KILLING GOD

That hollow sick feeling wakes her up, the empty woman, lying on the stained mattress. No sheets. On the floor. Light slashes into the room. Clean cuts. Dust mites perform pirouettes. Light made dingy as soon as it enters the room. The room only allows the dingy. Bones show through her wax skin like knives. Her fingernails broken. Her lips lilies.

The long husk of man is draped across her. There is nothing worse than waking into the bloom of man stink. Yellow scent of ownership. Bluffing, angry, violent smells. She kicks him. He shifts. He doesn’t wake. She kicks again. Hard. He doesn’t wake. The surgical tubing is loose around his arm. He breathes. He isn’t dead. Her lips press together. The crease in her forehead forms a thick line. Her first sounds are unintelligible. They rise up out of her like insects, and take flight from her lips. She begins to kick the man. To punch, and scratch, and dent, and break, and shatter. Spit strings lines from her cracked lips. She foams.

“FUCKER!! You mother fucking cock sucking son of a bitch! I KNEW you had more! You fucking junky fuck! Did you do it after I passed out!? FUCK!!”

The man doesn’t wake. His lip splits. Blood from his nose smears her fingers. Red drips blossom on her face. It only stops when she collapses in on herself. Her sobs are empty. They sound rehearsed.

“Why did you waste it? Why did you waste it? You aren’t worth it. You stupid fuck. You wasted it.”

Her eyes are dry.

She stands and gathers all the things that matter: The kit. A nearly empty bottle of Vodka. Her hollow purse. She can feel the cold needles and nausea gathering in her guts. Curling in like worms. As she leaves she kicks the man again. It is perfunctory. Like chewing off a hangnail. She closes the door, trapping the dingy room inside itself, and walks into the sunlight

***

God wakes up when the sun crawls in enough to touch his eyes. He can hear them outside already, the pilgrims.

“Are you here already? All of you? Are you here? I don’t have anything for you. I don’t. I don’t have anything. When did I start talking to myself? When did that start? Are you all here? Ready for school? All of you?”

He rises, stooped, and begins to work his way to the curtained door. The roof is low in his hovel. Light, colored by the beer bottles and broken glass set into his walls leaks in. For a second he looks like a stained glass deity. Only a second.

They are waiting. The pilgrims. Neat lines of them. They bring him things. Eggs. Bottles of water. Questions. He can hear the drone of cars above him. Commuters. Going to work.

“I don’t have anything for you. I don’t. You can ask. You can always ask. I don’t have anything.”

They approach. Each is different. They give him things. They ask their questions. Some wait. Some are afraid. Others shout them out. The questions. The pilgrims are all different, but their questions are the same. The question is always the same. He never has an answer. He doesn’t know any answers.

They give him things. They ask the question. He disappoints them. They leave.

That is what happens.

He remembers a carnival game. Metal ducks traveling left to right. Always left to right. The gun. You fire the gun at them to knock them down. Once he leaned in, and looked over the counter. Down. The same ducks traveled right to left. They stood back up. Upside down. Righting themselves. Ready to be knocked down again. Over and over and over and over and over and over. It was a lesson you learned in war. A lesson you learned when your heart was broken. But they never learned. They just went right to left, standing back up. They never learned. They always asked the same question.

And he never has an answer. He’d never had an answer.

***

Nothing is so desperate as fix day. When she is flush, she likes to play a game with herself. See how long she can hold out. How much of the pressure she can stand building up behind her eyeballs. How much pain. Sometimes she waits so long she can barely cook. Her fingers shake.

When there is nothing, it is different. She can feel every craving. Every twinge. She feels more and more empty. She eats herself from the inside.

It is an hour since she left the dingy room. The husk of a man. She can’t remember his face.  It is still too early for anyone to be out. Pushers are vampires. They burst into flame in daylight. She fights the growing waves of nausea. Tries to think rationally. Keep moving. Rolling stone. Shark.

