you if you told me that."
"Cured me of what?" I glanced up at her, waiting for a response.
"Your illness."
"I was never ill to begin with," I said. "Society has a problem dealing with the true nature of reality and they've misunderstood my intentions from the very start, none of that even matters now." I stared off to where I saw the wind carrying a Hostess cake wrapper across a well-manicured lawn. "Humans are the worse lot of creatures on any planet."
"What's to understand?" she said. "You go burning houses down, sacrificing dogs and cats and God knows what else, all in the name of spiritual continuity -- or whatever the hell you call it -- and have the nerve to call yourself misunderstood? You're a real nutcase, you know that, reverend? They should never have let you out..."
"The phrase is, 'Spiritual Gratuity'," I said. "And stop calling me reverend."
"Whatever." She threw her hands up. "The point I'm trying to make is simple: take your cheap ass flowers, your dollar-store-candy, and your wanna-be-a-cult-leader ass back to the funny farm. You brainwashed her once. I won't let you do it again."
"Everything she ever did was of her own free will." I spoke slowly, feeling the deepening shadows widen and respond sluggishly to the approaching hour. "I never forced her to do anything she didn't want to; she was lost when I found her, fresh out of an abusive marriage, with a prick that thought Monday Night Football: Half Time, was just another excuse for beating the shit out his wife for not refilling his beer glass as much, and as quickly as he wanted her to. She was directionless, gullible, and on the brink of suicide. The New Religion lifted the dark cloud surrounding her. We gave her life purpose and meaning -- that's what religions are designed to do, give a person something greater to believe in than themselves."
"You gave her life chaos and grief, and she was too vulnerable to see you for your true colors. Your marriage was a great big fuck-up and she pays for it every day, in tears and distress." She paused, wanting her words to sink in, then moved quickly to another subject: "Everyone knew you killed that girl -- it wasn't a suicide, but you were clever, and played it off like one, you sick sonafabitch!"
I winced.
I didn't want to think about Christina Vasquez.
Her failure was our failure. She didn't perform the rites properly, but that risk was hers, and hers alone, though she'd put our operation at risk, I still felt some personal responsibility for her actions, and I'd warned her not to take any of it lightly, but she was young and inexperienced, and a runaway teenager from a middleclass working family, and went dancing in our blood circle before I could even stop her, discarding her clothes and chanting passages inaccurately, with eyes closed tightly, and a smile stretched across her moist mouth, but the gods were displeased at her; her faith and devotion were false and insubstantial and she didn't have what it took to be a living sacrifice, and no one's to blame for it, but her... I didn't want to think about Christina Vasquez. She cost me everything: my wife, my freedom, my will to live, the future I'd planned for us and my work, all gone down the drain because of the trial and the lawyer fees and her parents, who found the blood they sought through the help of a sensationalist-media-machine, eager for a news story.
"Oh, did I strike a nerve this time?"
"Get out of here, Jan," I said. "Leave me alone, before I do something you'll regret."
"What you gonna do, preach one of your 'I'm the bad motherfucker in the pulpit' sermons? Fuck that shit, if you so much as look at me wrong... and don't think for a moment, you little piece of shit, that I won't call the cops over here to dispose of you, it'll be my pleasure..."
"I'm warning you --" My teeth were clenched. "Shut up, before something happens."
"No," she said. "I'm warning you. Who do you think you are, anyway?"
It was very simple. I visualized what I needed to happen -- what was going to happen anyway, with or without me, but I helped it along anyway -- and felt the power of The Old Man surging within me, obeying my will, and the euphoric sensation engulfing me, washing over me.
"What are you grinning about?"
"You'll see," I said. "You'll see." But I wasn't grinning.
A few minutes passed between us in silence. The cars continued whirring past.
It's like that when you've shared a bed with someone, you feel awkward and naked and troubled by a past distant, though close enough to touch, and to see, and to feel; as transparent, as the transparent wall that separates two people in captivity who are occupants of the same room, yet sadly divided by the absence of touch; insubstantial to one another; the distance -- the closeness -- unmistakably drawn between them, as it was unmistakably drawn between us...
Jan and I had been precarious lovers from the start; off and on, on and off, in a tumultuous dance of sexual Russian roulette from our earlier collegiate days, when we'd spent alternate weekends in each other's dorm rooms, breaking up, and making up every other week or so, up to and including her marriage to Harold Weisumbaum, when we'd meet up in hotels and bars and fulfilled libidinal thirsts, while old Harry took care of the financial side of things. He was a computer engineer, or something like it, that brought in a six figured income and turned a trailer park girl from rural Arlington into the viperous centaur she eventually grew into, and even then, we couldn't get enough of each other: she was aggressive to the extreme in the bedroom, and I enjoyed our time spent together, between the sheets, as it were.
