Prologue
Before Adam "Beelzebub" Alldred strolled into my cubicle, I fabricated a story about aliens funding the war on terrorism. He didn't look evil. He looked like a young guy, a sober man of Irish descent and some refinement. He was around my height. And I'm a small guy. I may be the tallest Filipino in the Philippines, but the Press Office of the Weekly World News was in the broken heart of New York City. An athlete's muscles struggled to fit under his clothes. Nothing seemed evil about the blue shirt and tie he wore, and his pants weren't possessed, as far I could tell. He was neither stunning nor disfigured, nothing peculiar except the fly peacefully licking his left cheek. My paper is not in the business of human interest, so I asked him what business he had. He asked if I was Pepe Abola. I confirmed it. He stared with a sly smile and declared, "I am Beelzebub reincarnate."
"Satan?" I asked cautiously.
"No no no. I'm not Lou."
"So you're some sort of lesser devil?"
"A demon, to use an abused term. You know it meant 'divine being' when it became a word. Socrates had a demon. I came before Yahweh, Jesus, Santa Claus…the Easter Bunny."
"You want an interview?"
"No, I believe it's vice versa. You want to interview me."
With the little microphone shoved an inch from his nose, I asked "So…How would you describe yourself?"
"I would say conflicted."
I asked, "You look like you're around my age, what was your childhood like? What moments cemented your suspicions of being a demon, Beelzebub? Um, Do you have a nickname, something less conspicuous?"
"My brothers called me the Beez."
"Great. So are you ready Beez?"
"I'll start when you stop addressing me in that tone."
"I'll try my best," I said. "What was it…oh. So, what moments made you believe you were Beelzebub reincarnate?"
Beelzebub's Dialogue
The moments when I'd back off and watch the drama ensue. Those are the times I regret. A volcano only stays dormant for so long. If I defended myself sooner perhaps no one would have been hurt. I lied to myself. I turned my back on my instincts. I tried to be civilized. A demon can never live harmoniously among humans. Even growing up, other children spotted me as something different. Most saw a scapegoat to befriend one minute and humiliate the next. I didn't hatch into a five-siren hell raiser until the end of puberty. I was in love then. And how delusional must a demon be when he believes in love? How delusional do humans seem when they believe in love? I will explain in human terms, for at that time I thought I was human. What a silly game life and death is. What a boring game life is now.
I was named Adam Alldred. In the neon plastic jungle gyms of Pittsburgh I learned to play with other children. You remember our generation. Pack a baloney sandwich in your lunchbox with whatever cartoon is en vogue amongst your peers. Fill your matching thermos with Hi-C. Plead with mommy until she surrenders the candy bar she bought the day before with the specific intent of pretending not to give it to you. My mother filed for divorce before my first birthday. My father would wrap a cold hot dog in aluminum foil. How unfortunate that my mother didn't miscarry me.
As the youngest of four boys, I grew accustomed to that bored feeling people get when waiting for their date, like the old man who eats alone. Throughout childhood I was quiet, servile, and nervous. I'd blame it on Luke, Gabe, and Matt. My older brothers developed sooner than I did. I was six years younger than Matthew, the youngest of the three. Gabe and Matthew were separated by two years, and Luke was four years older than Gabe.
My father bought a TV with the money from the divorce settlement. We had cable with all the premium stations. Santa Claus brought me a VCR on my third Christmas, and I thought it was candy, I bit it. One black eye and a broken arm later, I understood how the VCR worked.
Somebody planned this long before I was born. Somebody chuckled outside the office after deciding this demon's father would be an alcoholic priest. A Protestant to be specific, I know how Christians are so fussy about what kind of idiot they are. Anyhow, my father saw priesthood as an occupation rather than a vocation. He compared himself to a stripper. Onstage they welcome you with open legs. Offstage you'd be lucky if looking her up and down doesn't get you knocked out by her bodybuilding boyfriend. The parishioners at St. Paul's Cathedral saw father as a beacon of morality. Offstage, he saved what money he made to gamble at Ladbrokes, a franchised restaurant that allowed its patrons to bet on horse races, although there was no racetrack. Just TVs. At home my brothers and I would be nestled around our babysitter TV. Probably watching porno or something violent.
