The year is 2006.
The month is September.
You can call me Alicia.
In 1965, I discovered a mystery.
In 1966, I revealed the contents of this mystery to my ex husband, Paul. That was thirty years ago. Paul is dead now, and that’s a shame, because with the help of a young man named BJ, I have finally seen the truth of the mystery.
To be honest, BJ and I have broken the truth open like an overripe melon on a jagged rock.
In 1965, through much reading, research, and wondering, I discovered that magic had its origin in God. All the skills and powers and intelligence that human beings take for granted, technology, medicine, premonition and telepathy, love and mercy, all of these things are a result of mankind harnessing this essence, this magic. Paul didn’t believe at first. He didn’t believe until I showed him smoke tricks in his room one day in the fall of the next year. In the rings and twists of the cigarette smoke, I introduced Paul to wonder.
He believed, then.
Six months ago, BJ and two of his friends came to understand what I came to understand all those years ago in the same way.
Through smoke.
Now, BJ's life hangs by a thread from Death’s embrace, and all because he wanted the truth as badly as I did. How did I meet BJ? Well, a dream is what ended it all.
In the world of two months ago, I was asleep in my bed, deep in the throes of a nightmare. Rabid dogs chased me through a labyrinthine, foreign junkyard, frothing at their mouths, their barks and snarls a terrible thunder at my back. I ran and ran and ran, but the faster I ran, the closer the junkyard dream dogs got.
As the fence that enclosed the junkyard came into view, a man appeared from behind a wasted washer and dryer set. The washer sat atop the dryer, which had a door that hung open and slack, like a dead mouth. The man stood against the fence. In his right hand was a grape soda can, and between his lips was a multicolored fun straw that pulled the soda into his mouth and down his gullet. The man wore a black leather jacket that fell to his knees. The jacket swayed in a wind that I didn’t feel. On his hands were gray gloves with no fingers.
The man looked at me as I screamed horror and death into the day within the dream.
“Help me!” I shrieked, clawing at the man’s slender chest with my fingers the moment I collided with him. My fingers were bloody and torn.
The man smiled at me and sipped his grape soda. Meanwhile, the rabid junkyard dogs leapt, fangs bared, toes splayed, eyes filled with kill-lust and stupidly wild hate.
“Help!” I said, trying my best to throw myself into the man’s arms.
The man spoke.
“I saw your research on magic online two weeks ago. Brilliant, I must say. Convincing, especially when placed in conjunction with my own studies.”
The man was quite calm, even when the junkyard dogs crashed into my back and threw me to the ground before him. I gasped and coughed into the dust that I drew into my lungs when I hit the ground. I felt a low, rumbling purr at the back of my head. When the pain of my flesh overcame my body’s protective shock-shield and collided with my brain, I understood that the purr was the ripping of the flesh of my neck. One of the dogs was tearing the back of my neck out like rotten plumbing.
“For the love of God, help me!” I screamed. I felt warmth running down my neck and my back. From somewhere in the vicinity of my right calf muscle, I heard a sharp crack that pierced the day like a rifle shot.
The man on the fence smiled and sipped his soda.
“I can help you out of this dream, but only if you help me out of this reality. Say you will help me, and I will help you.”
“Please! Please, whatever you want!" I screamed. "I will help you! Please, help me!! They’re killing me!”
“Okay,” the man said. He threw the soda can over his shoulder and took my right hand. “But remember; answer your phone when it rings after you wake up. Remember, we can die in our dreams, and when we die in our dreams, we sometimes die in real life. After this, it is likely that you’ll owe me your life.”
And just like that, the dream was over and I was in my bed again, thrashing and groping for the back of my neck. My breasts and hair were drenched with rank sweat. I held my hands up before my eyes. They were shaking.
A nightmare. Nothing more, nothing less. The digital wall clock told me that it was 11:22 at night.
The phone rang.
Once. Twice. Thrice.
The ringing stopped after the third time, and I sighed. Dreams were fun enough to examine and wonder about, but when they started stepping on the boundaries of reality, well... then they weren’t so much fun to examine.