Graduation day came, and I took a degree in theology and metaphysics, and Jan took hers in business administration, but as dissimilar as our interests were, our bodies converged amiably, unaware of how different we truly were beneath the sweaty flesh, and flexing bones, giving less than a damn, and daring the consequences: I visited frequently as the-old-friend-from-college on holidays, birthdays, special gatherings, or whenever her husband was at work, either day, or evening (since I was unemployed at the time), and I began holding small group meetings at an old mom and pop store in downtown Arlington that sold the strangest most obscure books on organized religion; it was shortly after that the New Religion began forming in my mind, and I wrote instructional texts on worship and incantation, and published them with the remainder of my savings account.
Jan didn't hold too keenly with my spiritual beliefs, but we were quite happy for a long time, and the membership swelled so that I was able to afford a small building to hold our services in.
Nine months later, she introduced me to her just-moved-in neighbor, a twenty-seven year old UCLA graduate from Sacramento, very pretty, very smart, shortly cropped sandy hair, the color of virgin sand. She taught classes at a local community college in theology. Her name was Leslie Wright, and it wasn't long before we fell in love and moved in together.
After Leslie and I got married, Jan changed for the worst -- at least, towards me, she did -- and the trailer park sprung fiercely out of the trailer park girl with a vengeance, who was now educated and living in the biggest home on the block, and supposedly happy; that is, until Leslie came along. It seemed she didn't mind us dating and fooling around from time to time, but when the relationship was officially consummated, and we moved in next door to her, Jan was never the same again. She was likely sexually frustrated (I refused her sexual advances on several occasions), and Harry wasn't the kind of man to help get the job done, so now she walked around all flushed in the face and pissed off, and here I come, a reminder of all the things that had gone wrong in both her life, and Leslie's. No wonder they were the best of neighbors again.
"What's the matter, fart-face?" she said, in her nastiest tone. "Cat got your tongue?"
I just kept smiling because I knew the lines to the script, and was turning the freshly inked page with glowing interest, timing the moment to its very second.
The screen door banged suddenly open and Harold came flying out of it, cradling a bundle wrapped in brown cloth close to his chest, placing it carefully in the backseat of the car, his features distorted by fear and desperation. He called to Jan in a quavering voice that barely reached her, while I held my smile as steadily as a tightrope walker holds his balance high in the air, and Jan was giving me this look of confusion and mixed accusation before darting over to him in response, climbing in on the passenger side, glancing back at the backseat, and back at Harold, in one complete, incongruous moment.
The little bundle, of course, was Catherine Weisumbaum, Harold's daughter, Jan's stepdaughter. She'd taken a rather bad fall down the basement stairs. The idiot should have left her there; shouldn't have moved her without consulting 911 first, but he scooped her up in haste, without thinking, and now he drove wildly down the dipping curving street, whipping past sharp corners, in a shriek of tires and disregarded traffic signs.
Will she live?
I don't know. I'm rather new at this, but I'd venture to say, in all confidence, that death is the least of her problems. Children should not suffer from, or for, the mistakes of their parents, but they always do, and the scenario's always the same, just like the Old Man said, death was circular; life was a one-way street leading to the exact same location, no matter the departure point; in death, there were ways one could navigate through and around it, but it can never be entirely avoided; life, in contrast, gives little in the way of choices, except old age and decay. Few get to choose our own deaths, but I did.
Yes, the old man was indeed correct: death is circular...
* * * * *
I met The Old Man three months after I was committed to the Arlington Restoration House. It was erected so people like me could be reprogrammed or "restored" -- they'd tell us to say: they didn't like the word "reprogrammed" -- to a normal life, to rejoin the rest of the spiritually deformed world, and to resume a healthy Christian lifestyle, the type that a Catholic mother would be proud of.
My lawyer had advised me to take the guilty plea.
As a direct result of my cooperation and humble apologies, for myself, and my colleagues -- and my solemn regret over Christina's death -- they threw out the manslaughter charges, and labeled me mentally unbalanced: this helped me evade having an asshole -- my only one -- torn out in a prison cell bed. I had to take the rap for Leslie and the others (who ended up doing some community service), which was fine, because it was far more inviting than prison and I was grateful for that. They closed the doors to the Temple of the New Religion, and shipped me off to serve my time.