“Gotta find a squat. Gotta get food. Gotta find a squat. Gotta get food.”

She catalogues out loud what should be instinctual urges, but aren’t. She overwhelms the growing hole in her stomach and head with repetition. Simple tasks to stay alive.

She’s always had this skill. Immersing herself in schoolwork when her first boyfriend left. A job to mourn her mother’s death. She has achieved so much replacing pain. Now nothing can replace it.

The day is bright and washed out like an old photograph. Details fading with time. She barely notices. It is a rare day for a city whose sharp edges are usually softened with fog and rain. All the lines, and cracks, and veins, and wrinkles, all the imperfections are visible today. She belongs in this landscape. She disappears into it. Her face is like the streets. Those who witness her muttering shuffle see a piece of the city itself come to life. A golem. Cracked sidewalk, stuck on gum, tufts of pushing up grass, gotten up on two legs. The angry city walking. But no one sees her. This is why she survives, this invisibility. Men, women, walk by and do not see. They look through her body like glass.

She witnesses so much now. She is the city’s eye. When she was beautiful, so beautiful that all the world could only see her face, life was performance to her. Everyone hams it up for the camera. It is only now that she sees living. She sees men, filled with hopelessness, and fear, desperately define themselves with violence. She sees women, lost, separated from themselves, turn their bodies into resources, to be used up. She sees love replaced, 10 CCs at a time. The everyday art of desperation. Of living. 

Sometimes she wishes she could be beautiful again. Sometimes she wishes to go back, and watch the movie.

“Gotta find a squat. Gotta get food. Gotta find a squat. Gotta get food.”

Rolling stone. Shark.

***

God watches the pilgrims leave. One by one. Walk away burdened with more than when they came. There is never any comfort. There is never an answer. The last two wait. They have waited patiently all morning. They make him nervous. Stiff. Young. Painfully young. Their faces shine. They bring him oranges wrapped up in paper. They look at him. Into him.

Fanatics. The word seems right to him. They ask the question, but they don’t want answers. They already know the answers. All they want is to look at him through the bars. Come see the monkey throw its feces. Come see God.

He stands, taking the oranges with him. Guilt makes him want to stay and let them gawk, but pride won’t let him. The shorter one reaches out and grabs his arm. Looks deep into God’s eyes.

“A change is coming. The world is going to change. Do you know that?”

Ice water in the face. The world does not change. The world could not change. A fire from earlier times sparks in his eyes. Imagine an ant telling its keeper how it would tip over the ant farm. Crack open the glass. Climb out into the world. Wouldn’t you want to push down on it with the thick pad of your index finger? Feel its body softly pop?

“Of course … of course … change is the nature of life. Everything changes. Everything changes.”

The hand on his arm tightens. He winces with the pain. Grimaces. The hand opens, and he staggers. They turn; the fanatics; turn and walk away. Their eyes glow. They have found their answer.

God watches them go, then turns and climbs back inside his hovel. Tears glisten on his face.

“It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. I didn’t think it would. I really didn’t think it would. I thought I’d have to wait forever.”

God begins to laugh. He unwraps an orange, and pulls it apart section by section. He slides the orange sections into his mouth. The seeds crunch between his teeth. The juice stings his lips.

“I am going to be free.”

***

She pounds on the door. Thin Jimmy’s door. Pounds and screams.

“How long have I been doing this?”

Her fists are dull with pain. Her voice is cracked. She feels the sun on her back. The few people who walk by do that trick: Looking but trying to look like they are not looking. Tight lips, little glimpses from the corners of their eyes. If she keeps this up soon there will be a patrol car. She’ll have to be pathetic and polite and pretend that she isn’t a junkie.

It is so hard to pull away from the door. But if Thin Jimmy is up there, he isn’t coming down. He won’t give her anything in this state anyway. He stopped trading for fucks a long time ago. He only lets her blow him out of courtesy.

“Because we’ve had such a good working relationship in the past.”

