Chapter Eight: Via Deus

 

 

Chapter Eight: Via Deus

 

“But something stirs

And something tries

And starts to climb

Toward the light.”

 

-Pink Floyd

 

In which Frank and Gia take a dip.

 

Things would ultimately make sense, his unknown sister assured him so. She said that horrible tragedies would roll out like rusted cable serpents from broken spools, that pain would burn like wild-fire, and that true love would wither and die, but that the whole bit would make sense.

Really made him feel positive about the coming days.

...

 

In Meskanaw, after their first date, Gia told Frank that she wanted eleven roses, two different colors. Not twelve roses. Eleven. Six of one color and five of another.

She was only kidding.

Frank popped two codeine treats into his mouth and away he went.

Zoom, zoom, zoom, just like in the car commercial.

He had the morning off from work—just had his teeth cleaned—and still had an hour to kill.

Zoom, zoom, zoom.

He thought about his girl. He went to the flower shop.

She said she wanted eleven roses. Eleven fucking roses, she told him. And so he found himself trying to choose between the red ones and the blue ones, or the red ones and pink ones. Red was for love, he was pretty sure, but he didn't know what blue meant. He didn't know what pink meant. The florist had no patience for him. She kept tapping her pen on the counter, anxious to make the goddamn sale and get it the hell over with. Strange looking woman—hollow cheeks and beady eyes. Reminded  Frank of a bird. She wore a purple sweater and sunflower yellow spandex pants. The tattoo on her collar-bone was a green locust, which meant something to certain people, but not to Frank. Dreadful.

“Are there any other colors?” he asked.

“All we have this morning are red and blue and pink,” she said. “If you want yellow, or white, or aquamarine, you'll have to come back later this afternoon. Or tomorrow.”

“What about the pink?”

“Yeah, you can have pink.”

“I think I'll have red and blue.”

“Sure, red and blue.”

“How much are they?”

“Thirty-five dollars a dozen. Plus taxes, of course.”

“What if I only want eleven?”

“Then buy twelve and throw one away.”

“Can't I buy them individually?”

“Certainly. They're five dollars apiece. That fifty-five bucks.”

“I suppose I'll just go with the dozen.”

“Would you like the red ones or the blue ones?”

“I said both. Can we mix them up? Six red and five blue?”

“Six of each. That's extra, too. Mixing them up. It's a small charge.”

He thought about slamming his own thumbs in a desk drawer, over and over until the bones turned to mulch. That had to be preferable to dealing with this icy retail princess. What was her problem? (Maybe too much gluten in her diet?) She'd been frowning since he came into the shop. If she worked for commission, she probably wasn't getting her rent paid on time. And if she only drew an hourly wage—well, she had a giant stick up her ass, either way. (It didn't occur to him that the shop was a front for the Corsairs, or that this ice princess was one of the Corsairs' bitches.)

He thought one more question might drive her into a violent rage.

“What does blue mean?” he asked, bravely, almost cracking a smile.

Without hesitation she responded, “Blue means you won't be getting any tonight.”

“But red still means love, right?”

“Jezus, I don't know, man.”

“Some of each. More red than blue. Eleven.”

“Twelve, you mean, and you'll throw one away.”

Frank brought Gia eleven red ones and she went down on him in his truck.

Falling in love was easy. The talking, the kissing, the sharing, the intimacy, et cetera. And even if it wasn't love it was  close enough. (But it was.)

...

 

The drive north to Rebowken was an hour, maybe fifty minutes if the road was good. It was forty-seven narrow miles of unpaved gravel with no shoulders, snaking through the evergreen ocean that was the northern boreal forest. Moose were famous for standing in the middle of the road, ready to die and to take the lives of every mother fucker in the vehicle that hit them. Moose and bears and the occasional woodland caribou.

The last time he went came up the north highway, hunting for upland game birds, years ago, he blew out two tires. He promised himself he'd never do it again, yet here he was.

Gia was talking about Lump, Kayla, about sending her packing. “I know you're having difficulty tolerating her, Frank, and I can't say that I blame you. I'm not having an easier time, myself. She's rude and foulmouthed, and I know it's her that vandalizes the washrooms with shit.”

Frank smiled at her. He wasn't really paying attention. He was watching the road, mindful of wild ungulates, trying not to think about Roman graves, and troubled by the words, “Go into the bubbles, Frank,” that were playing in his head, once again.

“Go into the bubbles.”

“Go into the bubbles.”

And, “Draw a circle around Hell,” which he hadn't heard in a very long time.

