Americosis
Vol. 1
“The Savior Cometh”
HAYDN WILKS
Copyright © 2015 Haydn Wilks/Dead Bird Press
Dead Bird 002
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 1511985550
ISBN-13: 978-1511985550
www.haydnwilks.com
www.deadbirdpress.com
COVER ART BY JACK SKIVENS
www.deadbirdpress.com/jack
FURTHER INFORMATION
www.haydnwilks.com
www.deadbirdpress.com
New York, New York
You’re in a McDonalds somewhere in midtown Manhattan, fading, growing weaker by the hour. You’ve long stopped asking yourself why you followed the crowd in here, and the best and the worst of the late-night drunks have long since ceded ground to the pre-work crowd; fat men and women in suits, pouring coffee over their world-weariness, chewing sugary bread and cheese-smeared patties, all of them dining alone, staring into the middle-distance, staring at walls or out windows, no-one looking directly at anyone else, chewing and slurping the only sounds.
You feel confident that you could take one of them – you’re fading, but no-one could tell that from looking at you – but you worry where you’ll go from there. Some of them must be married, you reason, meaning there’s at least one other person on Earth who’s willing to have sex with them (or there was at one point.) There’s someone for everyone. The chain will continue.
You wonder how the bodily neglect of a McDonalds-munching fat man will affect his longevity. The skin you’re in has served you well – you’ve gotten almost two weeks out of it, since the girl was seduced at some hipster indie rock gig across the river in Williamsburg.
You don’t know why some people last longer than others, but two weeks seems to be the upper limit of human endurance. The body you’re now inhabiting is definitely nearing its end.
You pick the girl’s phone up from the table and take a look at yourself in the self-cam: you’re showing signs of tiredness round the eyes, but you still have that cute pixie prettiness that’s served you so well so far – two to three guys per day for the better part of two weeks, all drawn to you like moths to the flame.
The next will be the last.
You take action to obscure the tiredness and remove a make-up case from the girl’s bag. As you pad powder to your cheeks and apply lipstick, you wonder why the body’s original inhabitant made so little use of its ability to attract men – a serious boyfriend in college, the odd short-lived fling in the few years since then. You’ve fucked more guys in a week than she did in the eight years she was sexually active.
Make-up done, you look around at the fat men of McDonalds to find a suitable target. You see one guy, eating alone like the rest of them, a look of anger on his face as he shoves forkfuls of syrup-smeared hot cake and meat patty into his mouth. There’s a meanness to him, some inner aggression, likely caused by elevated levels of testosterone, which would likely lead to him accepting your offer to share your body with him.
He has short black hair parted down the middle, a strong nose and sharp chin, the latter of which further sets his face apart from the trans-fat filled pudge obscuring the lower part of most the other male diner’s faces. He wears a plain black suit, with a white shirt and grey tie beneath it. From the way it clings to his physique, it seems better tailored and more expensive than anyone else’s. He’s the one.
You get to your feet and walk towards him. You’re light-headed - fading fast. You reach his table and he looks up at you. His mouth hangs open, displaying chewed-up chunks of bread and syrup. You give him your best pretty pixie smile.
“Hi.”
Logan, New Mexico
“Every man I meet’s a total dick or a total dweeb,” Maybelline moans.
“It’s testosterone,” Sandra explains. “Too much, the guy’s an ape. Too little, he’s an ant.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
"Once we got Mitzy done, he became a sweetheart. Before that, he was disappearing all the time, probably spawning litters of little kitties all over Logan.”
“Maybe I oughta’ve cut Kevin’s nuts off.”
“That’s the least I’d have done, all he put you through.”
Maybelline turns off 3rd Street and pulls up outside Sandra’s home.
“You get home safe now,” Sandra says, hopping out of Maybelline’s pick-up truck – the one good thing Kevin left her with, after he took the kids and shacked up with that whore in Albuquerque.
“I’ll try.”
“And don’t you worry about men none, Maybelline. I saw our horoscope this morning. The stars have something special planned for us single Scorpio girls.”
“I’ll take whatever I can get.”
Sandra laughs. “Drive home safe now.”