There, at the Arlington Restoration House, I found I could pretty much come and go as I pleased around the place, so it was actually more lenient than the judge let on, probably because Christina's parents would have raised hell had they'd known, but there wasn't much they could contest seeing that that business of molestation came out shortly after. The restrictions were fair enough: no one could leave the grounds; the only way out was through recommendation -- which for me, wouldn't come for at least another five years -- or death.
The Old Man didn't say much at first: a few muttered words in greeting here or there, or a nod of his head, and sometimes nothing at all, except a grim stare, and we'd have these Wednesday and Friday group meetings where they'd have us discuss our progress in an informal setting, the counselors calmly scribbling and making notes on clip boards and nodding like they understood all of us, but the Old Man himself rarely participated. He stared at me, and didn't say a word during the discussions. The chairs he sat in always seemed to swallow him up because he was so slight, and so easily overwhelmed by the objects surrounding him. Eventually those few exchanged words of parting and gesture became long sprawling discussions on philosophy, and life and death and history, and we spent more time together in the garden of pagodas and chrysanthemums, trampling the freshly swathed grass that adhered to the sides of my white-worn-sneakers, as we sauntered along, not saying a word to one another for a long time, following each other's legs to where they took us: out of my cold white room, down the length of the hallway, past the reception desk, and outside, where the sun was hiding behind a string of clouds. There were a few orderlies hanging outside, talking with each other, pretending to not notice us, but I wasn't delusional. The cameras were still watching, even if they weren't, and a planned escape would have been the dumbest thing staged since Dawson's Creek: Live, and if you haven't seen it yet, don't bother, because it stinks as bad as the show. (Leslie watched that show every week, faithfully.)
Sometimes I'd watch the gate, hoping Leslie would come visit me, waiting for Leslie to comfort me, but she never came, and the only company I found was in the Old Man, who'd I'd become quite close with in the space of a year.
We found a seat where the shade was thick and the wind blew from the west, lifting the skirt of a pretty nurse who was pushing along a middle aged woman in a wheel chair by the marble fountains. I wondered if I'd ever see Leslie again.
"Do you want the answer to your question?" The Old Man said.
I turned to face him. "I don't remember asking any question." I shook my head. "Did I ask you a question? I'm sorry, I've been so preoccupied as of late. I miss her: I miss my wife."
His bony face seemed to flex into a wide smile, but was gone before I'd become entirely sure if it were a smile, or a grimace, or somehow, both.
"This will come out strangely," The Old Man said, with satisfaction on his lips, "but you're open minded enough to at least listen to what I'm going to tell you, no matter how far-fetched it seems, I know you'll listen. It was you, wasn't it, that was the High Priest-Umla of the New Religion, yes?"
"That was a long time ago," I said jovially. "Now I'm on the road to restoration." I said it like they told us to say it in therapy.
He laughed at this. "That's bullshit and you know it," he said warmly. " I have a proposition for you," he said. "One that would be mutually rewarding, for the both of us. Your operation should never have been shut down like that, just because some snot-nosed girl with a drug problem decided to screw it all up, separating you from your wife and your followers, turning your organization into a five 'o clock news special, that, I'm truly sorry for... but there's still hope; there's still a way for you to continue your work, it's important to me; it's important for us... Are you interested in hearing this, or am I wasting my time?" He waited for me to give him my full attention. My eyes kept wandering around the shrubbery, trying to focus on something I imagined I saw, moving between the branches. I fixed my eyes on him, so that he would go on. "I can get you out of here, without incident: you can be free again to do whatever you please. Whatever's your passion, you'll be more than free to pursue it -- it's a salvation of sorts, if you want to look at it like that."
I had to keep from laughing, because I didn't see what this short, gray-haired-old-man could have that I would've possibly wanted, without wanting something in return, that is. "So, what's the catch? What do you get out of it?"
"Same as you," he said. "Freedom: a release from captivity. I've been at it for such a long time you see, I can't just walk away from it. No, no, no, they wouldn't accept that. I must have a replacement, someone to take over for me, so that I may finally rest these old bones." He watched me from the corner of his eye. "They tell me your work has been excellent, that you need only the proper tools to complete your final journey. They said the same thing to me, when I was a young man, not much older than you: a revival pastor moving from town to town. What I wear is merely a mask; I have no real age to speak of, and neither will you. Everything you've ever done has led you to this moment, and I've waited here patiently for you, as you will wait for your own successor, centuries from now, or your followers. We're a patient breed, you see, and you've exceeded their expectations from the very start; I never managed to do that, they say I got too personally involved with my work, that I overstepped my bounds at times. Humph..."
