HEART OF OCCIDENT
Prologue
It was the dry end of a bender. The earth was scorched and fissured. The masses elevated the fools into rich heroes. The sky rained missiles. Night became perpetual. The land was ash, the air dust.
I raked for poker chips in the rubble of Harrah’s. A scrawny blonde strumpet approached me by the slots. She was cataract blind and led forth with a leash by a Seeing Eye dog. She batted her useless eyes and smiled, offering her self for $100.
I thumped my chips. “How’s $50 sound?”
The woman handled my face a few awkward ways. “I’ll take $75,” she said.
““Can you spot me $25?” I said.
The dog glowered and flared its teeth.
The woman mulled her sweaty brow and fished through her corset. “I wish I could,” she said. She produced a bloodstained hanky and swabbed her neck grease. “But I’m broke.”
The dog cocked its ears and yowled as if it detected some incoming we couldn’t from the heavens.
A Rebel mortar scud a jet fuel flare through the underbellies of cloud.
The dog dugs its nails into the asphalt until the leash went taut and pulled the woman away.
I crawled inside a drain pipe and waited for the boom.
I.
I fell in with some gutter punks from the Plains. There were six or seven of them outside RadioShack sitting somewhat apart, crouched on the curb, eating Doritos with raunchy fingers and watching Tomahawks stream through the nocturne with an autistic fascination.
A girl with a nose ring stood and yodeled, plucking a dented ukulele. She had a magenta zit on her navel and a mop of sable dreadlocks tied back with a polka-dotted kerchief that encompassed her entire noggin.
When she finished, I stood and applauded while the rest sat and leered at rockets flying from faraway silos into the atmosphere. The girl blushed and tiptoed forth like a beatnik harlequin in a hemp gabardine.
She offered me her hand. I took it and from there she led me into a junkyard where jalopies rose in gothic stacks around us, their hoods looming above the compost like hub-capped golems.
““Where are we going?” I said.
The girl looked over her shoulder and the wind went among her braids. “Camping,” she said, her face composed a mischievous grin.
She chopped her ukulele through the jimson thistle as we bushwhacked a path to a barbwire boundary. The fencing was clogged with shreds of windblown refuse. A dead cat hung like a strange dark laundry, every vertebrae exposed, its mouth half-open. I examined the carcass closely and identified a fist-sized bullet hole in the hide on which the crows and maggots had mealed.
““I’m getting kind of tired,” I said, my voice tense and pensive. “I think I should turn back.”
““You can’t go,” the girl said. She held my hand and squeezed. “Who will protect me from the Rebels?”
She crouched through a small fold where the fence had been pulled from its abutment and she looked back at me from the other side. “Please come with me,” she said, batting her lashes.
I was duped by her flirty energy and proceeded to squeeze through the threshold, catching my dungarees on the fence’s spiny mail.
I made out a sparse encampment in a gully where a few upturned paint cans encircled a small fire pit. A makeshift teepee rose behind the pit pitched in a quad of broomsticks and a few reams of dew soaked butcher paper. The site sat on the lip of a small fen shimmering in cattail silhouette, a white moon ensconced within like a great pale deity.
““This is it,” the girl said.
““How long have you lived here?” I said.
She shrugged and let her hair down. “Since I ran away from home.”
““Why did you come here?” I said.
““The orphanage was too crowded,” she said.
She drew the tent flap and entered. I followed and we hunkered on a foam mat, our frail bodies spooning warmth amongst the eggshell nubs as the toads belched swamp gas in the mud cakes around us.
II.
A boot kicked my ribs and my sides twinged in a splitting pain. A spray of warning shots stripped the teepee sheets from its buttress. A troop of foot soldiers surrounded us and from their Hessian caps I guessed they were mercenaries hired by the hand of some Fourth Reich. One held the girl’s ukulele in the air and smashed it on a stack of VCRs.
The boot swung forward and kicked me again. My gut exploded in a spasm and I began to dry heave. I felt a hand clutch my throat and hold me up in the air. My head filled with blood as I flailed my arms.
I could see the girl running away in my periphery but she tripped and went tumbling into a thicket. Three henchmen pursued and piled on top of her, then dragged her back to camp by the dreads.