Maybelline turns back onto the road and carries on driving through the pitch-black sandy vista of her backwater burg, 1000 miles east of Hollywood and 1800 miles south-west of Manhattan. As she drives, she thinks of Kevin and his whore in Albuquerque, 200 miles east, and little Jimmy and little Kimberley in their custody. She find herself cussing out loud, feeling the beer more now that she’s alone.
She accelerates, the dark of night depressing her, and as she thinks of times gone by, something appears in front of her; a flash of flesh. She hits it. She slams the brakes and sits in darkness, her headlights illuminating nothing but dust and tarmac. Some semblance of sobriety returns. Her hand shaking, she opens the door and gets out.
The front of the pick-up’s been dinged. She creeps round to the back and sees it, glowing red beneath the taillights; pink flesh upon the ground. A human body, bathed in red light, immobile and exposed, like the flesh of a pig beneath a meat counter.
“You alright?” Maybelline asks, creeping toward it.
The figure is completely hairless, with thick muscle-mass defining its body – his body – and as Maybelline gets closer, she becomes fully aware that he’s fully naked, and she notices his penis, an improbably long protrusion, stretching down almost to his kneecap.
Great, Maybelline silently scolds herself, you find a guy hung like that and you take him out with your damn pick-up truck.
Too drunk to register the oddness of the ripped naked bald guy out cold on a hot New Mexican night, Maybelline crouches down and places a hand in front of his mouth; he’s breathing.
She thinks of taking him to a hospital, but figures he’s probably uninsured, and probably won’t want to wake up to a huge medical bill. Maybelline’s certainly not paying. She grabs him under the arms and pulls him up into a standing position, leans him against the back of the truck. She keeps one hand under his left arm and places the other at his crotch, his massive member brushing against her wrist. With a groan of exertion, she pushes and flips him over into the back of the pick-up, like a WWE wrestler tossing someone out of the Royal Rumble.
She returns to the vehicle and carries on driving through the silent darkness. It’s not until she pulls up outside her home on 5th Street that panic sets in.
She looks at her ramshackle one-floor dwelling with its wealth of neighbors and realizes there’ll be hell to pay if anyone sees her dragging a naked corpse into her home. But what else can she do? She can’t exactly drive back and dump him out where she found him. Her head spins with uncertainty, Maybelline regretting at least eight of the beers she’s drunk. She briefly considers taking him to a motel, but hates the thought of spending money she doesn’t have on some naked freak creeping out in the dark of night, however big his dick might be.
She gets out of the truck and walks to the flat-back, then leans in and grabs him by the arms. He seems heavier than he did on the road, but with great effort, Maybelline’s able to pu
ll him to the side of the pick-up, awkwardly roll him over its edge, and let him drop with a dull thud to the dirt and gravel floor. She grabs his muscular calves and moves backwards, dragging him toward her house.
She’s out of breath by the time she reaches it. She stands in the doorway, panting, looking down at him, passed out, with that giant dick between his legs… then she remembers her neighbors, and drags him in over the threshold.
Some time later, Maybelline’s sitting in a time-savaged armchair, the soft flicker of the TV flashing before her tired eyes, the beer’s buzz subsiding, inertia taking its place. She’s forgotten about the naked form spread out on her sofa. Her eyelids grow heavier. The naked man murmurs, stopping her drifting into sleep.
She stares as he sits up and looks down at himself, then at the television, then at Maybelline. Maybelline smiles.
“Howdy,” she says, as alluring as possible.
He’s on his feet in a half-second, leaning over her, a firm hand clasped to her throat. She struggles to breathe, as his eyes fix her with cold uncertainty. He looks panicked, a wild animal awoken in unfamiliar surroundings. Maybelline struggles, digging the red plastic shards of her nails into the skin of his tightening fist. She gargles, spits, trying to kick and claw the stranger away. He yields and she breathes suddenly and deeply. He stands and stares at her, his massive penis swinging limply as he huffs and puffs and regains his composure.
“What year is this?” he demands, his voice military-precise.
She stares at him, startled. Silence hangs as heavy and impotent as his monstrous dick.
“What year is this?” he demands again, louder, angrier.
The absurdity of the question penetrates the tension. Maybelline laughs, quietly at first, but within seconds it’s a full-on hyena cackle. A few more seconds and it’s gone, and she’s smiling up at the bewildered stranger.