He remembered a day in grade four, many years past. In those days, the Church was still allowed into classrooms for about an hour every week. It was called Bible Study. The kids who were Jehovah's Witnesses—and there were three of them—didn't have to take part. They got to sit in the library and read or do artwork. (If there had been Jews or Moslems in his class, he supposed they would have been excused as well, but there weren't any.)

This particular teacher was a substitute named Mrs. Ackland. She handed every student a piece of paper that showed four ink-drawn scenes. The first scene was of children swinging and sliding at a playground. The second was of two parents cuddling and loving a newborn baby. Third, two children sitting cross-legged in front of a Christmas tree, gleefully opening gifts. The fourth scene was of a lake of fire, with screaming skeletons bobbing up and down in the flames like buoys.

The directive: Draw a circle around Hell.

He now recalled that exercise as clearly as a sunny day.

He couldn't exactly remember his own motivations, whether he was being funny or ironic, or just insubordinate. Mrs. Ackland took him aside and asked him why he circled number two.

He recalled telling her, “Because life is suffering, isn't it? So, being born has to be something like coming to Hell for the first time.”

Or maybe that was a trick of the brain—mind as myth-maker. Maybe he said nothing at all, or merely shrugged. (He didn't think he'd been an exceptionally clever child.) Maybe it was his adult voice, laid over the audio track of his childhood. Either way, the memory of the exercise itself was real.

“Draw a circle around Hell.”

Gia was watching him intently.

“What's happening, Frank? How do you feel?”

Most days, these days, he felt empty, dull and spent. It went right to the bone.

“What?” he said.

“You seem like you're a billion miles away. I'm talking to you, but you're somewhere else. I'm just wondering what's bothering you.”

“Do I really need to tell you what's bothering me, Gia?”

“Is it the tombs? The Street of Tombs?”

“You could say that.”

A red squirrel ran across the road, but Frank decided that trying to veer around it would be dangerous, possibly deadly, and so the truck's tires left a red stain on the gravel.

Gia said, “I don't think you're crazy, if that helps you.”

She was clutching her purse very tightly, Frank noticed. Her knuckles were almost white. He didn't think it was like her to keep secrets. Perhaps, he assumed, the drive itself was making her anxious—always on the lookout for the next wild animal to dart out.

“Time to relax, soon, yeah,” he said.

“I'm so looking forward to it.”

A green Dodge van passed them, heading south, speeding, and kicked up a spray of stones that chipped Frank's windshield in four spots. This was exactly why he never came up the north highway. It was hell on vehicles and, in his non-professional opinion, should only have been driven on by government workers and fucking Indians—and only in emergent situations.

...

 

Gia turned on the stereo. It was AC/DC in the CD player, so she switched to FM talk-radio.

The guy was going on about black holes and the end of time.

“The CER rips a gaping wound in the fabric of our reality and you think there are no repercussions? Hello! This is the brink, ladies and gentlemen. You can't fill a vortex with tachyons. Even if you can, it's not going to hold—it's going to keep on tearing, like a run in your mother's nylon stockings. The whole universe is going to split apart at the seam. The CER knows it. The board-members and the scientists know it. This is all a put-on. They're stealing taxpayer money to mend a hole that can't be fixed. It's all over. They're powering-up the warp junkets as I speak. No joke! If they can't extract their precious anti-matter from deep space, they're going to get it anywhere they can—”

Gia switched the stereo off.

She said, “What good is money if the world is ending?”

Frank said, “Huh?”

“It's one thing or the other, but not both.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the investors are lining their pockets, the world is not ending. If the world is ending, why would they bother? It's not logical.”

“It never is. It's about covering all the bases, sweetie. It's what they do.”

“I don't think I care anymore. Maybe I never did.”

...

 

They came to a hand-painted billboard, seven feet high by ten wide, a swirl of greens, blues, yellows, announcing—

 

You've Arrived at the

World Famous Healing Waters of

REBOWKEN, Pisimatum

Population 811 (198_)

“Home of the Fire Serpent”

 

The town itself was hardly more than four hundred box-shaped mobile homes laid out over twenty blocks, in a forest clearing beside a lake. In the center was a cluster of metal obelisks—communications and radio antennae, relay and microwave towers, satellite dishes. On the rocky shore was a chalet, as big as any twelve living trailers bound together, two stories overlooking the water, built of hewn logs, with a long wharf that seemed to stretch halfway across the lake.

The whole town seemed to be humming, alive with electricity.

“It's nice. But it looked so much better, online,” Gia sighed.

