Every time a world ends, the first and only warning comes in a dream. It would be no different tonight as the Rev. Sheldon Smalley lay down by the rivers of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime® tea and dreamt.

* * *

            He stood at the corner of Post and Montgomery, sometime in the night, maybe midnight, maybe 3:30 a.m. The battered gray blanket of fog had been pulled over the city once again. It bunched up in lumps in some parts; it was threadbare enough in others to see the stars beyond. Mercury lamps gave that comforting radioactive amber glow to every water droplet from the rivulet of piss flowing toward his shoe to the sky’s underbelly overhead. Nothing unusual. He was downtown in the financial district. Except the streets were too still. Not even the telltale pock pock, pock pock of leather-soled heels striking concrete. Not even the distant clattering of a stray shopping cart. Not even the slow thudding heartbeat inside a signal box to announce the nearby traffic light would change.

            Everyone must have fled. Those with homes to the suburbs. Those with apartments to anywhere they could afford. And those with nothing, to whatever doorways that remained unbarred.

No, it was so still because everyone must be asleep. Except for maybe a few stray bands of office cleaners wandering on random floors in the random office buildings circling him. Nothing seemed unusual. Yet everything felt off.

First, he’d never, before now, stood on the corner of Post and Montgomery in the middle of the night. He might have driven through this intersection or somewhere like it during the hours normal people went from here to there. To be honest, he’d have been driven rather than driven himself. He’d been driven most everywhere since his television ministry had been picked up by several cable markets. It didn’t really matter. The point was that he wasn’t the kind of man who stood on deserted streets some time in the night—long after he was sure he’d be asleep and long before he was sure he’d be awake. He had no idea what time it was. He only knew this was night. A foggy night.

            Maybe there should have been some cars. That was it. It wasn’t that he was the only living soul. No, there were no cars, not even parked. That was what was odd. No, it certainly wasn’t that he was alone. He was surrounded by office buildings, stone-and-metal boxes and cartons. Nondescript but comforting. For each had a window here or there or maybe a whole floor lit up. He couldn’t be alone. There had to be others. Go toward the light. But which one? There were hundreds of them. Which one was the right one? Where could he find help? But why did he need help? He didn’t really feel in danger. A man who’d accepted Jesus Christ as his lord and personal saviour?! How could he! And this man, as unworthy a sinner as any other, had not only been saved but embraced. Given a special task even. And he shared this wonderful secret love with millions as he spread the good word every Sunday, at 6 a.m. on stations in Los Angeles and San Diego, at 7 a.m. on stations in Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton, Bakersfield, and Redding, and at 11 p.m. on two stations here in the Bay Area. And that was only California! He was his master’s humble servant. He was the Rev. Sheldon Smalley. What on earth should he be afraid of!

            He wouldn’t have admitted it, not even here in what might have been his subconscious, that as his eyes widened and his upper lip and wrinkled brow began to sweat, he was slowly turning into one of those hellbound heathens he’d always chuckled at in those Chick Publications he used to pass out by the handful, before the Lord called him to labor in a larger vineyard—a televised one—hung with millions of souls ripe for the saving.

            He was beginning to panic. Who was watching him? He was all alone. He’d thought. Now that was all he hoped. But why? Which way should he go? Why did he need to move at all? He felt he’d be safest if he never moved—not even an inch—from where he stood. But he had to get away from the eyes. How many? Two, at least. Maybe more. A dozen. Maybe many more. Maybe every plate of glass in every building could see him. And behind each of these eyes were other eyes. Why was he so nervous about being seen? He’d been before the camera for years. Preached before thousands. Why now would he be afraid? Perhaps he’d buried years of stage fright, and tonight, here on this street corner he couldn’t remember getting to, it had decided to surface. One enormous, grand mal panic attack no longer content to run silent, run deep.

            No, it wasn’t his imagination. These eyes were different from the millions before tonight. They weren’t holding him with love, with respect—maybe, occasionally, even with awe and attraction. These eyes stared. Worse, they smirked. Eyes that smirk will leer he thought he remembered some great aunt whispering to him as a child. Yes, they were leering now. Then they laughed. A slow chuckle first. They knew a secret. A secret he should have known too, like his fly was undone. A secret that, if they’d liked him, even felt sorry for him, they’d have told. A common courtesy. But there was nothing kind about these chuckling eyes that now laughed louder until they screamed. He moved that inch now. He didn’t care about safety if it meant listening to howling eyes all around. Evil cartoon hyenas circling closer and closer.