I had just begun to get out of my bed when the phone started to ring again. This time, even after the third ring, it didn’t stop. I answered the phone. My hands had begun to shake again.
“I thought I told you to answer the call when the phone rung,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. I said nothing. The shock of my nightmare still held my mouth shut.
“Well?” the man on the other end of the phone said. I could hear a crooked smile in his voice. “You can speak in the land of the waking, or is that just a skill that you gain in your dreams?”
“What do you want?” I said. My mouth was as dry as a desert in summer. “Who are you? Is this real?”
“One question at a time, Alicia,” said the man.
“How…”
“One question at a time, I said. My name is Boland Jenkins, but you can call me BJ. I live in New Jersey, but I’ve made the trip to New England, special, to meet you. I want to meet with you tomorrow to discuss your theories on magic, on the existence of human kind. This certainly is real. Might I remind you…”
There was a pause. I could hear the man’s voice from a distance. “That’s right, ham on rye. No onions. Sweet tea. Cool sweet tea. Thank you.”
“Sorry about that,” the man said. “The use of buying fast food is lost if it aint good fast food.” He laughed softly. “Will you meet me tomorrow at the Greasy Giant Grill, on I-66? They’ve got great food, and they don’t stiff you on the portions, either. Or so I've heard. What do you say?”
“Meet a total stranger in the middle of nowhere to discuss magic?” I said, half of me encased in miserable knowledge, the other half absolutely incredulous. “How do I know that you’re not some loony fan? How do I know you’re not some crazy b*****d who’ll try to rape me, then stuff me in your trunk and dump my body in a bog?”
The man laughed again, this time a bit harder. There was an edge in that laugh. “If I wanted to see you dead, I’d have let the dogs tear you to pieces at the fence.”
That was all I needed to convince me that meeting this man, at the very least, would pose no threat to me. But still, I was cautious.
“Three in the afternoon, when the lunch rush is in. When there are plenty of people around. I’m not stupid. Coincidence happens every day, you know.”
“Fair enough,” the man said. "But tell me, do you like quince juice?”
“What? Quince juice? Why would you ask me that?” I said, getting out of bed and making my way to the restroom. I was raised to call it the rest room. Bathroom is a loaded, dirty word. At least, that's what my Mom always said.
“The best quince juice in the world is made right here, in a smutty little town in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like you’ve never had it. You really should try some tomorrow.”
“Right,” I said.
“You’ll know me when you see me, Alicia,” the man said, crunching into something; perhaps bacon.
“Goodbye,” I said. I pushed the END button on the cordless house phone and sat it on the bathroom sink.
Who the hell wants to talk about quince juice with a total stranger in the middle of the night in the middle of a long pee?
The next day, at three p.m. sharp, I walked into the Greasy Giant Grill, a bit nervous amid the lunch crowd.
I saw several smiling, full faces.
Evan Howard. The town’s only tax specialist. He munched a cheeseburger and grinned at me with a mouth full of half chewed cow. Sally Phelps. The greatest lover in town, or, at least that’s what half the men in town say. Even the married ones. Scribner Powers (Screw for short) sat with his mother and his wife, who were eating their hot dog platters with no relish whatsoever. The two women were far too busy staring daggers at each other to really enjoy their meals. Every resident with half a brain in town understands that these two women share a special kind of hate. The sort of hate that burns with every fiber of each woman’s being.
I walked between crowded tables and booths, and people stared at me over their plates and their glasses. Everyone knows everyone else, here. It’s that sort of miserable little town.
And just as the man called BJ had said, I knew him when I saw him. He sat in a booth at the back of the place, already on his third helping of apple pie.
I sat down lowered myself into the booth, in the seat opposite him.
There was small glass of orange-red juice sitting in front of me.
BJ held his right hand out, and as crazy as it might seem now, I took it and shook it.
“Charmed,” BJ said, grinning.
I said nothing.
“You gonna try the quince juice?” he asked, spooning another bite of pie into his slender mouth.
“Not just yet. No appetite,” I said, and it was the truth.
