Notes from the Future: Felonious Monk, Part VI

"You there! Stop in the name of the Prophet!"

Sssssnap, CLICK

Gunshot

I open my eyes. Standing Me is gone, but just outside the door is a clean-shaven guy dressed like a lumberjack who has just fired at the spot where Standing Me was moments ago. He's staring at me like I'm a shaved orangutan.

I'm not a shaved orangutan and ... I'm not dizzy.

Not dizzy at all.

Holy shit, was it the gunshot? The surprise? Or was it just going to happen because we were awake in the same place? I'm me. I'm whole. I'm not dizzy and split anymore. The snap and click noise I heard (felt?) was me clicking back in. Socketing back in. Felt like a hip socket popping back into place, only deeper. Somehow. Weird feeling. But good, now.

Fresh-faced Lumberboy skedaddles, and I can hear him in the next room, no doubt exclaiming; it's what religious freaks do, they exclaim:

"Mighty Prophet, there was a man in the Interloper's room!" He exclaims. See? "He was ... he was ..." His voice trails off and I hear some quieter talking, some almost reasonable tones of voice. I don't remember the Prophet speaking in a reasonable tone of voice when I was passing out on the ridge. How long ago was that? How long have I been out?

The voices in the next room are too low for me to understand, and I really have to pee. Have I just combined the contents of two full adult male bladders into one? I start looking for a place to pee. I'm getting a little frantic and wait but now I, well, I'm peeing. I'm peeing and it just doesn't feel the same.

I reach down, carefully. Oh what joy, I've been catheterized. I hope it was the hot redhead who did it.

This voice raises in the next room:

"I was told by Iron Rachel to come in the back way and check for fleeing Rachels for the dairy --"

"What happened when you were in the building?" Ah, the Prophet is back on form. Superb.

But what is the dairy that lumberjack guy is talking about. Can I get a milkshake. Wow, suddenly, I crave a real milkshake. From Val's, in Hayward. Ten minutes from here, before the quake.

I can hear the younger man talking again, he sounds like he's panicking:

" ... passing the Interloper's room when I saw a figure standing near his bed, Prophet. I looked in and it, it, well it was like he had a twin, Prophet. He was lying there in bed in his hospital gown, and the other man was leaning next to him, reaching out a hand. His right leg was in a cast, same as the Interloper's. Then he stopped, he didn't touch the Interloper. I raised my rifle, shouting, and he disappeared --"

There's a yell or a snarl and a scream and it sounds like some equipment is knocked over and there are people coming down the hall, the lumberjack is still talking. I close my eyes.

Wow, I am still peeing.

The lumberjack is saying, "He may have disappeared before I fired, Prophet. I am ... not certain. I don't really know what happened, Holy One." And now they're in my room and I'm listening with my ears wide open.

 Unfortunately for me. Because it sounds like someone stomps to the left side of my bed and I get to hear this:

"How?! How do you do these things?! Who sent you?! Who gave you Godspeak?! Wake and tell me now, I kill kill kill you --" 

Rustling, like he's searching his pockets or flapping his arms. Then silence. Does he know I'm awake?

"Where did you get that? Where, Whore?! Did he appear and give it to you? Is he here? Is he in this room? Tell me now!" 

"Your name is Torvald Mayberry," I hear Veronica! It's Veronica! We're here in the same room at the same time and I can't hug her, can't tell her I love her because, well, the Prophet sounds like he's in a murderin' mood. I think I twitched when I heard her voice. Did anyone notice? I try to focus on what she's saying: "You are probably wanted for sex crimes, and you are not a Prophet at all," she is so confident when she says this. Like Zoe on Fierfly.

I hear men gasp. More lumberjacks, no doubt. 

There's a sound that makes me think of stripping a turkey, and a wet noise like someone squeezed an orange wedge onto the bedsheets.

Veronica says, "Torvald Mayberry, false Prophet, you have no power. You didn't know about the rabbit, you didn't know I had the scalpel. You are a sorry, weak man."

"No power?! No power?! See my power, Whore!" The Prophet is doing that keening, screaming thing he does. Must carry for miles, where did he learn --

My bed lurches forward, veering to my right and I open my eyes in time to catch a glimpse of a girl with a badly beaten face and some bearded lumberjacks before my bed crashes through some French Doors, something tears out of my right arm and the bed is being forced up over a small landscaped hillock amid little birch trees. This seems familiar.

Oh. Oh! I need to go! I need to go now! I have to get Chauncey!

POP

I slam into the wall of supplies in my tent, praying I didn't crush the bunny. Ah, no: there he is, right across the tent near the zippered door. I flop down onto my back and pat my belly.

"Come on, Chauncey," I say.

He sits staring at me, whiskers twitching. 

My junk feels funny. I look down, pulling my gown aside, being careful, but it doesn't matter: the catheter is gone. Maybe I can market this to people who don't want it yanked out by GlauGlau the Night Nurse.