            Music. Beyond the eyes, he heard music. Faint thudding. As if a radio with some super bass contraption were playing as loud as the driver could bear in his car, windows rolled up, passing several stories below a locked window to an apartment humming with air conditioning. It came from the corner across the street. The building stood alone from the others. In fact, it was a building while the others were boxes of steel, concrete, glass, stucco and Sheetrock. It was not one shape, but a collection of angles and curves. Some of the stone was smooth and unblinking. Other bits curled into garlands or congealed into ancient masks for gods, for warriors, for even the occasional misplaced farm animal. Window arched beside window with an identical layer below and above. On the inside of this Roman aqueduct, curtains faded by a thousand suns gathered on each side of each window into the embrace of an emotionless winged brass cockroach. And both of these bugs looked up to the center of each arch where a small wolf’s head blossomed, the lone bud left on a leafless trellis. All the windows, all the stonework pulled Sheldon toward the pillared portico. The garlands quickly grew thicker and the masked menagerie more menacing. Blank stares became scowls, maybe even sneers. The music too was changed. Less muffled. Thumping was no longer thumping. Pa pa pa da pa pa pa dum. Pa pa pa da pa pa pa dum. Pa pa da pa pa pa dum.

            He went up the three steps through the center pillars. On the marble floor before the door was an oddly stretched circle. Even a simple geometer would have known it was an ellipse. Not Sheldon, however. He’d been forbidden to study much within the liberal arts. His parents had strongly taught him, hands on usually, that if it wasn’t mentioned in the Bible, it not only wasn’t worth learning, it just plain wasn’t. Yet here an ellipse lay, smugly carved into the stone and inlaid with yet more burnished brass. And circling its outer rim like charms on a bracelet were figures and scribbles. And there were more scratches within the heart of the unacknowledged ellipse. To the simple geometer, these symbols were more arcane than most would like to admit. To Sheldon, they were undecipherable.

            Once he’d passed over it, Sheldon pushed his way through the revolving glass-and-yet-more-brass door into the lobby of what must have been, by day, a bank. The ceiling had retreated even further away from him. There, squares honeycombed within squares within squares within circles within squares yet again. An educated liberal, or more likely a liberal education, would have whispered into his mind’s ear—early overblown Roman basilica. But he stared at the ceiling unaware, for neither had followed him past the door—the one unlikely to have this dream in the first place, the other unable to ignore the inscription in the ellipse.

            The air, as still as stone, smelled of brash polish and cigarettes. The music had grown loud enough to make its presence known. It was all that moved other than perhaps his heart—no, too faint—the near-soundless snorts were coming from his almost-trembling nostrils.

            Ooompa. Ooompa. Ooompa. Ooompa. The music had changed beat. It was quicker and closer. It came from the doors far across the white marble floor with the gold flecks that matched the white wood-and-gilt trim of the ceiling and the forest of hundreds of pillars and posts. The music sounded nice. Certainly nicer than the howling eyes outside. He wouldn’t go back. So he walked forward. The clack clop clack clop of his dress shoes on the tiles was almost too loud. He tried to ignore the emptiness he felt all around him as he crossed what felt to be miles of marble.

            The echoes reminded him that just that morning—was it really that long ago?—he’d clacked along with a crowd of journalists, lobbyists, politicians, and well-wishers through the corridors of the state capitol in Sacramento. His idea—and he warmed just thinking this—his idea to turn the Defense of Marriage Act into a constitutional amendment had been hailed as an act of political genius by friend and foe alike. He’d learned the hard way not to quote chapter and verse from Deuteronomy or II Corinthians at every public forum. He’d learned to curb his usage of favorite phrases like “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” “abomination,” “pedophile,” “child molestor,” “culture war,” “Satanic lesbian witches,” “mental illness,” “God’s divine retribution.” Sure they’d been crowd-pleasers. But he was out to wow a much larger crowd now. Of course, he wanted to stop the radical homosexual agenda dead in its tracks. Who didn’t? But there was something greater in the “Endangered American Families Amendment.” It was time that Christian soldiers all across this great land knew there were other generals in God’s army besides that cherub Ralph Reed. And they had begun to take notice. Why already just today he’d had breakfast with the Governor and lunch with the Assembly Speaker. It was only a matter of months before he’d be praying with the President in the Oval Office. Yes, he was going to make it to the mountaintop this time.

            After hours, days, a million ooompas, he made it to the other side. The white-washed and gilded doors reached up to be closer to the still-retreating ceiling. He turned the knob and pushed one of the doors back. The room beyond was as dim as the room he stood in was bright. The air smelled even more of cigarettes. All he could make out was a vast desk that like everything around him had white wood and gold trim. He closed the door. When he did, the music stopped. He was startled at the stillness. Except for the ugly desk, the enormous room was empty. He began to walk toward it when he heard a click.

            He turned as he heard the door open behind him. He wasn’t alone. He’d been right about the eyes. That was the last thing he remembered believing clearly. For when his own eyes took in the person in the doorway, time and synapses and whatever else that usually ran smoothly derailed. Seconds and thoughts began to tumble from the track one by one. It was just like any other accident. The event happened in an instant; the effects would play themselves out forever.