“Right,” he said. “Down to business, then. A few months ago, I read your first book, Clean Shavings. I was intrigued by it. Your second book, Cropped Reality, furthered my interest in your opinions. Then, a few weeks ago...”
“Neither of my books sold very well at all,” I said. “I’m surprised that you can even find them online these days.” Almost at once, I was sorry that I’d said anything at all.
“Amazon has everything, Lees,” BJ said. He wiped his mouth with a brown napkin. How in hell could a person use something that was the color of s**t to wipe his or her mouth, at the dinner table, no less?
“Call me Alicia, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Whatever you want. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I thought I’d try to track you down, maybe have a conversation with you about this subject. You see, not long ago, two of my friends and I started smoking crystal meth. It was through the smoking of crystal meth that we saw a few real truths.”
“Oh, hell,” I said, slapping my forehead with my right hand. “A drug addict whose mind fell when he read my work. You’re the one group of people that I don’t want reading my work. You people and the subject matter of my work mix too damn well. You make it look hack and crazy. You rob me of my research. I’m leaving.”
I began to rise from the booth. Out of common courtesy, I took a small swig of the quince juice before me.
“I know magic, Alicia,” BJ said. He placed his spoon on the table before us and looked into my eyes. His pupils, a deep, suede brown, seemed to shiver.
In his eyes, I saw a maniac’s idea of Heaven. Strange alien animals twisted and danced to a weird, vibrating tune from a distant era. Clouds had whispered conversations with one another, and planets bobbed back and forth in the electric sky. The stars beyond the bobbing planets looked as if they had been drawn by a child, and by a young child at that. To the north, the polar icecaps were melting. To the south, the polar icecaps were melting. When they were finished melting, they formed again, and then the whole thing started over.
In my heart, somehow, I knew that the icecaps were always melting and reforming.
In BJ’s eyes, I saw an old black man in a Panama Jack shirt and a wide brimmed straw hat. This man was God. I knew this beyond the shadow of a doubt. God had thin, frizzy black hair. I heard the words; “I am the Magic’s origin and epicenter.”
To me, this statement sounded like a lie. Why, I don’t know. Why would God lie, after all? Isn’t God perfect? Isn’t God flawless?
I was lost in staring at the ridiculous straw hat that God wore. With a jerk, I came back to the Greasy Giant Grill. BJ was standing in front of me, pulling a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet. He placed the bill on the booth table and looked at me.
“Believe me, now? Still believe I’m a drugged out wacko with nothing on his hands but your books to read?”
“No,” I said. My breath came in short bursts. My heart raced as if I’d just finished a thirty mile marathon. “I believe you, now. How did you do that? How did you make me see those things? The most I ever did was make trees out of smoke. How are you this powerful?”
“Laced quince juice, Alicia. Liquid crystal meth in your quince juice. One sip was all it took to link your thoughts with mine. By the way, you should never drink anything that’s offered to you by a total stranger. Dangerous. Let’s go.”
On the way out of the Greasy Giant Grill, BJ spoke.
“How in hell did you ever do the things you did with plain old cigarette smoke? How did you know that you could do them?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just knew.”
The motel that BJ had booked for his visit was a fleabag, plain and simple. A dozen shabby brown doors lined both sides of the place. The man who checked us in was a sleazy, greasy looking gentleman who wore spats for some reason.
“Your three day payout on room 324 is expired, sir,” said the man. BJ smiled and took his credit card from within a pocket in his wallet. He handed the card to the man behind the desk. “Another night, if you please.”
BJ’s credit card was taken and drawn across a sensor that stood on the side of the small monitor in front of the desk-man. There was a beep, and then the man said; “Room 227. Here’s your key. Have a nice night.”
Ten minutes later, the two of us, BJ and I, were in room 227, and BJ was setting up his meth cooking set. He did it with the speed of a habitual drug user, and I have to say, I was impressed, no matter how bad it makes me look.
“I don’t know how it’ll happen this time, the transportation,” he said, switching on the Bunsen burner as he spoke. A tongue of thin, red-blue flame licked the bottom of the beaker in its hold. Almost instantly, the drug inside the beaker became liquid.