The Old Man's face darkened.
I laid my hands flat down on my knees, the sweat of my palms moistening my pants. I was nervous, excited, incredulous, willing to believe almost anything if it brought me closer to Leslie. The rush of these dissimilar emotions scared me, like a thoughtless recrimination. I felt a stranger part of myself emerging, exploring, reaching out for answers.
"Who are these people?" I asked. "The ones you keep referring to as 'They'?"
"Why, we're the ones who gave you the idea for The New Religion, didn't you know?" His voice was cheerful, revelatory. "They say you will influence many -- guide the fold to the realms of the Pseudo-dimensions, and you can't do that locked up in here, can you?"
"I don't... understand exactly what you're saying..." There was a buzzing in my head, like a million untrained voices, rising into song.
"We will help you to understand, won't we comrade?" he said, to an invisible specter that I could almost make out, if I squinted hard enough. "This is an offer you can't refuse." Funny, I remember thinking, he's quoting Godfather, how funny, how strange, how funny that is.
Then he reached over and touched me, his thin, skeletal face, beaming at me, as the trees, and the grass, and the bench, grew dim as the farthest star, and I heard the scream inside my mind wanting to crawl out...
* * * * *
I awakened somewhere outside the gate by the side of the road.
I was dizzy at first, but this soon passed, and I then felt better than I've ever felt in years. My ability to quickly calculate (to see various colors differently, in various combinations and shades more sharply, and to even see ultraviolet rays) made the world so different now, so open, so easy to grasp -- all the complexities fell away. There was no information I didn't have access to, electronic or otherwise. I could now operate on several plains of existence, but it nauseated me, because I hadn't fully assimilated my new gifts.
I hitchhiked my way back to Arlington, unaware then that I didn't need a car any more to get from place to place. I only carried one thing on my mind: my beautiful, faithful Leslie.
I held the keys to the universe and I wanted to share them with her.
I got dropped off a couple blocks from the college and spent my time feeling for her inner glow; sniffing the air for her particular scent, unique only to her; noticeable only by me, or those of my kind.
My heightened senses soon lead me through the parking lot, where I finally found our car: the 93' Taurus with the pair of light orange and silver tousles hanging from the rearview mirror -- her car, I had to remind myself -- and I sat on the hood and waited for her, as the college boys and the college girls eyed me, as if they'd recognized something familiar in my face but couldn't place it.
A few hours later, Leslie came out of the building, leather briefcase hanging immobile at her side, her eyes glazed, lost in thought. She was preoccupied with something -- that much was certain, and it was difficult to get through the labyrinth of her mind without damaging it, so I left it alone.
"Hi Leslie," I said. I expected her to look startled, or unpleasantly surprised. But she was very still, very accepting, of the whole thing, considering. "Let's take a drive, sweety. We need to talk."
"I don't want to talk to you." The words came slow and methodical, as if rehearsed in front of a mirror. "You almost ruined my life, not to mention my career, I don't need to talk to you..."
"Well, I'm here to fix that," I said, pushing my weight off the car. "You want to get in?"
Without saying a word in answer, she hit the locks and I climbed in after her.
We took the south route to the expressway, the traffic growing thick with rush hour.
She kept her eyes on the road and her face, stolid and impassive, like an impenetrable fog, sweeping over a condemned city.
"Would it matter to you, if I said I was sorry? If I admitted that things got a little out of hand?"
"A little?" Still, the rehearsed voice; this time with a faint murmur of verisimilitude behind it. "Christina died, remember? You promised her eternal life, and she fucking died."
"Wait a minute," I said. "I never promised anyone eternal life. I was an interpreter, a humble vessel for Spiritual Gratuity. She knew the risks. We all knew the risks, but now I promise you it'll be different. I have the means and the resources at my disposal now. You'll see."
"Don't give me any of your metaphysical bullshit," she said, her tone still autonomous, carefully measured. "The New Religion is dead. It took Jan to explain it to me. I was blaming myself for not being a good wife to you, when all you really ever cared about was yourself and your phoney religion. I was stupid. You were the smart one. You got out of the relationship unscathed."
"That's not true," I said. "I've come back because of you, Leslie. Please believe me when I say that. I want to restore your faith in me. I've changed, Leslie. Why can't you believe that I've changed?"
The traffic was growing thicker, enclosing us on all sides, trucks behind and in front of us. She hit the steering wheel in frustration with the heel of her hand; the wall of her psyche, slowly crumbling. "I shouldn't have listened to you. I should have drove off. I should've fucking left you in the parking lot."