Her assets are just about all used up. When she started shooting it seemed like they would last forever. Like she was made of gold. Such a potent combination: painful beauty and emptiness Men pay money to fuck vinyl dolls. Machines. She was warm. Soft. A good actress. White. So funny how important that last one was. Is.  It is why she still can. She is everything the world denies them, everything they are taught to love, the dark men. Maybe that is why the fucking is so often hard. Violent. Maybe that is why they are always so tender after they are spent.

She hears sirens. She has to walk. Get somewhere. Get away. Rolling stone. Shark.

She isn’t sure why. Why she doesn’t just collapse. Sink back into the streets. Let them swallow her up.

When she was a little girl her daddy took her to L.A. They never did the normal stuff. Disney Land. The Chinese Theater. She remembers the big shaggy shape. Fiberglass. Half immersed in bubbling, stinking blackness. The whine and click of hidden motors as it raised its trunk. Forever sinking. Years of sinking, but never sunk. Like her. Never Sunk. It had something to do with revenge. Waiting around for revenge. Her and that mammoth. They looked into each other’s eyes that day. It was like looking into the future. Then her daddy grabbed her arm, and dragged her away. She wondered what other secrets she could have found buried out there in the tar.

Daddy knew best. He always knew best. Even when he loomed above her in the dark. Even when his tears fell onto her face like rain.

“You gotta keep moving, buttercup. Like a rolling stone. Like a shark. You know? Sharks, if they stop moving, they die.”

His world was blurry at the sides. Like looking out a car window. Streaks and lines.

Hers was blurry too. Is blurry. She moves again. Mechanical. She is sinking, but not sunk. Always sinking.

She thinks about revenge.

***

“Idle hands … Idle hands … Shit I can’t remember the rest of it.”

God is talking to himself again. He is waiting. He has spent years doing nothing, but this is different. So different between choosing inactivity and being forced to wait. Waiting is exhausting. If you move, if you stop paying attention, if you stop waiting, you just might miss it all together.  That is how the world works. The most important things are small. Sometimes not one person witnesses them.

“A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo … A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo … Shit I can’t remember the rest of it.”

This is his problem. He doesn’t know how anything ends. This is what he is waiting for.

He is organizing. Keeping his idle hands busy. He doesn’t have much: bottles, a book, stones, bicycle parts, parts of things that have no meaning. Things that must have been important once. There are so many different ways to organize them: shape, color, size, when he found them, how much he loves them, hates them. There is something mathematical in the act. Alchemical. By rearranging perhaps he can find meaning. Not intentionally, of course. He has no idea what to look for. He has no idea how to go about it. By randomly finding different ways to fit all these things together … maybe. Maybe he can find connection deeper than orange follows red. One fish, two fish. He could just as easily miss it all together. He knows this. Maybe the connection has come and gone already, but he is too busy, too distracted with his waiting to notice. Maybe when he turns his head to find that gray stone, the one with the green vein in it, maybe it’s come and gone. Maybe that’s why nothing ever changes. Maybe the end of the world’s come and gone, and no one noticed. Maybe he is waiting for nothing at all.

He laughs out loud.

“Not with a bang … Not with a bang but …” but he can’t remember the rest of it.

***

The two men watch her from the car. She can feel their eyes on the hairs of her neck. She remembers when she was young and beautiful. Going to bars. Men in the corners of her eyes. Watching. Waiting for one more drink to make them brave enough. It felt so inevitable, those looks. It just happened around her. It is only now that she is older, used up, that she realizes the gift in those looks. Now that she is invisible, she longs for those looks. Now that she is invisible, she fears those looks.

“Do your worst you little fuckers. What do you want? To roll me? To roll a bum? You want to know what it feels like? It’s not gonna be easy? Hear me? I can kick and scratch and bite. I can make you pay for it. You can get what you want, but you have to pay … somehow, some way, you have to pay.”