There was a listless glint in BJ’s eye.
“The first time it happened, a Light appeared in the corner of my living room. Since then, I’ve just sort of drifted into Heaven. God never has much to say to me. He spoke the most the first time, when my friends and I first visited Him, but now, He never says anything more than “Hello” to me. And then He kicks me out. So, I’m just saying…prepare yourself. It might be hell.”
A few minutes later, a set of twisted glass pipes touched two pairs of lips. Lungs inflated. Minds reeled.
“Look,” BJ said. There was a great big s**t-eating smile on his face. “A stallion. Standing right outside the window. There.” He pointed not to the window, but to the east wall of the small motel room.
“I see,” I said. “We’re supposed to ride it someplace?”
“Let’s go,” BJ said.
In what seemed like a few seconds, we were at the stallion’s side. A moment later, we were upon the stallion’s broad back. “Giddeeup,” BJ shouted, laughing.
And then we were off.
Somewhere before us, a wall broke. A great, grisly wall of flesh and blood that showered us with its contents as we rode through it. After the shower of bloody building blocks, there was a great gust of wind, and in the blink of an eye, we were airborne. A stallion of no particular color racing across the New England sky. No one noticed a thing.
“To Heaven!” BJ shouted.
With the shout, we were clip clopping on the golden, shining streets of Heaven. Everything I’d seen in the vision in BJ’s eyes earlier was mirrored by what I saw when we arrived in Heaven. I was flabbergasted.
“It’s dulled since the last time I was here,” said BJ as he climbed down off of the stallion. He helped me down, and then looked around. “It looks duller than I’ve ever seen it. I think that human beings are siphoning the magic that sustains it faster than ever. Soon, it’ll cease to exist.”
“Maybe that’s why God wanted you out. Maybe that’s why He seemed to lie,” I said. “What’s wrong with preserving His being after all?”
“If He takes the magic back from us, then humanity is doomed. Remember, without it, we are nothing. We don’t exist without the magic, Alicia.”
“But we don’t exist without God, either. It’s a catch 22,” I said.
“Then He should’ve just said so,” said BJ, now visibly furious. “It’s not fair to keep such a thing from us. Maybe if He had limited us in the beginning, we wouldn’t have taken so much from Him. Now, it’s Him or us. I don't know about you, but I want to live.
I couldn’t get over the look of the place, but all of a sudden, I had a feeling that things were wrapping up, so I spoke.
“Are you saying that we have to fight God, BJ? Is that what you’re saying? That's crazy. Even if we did manage to get through His angelic guard, we’d never beat Him. He’s God.”
BJ began to walk forward, toward the electric horizon. “Ah, but God has no angelic guard, not anymore. He’s taken the life force of the angels for Himself. What energy He has left He’s been using to sustain Himself. How He planned to take back from us what we took from Him, I don’t know…but I do know that this is the main purpose of Him sapping Heaven and His angels of power. He’s using Heaven’s beauty to keep Himself alive, now.”
“The ultimate survivor,” I said, horrorstruck. “Where do we find God?”
“Right here,” a voice boomed from before the pair of us.
There he was; an old black man in a Panama Jack shirt and a wide brimmed straw hat.
“I thought we’d have to search for you in order to kill you,” BJ said, cracking his knuckles on the palms of his hands. This man intended to beat God up. What the hell?
“There will be no need for that,” said God, smiling. His teeth were perfectly even. Perfectly white. Perfectly set. Perfect. “I will die soon, as hard as that might be to believe, but before I die, thanks to human beings, I will tell you the truth.”
“Good,” BJ said. “I’m glad you took the noble route and decided to do the right thing. Handshakes beat a*s whippings any d….”
That was when God snapped His fingers and bathed BJ in white lightning. BJ screamed, jittered, and then fell to Heaven’s ground in a smoking heap.
“Gutt…gutt…gutless,” he said from a face that was hard to tell from a pound of burned beef.