At church my brothers and I wrestled in the front pew. It was here, during father's Easter Sunday homily, that I first heard my true name. Behind the exquisitely covered altar, surrounded by gilded crosses and stained glass, our father declared holy war on the devil himself. He swung his meaty arms in a dramatic fashion. He made his eyes widen like a possessed man. And he berated the devil in all his forms, ending with the phrase, "whether he be Lucifer, the morning star, Satan, the devil, Belial, Beelzebub…"
I forget the other names - but Beelzebub crawled onto, dug in, and festered inside my imagination. I turned to the congregation and declared, "I am Beelzebub." There was silence, muted laughter, and a barrage of songbooks beating my head courtesy Matthew and Gabe. Father glared down from his podium and waited until all the commotion ceased. When it did, Luke shouted, "All Hail Beelzebub!" The songbook beatings began again and we were expelled from the church. On the ride home my brothers sang "All Hail Beelzebub!" until father literally ran the station wagon off the road. We were slapped and spanked and humiliated. We didn't speak in the presence of our father for a week.
The following Friday when father left the dinner table, Luke asked, "Beelzebub, bringer of peas, pass them so that I may taketh from thy unholy bowl."
Gabe chimed in "Will the vile lord Beelzebub be washing the dishes he hath defiled?"
Matt grabbed my hand and inspected it. He asked, "Will the Joy dish detergent wipe the blackness from his dirty sinful hands?"
After dinner we watched the Pirates game on TV. Father turned to me with a cat's grin and said, "Beez, could you grab another beer from the fridge?" My brothers surrounded my father. They tried to lift him up. As I delivered the beer they chanted, "All hail Beelzebub, all hail Beelzebub, all hail Beelzebub…"
Eight years passed before the end of my junior year at Central Catholic (an all-boys prep school), when my father announced he would be retiring in June. Florida he told us. To get away from us, get a new life and shed the white collar that was, "chafing his cock" as he gracefully put it. Luke would turn twenty-seven the following September. He was a teller at a Mellon Bank, while Gabe and Matt attended the University of Pittsburgh (Gabe had to repeat his senior year). The four of us moved into a third story flat in Oakland. It was a block from the bank, two blocks from the university, and three blocks from Manner Cinemas.
Before demons emerge as full-fledged infernos of sin, we go through an incubation period of sorts. Humans call it puberty. People say this period is, "a bit awkward for everyone."
I was cursed with the spare parts of the Alldred looks. Weighing in at a hundred forty pounds, at a height of five feet four inches, with lunar craters mapping his face and glasses that looked like two oversized magnifying lenses and braces that could blind a pedestrian across the street, I present the Beez Alldred at age seventeen. The ugliest teenager in heaven, hell, or in between.
Catholic School had suppressed my demon instincts. As my demented childhood shows, I was always the demon Beelzebub. Consequently, the moniker had not become extinct. My brothers still goaded me with comments like, "Beez, when you're done moping about at the cinemas could you pick up some beer?" But it was not all songbook beatings and smart-ass comments. I really looked up to Luke. He was our leader. Without him father wouldn't have left.
I remember the first June and July of freedom with the victorious fist holes in the alabaster walls, the mountain of beer bottles on our porch, the assortment of girls that came in at night and left by morning, and the insects. Flies especially. They seemed to follow me up and down Craig Street when I'd go the comic shop or head out for a movie. Maybe it was my smell. Matt and Gabe had taken summer jobs the Original Hot Dog Shop; a two-story "restaurant" that served everything deep-fried. We were dispersed all over Oakland during the day. I spent my time and money wandering Craig Street.
But Craig Street was and will be a sort of magical place. At the street's end was the Carnegie Museum of Art. Two blocks down in the opposite direction was Oakland Catholic. For the last three years I spent every afternoon watching girls frolic down those stairs. In intentionally hiked blue skirts and slightly unbuttoned blouses they'd parade out, spilling onto Craig Street. Nobody attended school over the summer, but I found myself staring through those glass doors at the Virgin Mary. Pleading with her as if she were the gatekeeper to unlatch those jumpers.