“I have no memory of this place,” Frank said. “My mother brought me here when I was a baby, or so her stories went.”

“The water looks cold.”

“The water looks like water. You can't tell if it's cold from just looking at it.”

They parked beside a long wooden ramp leading up to the chalet lobby. There was only one other vehicle, a rusted Dodge Dart, and eighteen empty parking spaces. All was quiet—not even the sound of birds on the water.

“It's the end of the season, remember,” Frank said.

The lobby smelled of must, lit, just barely, by oil lanterns mounted on the walls. There were two racks of caribou antlers hanging above, plus a full bull-moose head, the size of a washing machine. Frank figured the whole animal, on the road, could have destroyed a gas truck.

Not really, but

There were shelves of potato chips and candy bars, dreadfully overpriced, plus souvenir ashtrays, emery boards, postcards, and t-shirts, on a rack, that said, I Believe in the Rebowken Fire Serpent.

A dark man met them at the reception desk. He walked with a limp. His left eye was cloudy and damaged. His name-tag said Leduc. He said, “Are you the Burczyks?”

Gia nodded. “Frank and Gia. From Discord.”

“Are you going to have a room, or will you just be staying for the day?”

“Just the day-pass, I think. Frank and I both have to work in the morning. What's included in the package? Do you have a hot-tub?”

“Yes. Hot-tub, steam room, plus ease of access to the healing waters of the lake itself. And there is also a lunch tray, just a bit extra, and two masseuses on the premises, for hire, plus a doctor of the chiropractic arts. Aroma-therapy and audio-therapy, too, free of charge. And, if you like, we have a selection of slaves in the basement hold, for rental, for whatever use you think of.”

“Slaves?” asked Frank.

“Yes. Slaves,” said Leduc. “Two men, five women, and a Gaul. A Frenchman.”

“I know what a Gaul is, thank you. Did you say they were slaves?”

“Not real slaves, obviously. It's a euphemism. I mean, umm, escorts.”

“Prostitutes?”

“Yes. Would you like to view them?”

“I think I'll pass, thanks.”

Gia said, “How much are they, your so-called slaves?”

“Good rates,” said Leduc, “as good as you'll get in Discord. The women are five hundred apiece, very fine. The men, extra, about seven hundred. And two hundred for the Gaul. He is very ignorant. And dirty.”

“Thank you. We'll let you know what we decide.”

Frank noticed the door to the basement, made of thick oak slats and reinforced with iron plates. A sign, carved into the wood, included the words, Keep Closed, and an arrow pointing down. A thick wooden bar lock prevented the door from being opened from the other side.

Frank shuddered.

The desk-man slid a key across the counter to Gia. He said, “That's for the day-room. Chairs, change area, toilet, and a view of the lake. I'll be at your service anytime you need. First, I will go and see that the hot-tub has reached temperature.”

“Thank you, Leduc.”

“Than you, madam.”

Heading up a wooden spiral stair-case, Frank said to Gia, “What are you thinking? Slaves? Does that seem at all kosher to you? When did we start buying slaves?”

“Not real slaves. Escorts. I was just curious, Frank. We've never had one before.”

“Because prostitution is illegal!”

“Even at Emathios, when we had the option to bring that nice Spanish girl to the bedroom, you were being so cost-conscious. It would have been a nice time.”

“What Spanish girl are you talking about?”

“The tattooed girl, at the market. Remember?”

“I don't—this is lunacy!”

“I don't see why you're getting all worked up, Frank.”

“Yeah, I'm the guy with the problem.”

“Do you need to talk about something?”

“I don't know where to begin, really.”

Gia's key went clack in the lock and she opened the door to the day-room.

Inside were two low-backed couches facing the window, and each had a robe, slippers, and a towel resting upon it. The room itself was spacious, probably bigger than it needed to be, painted orange, like the 1970s, with orange carpet, orange drapes, orange everything, and an Oriental screen along one wall, concealing a large brass chamber pot.

Between the couches was a small table with a bottle of bubbly wine, two Champagne flutes, and eleven red and blue roses. The bad energy between Frank and Gia instantly dissipated.

“Remember that, Frank? The eleven roses?”

“I do. Did you arrange for that?”

“I didn't mention it at all. Did you? It had to be you.”

“No. I didn't even know we were coming here.”

“Weird.”

...

 

They were both wearing their robes.

“It's very similar to Emathios,” said Gia. “Everything—the whole town.”

“I don't know that I agree,” said Frank.

“They have the same amount of letters, Emathios and Rebowken.”