            He stood looking down on an old Mexican cowboy. Maybe he wasn’t Mexican. He looked Mexican. For Reverend Smalley, this was anyone with brown skin and black hair living south of Texas—all the way to the tip of Patagonia. In fact, his only attempts to acknowledge any Latino presence in San Francisco had been to avoid the Mission district, day or night, to fight Army Street’s renaming to César Chavez, and to ignore his wife while she watched that Linda Ronstadt special on the local PBS station.

            Despite this doubt, he was certain, very certain, even in such dim light, that the man was very old and very little. Old was an epithet he was becoming used to, but little he’d understood all his life. Sheldon was no more than five feet three inches himself, except in the eye of the television camera. But now he no longer felt alone or small. In fact, this new arrival made him feel physically, morally, and racially superior. The man pushed the large black leather sombrero back off his head till its stringy little arms clung around his neck. As Sheldon’s eyes focused, his thoughts began to blur even faster.

This he might be a she.

            The face was both childlike and ancient, an odd combination he’d seen before in the features of the newborn and the nearly dead. Forehead and chin were broad and round while the cheek bones and nose were sharp and narrow. The skin thickened and cracked with wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, but it ran as thin and smooth as an onion’s over the cheeks and forehead. It was not one color, not one shade, more a desert ridge of layered reds, oranges, grays, blacks, blues beneath a surface of sun-stained brownness.

            If it was a he, then he had the faintest black moustache and a few whiskers on his chin. But these slight hints of masculinity combined with the jet black eye shadow and mascara convinced Sheldon this he must be a she—or worse—a pathetic female impersonator.

            He could observe her face so well because her hair had been pulled tightly behind her head into a bun, a miniature version of the sombrero now sleeping on her back. It was dyed. Black. No, he thought, darker even. As dark as when one walked, as he once had, out of a too-brightly lit cabin into the forest. Alone in the too-dark-darkness, too blinded to see any other shapes. Only sense their presence. Feel their shadows. Smell their closeness. Her whole small body was covered in leather dyed that same shade of too-black black. If pressed to describe her style of dress, he would have had even more difficulty than he’d had with naming geometrical shapes. To Sheldon, she simply looked like a member of a malevolent mariachi band or a motorcycle gang.

            As his eyes had eventually adjusted to the dark outside the cabin so he could see the millions of stars in that night’s sky, so now he began to notice little grinning silver skulls buttoning every hole and studding every seam. He stopped. He could only stare. A large silver phallus, a gargantuan milagro, pointed out from her—please, let it be a her—crotch.

            He trembled. He was confused. What is it? What does it want with me?

            Her bony hands moved. They were speckled with liver spots and silver rings. They reached for the phallus. Sheldon’s eyes had never moved from it. Suddenly all he could see were the blue threads of her veins, barely hidden beneath the skin. He couldn’t tell if she’d unscrewed the phallus or unbuttoned it or slipped it off like a garter. All he understood was that it was glinting in her hands and then he heard it thunk hard on the edge of the desk. She turned toward him again. He realized her pants were not pants but chaps like a cowboy’s. And beneath them was only her well-worn flesh. Where the lone silver bullet had stood was only a tuft of pubic hair the color of steel wool. How disgusting, that whore is flashing me, he thought. The head of his penis, however, wobbled like a pink marble in a nest of white string.

            He was shocked. Here he was, the Reverend Sheldon Smalley, trapped in a room with some perverted old Mexican hag. He tried dismissing her from his thoughts with every name he could curse her with, and he knew many from his childhood in Fresno. But none had any effect on her presence. She was different. She was not of this world. She was an affront to the laws of nature. God’s very laws! Such an abomination in the sight of the Lord could only be a demon, a servant of Satan.

Now, Sheldon was angry. Why hadn’t Satan come himself instead of sending this old maid to terrify him?

            Satan. Just the thought of him puffed Sheldon up with the confidence he needed to confront whatever this thing was. He would use His words to drive out this spirit. “Devil,” he bellowed in his Sunday best, “thy name is legion, and, in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, I cast you out.”

            “Nice try, padre,” she smiled as she looked directly into his eyes. “But I’d save that exorcism for the next available herd of swine. I’m fresh out since I scared away today’s delegation of California Republicans. Forgive the form, it wasn’t intended for you. But it always scares la mierda out of former Governor Wilson.”

            Sheldon paled.

            “Oh, I’m so sorry, pobrecita. Petie’s session ran over and I had no time to change.” She’d stopped now that she’d reached the opposite side of the vast desk. She turned toward him, lowering her eyes and her presence. They both stood downcast. “Perhaps, I could fold some laundry—¿Sí?—make breakfast for your children—¿Sí?—or I could just sit silently slapping out tortillas—¿Sí? Would you like that, don Sheldon?”

            She opened a humidor that had sprung fully formed from the field of green leather on the desktop. She took out a cigar as fat as a baby’s thigh. She held it out toward him. He shook his head and his backcombed hair, a white shell covering his pink skin, wobbled to decline the offer as well. She lit up and pulled in several drags.