"No," I said. "You did the right thing: you followed your heart." I watched her as her face relaxed and held that queer expression again. "An old man at the institute gave me a special gift. He said I could pass it on to others, and that the New Religion would flourish under my leadership again, and this time, it would spread to the ends of the Earth, like the Gospel. I wanted you to be the first, Leslie. I wanted to pass this gift to you, and to the others: to Jeff, Mike, Sally, Yolonda and Philip. All you have to do is trust me, can you do that?"
"I trust you." She seemed to be giving something up, when she said that. There was an opening in the next lane. "But there's too much left unexplained, too much I don't understand..." she said, easing the car in front of a blue fuel rig.
"In time, sweetheart. We'll have all the time we'll ever need," I said, pleased by her -- her lack of fear, as the mask of my face tore away, and she saw me for what I truly was. Death himself. "Give me your hand," I said delicately.
She took a hand down from the steering wheel, and grasped my own tightly, squeezing it, pressing the brake to the floor, as the truck smashed into us, and the glass shattered.
And her heart stopped, just before the car exploded.
* * * * *
Death is a celebration of sorts, a farewell to earthly pleasures, so I purchased some chocolate.
Flowers signify the beauty of being uprooted, so I bought her some flowers.
I have sustained my flesh-essence till her arrival. It is necessary to continue with the illusion, until she grows used to my new face, to my new form. I am very old indeed. Death begins with the very first drawing of breath into the lungs. I am neither dead, nor alive. I am In Between, and I inhabit the Pseudo-dimensions, as Leslie will. I left a bright path for her to follow, as The Old Man had left a path for me to find my way out of the maze: that confused cosmos, with life on one end, and death at the other: The Vertical Tunnel, we call it.
She will come to me.
She will rise from the ashes like a phoenix and seek me out.
She said she trusted me. All it takes is trust.
The crickets are crooning the night's song, hidden away, somewhere beneath the unseen blades of grass and the weeds that grew under the fence, gripping the air with melody, and that sound like turning the water faucet off and on.
What was it The Old Man said? It seems to be coming back to me now. How did he put it? Yes. Yes. That's it.
Those that desire life -- those who desperately want to live -- will flee from the light of the Vertical Tunnel. Those who desire the release of death, however fatal, or seemingly volatile, will gladly risk the chance, beyond the door opposite: the door that man fears most. Be mindful of this emotion you declare she feels for you. If she does not wish to return to you, she will forget you ever existed, and the path you have set will become transparent, and she will find comfort in another form of dying. In order for her to cross over to the In-Between like you, she must trust you, and you alone, as you trusted me. The Vertical Tunnel must close its corridors behind her.
She must trust you... Those were his last words before I touched him with the death sleep. She must trust you...
The scythe is merely a metaphor for our deadly touch; the touch, that cuts away life...
She must trust you...
* * * * *
The night is black.
Cars are whirring past, with their white bright eyes, open to the broken roads, piercing through the obscurity.
Every sound of a footfall brings my eyes to scout about for her. But she doesn't come, nor is her scent in the air.
Jan and her husband haven't returned yet. There was an accident on the way to the hospital, with only one survivor, and she's playing hopscotch along the edge of the curb.
I devour anything I am next to.
I drink life, and call it mere entertainment.
I won't allow myself to believe that she tricked me. That she wanted to die. That she wanted to be rid of me forever. That she'd known all along who I was before I even knew. That she wanted death, but was not willful enough to commit suicide alone. That she struck a deal with the Old Man from the beginning and they plotted against me to both reach the ends they wanted; her, the dismissal of me; him, the possession of... I won't allow myself to believe that...
She will come to me.
She will rise from the ashes like a phoenix and seek me out.
She said she trusted me. All it takes is trust. And faith, I forgot faith. Did she forget faith?
My time-sense is beginning to accelerate...
* * * * *
The sun is nearly up. The crickets are tiring, growing bored with the creeping dawn. The shadows are fleeting. The dew is forming. The dark is seething. But I'm still waiting for Leslie.
Cornelius Fortune's cycle of stories entitled Stories from Arlington will be released in early 2004. His stories and poems have appeared in Black Petals, Twilight Showcase, Dark Fire Fiction, Dreams of Decadence, and the forthcoming science fiction anthology Mirrors in Flame. He is a frequent contributor to the Detroit Metro Times. For information on the upcoming book, including the Stories from Arlington website and its related newsletter and mailing lists, contact him at arlingtonworld@hotmail.com.
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