I won't lie. I understood the fatales from Days of our Lives better than I understood real girls. My hideous mid-demon form made me hide. Even today after emerging from that half-hatched phase, I have not known many girls. My brothers knew women well. They swaggered with a loose hip and a lazy stride, the strut of rock stars enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame. For them dating was a two step process: first, finding them drunk, and secondly, leaving them naked. But Luke passed his girls down the line like hand-me-down clothes. Matthew offered them, but I refused. What good would it have done?
By August the flat was beyond repair. The toilet was clogged. Cockroaches rose from the shower drain. And the smell of bubbling grease in a deep fryer wafted in from the Burger King down the street. And the flies. The first Saturday that month I had played video games and gone to the movies, a regular night. I fell asleep lullybyed by passing cars and chirping crickets. As I sunk into my pillow the grinding of grocery cart wheels was the last sound I heard.
Until cymbals crashed. From my window three stories above Craig Street I watched two mad people dance around the shards of a broken bottle. A halo of smoke hung around Luke's head. The other person (who I could barely describe due to my vertical view and my half-asleep state) shoved him against the gray brick of our building. From the shrill wail of the voice I deduced it was a woman. She, casually dressed in Luke's favorite T-shirt and a pair of khakis, latched her hand to Luke's wrist. The red embers of their cigarettes wheeled around like fireflies. She took a drag of her cigarette, ashed on the concrete, and stamped it out on Luke's palm.
He yelped. He kicked her side. His free hand windmilled into her face. Words fluttered to my window. Frantic and alarming, but I could only listen to pace and tone. He slammed the screen door upon entering our apartment. His footsteps reverberated on every floor of the building. She retreated down Craig Street like a lost ballerina.
I rustled out of my sheets and tiptoed to the kitchen. I acted surprised when Luke stormed through our door, stumbling to the sink. He yowled and yipped as cold tap water splattered over his right palm. I quietly chewed my cereal at the table. Only the billboard white light and traffic lights and car headlights and cool orange streetlights from outside lit our kitchen. After taping a plastic baggie of ice cubes to his hand he sat down and pulled out another cigarette. His black leather jacket was slung across the back of his seat. In the darkness I could still make out the yellow sweat marks under his armpits. A fly circled us. Luke caught it with his iced hand and burned it with his cigarette.
"What happened to your hand?" I asked.
"Bar brawl. Me and Slopy McHunkerstein, a massive anvil of a man, a red hot baldy with a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on his forearm. He wanted a piece of my woman. But I don't think he wanted part of the action."
"Things okay with this girlfriend?"
"Yeah. We hit it off pretty quick. Maybe too quick."
"So you beat this McHunkerstein up?"
"I killed him. Murdered him with these fists. Now I have to register them with the Police as lethal weapons."
"You're not going to jail? Are you?"
"Nah, Beez, I wouldn't leave you guys, even if Daddy came back."
I slurped up all the milk left in my bowl and dropped it in the sink. Luke stamped out his cigarette seven or eight times. I hugged him. Hugged him for two minutes. He slapped me. A lens popped from my thick black glasses and slid across the floor. The slap was a warning to get away and go to sleep. I obliged.
~
Luke's favorite poster was crumpled into a ball lying next to the kitchen wastebasket. I woke Gabe and Mark up and pointed to it like a dog's corpse. Gabe shook his head sarcastically. He unraveled it. James Dean's face, black and white and every shade of gray, had been torn apart. Permanent red marker had been smeared over his pursed lips. Black pen ink scrawled black holes over his stoic eyes. We patched it together with Scotch tape and tacked it above our stove.
We found a check for the year's rent on the table. Matt stood at the window and said, "The Contour's gone." Our VCR tapes had been ransacked of all Alfred Hitchcock movies and most of the Martin Scorsese ones. The living room shelves had empty spaces where GI Joe action figures once stood. We migrated to his door. Gabe knocked. Matt hammered both fists into the door until the eye-hook lock broke. In his closet a couple hangers hung where Luke's arsenal of Banana Republic Oxfords and matching pants used to. Matt fingered the dust on Luke's dresser, writing "Fuck Luke." I laid down on the sheetless bed. It felt like a motel room, vaguely familiar the moment you enter but alien as you laid down in the bed.