“No, I'm pretty sure Rebowken has more.”

“They're very similar, Frank. Think about it. Think hard.”

...

 

Frank's Non-Dream Journal, September 26, 201_:

 

She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me.

I wrote this after we came home, but I'm pretending I'm writing it in the afternoon. That way, years from now, I'll read this and say, “I don't recall taking a break from all that awesome fucking just to write in my stupid journal.

Anyway—this is my belated birthday gift. I'm (supposedly) at Rebowken spa, this very second, and I'm fucking my beautiful wife in her pretty ass. It's hardcore and it's off the chart. She loves me so much that she offered to get a hooker so we could have a threesome—

Strange, yes, but Gia is no ordinary woman.

I try to be offended—and I am a little offended—but really I worry that I would fuck this other woman in my wife's presence and I might actually enjoy it too much. I can picture her beautiful heart breaking, even though she'd feign otherwise, and I couldn't live with that.

I've never cheated on her. Swear to Jezus.

I have already cum twice and I'm working on a third. We have been at this for hours! She wants me to pull out of her ass and cum on her face, just like in the porno movies. Maybe I declined the hooker, but I won't decline this treat—

Later, we'll talk about how Rebowken reminds us of Emathios.

I would go back there in a heartbeat.

We're doing good in the bedroom, Gia and me, but something else seems to be broken. She is sad about something, deep inside. I think I am familiar with that feeling. I want to hold her and fuck her and kiss her and tell her that everything will work out golden.

For this afternoon, we are happy.

When we leave this place, not so much—

...

 

The village proper, Emathios, was a wobbly grid of five streets and four avenues, all weathered plaster tenements full-up with filthy peasants and drug addicts, butting up against the sky-green water of Lake Neronia—wide and deep enough to keep these impoverished villagers in the west, well off of hotel property. 

Some of these villagers had been (un)lucky enough to work for the 11-22-998 Company and had earned thousands of hypothetical American dollars sinking the shaft for the world's first vertical hadron collider. They hadn't been paid in the three years since the project's completion—maybe the 11-22-998 Company had no intention of ever paying—but many of them remained optimistic. They had the time, plenty of time, in which to wait, and the collider didn't seem to be going anywhere.

It was located on the east side of the lake, under the Nero hotel.

...

 

While Frank and Gia were at Rebowken, on Sunday, while Lump was out with friends, smoking crack—and not at the movies—Jim Codeman paid a visit to their house. He jimmied the window in Frank's office, easily, and slipped inside.

After rifling through boxes in the office, and Frank's bedroom bureau, and Gia's dresser drawers, as well as the drawers in the kitchen, Jim called Berk from the house phone.

“I don't know what your guy is talking about,” he said. “There's no millionaires living here. Just a bunch of assholes. Boxes of worthless shit. Junk. And maybe some good China and such. Pretty regular. Looks like a waste of my time. And yours.”

Berk busted a gasket on the other end of the line and his nose began to bleed. “Casey's dead, no fucking doubt about it. I'll kill him. I'll kill him for lying to me! I'll dip him in liquid gold! I'll have him bronzed! I'm going to drown him in a marsh and leave his body for the muskrats. Fucking cocksucker! Are you sure there's nothing to it? No money? No RSP accounts?”

“Berk, we both knew he was lying all along. Come off it.”

“Give me something, Jimmy. There's got to be something.”

“It's completely middle class. Lower middle class, I'd say.” He was holding a letter written by Frank's ex, Tracy, and addressed to Gia. He recited a piece of it to Berk. “You fucking bitch. That asshole is fucking trash, you garbage whore. You cunt. I would cut your fucking throat. You are low like the trash. Eat my shit.”

“What are you talking about, Jim? What is that?”

“That's the people we're dealing with. They aren't no Fortune Five-hundred, I tell you.”

“I'm getting angry.”

“I'm already angry.”

“I need to make this shit pay for itself. Anything worth stealing?”

“TV and such. Stereo. A couple laptop computers.”

“Fuck no—shit! No computers. Let me think, goddammit! Fuck!”

...

 

It was the past, again.

Two men were inside of the vertical hadron collider at Emathios.

The tall fellow's name was Mr. Sharky, and it seemed pretty apt—he had the face of a blood-hungry Mako, in the opinion of many of those who'd seen him. He claimed to have been burned in a fire, years ago. His scalp was bald and waxy, nose ruined and melted, eyes dead black, and holes where his ears ought to have been. But fire didn't explain away his teeth, which were pointed like little arrowheads in his mouth.