            “Care for some scotch. No? How about some blood of Christ. Oh, how Catholic of me! Forgive me.” She whispered to her fist, now parallel to her face. Her thumb, jutting out from it as a bony lower lip, moved. “Ego te absolvo.” She looked up at Sheldon and smiled. “Let me guess, you’d prefer some grape juice in a paper shot glass.”

            He tried to scowl through her as she puffed away.

            “Don’t judge me, Reverend. No one I cared for was exploited in the creation of this masterpiece.” She rolled the cigar between her thumb and forefinger as she exhaled. “I have a little plantation not far from here where little fair-skinned old men, just like you, shrivel up in the sun almost as fast the tobacco leaves.” She offered it toward him once again.

            He said nothing.

            She began the long walk around the desk back to him, a demonic Rudolph, the cigar’s burning tip lighting her way.

            “So, ¿qué tal?, Smalley.” She ran her hands along the lapels of his gray polyester suit while she whispered, “My, my, my. The latest in urban puritan. Don’t you look dour. Just come from a witch burning?” She jerked him down toward her teeth and spit out, “You know you’ve been fucking with the wrong side, don’t you?” She let go.

            “Ah, but that’s why you’re here isn’t it.” She wiped her palms along her thighs, then shook them to flick off whatever still stained them. “First things first. We’ll get to the fun stuff later. Would you be more comfortable if I changed into something less comfortable for me? I could take the shape of Carrie Nation. Now, while I must agree with you, Shelly, that an axe is an amazing fashion accessory,” she paused. “You—no, I guessed right—you have no idea who she is. Cotton Mather? John Calvin? Zwingli’s definitely out then. How about good old Miss Diet of Worms of 1521, little Marty Luther.” Her leathers cracked and popped as she clasped her hands together. “Oh, my god, here I stand...” she pleaded heavenward with the subtlety of a silent movie star. “I can do no more. Poor little old me, just 95 theses and a prince’s army, ready to kick the holy fuckin’ ghost out of anyone who disagrees with me.” She turned her glance Sheldonward. But her black eyes met only the stern stare of his blank, bloodshot, blue eyes. “Isn’t there any other disgruntled Protestant zealot you’d recognize besides yourself?

            “No words when the camera sleeps, o holy one. Well, then I’ll just keep this form. It suits my mood.” She jumped onto the side of her desk with a thwack as the leather of her pants greeted its kin stretched across her desk. “Welcome to your nightmare, señor Smalley. Would you like it hot or mild? For here or to go?” She laughed softly so that only the sides of her darkened lips, the color of wet clay, slipped upwards.

            “I know. You can’t take your eyes off me. You never thought someone non-white and over twenty-five could look so hot in leather. Surprise! And there are many other things of which you’ve never been aware that you will be soon. Of course, mija, if you listen to your spider grandma, they’ll only hurt in all the right ways in all the right places.”

            She locked eyes with him, then looked down into her lap knowing his gaze would follow hers. She spread her legs even wider as she slowly slid back another inch from the edge of the desk. Sheldon’s pink marble rolled from one side of the nest of white string to the other. “It’s a dick. You want to hold it?” The marble rolled still. “Go ahead, touch it.” She crooked her right index finger under it, raising its head, then she straightened her finger and it flopped back. “It won’t bite. I will.” Sheldon’s own pink little head rose up over the edge of the nest. It wasn’t a cold marble after all. It was a just-born bird, hairless and hungry, that raised its little gaping mouth up and up.

            “You look confused, mi amor. We’ve been talking about dicks. Mine, not yours. Or do you prefer the more clinical penis—yes, yes—how insensitive—this clinical penis doesn’t bite. No teeth. See. Nor my vagina. Disappointed, eh, mija? Perhaps since abuelita is so old, all the teeth have fallen out. I can read the headlines now—Travesty or Tragedy in the Underworld: Rev. Sheldon Smalley gummed to death by a vagina-no-longer-dentata. Story at eleven.” She held her cigar like a microphone and spoke into the smoking end. “Then at last, then at last, thank god almighty, then at last, my Smalley, you’d finally get a teensy-weensy taste of the fame you’ve mistaken for heaven.”

            He emitted a harrumph that sounded very little like a harrumph and very much like a heavy fart muffled by a thick mattress or a cushion in a chair. She is not Satan, Sheldon thought. I will sit here until he arrives. Sending some minor demon, really. Lord, strengthen me to endure this trial. With your angels watching over me, Father, I will not break. I will not falter. I will not betray you. Sinner that I was and always have been, Lord, I’m yours now. Tell me how I can serve you here.

            “Disgusting.” She put out the cigar in her palm with one swift twist. “You think your god’s going to come rushing over for that half-assed attempt at prayer. Smelly Shelly, honey, you make one pathetic bottom. Throw your whole soul into it. Burn with praise or fear or desire.” She pointed the blackened end of the cigar at him. “No, no, mija, I didn’t say burn those you fear or desire. Burn with. With, dear.” She finally laid the cigar to rest in a brass ashtray that had sprouted from the desktop as magically as the humidor.