We were blindfolded, cuffed and stuffed into a Humvee then driven to the harbor where a frigate was docked and the air reeked of dead marine life. We were shackled and shucked into tangerine jumpsuits and walked into a brig with rifles pointed at our backs.
The girl grabbed the bars and sulked. Her body hung in a jilted pose.
““Godamnit,” she sighed. “I just can’t get a break.”
““You have a beautiful voice,” I said.
““You’re just saying that,” she said. She covered her mouth bashfully and sniggered.
““I’m serious,” I said. “Your yodel hits every note.”
““What do you know about singing?”
““I sing all the time,” I said.
““What’re your favorites?”
I stood and cleared my throat. “I like the Oldies,” I mimicked in a weak falsetto. I curled my lips and swiveled, thrusting my hips forward.
The girl eyes darted up and down the cell walls. “These chains make me horny,” she said. She smirked a little and moved towards me like a weak magnet, shedding her jumpsuit among the clanking tangle of her manacles.
My face was dry and she wet my cracked lips with hers. Her alien skin formed an aloe husk around me as our chains knotted and we made love like pining teens in the brig between bunk and bedpan.
She glowed with a post-coital numbness and I pointed to her zit.
““You need to pop that pimple,” I said.
The girl studied her navel. “I think it’s an ingrown hair,” she said.
““Whatever it is,” I said. “It looks infected.”
III.
A biohazard crew barged into the cell and pulled us apart by our shackles. Their rubber suits squeaked as I squirmed against the restraints of their latex gloves.
The girl thrashed and fist-fought and the men zapped her with cattle prods until she fainted. They searched all our cavities and spackled our limbs in lye, then stood back, chuckling as the lice fled our every orifice.
I writhed across the slippery tile. The girl lay beside me unconscious. The men made way for a sumo-sized man in an ebony visor. He entered the brig schlepping an enormous hose. He widened his stance as he leveled the nozzle upon us and unleashed a spray of such force we went reeling against the wall, lashing our naked limbs in a cold bilge blast.
The sumo cut the water off and began backing away. The girl gradually came to and rolled over, hacking up a curd of chum.
““What about a telephone call?” she mustered, crouching on her knees and knuckles, her underbite pronged like a barracuda, her eyes small against the stinging grit.
The sumo stopped and stirred through an anterior compartment on his rubber suit. He turned and casually tossed the girl a cuff key and a quarter.
““You’re free to go,” he said, his robotic voice smothered by the muffle of his visor. He made a husky pivot, heiled his charges and slowly slithered out of the cell.
IV.
The dock was full of ragged natives, women and children hurling rotten fruit and rubble at the frigate, their dearth faces wrought with an insurgent syntax blundering in the flare of burning torches.
A white fog hung in the air and blended with bits of beer and saliva spattering from the foaming mouths of young men in camouflage crashing through the riot in sporadic teargas waves.
We fought our way through the foray to a phone booth on a corner where leper children peddled flyers for a USO go-go show in a clutched flock of gauze.
The girl rolled the quarter into the slot and spun the rotary with a skittish cursive.
The phone rang and rang until a distorted voice answered in a warp of static.
The girl cupped her hand around the mouthpiece and spoke quietly for a time and then hooked the phone on the receiver.
““Who was that?” I said.
The girl weaseled her finger in the empty coin slot.
““That was my mother,” she said.
““I though you were an orphan?” I said.
““I have a mother,” she said. “A superior one.”
V.
A nun rolled up in a gremlin. Her cornet flapped in the breeze through her window as she wangled the gear into park. There was a bald baby doll nestled in a wicker basket on the front seat beside her. It was wrapped in a wad of white terrycloth, its rubber snout jutting like the muzzle of some human-wallaby interspecies.
The girl leaned through the window, scooped the doll up and began to sway.
I watched her for a moment and then looked at the nun. She wore a pair of bifocals and a stingy expression that a dug hole through my stomach.
““Whom do we have here?” she said.
““This is my friend,” the girl said.