He stretched out an arm and invited Filch to walk with him along the circular catwalk. To his left was the abyss, which he called the Ru-Nexus, and Filch kept to the right, too terrified to even glance toward the moaning pit. Mr. Sharky said, “Your wife was a great woman, Mr. Filch, and her mind was perfect. Had she actually published her latest theorum, she would have won the Nobel Prize for Physics. I would have guaranteed it. Unfortunately, her death was equally certain.”

Filch said, “Seems like you're suggesting she was murdered.”

“Not suggesting. I can state it as raw fact.”

“She was hit by a truck.”

“I know the story, Mr. Filch. But I also know that she was playing a dangerous game. Numbers. The secrets of the universe. Some things aren't meant to be known by men. Or women. Just think of all she could have accomplished if she'd applied herself in the field. But then, her end would have come all the more speedily, don't you think?”

Filch grunted ambiguously.

Mary had been a chartered accountant with Bagman & Steele, which was owned by the  11-22-998 Company, which was itself a division of the CER, but her mind was too large to be properly exercised by doing taxes for local ranchers and grain farmers. She joined Mensa. She started an online workgroup for armchair mathematicians and physics buffs. She dreamed in code.In the year leading up to her death, she published four essays on string theory in three reputed scientific journals. Her doctorate, well earned, was awarded posthumously.

Mr. Filch, a lowly music teacher, just went along for the ride.

Mr. Sharky continued, “Your wife—Doctor Mary Filch—saw something no one else has seen. She saw eleven dimensions where we saw just ten. The upper six existing separately from the lower five. People think we exist in four dimensions—three of space and one of time—but Mary Filch detected one more. A basement to our physical universe. Her work will change everything. It already has changed everything, in a sense. She's famous. You know this. You've reaped the rewards.”

“She told me she would someday write the God equation,” Filch said. “The strings were just the beginning. She wasn't the first to see eleven dimensions, though. She was adamant about that. That was Dr. Kuiper's baby. Mary merely caused it work on paper.”

“Can you see it, Lenny? That's the real question.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Sharky, I'm not that sort of mind. Pretty mediocre, to tell you the truth. I'm a musician. Frankly, I think Mary was becoming tired of me. I bored her.”

“Genius like hers is forever bored with humanity. It's unavoidable. But it doesn't mean she didn't care about you. I'm sure she loved you, even at the end.”

“I like to think so.”

“What if I told you I could help you to see her again?”

“Pardon me?”

The abyss howled just then. A scream riding the waves of blackness. Leonard Filch's heart leaped into his throat and he had to pause and rest against the wall to catch his breath. The Ru-Nexus was full of unspeakable horror—he could sense it in the pores of my skin, on the buds of my tongue, coppery—and he yearned to leave it behind.

Mr. Sharky lit a cigar. A nice cohiba. He said, puffing, “You think of the strings like the weavers do, but with an extra axis. Remember the numbers three and eleven, very important. Now, there are forty-two worlds per vertical string. The horizontal strings intersect at three points, these being the core worlds—Earth, Elef and Egot—and each of those worlds begets eleven mutations. Or is it twelve?” He began computing on his fingers, whispering, “Ten, one, three, one, five.” Feigning ignorance. Teasing Filch with ideas he couldn't comprehend. “The core worlds are anchor points, intersected thrice. Three axes. Three times three. Five dimensions from six.”

It was gibberish.

Filch said, “Mr. Sharky, I don't know the lingo. I'm not in the club.”

“Mary gave you a note before she expired. I know that much. Her final equation is incomplete. The middle is written in cipher. I know for a fact that she gave you the code before she expired. I can see the scene in your mind. Blurry, but it's there. She wrote the code on a bloody napkin, yes?”

“She did, but she instantly pulled it away. She said it was wrong to put it on me.”

“You are telling the truth, Lenny, but not all of the truth. She did pull it away, but that didn't stop you from looking, later. Do you deny you read or glimpsed the code after she died?”

“No.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Mr. Filch.” Sharky turned and leaned on the railing, unflinching and unafraid. He motioned for Filch to join him, and the small man met him halfway there—two feet from the rail and two feet from the wall. He wouldn't venture an inch closer.

Hadron collider, horse-shit. The abyss was a tube routed all the way to hell, and wide enough to fly a Boeing 767 straight down the Devil's gullet.

Mr. Sharky said, “With enough time and no small amount of pain we could extract that code right out of your mind.” He made a pop sound with his tongue. “I don't think we need to go to such an extreme, Lenny. Time is precious. You can change the world. If you can decipher your wife's equation, the world can change overnight. And it must change. There are extenuating circumstances.”