            “Reverend Smalley, you may find this an odd question, considering your profession and all, but do you know what an angel is? Right, right, a white person with wings.” She slapped both her palms flat on the desk. The sound echoed. “Wrong. A being so awake to the desire to create that it burns. You could become an angel, still, instead of what you’re settling for. Think about it. You could be your very own burning bush.” She let both her hands slide well behind her and she leaned back on her arms. “I’m no shrink, Rev., but I’d say it’s time to turn off that old projector of yours. Otherwise someone might kill you before you kill them.”

            He squeezed this idea into a little gunmetal-gray box and then stuffed that between the oatmeal-gray layers of what a coroner would later claim was a brain.

            “I felt that,” smiled Sheldon Smalley’s satan. “Daddy’s little girl was listening.”

            The gape-mouth birdie stirring in Sheldon’s pants almost peeped. A peep that, if it had happened at all, would have, sadly, been drowned out by his loud-mouthed mind. There she goes again, that old wetback cunt, calling me girl. “Get thee behind me....”

            “Oh, here we go again. All those lines from the Mount of Temptation story you’ve waited your whole pastoral life to use against the devil.” She swallowed a yawn. “But answer me this: What could I offer you that you haven’t already sought and taken? Power over the kingdoms of earth? Wealth? Fear? Death to your enemies? You have no need of a satan. You’re the one who’s everywhere. Your armies, the herds of the righteous, are legion. Me?” She lightly kicked the desk with the backs of her boots. “I’m here alone. Able only to inflict a little pain, a little remorse, a little poetic justice long after the deeds are done. Where’s the terror in that?”

            They sat silently staring at each other while her kicks kept track of the passing minutes.

            “Why am I here?” he said as his whole body finally blinked. She stopped kicking.

            “It was time one of us had a talking with you, and I manifested the short end of the stick.”

            He asked again. “Why am I here?”

            “You’ve been here before, many times.”

            “No, I haven’t. I’ve never stepped inside this bank before.”

            “Bank? You think you’re in a bank?” she looked puzzled at the simplicity of his statement. Then she glanced around the underworld and laughed. “Ah, yes, the decor. Welcome to First Infernal. Will you be opening or closing your account today?” She laughed softly, encouragingly, hoping Sheldon was just playing dumb. He remained silent. Her face slowly hardened into a mask of pity. “You really have no idea where you are.” A chair of white wood and gilt trim with a green leather seat and back now crouched beside him. Sheldon sat.

            “Hell.”

            “Hell? This is your heaven. Surprise number two! All those years of wasted torment and tribulation, finding and seeking. I’ve found your kind bore easily of open desires. You’ve never enjoyed any pleasures on earth unless you stole them when you thought I wasn’t looking. So I redecorated. I bulldozed the garden of earthly delights and buried everything under a hearty schmear of concrete. Haven’t had a complaint yet.”

            “Why would I want my heaven to be a bank?”

            “Don’t ask me. You’re the Protestant.”

            “If this is heaven, where’s Jesus?”

            “Like he’d want to hang out with a bunch of uptight assholes in a bank.”

            “I sympathize with you, demon. You will never look upon the glorious face of the Lamb of God.”

            “What makes you think you’re not looking at that very face right now?”

            “You sicken me.”

            “Me? You’re the little infectious disease. Not me!”

            “Tell Lucifer I will speak only to him.”

            “Oh, and all I get out of you is your name, rank, and favorite serial killer?”

            “I will only speak with Satan.”

            “Not in.”

            “Where is your master?”

            “I am my lord and my master.”

            “What is your name?”

            “Why? Do you want to report me to my supervisor?”

            “What is your name, bitch?”

            “That’s definitely one of my favorites. I have as many others as I have forms.

            “Like Beelzebub. Mammon. Satan.”

            “No, no, no! What is your obsession with Satan, padre? You always want to talk with ‘The Man,’ don’t you? Even when it’s obvious the man’s been gone for several spins of the cosmic wheel. Still you and so many others keep feeding that concept with your energy. I myself have no idea how I first, if you believe in such things as first, got here. All I’m certain of is that each year I grow a little stronger. Thanks to all those prayers of fear and hope from all those people you and your kind have taught to believe they are no more than powerless pawns in a devil/god champion chess match. They hand it over to me, and I hate to see energy lie around idly—puritan energy will do that to you. So here I am—buffer, butch, and bent on giving my children a good time.”

            Sheldon ignored the bristling of the hairs on his balls and spoke, “You mean you’re in charge?”

            “I’m, more or less, the zoo keeper.”

            “So you are Satan! Or the son of Satan or daughter or something!”

            “When are you going to get it?! This isn’t hell. I’m not Satan. I’m just the embodiment of your unwanted fears and passions.”