Waste of time. Focus! I don't have time for this. I'm desperate. I can feel something building in me, and a kind of ticklish humming in my forehead and behind my eyes. Should I grab him? Seems counterproductive. It may be what I have to do. But before I commit to another bunny lunge, I decide to try the Veronica tactic:

"I will give you lemon leaves and pine cones, Mister Bunny. Please hop onto my belly," and even before I'm done with the word "belly," he's hopped onto my tummy and is sitting there looking at me, all rabbity and intense.

If I pop back to the compound, it means Veronica found the talisman. Amulet. Whatever. 

If I go somewhere else, well, we're fucked.

Tickle in my forehead and

POP

The hospital bed is coming down off of some small shrubs, coming back from a dangerous angle to something more manageable. I want to clutch the edges of the bed, but I need to hold Chauncey firm on my tummy. I'm trying to suck it in so I don't look distended, but my concentration is skewed a little by the Prophet's voice coming from right behind my head:

"Rachels and Ezekiels, the Reckoning is come to an end! Attend your Prophet and see! See the truth! See the Interloper come to meet his maker! See Satan's relish fall from his mouth like ashes of the burned vagina of the Whore of Babylon! Ebasagu, Ebasagu, ebanah-ebanah-ebanah-flerr-na-na-na-na-The Lord is Mighty!"

We're rolling over gravel and I can feel something warm and wet on my right arm. I must be bleeding. Ah, yes. The tearing I felt before I popped to the tent.

"I have discovered this Whore hiding among the healers! Spies! Spies and Interlopers in our midst! She -- this Interloper Whore -- she questions my power! She conspired with her DevilMan to create a double, to infiltrate us and steal our American way of life from us like the Unclean Mexican she is! Somewhere among you he may yet lurk! This man's twin in all things, even the broken leg! This man with stolen Godspeak come to deceive you with his dark magic! She questions my power because she thinks she can! Yet you all know I hold the power of Life and Death in my hands! See! Ezekiel, bring me the White Sheet! So saith the Prophet!"

"So saith the Lord," I hear some few voices shout.

I hear footsteps come running up in the gravel, the fluttering of cloth.

"Behold! I place the sheet and he will die at my command! So saith the Prophet!" And this guy is so creative with that So Saith thing, he must be proud. He sure seems to use it a lot. Like when a baboon discovers its penis.

"So saith the Lord," a few more voices this time, but all a little subdued.

I hear the furl and snap of a sheet of cloth and I feel a sheet settling down over me.
"Lo and behold, the Prophet did see that the man and woman were Of The Devil, and he did ask Almighty God for his thundrous hand to smite them down. And God did as the Prophet asked, so saith the Prophet?!"

 

This is some ridiculous bullshit. The words leave my mouth before I think:

"So saith your Mom!"

Peas and carrots, general hubbub from the culty populace. They don't seem to know it was me, so I pull the sheet from my face with what I hope is some amount of flourish.

Great gasp from the assembled cultists. I'm like Houdini, if Houdini was, wow, bleeding profusely from his right arm. 

Immediately I see Veronica. She cries, "Tad!"

 

I wink at her, devil-may-care fellow that I am. She's holding something in her hand. It looks like the amulet. Talisman. Thing.

Whatever it's called, to business: I address the Prophet.

"Hey there, fucko!" I call in my best how-de-do. He whirls like a pervert caught without his pants. Which, it appears, is the case. Wow, ugly dick on this guy. Looks like Ginger root. Tearing my eyes from it, I flash the pearly whites: "Feeling rapey?"

"Tell me now how you did it and I may allow your Whore to live! Tell me how you created your double!"

"Well, I can't exactly tell you that, Torvald Walter Mayberry. But I can show you, you false prophet and fucker of corpses! Would you like that, Mr. Twistydick?"
 

Some of the Culties laugh. They may not be all bad if they get my jokes. I hear Veronica laugh and I chance a glance her way. So beautiful, very pale. I'll bet she hasn't been eating.

My attention is brought back to the prophet, who has spun around and is waving at the big grey house with all the decks. He's pointing at me.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, do show us all, Foul Deceiver! Show us your Hellbane and Hemlock!" His arm is not moving.

I think it's time to go.

"No hellbane and hemlock here, Torvald," I say. "Just good, old-fashioned know-how," I steal a glance at my right arm. Positively gushing, as they say. Maybe that's why I'm feeling wobbly? I turn to Veronica and Mother Henrietta. "Do I need a tourniquet for this?"

"Yes," they answer in almost the same tone, same gesture. Both look like they want to smack me, hug me and bandage me. Mother Henrietta must be a Cancerian, too.

My eyes tear up a little. But I know what I have to do. I remember what Future Me told me to do: be bold, be daring, be her hero now.

I smile, charming as hell, and say, "Done, ladies. Honey, I love you. Hold on to that amulet." As an added touch, I kiss my hand and toss it to her, Cyrano de Bergerac style. Then I throw the sheet over my head again and as I feel it settle all around me I can't help thinking of the penultimate -- which means second-to-last -- moment in Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. But I need to focus, so I hold Chauncey tight and I --

Wait, why am I holding Chauncey? I should leave him here, right? Isn't that the whole idea? Right?

Feeling a buzz and tingle in my forehead, I try to push Chauncey away without touching him, trying to twist and not have any contact with him at the same time, hearing a gunshot as 

POP