“Are you the good guy or the bad guy?” Filch asked.

“There are people who would call me the bad guy. They would call themselves the good guys. Those good guys murdered your wife, you know. It was an executive decision. They didn't want the secret to get out. The president of the United States gave the order, himself. He has the status quo to consider. But I'm the guy who's willing to rip the paper bag wide open. I'll give Mary her voice. And I'll give her to you, too.”

“I can see her again?”

“You will see her. Briefly. Feel her essence. The best I can do. Otherwise I'd ask her for the bloody code myself, wouldn't I? It's not the same as life, but it's not damnation, either. You will be able to tell her goodbye properly, in a way you weren't permitted before.”

Filch missed her. he sorely did.

He said, “Four is five. That's the code. Four is five. Nothing more to it.”

Mr. Sharky paused to consider the simplicity of it.

“Four is five. Yes, of course it is.”

Filch could almost see the numbers dancing in his brain. Sharky took him by the shoulders and said, grinning, “Everything changes. It changes now, on the head of a pin.”

And then he tossed Filch over the rail, into darkness.

Into hell.

...

 

 

 

The abyss was exactly fifteen thousand and three feet deep.

Leonard Filch did not hit the bottom.

Everything became like hot soup about halfway down. His lungs were spent from screaming. His heart had stopped. His head was smashed from battering against the wall. He was naught but a shell of himself. He didn't know shit from shinola.

Still, he felt the soup. It was like teeth, nails and live, electric music.

...

 

With Mary Filch's fantastical equation properly deciphered, Mr. Sharky and his team were able to quickly (and quietly) reprogram their computers based upon the new mathematical model. Everything (or nothing) was riding on this. Sharky pushed an unassuming green button and it made a tiny click—the sound of salvation (or damnation). A black box, located at the top of a radio tower above Emathios, began to hum. This, the first of two functioning Earth-based Schillinger junkets, was fully activated at 00:08 hours on the morning of September 25—finally, after many long years of trial, error and rust—and the world, maybe, began to end.

Mr. Sharky raised a can of Mountain Dew. “Salud.”

These things took place within the so-called vertical hadron collider, the abyss, the place of soup, at Emathios, the place where Mr. Filch died not thirty-seven hours before.

One of the team members asked, “Why did you have to throw the poor guy in?”

“Because I'm curious,” Mr. Sharky replied.

...

 

At Rebowken, Frank and Gia were sitting in the lake, up to their necks, submerged in thick, briny water that was far warmer than either of them could have imagined. The air was cool—this was September 25. It was fall. The water was warmer than it had any right to be—perhaps heated by the fire serpent, itself. The rocks they sat upon almost formed a natural bench under their bottoms, and their feet were resting in fine silt that Leduc had assured them was “better for the skin than any hundred over-the-counter creams.” It was mid-afternoon, but the sky was deep orange, as orange as the day-room, like sunset.

Their niece was off getting stoned out of her gourd, and their home was being rummaged through by a sociopath, but Frank and Gia were oblivious to those things and their day together was warm and beautiful, like Christmas.

“It's beautiful,” said Gia. “Reminds me of Lake Nero.”

“Except Lake Nero was cold as hell,” said Frank. “This is like paradise.”

“I feel like I'm made out of silk.”

“It's actually better here than it was in the hot-tub.”

“Uh huh.”

“Mhm.”

Soon, they were kissing like horny teenagers.

Gia paused briefly to say, “Gods of Egot, you taste good.”

...

 

There was sex, again.

Despite the macabre theme of the weekend, the conjugal relations between Frank and Gia had been excellent. They didn't do it in the sacred, healing waters, but they came very close, and only retreated to their day-room at the last instant.

...

 

[Lacunae]

...

 

Frank pulled out and shot thick white cum over the outer lips of her vulva, entirely coating the area with wet and heat. Gia touched it, rubbed it all in, made squishing noises, rubbed a bit over the rim of her asshole, dreamed about delivering an ass-baby, a girl, and told Frank she loved him beyond what was reasonable.

...

 

[Lacunae]

...

 

He thought about his mother.

Sometimes he figured she was more suited to death than to life.

For years he'd been pretending she was already gone.

He told that to Gia, once, and she said she understood the logic behind it.

From this now-place in time, he didn't think there was any logic to it.

“I should be sadder than I am,” he confessed.

Gia told him, “If it's not there, don't fake it.”

...