            Sheldon recited the Twenty-third Psalm.

            “Great. Yet another love letter to god. Of course, it doesn’t really matter. It’s all falling on deaf ears.” She smiled as if remembering a private joke between herself and a lover. “Deaf ears. You humans, I swear you’ll personify anything, even the void.”

            “God knows all, sees all, hears all.”

            “Then he has an awful response time. Worse than 911 in a quote-unquote bad neighborhood. When, old man, was the last time you remember him doing a walk-on? And I know why. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

            Sheldon sat unmoved.

            “Nice imitation of a stone tablet. C’mon, Friar Tuck, don’t you want to know? I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know.” She had begun to kick the desk again. “Ah, the silent treatment only works if I couldn’t read your every thought. And since most of your thoughts are someone else’s and since we’ve had this conversation a million times in a million different forms, I’ll forgive myself for cutting to the chase and telling you all the answers.” She stopped kicking to preface what she was about to say.

            “This ain’t hell. I’m not Satan. He hasn’t been in since four—no, I think it was five, yes, five—worlds ago.”

            Thus the devil spake to the televangelist and then spake some more.

            “God and Satan, dear boy—dear little malignantly mutated egg of your mother—they were lovers the whole time. All of this,” she threw her small arms out wide until her leather jacket creaked, “was to get the other’s attention, stir the other’s passion, a game, a way to pass that which for them never passes. But they grew bored and left this universe so many long agos for another. Why not? This play has happened so many times. And it will over and over again. So now there are no headliners hanging around. Does it matter? Sometimes some blob gets to your level, sometimes it evolves well past you. But you and I always end up having the same conversation about the same topic: good and evil. It never gets scripted differently. No matter the matter, I always get caught up in some version of this passion play for particles.”

            She paused and noticed him. He looked bored. Actually, his small blue eyes, small even behind his thick glasses, looked disconnected from his brain. They didn’t roll or shake. They didn’t twitch. They didn’t do anything.

            “C’mon Shelly. Don’t blank out on me, mija. Right, right, take me to your leader—the one hung with a Y chromosome. Okay. I’d hoped to avoid that. Walk with me, my teensy weensy tiny whiny one. Your spider grandma is taking you to a fiesta!”

            Anything would be better than this, he thought sleepily. He followed the black leather dot as she bounced down a long, even darker hall. The music had begun again. Ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky, ticky tat, ticky tat. He could hear trumpets and laughter. They stood before doors even wider and taller and whiter than before. He guessed from the noise, hoped, there must be hundreds of people on the other side.

            “Before we go in and party your life away, let’s finish the talk we’ve both come here to have. It’s fine by me if you don’t say anything. I’m beginning to enjoy having all this air time to myself. Amazing, isn’t it? I once was blind but now I see why you’ve always avoided any televised debates. So wise for one so stupid, my Sheldunce!

            “Good and evil, or let’s bring it down to your level of intelligence, me and not-me. It really is that simple for you, isn’t it? I’ll admit that keeping conscious of the multiplicities of multiverses—ave, maria that’s a tongue-tier—anyway, keeping conscious of all those multis is a learned skill, hard-won, definitely. But you and your kind have sealed off so many cubits in your brain with pitch that all you’ve left yourselves with is a leaky boat big enough for two, and only two, of every kind. But, baby, the flood’s over. You can come out of the ark now. Hell, your kind has been stumbling over dry land for millennia.”

            She kept speaking out loud to herself, very out loud to herself, so Sheldon couldn’t help but overhear.

            “Two. Two. Rarely ever is it more than two. Existence either comes down to one, two or, on a good day, three—though it’s usually just three-in-one. Father. Son. Holy Ghost. Maiden. Mother. Crone. Hecate’s three crossroads. But they’re all roads. Only variations on a single theme. Yet a forest isn’t just the same tree cloned over and over. There are conifers and deciduous. There is grass and dirt and animals. Rocks. Streams. Mud. Shit. All this,” and she winked coyly at him, “and much, much more, is a forest. And as below so above. The universe is much more than a huge black box with a gas problem. But it’s always more fun to search for Euclid’s point-that-has-no-part or Lucretius’ unsplittable atom. Or God and Satan. Or the three little bears!

            “So I’ll spare you the trouble of discovering what I’ve learned. I’ll just tell you. You probably won’t grasp it. Even though, like you, it’s very short and very simple. But I don’t care. I’m sick of waiting for you and yours to get it. The secret is this: It’s the odd that makes any of this bearable. The fourth dimension. The sixth sense. The queer. The other. But you want to pretend it away. Better yet, closet it. Best of all, kill it.

            “I’ll admit you’re not alone. You have many friends stupider and smarter than you. Even your enemies are usually in favor of a dualistic pissing contest. Just one where they get to piss on you once in a while.”