“Honey, I think we may have to get you to a hospital. You done whacked your head pretty good on the front of my pick-up. What the heck were you doing out there? Running round in the dead of night, buck-naked, that mighty member of yours swinging round for all to see?”
He stares at her, confused. A few moments pass, his silence annoying her.
Just my luck, she silently curses, I find a guy hung like Holmes and it turns out he’s a window licker.
He sits back down on the sofa, holding his head in his hands, giving up. Maybelline leans forward and delicately touches his knee. His eyes burn a hole straight through her. She withdraws.
“Honey, do you remember anything about what you were doing out there tonight?”
He thinks about it for a long time, his brow furrowed, his eyes pained. Then his face softens and he turns to look at her. “I’ve come to save America.”
She bursts out laughing. She stops upon seeing he’s serious.
Maybe he’s one of them Arab terrorist types, Maybelline supposes. But he don’t look like no Arab. “What do you mean, ‘save America’?”
“I’m from the future. I’ve got to…” He trails off, collecting his thoughts. “I have a mission to complete. Thank you for your hospitality. You have been most kind.”
He stands and strides toward the door. Maybelline clasps his wrist as he passes her. He looks down at her. She smiles. When the words first spilled out his mouth she considered him crazy, but she’s beginning to allow herself to believe. No-one ever believes them at first, she thinks, not until the robots and the monsters and all the rest of it show up and start killing people. She’s seen too many movies to doubt him. She’s ridden too many ponies to let a stallion walk away.
“You gonna put some clothes on first?”
He nods slowly, her grip on his wrist telling him he’s safe. She rises from her seat and moves her hand to that big dick of his, which proceedes to grow even larger.
“You could always stop the night. America’ll still need saving tomorrow.”
He looks at her with submissive eyes. She smiles and drops to her knees, then spread her lips and slides the tip of his giant penis into her mouth.
She sucks and licks and rubs and pumps, sucking for the future, sucking American’s savior.
New York, New York
“All I wanna do is get my butt to da club, / All I wanna do is give my little boo a rub…”
The radio clicks into life at 6.25am. John Baldini stares up at the high white ceiling of his Fifth Avenue home.
“All I wanna do is dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d—“
The awful music speeds up to crescendo. John sits up, blinking into wakefulness. His wife mumbles beneath white sheets beside him.
“…and find some bitch to love.”
John reaches out to stop the alarm clock as i.am.sam.i.am’s latest dreadful top 40 hit reaches a chorus repurposed from an old Jefferson Airplane song. John looks at his wife, Erica Fitzkoff-Baldini, face-down upon the pillow, her sleep undisturbed. He envies her. He can’t have slept more than 2 hours. Their flight back from Saint Kitts was delayed. It was long after 3a.m. by the time they’d staggered through Customs at JFK.
He gets out of bed and begins his morning routine: stretches, squats, push- pull- and sit-ups, followed by a breakfast of muesli and soy milk with an espresso, followed by a banana, all eaten whilst staring out the window onto Central Park. The view and location were the reason Erica had been so determined to live there. The 1300 square foot of oak flooring, marble-floored bathroom, ultra-modern kitchen with granite countertops, formal dining room, spare bedroom, southern exposure to light, 24 hour white-gloved doorman service, and carefully-curated pre-war class all contributed to the apartment’s $5,875 per month cost, but really, the bulk of their rent was being spent on the chance to eat breakfast while watching day break over the park. John had argued that they could get a huge house further out and eat breakfast in the middle of the park for half the cost. What Erica wants, Erica gets.
A face-full of Antonio’s Energizing & Exfoliating Facial Scrub does little to wash away the late night’s fatigue as he showers. He scowls as he thinks of his wife, lying in bed until mid-morning, sleeping the flight off. Her job keeps different hours to his. He rises with the city that never sleeps; she isn’t needed until people like him have a spare moment to get their heads examined. She sleeps as they crack beneath the high-pressure system of Manhattan morning, then strolls in at lunch time to mop the mental mess up.
She’s a shrink. A surveyor of the compressed murk of human fuckedness. And a damn well-remunerated shrink at that. Well-regarded enough to run her own practice on Madison Avenue. Well-rewarded enough to take up half the slack on a Fifth Avenue rental fee. Well-deep enough to bring her work home with her.