“Did you think I would give my life up so easily? Hah! Not a chance. I created you, and I hereby un-create you! I will live!”
God began to laugh. He pointed a smoking finger at me and said; “Peace be with you. Your magic center, your life-force, well, I’ll take that. It might hold me for a few more minutes before I’m forced to drain Heaven dry. After Heaven, Earth. After that, everything else. Last words?”
I cringed where I stood, facing down the Creator’s mighty rage and righteousness as I pissed myself. How could a mere mortal beat God? How could that even be possible to think of? Just before I was swallowed whole by despair and fear, a solution occurred to me. Out of nowhere, in the center of my terror, I knew. I knew how to kill God. I knew what magic really was.
“I un-make you before you un-make me," I screamed at the top of my voice. "I don’t believe in you or your power. You’re a scam. A lie. A charlatan. Go away.”
It was then, as I spoke, that the wave of insane anger began to flow over me like a cocoon. Suddenly, I had the righteous fury of every cheated living thing on my side. It became a terrible strength in me, a song of plain old indignation.
God’s finger blazed fiercely for a moment, and then was normal. Normal for God, at least. His power began to fade fast.
“No…,” God said. “Not now. Not ever. How did you know?”
I drew myself up to my full height, inhaled and stared God right in the face.
“I know that any god worth his salt doesn’t exist outside of his worshiper’s beliefs. I know that here, beliefs are everything. Here, beliefs are power enough to challenge you. That's why the angels could never think for themselves. That’s why you didn’t want thinking, intelligent people here. Because then, they’d know that you aren’t all powerful. They’d know the true power of belief, and right now, I believe that I can take your magic from you. Your life is mine.”
I felt cold, ice cold. I was killing God with my thoughts, yet I felt as cool as a cucumber. “With the last of what you are, tell me true. Tell me true,” I said.
“Da…damn you. I may as well, now, eh? Now that I’m dying, someone must know the truth.”
God was fading away, slowly losing His color and verve like an old reel of film.
“Someone must know that I am not God. Just a god in here, in this tale…in this story.”
“What?” I asked, though a fresh wave of terror in my heart had already revealed to me what He really meant.
“I opened my eyes to life three months ago,” God said, fading still. “I was written to life by a writer, and an amateur writer, at that, named Broadie Thornton. He likes to be called Hawksmoor for some stupid reason.”
“What are you telling me?” I said, shivering, knowing the awful truth of God’s failing voice.
“Look north, Alicia,” He said. It startled me to hear Him call me by name. “Look south. The melting ice caps? Not melting, and not icecaps, either. What you’re seeing are the borders of this story, turning, over and over again. Someone is reading our story yet again, and they’re nearly done.”
I stood where I was, startled into silence by this. Suddenly, I understood everything. Magic…my a*s. There’s no such thing as magic. Magic is nothing but creativity made fantastic. Some galactic b*****d who calls himself Hawksmoor has written us to life in this story. God, the best of us, is nothing. After all, God was written by Hawksmoor. A goddamn writer, for Pete’s sake.
Now, you’re up to scratch, Reader. I’m nothing but a facet of some a*****e’s seething imagination. God has faded away to nothing at all. So has BJ. God couldn’t kill Broadie, our true god, if you think about it, to save us all. He couldn’t fool us into thinking that He was all there ever was, and all there ever would be. All He wanted us to think was that there was nothing before Him. He failed. I’m beginning to fade away. I think this story’s coming to an end.
Do me a favor, though. Broadie must have companions who write as well. Understand who I am, who God was, who Paul and BJ were, who we all were. Understand what our world is made of, what we were about, what made us tick. Understand Broadie’s characterization; get it down pat, sharpen it better than that filthy, no talented son of a b***h ever did. Rewrite us, Reader. Birth us from within your keyboards and onto your monitor screens. Finish reading this and rewrite us! For God’s sake, rewrite us! Because we deserved more than being some goddamned writer’s fancy on bored days! We deserved to live, damnit! To live!
REWRITE US, PLEASE!
And somewhere in North Carolina, an amateur writer closes yet another half assed story.
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