            He harrumphed again. This harrumph sounded worse than the one before but Sheldon still heard the peep from his growing ugly red bird. He fidgeted and then tried to halt his glasses’ attempt to slip quietly away. He pushed them all the way back to where they’d been before he’d ever entered this madhouse.

            “Please prove me right. I thought you harassed my queer children because you were willfully stupid and unaware of all the other possibilities. That you needed an easy mark to win you friends and fame. Someone to rally the wagons ‘round now that the ‘Injuns’ are dead, the buffalo skinned, the forests cut down. Where to take your ‘pioneers,’ your ‘freedom fighters’ next? I know! Down the yellow brick road!

            “Still won’t talk? And don’t give me any more of that ‘I’m just a handpuppet for the Lord’ bullshit. Don’t lie to me. You’ve never even had your wife’s pinky, let alone anyone’s hand, up your asshole.”

            Sheldon grimaced. The bird stood up in its nest and squawked. He asshole squeaked. His eyes stared forward at the door. As if they were just two people—well, one person and some thing—in an elevator. He waited for the doors to open so he could get out and this creature could descend to another floor.

            “Don’t you ever think about what you’re trying so hard to destroy—the treasures, the worlds. No, it’s Ferdinand and Isabella do Spain all over again. You’d rather live without eyes than have to see anything different from yourself.

            “Do you know anything about the world you’re working so hard to conquer? Have you touched it, tasted it, smelled it? ¡Chíngate! Now you’ve got me doing it. Shrinking all possibilities down to a lump solid enough to make a sound while it rattles around in the head.

            “Do you know what the dirt of a fuckin’ faggot forest tastes like? Before a rain? After? Do you know what a bulldyke sunset smells like? Ever listen to the music of queer sex? For a solo instrument. A duet? A full flaming orchestra!

            “No. Your mouth, your mind are filled with the hates of another. No choice then. No responsibility. Just let go and let God. Or at least his legally appointed guardians on earth. What do you believe, Smalley? What do you want? If I offered you the gift of my ass,” his tough old bird stretched the length of its neck, “and you would be very unwise to refuse it, would you desire to bite it?” The bird shook its neck. “Lick it?” It grew even redder in the face. “Wipe it? Fuck it?” Much more of this and the old bird was going to crow. “Do you know what desire is? Have you felt it flow full on—no longer struggling to push past that rock you’ve rolled before it?”

            His eyes, those scratched, unwashed Plexiglass windows to the soul, still looked only at the door.

            “But perhaps you do know. Perhaps I’ve misjudged you after all. Tell me, torturer to torturer, you do enjoy it. You love to fry up the souls of your enemy like some psychotic short order cook for Christ.”

            The doors flew open. The guest of honor had arrived.

            Sheldon’s heart fell. No men. Only more women. The bird jumped up and down. Even in the band. It then jumped up onto the edge of the nest.

            Sheldon was the only man. When would Satan arrive? He was beginning to wonder when God would. Then he stopped still and his eyes twitched. Neither would have made Ralph Reed wait, his inner agent whispered. Now he knew just how minor league a fallen sinner he was.

            “All these goddesses have names, many names each, none of which you’d know. Should, but you don’t. So tonight we’re all going by names you’d recognize. No, no. Don’t get excited. There’s no one here by the name of Baal or the Whore of Babylon. Innana. I saw that. You know what I mean.” Sheldon looked to where she’d turned. He saw a woman with dark skin—they all had skin darker than his—layered in gold. She was wearing the brightest, darkest blue eye shadow he’d ever seen. She looked familiar. Maybe he’d seen her at one of his famous revival meetings.

            “So I’d like you to meet Prop 67, Prop 188, Prop H, No on M, Measure 4, Amendment 2, Rider to Senate Bill...” One after the other passed by. It was worse than Halloween in the Castro. The things he’d seen those cold nights trying to save souls paled before these horrors. Maybe he’d stumbled into the lesbians’ secret masquerade ball. What day was it? Was it October? Or April? Some of the women even flashed him as the old Mexican had. He grew sick.

            It seemed like hours. Maybe a day or two passed. Sheldon was growing tired. He exhorted his soul to stay alert for when Satan arrives. She’s just wearing me down to tip the balance in favor of her master.

            “My, what a busy boy you’ve been,” she said, pulling him close. The introductions were over. The band had returned, filled with a second wind. But since he didn’t know his tito from his puente, it was all just loud horns and drums—blaring horns and pounding drums. The line of women began to circle them like a snake coiling.

            Finally a man had appeared. A dignified older gentleman in a gray pinstripe suit walked toward them. Perhaps this was his bank. Perhaps it was Satan. Then Sheldon noticed he was bearing a silver tray loaded with small shot glasses. Each one burned like a fancy dessert in a French restaurant. His wife would have been impressed.