“How was your holiday?” Dan the white-gloved chauffeur asks.
“Saint Kitts is beautiful,” John replies, not quite answering the question. “The sand’s white, the water’s turquoise. You should go there some time.”
“Maybe I will.”
Erica hates that John takes a car service to work every morning. “What’s the point of living on Fifth Avenue and not walking in?” she’d said.
He told her that walking in would take over an hour. She argued the car service took almost the same, stuttering through early-morning traffic. He explained his job was all about image; helping his clients project the right image to prospective investors. And what image would he be projecting by stumbling in from the city with sweat patches beneath his arms? What would they think, when he worked for a firm that offered a car service, a car service he’d damn sure worked hard enough to be worthy of using?
That’s the main difference between he and Erica; he’s all about image. She’s all about chipping away at it.
The car chugs through traffic enough that John’s brought level with the river. The Hudson. The skyscraper-lined river: a natural feature dwarfed by one of humanity’s greatest artifices. The river was always his favorite part of the city.
He used to cross it coming in from New Jersey, pa
cked in the back of Angelo’s Camino with the boys from the band, dreaming of making it big, one dingy rock club gig at a time. Funny how things work out. Now it’s the edge of his world. Manhattan. He’s made the inner-circle. The central island. The pumping heart of global commerce, he a schmoozing, blustering capillary. He watches the river pass, the hulking mass of Riverswood Generating Station on the opposite bank reminding him that his dreams have to some extent passed into being, whatever form they’d shifted into.
He looks down at his phone and his emails, then the financial news, catching up, preparing for the big day and the big client ahead of him. A thought flits across his mind of the immense importance of his job, the heaviness of it, and the lightness of his old dreams of rock stardom, crushed and buried beneath the city in closed-down basement rock clubs. It makes him think of the Milan Kundera book a crazy-sexy Polish girl in the Village gave him a lifetime ago; The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
When he next looks up from his phone, he sees a glorious remainder of the immensity of his place in the world: the United Nations headquarters, the seat of global governance.
The car turns away from the river and the Empire State building soon appears, chief among the giants towering over 34th Street. He’s soon out of the car and in an elevator, riding to Incite International’s 11th floor offices on the corner of East 34th Street and Madison Avenue.
“Good morning Mr. Baldini,” Melanie on reception says, “how was your vacation?”
“Saint Kitts is beautiful. White sand, turquoise sea--"
“John, can I have word with you?” Don Wolf interrupts.
John follows the Wolf into his office. Gloria Liebowitz from H.R. is waiting for them, a stern look upon her face.
“How was Saint Kitts?” the Wolf asks, taking a seat.
“It was great. Blue sky, turquoise sea, white sand. Beautiful.”
“Uh-huh. It’s a beautiful part of the world. Did you check out Christophe Letard’s place?”
“Oh yeah, thanks for the tip. The lemongrass-poached lobster was divine.”
“With the dasheen risotto, right?”
“Yeah. Out of this world.”
“Erica like it?”
“She loved it.”
“Good. That’s good. Uh… Gloria?”
“Do you know who Barbara O’Reilly is?”
“Barbara O’Reilly,” John repeats. “I’m not sure. Is she a folk singer?”
“Barbara O’Reilly works for an organization called the Holy Land Protectorate. Have you heard of that?”
“No. Should I have?”
“Ms. O’Reilly sent you an email.” Gloria’s eyes fall to a sheet of paper in front of her, which she begins to read from. “The Holy Land Protectorate is an organization formed by Father Patrick Kilbride of County Sligo, a priest famed for his work fighting anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Ireland. Have you heard of Father Kilbride?”
“No.”
“Ms. O’Reilly’s email explained that Father Kilbride’s organization is seeking to extend his work in combating discrimination to the place that is of greatest importance to people of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. They have outlined a list of principles which they believe all companies operating in the Holy Land should adhere to. Ms. O’Reilly says she has written to all five-hundred and sixty American companies doing business in the Holy Land, asking that they sign an agreement to abide by those principles. Do you remember reading any of this?”
“No.”
“We do business with people who do business in Israel, John,” the Wolf summarizes. “Have you heard of Israel?”
“Is the Pope Jewish?” John quips.