 

They drove home, back to Discord, in the early evening. Frank was exhausted. Rebowken had sucked his energy as much as it rejuvenated him. He didn't know if he felt better or worse than before. Probably exactly the same—which meant that $280.00 probably wasn't money well-spent, but the sex had been off the fucking charts amazing.

Gia was clutching her purse, still.

“Are you tense?” Frank asked. “Wasn't it good? Did you not find relaxation?”

“I did,” Gia said. “It was very nice. It was the best time since Emathios. Fantastic.”

“Are you upset about the prostitution thing?”

“No—I realize that you're having a crisis of some kind.”

“Sure I am, but slavery is nonetheless an antiquated custom. The Americans emancipated their slaves nearly two centuries ago. It's a horrific, vulgar practice.”

“Yes, Frank, I hear what you're saying. But it isn't real slavery. It's prostitution.”

“Clearly, prostitution is also quite illegal.”

“We aren't children. We know how the world works. I wanted a nice birthday present for you. Haven't you always wanted to fuck two women at the same time? It's every man's fantasy, as I understand. I thought you wanted to at Emathios, last year.”

“No, I didn't. I actually respect my—”

She was still clutching her purse close to herself.

“Why are you doing that? What do you have in there?”

A young  woodland caribou, about the size of a Great Dane, sprinted out of the dark, evening forest, up the wall of the ditch, and proceeded onto the road. Frank was concerned only with Gia's purse. The truck flew past the animal at fifty miles per hour, coming within two inches of its rump, and Frank never noticed.

Gia said, “By Jupiter!”

“What?” said Frank.

“You almost nailed that animal.”

“What animal?”

“Slow down. Pay attention!”

“What is in your purse?”

She said she would show him once they arrived home.

“You don't need any more distractions, Frank. Just drive safe.”

...

 

They were sitting in the truck, parked in the driveway.

It was night, now, and the interior light illuminated the cab of the truck.

Gia opened her purse. Inside was a thick yellow envelope.

“It's Tracy, again,” she said. “She sends me hate mail, as you know.”

“That cow,” Frank muttered. “I do know.”

“She slipped this package under the front door, last night. Sometime between last night and this morning. It's not postmarked. It was hand-delivered, for sure.”

“Crazy bitch.”

“I don't know what to make of it. It scares me. Of everything she ever sent, all those threats, this is the thing that scares me the most. That woman can't write five words without making four typos, so this is something that could not possibly have come from her hand.”

“What is it?”

Gia opened the envelope and handed him a short stack of pages.

“It's mentions us. It mentions you, specifically. It's like the Twilight Zone. Read it.”

“Are you certain it came from Tracy?”

“It's her writing on the envelope. She's definitely the one who brought it.”

“But what is it?”

“Read it, Frank.”

And so he did. It went like this:

 

The end of the world is a difficult thing to describe, much less understand, and many people, including Frank Burczyk, tried, most of them unsuccessfully. The end, or the Cataclysm, as it came to be called, didn't happen all at once and it was perceived quite differently by the every one of the Earthlings who were present for it.

Some people were exploding, some being crushed or trampled to death, and others were consumed by ghosts with glowing yellow eyes—the wild spectres of Pluto Prectalis. A quite sizable number of humans simply ceased to exist, their molecules dissipating in the breeze, and we must assume that this was by far the best way to go.

Yes, there were survivors. We will deal with them soon enough, particularly the above-mentioned Mr. Burczyk, after we've paid our respects to the dreadfully departed.

Somebody, perhaps Anonymous, once said that the end of the world was no big deal at all. Every second of every day, after all, the world ends for someone. Succumbing to lung cancer, or being gored by a rogue elephant, for instance, can't be any less gruesome than being conked by a planet-shattering asteroid.

The asteroid itself was only part of the problem. That, at least, might have been immediate and final. No falling down stairs, or bleeding to death, or slow roasting, or gnashing of teeth. Just a gods-deafening WHAP! followed immediately by the cold nothingness of absolute non-being.

If someone had been paying attention, as a handful of computers were, the exact moment of the Cataclysm would have been written as 3:13 PM CST, September 29, 201_, presumably on a yellow Post-It note or on the back-side of a faded supermarket receipt. For many people, there was not enough time to jot down any more than that. For the rest, jotting it down would have been the last of their concerns, as there were too many exciting things going on, all at once.

At any rate, the exact time of the end was almost as subjective as how it felt for any one particular person to die, because the Cataclysm came simultaneously to 999 previous points in history.