            “I don’t think you’ve met the board members of the United Fruit Company.” She continued to play hostess and started to introduce them. Then she changed her mind and picked up a glass. “Don’t worry if the irony hurdles over your little balding head. It’s a private joke between me and centroamerica.” She tried to pat him on the head but he pulled away. “Oh, now where did the CEO go? Ah, yes, there he is. No, child,” her bony brown hand was amazingly strong as it gripped his chin and tilted his head back. “He’s up there.”

            An old man hung from the ceiling. He didn’t hang heavy with death like a convict on the gallows, a human pendulum of a clock that had stopped ticking minutes before. He dangled like a gaudy plastic earring decorated with warring primary colors and bright feathers and strands of crêpe paper. Then the shock fully snuggled its way deep into the remaining marrow of Sheldon’s bones. The old man had been stripped naked, hog-tied with a few leather straps, painted, feathered, crêpe-papered, and suspended from a mirrored ball in the ceiling like a piñata in the tackiest Mexican restaurant ever!

            Sheldon tried not to, but he kept looking. He could no longer deny he was hard. A smaller mirrored ball dangled from a shiny hook piercing the head of the old man’s orange-painted penis. Very hard. Sheldon winced and quickly looked elsewhere.

            That man’s mouth. A red ball had been shoved in and a piece of gold shiny fabric wrapped around it and the rest of his head. Above his silenced mouth, his eyes spoke. They screamed as they bulged like the sideways eyes of red-orange-gold fish. Eyes so large and wide and detached. As if they’d been glued on in the last few minutes rather than taking their own sweet eons of evolution to swell.

            This can’t be real Sheldon told himself. God is just testing my faith. The Lord will rescue that man just like Daniel. The Master will come skipping along the water or dance out of the conga line snaking tighter and tighter beneath the man. Just like Peter and Paul in prison, the earth will tremble, the band will stop playing, the women will stop conga-ing, and the chains will drop safely to the ground.  He’d be free. Then he, all the other old men, and Sheldon, under the command of their mighty Lord, would lay waste to Hell.

            This image strengthened him. He turned to her and announced, “Whatever you threaten, witch, my final place is in heaven with my sweet lord, Jesus. Whether I go tonight or I wait until the Rapture...”

            “The rapture? Oh, baby, have you got a long wait ahead of you. Girls, correct me if I’m wrong, but I heard it was scheduled to happen right after the true Messiah comes, the matriarchy is restored, and Walt Disney raises himself from the dead.” The music stopped suddenly for a rim shot. Then it began again. The women clucked and brayed just as he imagined the whores of Satan would.

            Sheldon felt odd. He couldn’t move. And he was looking down, down where he’d been standing before. The women were looking back. Where had all those shiny silver sticks come from?

            “Sheldon, I know you have other dreams than driving the queers into the Pacific. Our little St. Patrick of Fresno, eh? And in the future, men who look and think just as you do will hold parades in your honor and drink bucket after bucket of weak beer until their faces turn the same sickly shade of green as their plastic hats. And when the party’s over, all that remains is that stale smell of piss. Face it, my dear, their illegible writing’s all over the wall.”

            The bleat, peal, squeal of trumpets. His shoulders burned. The ticky, ticky, ticky, ticky, ticky of drumsticks on metal. His arms were being slowly uprooted from their sockets. The pa, pa pa da, pa pa pa da, pa pa pa dum dum dum of hands bouncing off the taut bellies of drums. It was getting harder to hear over all the din, da da din, da da din, da da din of the music and the da umpf, da umpf of his heart. He couldn’t feel his legs. He was cold. He was sore and afraid.

            “Your vision leads here and nowhere else. All the pain and death you will cause. For this. Choose again, mija. I can’t keep my friends from trying to knock out the sweet meats and other goodies inside you forever.”

            At that, the bird leapt forward, cock-a-doodle-doing, leaving the hard little eggs behind in the nest. Someone else noticed too. An old voice shouted, “Look. His right nut knoweth not what his left nut doeth.” Sheldon’s devil grandmother turned toward the voice. She smiled. That Baubo, she thought, always the party animal.

            Sheldon tried to speak now. Anything. But he couldn’t. Something was stuck in his mouth. The Reverend’s dick rejoiced. It had finally been severed from that dour mash fermenting upstairs in the skull. In fact, it hadn’t been this red and round in decades. This was better than that first hit of Viagra. Better even than two bottles of Viagra downed in one swallow!

            “Face it, Rev. You’re no Ricardo Montalban and I’m no Roddy McDowell and this is no Fantasy Island morality play. You’re in real deep shit and I’m trying to scoop you out though everyone around me keeps screaming ‘Flush!’ C’mon, mija. Listen to your spider grandma.”

            “Enough, Ereshkigal,” said a shadow from the edge of the circle. “He’s chosen.”

            “¡Ay, mierda! Fine, Smalley. I tried.” She shrugged her shoulders and all her leathers sighed with her. “Well, ladies, it’s puritan piñata time!”

* * *

            Sheldon awoke. Screaming. Miraculously, he’d simultaneously spermed and pissed the bed.

 

 

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