Matt and Gabe fixed their hair in the mirror. I watched them silently mouth a conversation. Gabe sat at the edge of the bed and ran his hand along my arm. He said, "Beez, Mark and I gotta go to work."
"At the O right? Could you leave the phone number somewhere just in case something else happens?"
He exhaled like a dying horse, and replied, "Nothing happened, but I'll leave it. It's only a couple blocks to the Original anyhow. You could just walk down."
"Yeah. Okay, see you guys later."
"We'll be out late, don't wait up for us. And behave," Matt said. They walked out the door in perfect Luke form.
That long afternoon I imagined Luke in a James Bond tuxedo. He was cruising in a BMW convertible down a curvy desert road. I inserted myself in the passenger seat, disguised in a black suit and a bowler hat. We drove through that American desert until it turned into the Sahara. In Monte Carlo they threw a parade for us as an orchestra dwindled over variations of Gershwin. We were covered in casino chips, throwing craps, playing Baccarat (neither of us really knew how to play, we tried once). At the end of the day we stood outside the neon pink lit door to an Arabian Harem. Luke looked at me with his trademark smirk and said, "Beelzebub cannot love. A demon cannot fuck. How could he?"
Two weeks dragged by without a dirty sock in the laundry room to hint at where Luke was. On a Tuesday night a phone call interrupted the "Unsolved Mysteries" marathon I had waited three weeks for. I picked up the phone and said, "Alldred residence."
A familiar voice with a British chop to it said, "Does Luke happen to be there?"
"No, he stepped out for a minute or something. He'll be back tonight," I said as I looked at the oil stains in his empty parking space, "would you like to leave your name and number?"
"Certainly not, thanks." She hung up within a millisecond of that accented "t."
I used * 69. When she picked up I dropped my voice to my father's gravelly tone and said, "Hello, this is a courtesy call from VISA Express. Could I speak with the man or woman of the house?"
"My parents are in Newcastle. Cheers."
Impersonating the eldest Golden Girl, I called one more time.
She answered the phone with, "This better not be the same creep from Luke's who called before."
"What are you talking about ma'am?"
"Oh, pardon me."
I sold her this lie about my daughter Agnes, who used to live at her number. And as I negotiated for her number the flies swarmed through the window. They buzzed about the room, and frolicked in my greasy hair. Whether they were warning or praising me, I felt at home with the flies. I wanted to follow them out the window, to wallow in the precious garbage cans. To lick the discarded boxes and burger wrappers. To penetrate any aperture I could. To buzz around Oakland until I found my brother.
Matt and Gabe rushed in as I put the phone on the hook. Matt walked by in a towel and said, "Get off the phone."
"I am off the phone."
"Who did you call?"
"Nobody. Somebody dialed a wrong number."
Gabe wore jeans and a plaid flannel with the sleeves rolled up high enough so that I could see his veins pop. He asked, "You didn't call the police did you?"
After they were groomed and perfumed they stood between the TV and I. They had meticulously picked at their clothes until it looked like they hadn't spent anytime fixing themselves. We had a conversation. They decided we couldn't call our father. Gabe said, "He'd call the police and move back in. Or go after Luke himself."
"So?" I said, not believing the word I had just said.
They left it at that. As soon as the door shut behind them, I combed Luke's room. I wanted to find airline tickets to Jamaica, bus tickets to San Francisco or Seattle, or plans to drive to Mexico. Instead I found a hidden compartment sliced into the floorboards underneath his bed. I leafed through sticky pages of a Hustler magazine, ogled a long roll of condoms, and applied some sort of sex wax. I wedged open a little black box and found a Polaroid camera. Thirty Polaroid photos of girls were kept in rubber-banded stacks. I flipped through them in boredom. Some pictures Luke had been in, some didn't. A lot of pink flesh I hadn't been exposed to before. I was looking up the Virgin Mary's dress.
~
When a demon encounters an angel the conversation is never dull. A demon may prostrate himself. He may attempt to redeem himself. The angel may pity the poor spirit, but she will not touch the despised thing. I've seen seraphim and cherubim walk hand in hand in harmony with their post. They amble obliviously toward oblivion like lambs led by their shepherd. A demon knows his verdict is guilty. He is damned.