The nun’s face clouded. She scowled at the girl and motioned her hither. As the girl lowered her head into the gremlin, the nun snatched her by the ear and pulled the girl’s head inches from her mouth. The girl held the doll tightly as the nun spoke sternly until the girl nodded.
The nun released her and stirred through her habit impatiently. She brandished a silver tin of snuff and promptly popped the cap, pinching herself a small conical and making it vanish instantaneously beneath a single nostril. She cornered her eyes and spat in my direction.
I held my hands up in a surrendering motion. “I’m not what you think I am,” I said, stepping backwards. “I haven’t got a Rebel bone about me.”
The nun’s eyes caught a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror and she pursed her lips as if taking the symbolic beads into her own considerations.
““You can sit shotgun,” she said. She squinted and spat again. “I’m going to keep my eyes on you.”
The girl replaced the doll in the basket and set the basket in the backseat before crawling in beside it. I climbed into the gremlin and once I was buckled the nun floored the pedal and the engine purred like a panther lurching through the boggy night.
““Thanks for the ride,” I said.
The nun turned to me and in a recital-like tone she spoke: “How kind the Good Samaritan,” she began, glancing at her blind spot. “To him who fell among the thieves.”
““That was beautiful,” the girl said. “Is that a bible verse?”
““It’s a hymn,” she said.
““What does it mean?” I said.
““The Lord encourages hospitality,” she said. She rode the brakes through a bend in the road and the gremlin heaved forward, bouncing the rosary against the windshield.
““Where are we headed?” I said.
““Why?” the nun said. “Do you need to be somewhere?”
““I’m not trying to get where I’m going,” I said.
““Which is where?” she said.
““No where,” I said.
““Well you’re still alive,” she said. “You can thank God for that. Have you talked with Him lately?”
““It’s been a while,” I said.
Her eyes grazed my shoulder and she proceeded to speak of Sodom and the lost tribes of Israelites, citing the gospel with a marvelous dexterity as she spoke in sooth of the Armageddon.
““Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God,” she said. “Revelation 12:10.”
I looked ahead and held an impervious expression.
““Are you a Believer?” the nun said.
““I’m undecided,” I said.
““Even Christ had moments of doubt,” she said.
““I doubt it,” I said.
““Fear not for I am with you,” she said. “Isaiah 41:10.”
I said nothing.
““I think we should pray,” she said.
I scratched my neck hesitantly. “I wouldn’t know what to say,” I said.
““What’s the matter?” she said.
““I’ve got the devil in me,” I said.
She waved her finger like a dagger in my direction. “Just repeat after me.”
““Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”
““Dear Jesus,” she said.
““Dear Jesus.”
““Louder.”
““DEAR JESUS.”
““I give everything to you now.”
““I GIVE EVERYTHING TO YOU NOW.”
““Because you are Lord.”
““BECAUSE YOU ARE LORD.”
“I repent for every sin.”
““I REPENT FOR EVERY SIN.”
““No matter what my sins are.”
““NO MATTER WHAT MY SINS ARE.”
““In Jesus name.”
“IN JESUS NAME.”
““Amen.”
““AMEN.”
““Amen,” the girl echoed.
The nun was perspiring profusely and a blue vein in her temple pulsed like a fuse as she gasped for breath. ““You’ve just received the Holy Spirit,” she announced elatedly. “How do you feel?”
I took a deep breath and palmed the expanse of my gut. The sewer air stunk of dead seafood. “I feel radioactive.”
The nun smiled. Her beady face beamed with content as the gremlin rolled like a grenade through the slum dusk.
I turned in my seat and regarded the girl and doll. The baby’s vacant expression conjured an unsettled sensation.
““What’s with the doll?” I said.
The girl positioned the doll’s skull against her mammary and simulated an instinctual nurse. “It’s my baby,” she said, cradling the doll in a profane caricature and murmuring contentedly, and in that fleeting moment there was peace on earth.
““Why are you doing that?” I said.
The girl nestled the doll against her empty pap. “I’m supposed to until it starts teething,” she said.
““How old are you?” I said.
““Sixteen,” she said, wrinkling her face and naughtily winking.
““Jesus Christ,” I said.