Gloria glowers.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of Israel.”
“Ms. O’Reilly says she wrote to you several times without receiving a response,” Gloria continues, eyes back on the paper. “In her last email she told you that every response, or lack of response, to their requests would be published on their web site.”
“What is your position here, John?” the Wolf interjects.
“Vice-President of Investor Relations.”
“Vice-President of Investor Relations. And in one word, what is your job about?”
“Image.”
“Image. And in a sentence or two, what does your work here entail?”
“I help companies that are seeking investors attract attention from Wall Street.”
“Uh-huh. And in a word, what is it that attracts Wall Street’s attention?”
“Image.”
“Image again. Okay. Gloria, please continue.”
“In Ms. O’Reilly’s most recent email, which we received Friday, she said that she was informing you of her aforementioned duty to publish your response on their website.”
“Any recollection of what that response was, John?”
John Baldini stares dumbly at the Wolf.
“Gloria?” the Wolf prompts.
“Go fuck yourself,” Gloria reads.
“Go fuck yourself,” the Wolf repeats. “Go fuck yourself. John, do you remember telling Ms. O’Reilly to go fuck herself?”
“I… I… look, I don’t remember exactly, but come on, I mean, my email address is the first point of contact anyone has with us, it’s probably the most public email account we’ve got. I get all kinds of crazies sending me stuff. Anarchists, communists, anti-capitalists, animal fucking rights activists. Come on, Don. Do you really expect me to waste time drafting polite replies to all of them?”
The Wolf nods slowly and looks down at the desk.
“And I mean, what does it matter, anyway? So I told this O’Reilly woman to go fuck herself. So what?”
“Image, John,” the Wolf says, raising his eyes again. “Image. Did you give any thought to what kind of image this might project of our company?”
“Come on, Don. Who’s even heard of this Father Kilbride prick? He runs an advocacy group for fucking Palestinians. So I hurt their feelings, boo-hoo. What’s he gonna do, go to the media? The media’s run by Jews, Don. They don’t say a word against Israel, and the Israelis hurt a lot more than the Palestinians’ feelings.” Gloria’s glowering at John again. He doesn’t care; his efforts are directed at the Wolf. “I mean, really, Don. Honestly. Think about it. So I told her to go fuck herself. Who gives a shit?”
“The internet, John,” the Wolf sighs. “The internet gives a shit. Gloria?”
“Since this was posted to the Holy Land Protectorate’s website on Friday, it has been linked to tens of thousands of times from other sites: Facebook, Twitter, 4Chan, Reddit… Our inboxes have been flooded with emails, almost three thousand of them, ranging from the mildly abusive to the wildly threatening. Our website has been subjected to four separate D.D.O.S. attacks.”
“That meeting you had with Aquarius Digital this morning’s been cancelled,” the Wolf adds. “They want nothing to do with you. They were on the verge of wanting nothing more to do with us.”
“On the verge?” John half-whispers.
“Unless we promised to have nothing more to do with you ourselves.”
“You mean…?”
“I think they’d rather we fired you. But outside of this incident, you’re damn good at your job. Great, even. And you’ve been a big driver behind some of our biggest successes. So I’m not going to fire you. But I am going to send you home for a while. Give it some time. Wait until this thing blows over. Show contrition. Apologize publicly to Father Kilbride. Donate your next bonus to a charity operating in Gaza or the West Bank. Then we can move on from this. But until then, I’m sorry, John, but we’ve no choice but to distance ourselves from you.”
John moves from the office to the elevator to Madison Avenue in a daze, then found himself drifting along 34th Street, skyscrapers above, people all around him; he’s floating, weightless, levity restored.
He thinks of all the vices Erica’s coached out of him. He thinks about finding a bar and drinking the day away. Getting a pack of smokes
and really going for it. Giving up on giving up. Living on in giving in. He takes his phone from his pocket and sees that it’s 8.47 a.m. – no bar’s’ll be open yet. As for cigarettes, if he prises that old wound open, there’s no guarantee it’ll ever scab over again. But an anxious desire for something propels him on, through the crowd, from the Empire State building to Macy’s. He turns right at the department store and carries on down 7th Avenue toward Times Square, glancing at girls in a way he hasn’t in years – with intent.