They watch from the car. The car that slows, crawling by her. She looks ahead, down, gathering the city around her, trying to sink, to disappear. The car moves on, ahead, then pulls towards the curve. Stops. She stops too. She tries to send the car away. She tries to remember how she used to send the men away. She can’t. She doesn’t. The car doors open. Two men get out. They walk toward her. She is a skittish animal to them. Rabies.

“Little sister. You have been chosen for an act of supreme bravery. You will redeem us all, starting with yourself. It is your duty as one of the suffering. You must do this thing. It is all that can save you. Save all of us.”

She is older than both of them.

“Fuck you! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! I don’t know you. I don’t know either of you! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!”

The walk towards her hands held out. They look so clean. They are beautiful.

“We have found him. We searched for so long, and we found him. He must be punished. For the suffering. For all of us. We must punish him. It is so much more than revenge, but it is revenge. He must be made to feel it. The pain. We want to be free. Don’t you want to be free little sister? No more pain? No more longing? No more suffering? Free?”

Their eyes glow. Blue eyes. Both of them with blue eyes. They look at her. Into her. They want her. It has been so long. She is trapped in those eyes. 

“What … what … what do you want? What do you want?”

They are close now. She can reach out and touch their soft faces. Smooth. Untouched. Unscathed. Open. Needing. Soft hair like down on their cheeks. They are so young. They are so beautiful.

“Little sister you can ease your pain. You can ease all of our pain.”

They grab her. She doesn’t fight. She walks with them to the car. 

***

God is tired. Tired of sorting and organizing. Tired of doing nothing. Tired of waiting. When he was young life was about motion. There was no thought. No waiting. His life moved like water, one turbulence to the next. It was a drug, all that doing. Life spent buzzing, whirring; like a machine, an insect.

He is stagnant now. Brackish. He wants so desperately to unfold himself again. Let the anger flow through his fingertips. Do. Do. Do something. He hasn’t forgotten how. He just doesn’t know what to do.

It is summer. The sun is still up even though it is late. Splinters of light creep in around him. They are bars. Keeping him still.

He looks down at his work spread out before him. Chess pieces. He fights for the memory when it was all chess pieces. When he made a difference. His fingers itch, like those civil war soldiers whose amputated arms still ached. Phantom limbs.

“That’s what I am. That’s me. Phantom limbs. The Holy Ghost. You can see right though me. Like I’m glass. Like I’m not here. I don’t exist anymore. I’m empty.”

All the bits and pieces are spread out beneath him. A whole world.

“Hrmmm. Something missing? Something missing? There’s always something missing. I forgot something again. Like that first time. Forgot.”

God lies down. He is tired. He is tired of trying to find the missing piece. He is tired of never knowing the endings of things. He begins to talk to himself.

“It’s time to make an ending. I can’t wait any longer.” He laughs, but it is a sad sound. “So easy to set it all in motion. So easy to start. I never could figure out where it was headed to. It’s all so fucked up. Chaos. Out of my control. Well, it’s time for an end. Time to stop watching. Time to stop waiting. They will never take control. They will always wait. They are just like me.”

God stills. His breathing slows. His body becomes gray.

“I never imagined …”

God dies.

The world goes on.

***

The needle drops from her fingers as the car stops. Beautiful boys, the melting time, for them she will do anything. The men are anxious. They are waiting for something. She gets out of the car, and they guide her to Him.

She stands there under the freeway, the waning rays of sun around her. God’s fingers. She closes her eyes and feels the warmth on her face. Through the blood of her eyelids the whole world is a red glow. A second to feel beautiful again.

In her hand is the thing the boys have given her. She looks at it, their candy promises fading into the repeated shush of the cars above her.  The gun is black and shiny, like an insect. It is small. Too small to be so deadly. It seems wet in the light, oily, like it is about to move, unfold itself. She wraps her hand around it too tightly to hold it closed. It leaves creases in her palm.

“Shouldn’t it be storming? Shouldn’t there be lightning?”