The nun thwacked the back of the skull and my head fell forward. “You praise His glory,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said. I dabbed the back of my scalp. I felt blood on my fingers and the nun thwacked me again.
“Right now,” she said, her voice brutal, her face twisted and ferocious. “Do it.”
I closed my eyes and started laughing. “Halleluiah,” I said. I pictured a laser halo above my head as it bled like a lazy river. “Praise the Lord.”
VI.
We came upon a Western Union where a pride of bums nibbled government cheese around a puddle lit with knifing streetlight.
““Hold on everyone,” the nun said. She revved the motor and braked across three lanes. The gremlin hit the curb and ramped over the sidewalk, landing in a reckless skid toward the bum congregation, their zombified pupils contracting in the headlights as the nun cut a wake through the puddle and cackled as the hobos scattered in every direction.
We entered a parched supermarket landscape. The smell of sulfur stank in the dark wind. Concrete encompassed our entire scope. The nun seemed certain of our route as she drove into the innermost zone of the barren and killed the gremlin.
I peered into the dark and waited for my eyes to adjust. Crickets chirped in the dead tufts of grass somewhere in the abounding night. I felt the nun’s hand feeling its way across my crotch in the blackness and I jumped, thumping my head on the ceiling.
““Oops,” the nun said. “I thought you were the glove box.” She grappled with the dash until a compartment fell open and ignited a tiny dome light.
A long-barreled six-shot revolver sat in a fat file of parking tickets. The nun took hold of the butt and spun the magazine several times on her finger.
““That’s quite a piece,” I said.
Her face swelled with pride. “God bless you child,” she said. “How kind of you to say so.”
““It looks heavy.”
The nun re-gripped the weapon and weighed it in her hand. “It’s about five pounds loaded,” she said. She huffed on the chamber and buffed the muzzle on her white coif.
I rubbed my eyes and surveilled the expanse of tank-tread shopping carts strewn along the rim of a ditch where poison pooled in a black chasm. A metal factory framed the horizon, its broken windows choked with grapevine wilt.
A feral a cat emerged in a gravel swale, skulking through the debris as it picked its way among cusps of brick and broken glass. The nun cranked her window down and drew sight upon the animal.
““What are you doing?” I said.
““God’s work,” she said.
““What does God’s work got to do with cats?” I said.
““They’re a nuisance,” she said. She stuck her head out the window, plugged one nostril and shot a rocket of snot onto the asphalt. “They’re Rebels. Devils.”
She leveled the pistol and thumped back the hammer, bracing the barrel across her forearm.
My throat was tight with excitement and fear. I clasped my hands against my ears and watched the nun’s finger tease the trigger, her mouth watering in a mindless throe.
The cat perched upon a bunker and began to tongue-bathe. The nun pulled and the gun made an enormous explosion. I watched the bullet spark as it skipped across the pavement. A lime green smoke filled the gremlin and cleared quickly as if sucked by some maelstrom out in the void where the cat lay abrogate having spun off the wall into a rift where it lay kicking.
My ears rang sharply, the buzz consuming my entire head.
The nun squinted in the cat’s direction. “Balderdash,” she muttered, dusting gunpowder from her cloak. “I only nicked it.”
I was disoriented and I held my head in one hand and my stomach in the other.
““Why did you do that?” I said as a wave of nausea swallowed me.
The nun set the hammer at half cock, spun the cylinder and lowered the hammer again. “Amen, I say to you,” she said. She smiled, her loathsome brow pleating like dolphin. “All these things will come upon this generation,” she said. “Matthew 23:36.”
Epilogue
I heard it whistle through predawn dark. A mute pop and a bomb burst arcing like a lightening strike, soaking the gator-skinned earth in white-hot strobe.
The gremlin flipped over and landed on its head. Dirt gushed through the windows. I suffocated until my body went soft like a vegetable.
The nun dug me up and applied a feverish Heimlich, but my heart had stopped. I could see the girl behind her lapsing in the napalm, her face completely flat as she whispered into the doll’s rubber head.
Adam Moorad is a writer, salesman, and mountaineer. His work has appearedwidely in print and online. He lives in Brooklyn. Visit him here: adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com