Narcissistic tendencies. That was Erica’s verdict. A proclivity to anxiety overcompensated for with outward bravado. Image. He feels the image dropping off him as he walks, his façade slipping as sweat seeps out beneath September sunshine. He’s loose. Free. Untethered. Adrift. An idea. A possibility.
Then he sees it; the sliver of red running across the middle of a building on the other side of the street. McDonalds. He’s not been in one since he married Erica. He waits for a gap in traffic and sprints over to it, provoking the irritated honking of a yellow cab.
He joins the line inside and stares up at the breakfast menu: cheese and meat patties in buns, hot cakes smothered in syrup, all of it looking so good, choosing between them impossible.
“Good morning! What can I get for you?”
“Good morning! Can I get a Sausage Burrito, a Steak, Egg & Cheese Bagel, and a Big Breakfast with Hot Cakes with a Coke?”
John hands over $20 and receives a few dollars back in change. He stands and salivates for several minutes while the staff preps his order, then takes a tray laden with food upstairs to eat.
He unwraps the burrito first and tears through it in three bites. He follows it with a big gulp of Coke, then opens the Big Breakfast box and sets about applying syrup to the hot cakes and butter to the buns. He then unwraps his Steak, Egg & Cheese bagel and takes a few quick bites, the rush of sugars and amino acids placating him, humanizing him. He carries on, alternating between bites of bagel and forkfuls of hotcakes and syrup, until a girl appears in front of him.
“Hi.”
He swallows before answering. “Hi.”
“I couldn’t help noticing you. This might sound strange, but since I saw you, I couldn’t look away. I had to come over and talk to you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Do you mind?”
“No. Go ahead. Take a seat.”
“Actually, I was kind of hoping we could go somewhere more private.”
You roll your eyes towards a handicapped bathroom. He’s shocked. You smile.
“Wait twenty seconds then come join me.”
You stroll past the tables of fat men and women dining alone and enter the handicapped bathroom. You practice that pretty pixie smile of yours in the mirror and smooth down some frizz at the sides of your nut-brown hair. You turn to the door and stand with your back against the sink, awaiting his arrival. He’s soon inside, locking the door behind him. He stands and stares at you, smiling, eyes running over your body. You cock your head to the side and smile, then call him toward you with your finger. His testosterone-based aggression bubbles up to the surface. He steps forward, a little hesitant, and parts his lips, as if to say something. Despite your outward sheen, you’re fading fast. No time for hesitation. You press your right hand to the side of his head, digging at his short black hair with your nails. You pull him toward you. His lips part fully. Your tongue enters his mouth. You probe it, tasting the sugar-meat residue of the food he left behind. His right hand grips your left breast, gently, not quite forcefully enough, so you use your left hand to pull your T-shirt up. He accepts the invite and slips his hands inside, gripping harder, hand on bra now. You’re feeling fainter, lighter. You release his head and pull the T-shirt off completely, letting it fall to the floor. You unhook your bra and let that drop as he steps back and stares at you, an almost quizzical look stemming the lust, stopping the unexpected flow of it gushing forth and filling the unloved confines of the handicapped bathroom of a McDonalds on 7th Avenue. You lurch forward, grab at him, at the belt of his jeans, and with a quick tug unbuckle it. You move back against the sink, lick your right index finger, rub your right nipple with it, calling him in, calling the lust forth. “Fuck me now,” you half-whisper. He steps toward you, unbuttoning and unzipping his pants, letting them fall to his ankles. You respond by wriggling your panties loose beneath your mini-skirt. He reaches you. The lust overcomes him, no arbitrary delay for the rolling on of a condom. His thick hands are under your skirt, squeezing your buttocks, pushing you back against the sink, and a moment later he’s shoved himself inside you. You let your head fall back, eyes closed to the glow of fluorescent lighting as he stabs himself into you. You’re letting go, letting him take over, you taking over him, melding, as he thrusts and pumps and fucks you against the sink, you and he becoming one, the same, thrusts intensifying, stabbing deeper, and you look down and you see yourself as you fuck her, feel some strange sensation, something beyond words, creeping into the cracks left behind when wordless lust washed over you, and the feeling’s too intense, and you try to hold it back, but you can’t, and you come, and then it’s over, and you’re looking past her, into the mirror, at the thickness and strength of your face, at the face of John Baldini, and you look back down at her, your soul mate, your sire, and you see she’s slipping quickly from existence. You press your right hand against her chest and push her back against the sink, using your left hand to slip yourself out of her. She tumbles over and hits the floor as you back away and pull your pants up. You realize you need to get away, fast. Questions will be asked. You cannot be nearby when your soul mate’s husk is found. You turn away from her and throw the bathroom door open. You step out into McDonalds, into the city, in search of another soul mate, someone else to sire, another vessel to pump your soul into.