Sudden lucidity. It is five years ago. Or is it ten? The pain is bearable. Life is bearable. There is love, and beauty. Life is simple and complex and happens all around her. She is at its center. It swirls around like a snow globe. She catches the flakes on her tongue. Beautiful eyes. Beautiful mouth. There is no sewage running through her veins.

“What happened? Why? Why am I here?”

The men do not answer her question except to point to the structure at the center of the underpass.

She looks around her. Garbage piled up in corners. The cast off world. The structure before her looks blown together, not made. It is grown up out of the garbage. It can fall apart, disappear.

Cold fingers push into her guts, and tighten.

“Act of god … it’s an act of god.”

She thinks about heroine. Bubbling, melting, turning liquid, flowing, changing, drawn up through the tip of the needle, filling emptiness. She aches to be inanimate. Crystalline. Geological. Each segment of her visible, revealed while the world flows around her. She wants to dig down into herself. Dwell in the layer where it all still was. Beautiful eyes. Beautiful mouth. Man. Woman. Child.

“Gotta keep moving. Gotta keep moving. Rolling stone. Shark.”

Her eyes adjust to the darkness, and she sees it all laid out before her. The whole world.

All the pieces. Shiny. Rough. Smooth. All the shapes. Interconnection. Red. Blue. Purple. Lines. Square. Circles. Planes. Intersect. Interlock. She is an airplane somewhere over the Midwest. It makes sense. There is a plan. The world works. There is meaning. Purpose. But something is missing.

She looks across the landscape. Across the clockwork of it all and sees Him. Silhouetted. Lying there. Waiting. Forgotten. It is Him. God. She doesn’t know how she knows this. She remembers so much. She remembers her father. She remembers the boy. The baby. All of it.

“I used to hate you. I had fantasies about this. Killing you. You always looked like Charlton Heston in them. Regal. Pompous. Stupid. Like you thought you knew everything. Like nothing real could get inside of you. Like you were impenetrable. I would walk right up to you. You never saw me. I was invisible. I put the gun right between your eyes. Rested it there. You’d never see. I pulled the trigger. It was like popping a balloon. Nothing but little pieces. You were hollow. Empty.”

He does not reply.

Her hands shake. She holds the gun away from her. To keep it from sinking into her.

“They said it should never have happened. They said it was unnatural. They said it was immoral. But I loved him. I loved my father. I loved him. Why? Why is the world this way? Why can’t we love who we love? Why is there right? Why is there wrong? Why do you do this to us all? I just wanted to be happy. I just wanted to live my life.”

He does not answer. She moves towards him. Her teeth are tight.

“I loved him. They took it away. They took him away. They said it was against god. Daddy left me. He left me alone. I was alone for nine months. Then I was alone again. They didn’t even put it on my belly. They were supposed to put it on my belly. They said it was against God. They said we were all sinners. Daddy. Me. The baby. Sinners. Why? Why is it a sin to love? Why do you do this to us all?”

Silence.

She stands above him the gun pointed. He doesn’t move. She looks into his face. A fly lands near his open eye and walks across it. He doesn’t move. His mouth is open. She can smell the death. She feels tears slide down her cheeks, sees them spatter against his forehead. There is no one left. No one left to fix her. She is too late. There is no way to take control. God is dead. There aren’t any answers anymore.

She turns the gun toward herself. Holds the barrel up to her eye. It is small. Narrow. Her finger tightens around the trigger. The world quiets. Something about the blackness of the hole. All that unknown meaning. With a single motion, she will become god. With a single motion, she will fix everything. She stares down into the hole, and sees a glimpse of what is on the other side.

Her hand drops to her side. She turns, leaving the old dead man behind her. As she walks up and out of the blackness, she finds a place amongst all the things that God has laid out, amongst the new world. It is incomplete. She finds a hole, and she puts the gun into it. She turns and doesn’t see. The tapestry is finished.

Something happens, and the world goes on.

The men aren’t waiting when she emerges from the hole.