 

The author of the document left a note to himself, between paragraphs—

 

Reference CER fuck-up. Mud-hole, anti-matter, etc. Check stocks.

Groceries tomorrow. Power bill! Ask her about cock size

 

—then continued—

 

One thousand versions of the planet Earth, all occupying the same position, more-or-less, in the quantum universe, were smashed into a single material space in the amount of time it takes for a human eye to blink.

If you have seen two vehicles after a head-on collision, all smashed and broken and only passably registering in your mind as automobiles, you still only have a small fraction of the picture. Now, if you could somehow pulverize a thousand planet-sized Saabs into a single galactic parking spot, you would be much closer to the awful truth.

 

The end of the world wasn't all about firestorms, lightning and earthquakes, however. Those things were merely the topside part of an oversized, nasty-toothed iceberg. Toss in locusts, lava, flash-floods and flaming hail, and you're just starting to see it. A few nuclear reactors melted and a couple war-heads went off, seemingly of their own volition. There were also animal attacks, mostly by bears, and a handful of electromagnetic dust storms. In short, every conceivable natural calamity, and more than a few unnatural ones, were thrown at the little people of planet Earth.

That's how it happened-- it was harsh, total, and happened simultaneously through a thousand generations.

 

Four days after Frank Burczyk's fortieth birthday, his wife Gia was shot through the brain by a deranged criminal, right in front of his very eyes. This was the beginning of the ending. Two days later, the whole planet was ruined. Except for the news on TV regarding mud-holes in space, Frank had not suspected anything was terribly amiss with the universe.

On his birthday, Frank had called in sick to work and stayed home because he was depressed and couldn't shit properly. Two voice-mail messages from Gia, his wife, who had gone to work very early in the morning, said exactly the same thing: “Had a great time last night, Loverboy. We should get together and do it again.” Another message said, “Hey, sexy man. Guess who's thinking of you?” Another said, “I love it when you pound my pussy.” Another, “Sorry about your balls the other night.”

He recalled something his father told him, a very long time ago: “You can't fake class. You either have it or you don't. You can't put a silk hat on a pig, son.” And Gia had class all the way up her gorgeous back-side—the kind of woman that every man fantasized about when he jerked off.

The woman was all gloss and glow (and dirty talk), and put every girl Frank had ever dated to outright shame. Drunk old Dad was dead, and it was sad that he couldn't see for himself, with his own eyes, what fine cunt his son was banging home, these days.

Another voice-mail message said, “You aren't answering. Give me a callback, you fucker. I'm at work. I can't wait to get started on tonight. I want you all over me. Meow!” That was a new one. And someone had been banging on the door of the house for fifteen entire minutes, while he was stuck to the toilet, shortly after noon hour. He popped two orange treats into his mouth, chased them with Coke.

 

Gia sucked amazing cock. She had sucked a lot of cock in her life. She'd sucked the cocks of most of Frank's friends, too. She had no gag reflex. She loved to swallow cum. She was a whore. A pretty whore, mind you, but a whore all the same.

In times past she was called Hoover, or Electrolux, or even Suck-U-Lux, by the men of Discord and Meskanaw, and there were many, who had fucked her pretty face—

...

 

 

For the most part, it could have been that the names Frank and Gia were pasted into the first chapter of a random end-of-the-world story, something Tracy Olafson, though profoundly unintelligent, was not altogether incapable of doing. Simple enough. However, the later paragraphs of the document, the passages about telephone messages, were particularly disturbing because they were very close to truth, a slice from real life.

And then, the last page, which was the cover page, shuffled to the back. It said:

 

Ragnarok, a novel by Bob Scieszka.

...

 

“Fuck you, Bob,” Frank growled.

“What was he thinking?” Gia exclaimed.

“Is there more to it? Is that it?”

“Is it not enough?”

“I mean, it seems like there ought to be more.”

“I guess it's as far as he got.”

“I'm going to bust his nose.”

“ Where did Tracy find such a thing? Why did she deliver it to me?”

“I keep saying, she's crazy.”

“How did she get it, Frank?”

“I don't know. Do I?”

“Bob really has his eye on you. And me.”

“It's fiction, Gia. It's bad fiction.”

“How does he know the things I said on the answering machine? That's not guesswork. I clearly recall saying those things. It was last week. That part is real.”

“I don't know why that is.”

“What about the other parts? Am I a fine piece of cunt to you?”

“Absolutely not. I didn't write this. Bob did.”

“This document upsets me, Frank.”

“No shit. It was intended to, don't you think?”

...

 

“He calls me Suck-U-Lux?”

...