Logan, New Mexico
“Jeez, I thought they’d cancelled this crap,” Maybelline says, observing the television from the kitchen area of her small home’s main room.
America’s self-proclaimed savior is slumped on the couch, a blanket covering his nakedness. He’s staring at the television, at Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air addressing two contestants strapped in harnesses.
“Dystopian,” Carlton reads from a card.
“Dystopian,” the contestant on the left answers, “D-I-S-T-O-P-I-A-N.”
“No! D-Y-S-T-O-P-I-A-N,” Carlton corrects him.
The contestant’s flung towards the ceiling at speed. Maybelline moves across the room and takes the remote control from the arm of the sofa.
“They must’ve brought that dumb show back for another season,” Maybelline says, changing the channel. “Lord knows why.” She flicks past old episodes of deceased sitcoms – Everybody Loves Raymond, Mike’s Struggles, Home Improvement, Taxi, Mork & Mindy – and stops at a white guy in a tux with an oversized bowtie, speaking directly into the camera, flanked by two Japanese women in pink dresses. “Well I’ll be, are they even re-running this thing now?”
“Re-running?” the Savior says. “You mean… this isn’t modern-day programming?”
“No it ain’t modern day programming,” Maybelline laughs. “When’s the last time you watched TV? No, this must be about thirty damn years old by now. Maybe more. I must’ve been six or seven last I saw it. I’ll never forget my Mom going crazy at my Dad to switch over to Dukes of Hazard, saying he was only watching this to ogle them there Asian girls. That’s the first real fight I remember my parents having. Damn, this show must’ve been cancelled after no more than five episodes.”
“That’s not good.”
“No it ain’t. Way I heard it, them two Japanese girls were hired on account of them being big stars over there in Japan. But their manager done lied to the television network and said they could speak English good. So they set everything up for them to host their own primetime variety show, and it turned out they didn’t speak a lick.”
“I mean it’s not good this isn’t modern-day programming.”
?
??Tell me about it. You know how much I pay for cable? And all that’s ever on is re-runs.”
“I think there may have been a disturbance in the time field.”
“Huh?”
“Me being here. I think it may have caused some disruption to the space-time continuum.”
Maybelline laughs. “Oh that’s right! I almost forgot. You’re from the future, ain’t ya?”
“Uh-huh. And to my knowledge, I’m the first who’s successfully traveled back this far.”
“Right. So that explains why there ain’t more of you future folk running around.”
“Correct. We always suspected there could be unforeseen consequences. Perhaps this is one of them.”
“You think they’re showing re-runs on your account?” Maybelline flicks past more repeats of long-dead shows. “Honey, they just do that so’s they don’t need to spend money on new programming.” She leaves the TV on Hollywood Princesses and heads back to the kitchen. “When you gonna tell me what you was really doing running round butt naked in the dead of night anyhow?” She opens and closes cupboard doors, failing to find breakfast. “What was it, your lover’s husband walk in on you? You and some buddies went skinny-dipping? Streaking? Or maybe you’re just full-blown crazy?”
“I told you already. I came to save America.”
Maybelline walks back to the sofa and sits down on the arm of it. “Right. Of course you did. And what exactly did you come to save America from?”
The Savior stares at the television, as two white blonde girls screamed at each other, beeps blotting out the expletives: “I don’t know yet.”
“Well be sure to let me know just as soon as you’ve figured it out. In the meantime, I was gonna run to the store and grab us some breakfast. What do you guys eat in the future?”
“Synthetic stuff, mostly. It probably hasn’t been invented yet.”
“Sweetie, you’re in America. The store sells Twinkies and cheese in an aerosol can.”
“Anything’s fine.”