A pact was always made prior to walking the steep ravine to the cabin: what happens at Noah's Bungalow stays at Noah's bungalow. Our friends and girlfriends got to know us much better on those nights. In two Fridays my brothers and I would travel to the cabin near Portersville. Each summer since I was thirteen the Alldred brothers went without our father, without the city, without anyone to judge us, we had freedom for one night. Sometimes Luke and my brothers brought their girlfriends and some high school buddies.
Before we left I decided to call the British accent girl. After a cat and mouse phone conversation, I convinced her to meet on Craig Street. On the phone she said, "I'll be outside Craig Street Coffee drinking a regular cup of black coffee, not mocha latte, not a cappuccino, no sugar, no cream, just black coffee." This was purely business I told myself. She must know where Luke roams. I followed my brothers' example and spent the hour prior tousling my hair in the mirror. I applied cologne generously. About half a bottle. I took great care in untucking my dirty white T-shirt. I even ripped matching holes in both jean legs. After popping a couple zits, and trying everything to clear that mess, my face. I left my glasses and squinted towards destiny.
The bite marks on her fingernails struck me most. She could pass for a high school girl. I could see her prancing about in an Oakland Catholic uniform. Yet, the rings around her eyelids, like half-halos chiseled into her face, made her look like she had already experienced mid-life crises. At least three times or so. Her face was as angelic as the Virgin Mary's and as human as Marilyn Monroe's. Her blonde hair was shorter than mine, held up by a green bandanna. A look of contempt and boredom lay in the position of her lips. And she smoked. She smoked and drank her black cup of coffee for a half-hour. I strolled by her. I strolled by three times before she asked, "Are you somebody in particular?"
Her eyes locked on me as she lifted the cup to her lips. The neon lights in the window behind her outlined a yellow cow. The red sun set. The sky snailed to darkness. Red streaks, like charcoal on paper, banded round the office buildings and electrical towers that jut into the horizon. In the red West I saw the jagged shapes of the steel mills. In the blue East I saw nothing but streetlights lining the hills. And at the center of the universe sat this foreign being who chugged black coffee as if it were the nectar of gods. I felt the pulse of Craig Street: the bums rattling spare change in a Styrofoam cup, the artists darting by with their heads huddled down in shallow thought, the cars rushing past my back only to brake after a few feet, the harangue of a PAT Transit bus wheeling across an intersection, and the buzz of a neon yellow cow. And the beat of all those moving energies focused around her green eyes. She repeated, "Are you somebody in particular?"
"Um…no."
She looked disappointed.
I sat down and stared at my reflection superimposed over the neon yellow cow. The girl asked, "Do you like what you see in that window?"
"No." I replied.
"I meant would you like a cup of coffee."
"No." I watched the legs walk and the wheels roll by us.
"I'm sorry, I'm Cerise Havisham."
"Pleased to meet you," I said as my sweaty palm shook her soft one, "Adam. Adam Alldred."
"I know Luke well enough, probably not as well as you."
Our conversation lingered on the blurry edges of Luke, the legends my brothers had woven around his reality. But all the words were forgotten as I watched Cerise's lips open to sip her coffee. She'd smile and acknowledge my eyes. She was only twenty, an English major at the University. She had met Luke through Matt. They'd had shared a few drinks, then he sleazed his way into her heart. They had been dating on and off for the last six months. She knew nothing about his whereabouts, not that I was too concerned with it. As the crickets began fiddling their night tunes and the neon cow was turned off we began to wander around Oakland. Across the empty lawn of St. Paul's Cathedral. Past the statues of Shakespeare and Socrates that sat outside the Carnegie Library. She stopped in front of the Brontosaurus' skeleton on Forbes Avenue. Without a shed of emotion in her words she asked, "You love your brother don't you?"
"As a brother would."
"Then nevermind."
"What?"
"Nothing. What happened between him and I is old news." She lit up and looked at the cigarette butts lying in the cracks of concrete. She added, "I'm sorry he's left you and your brothers. But everything happens for a reason doesn't it?"
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to end our conversation with something more than a goodbye. But touching her, I thought, would be like pasting your hand on a hot stovetop. I wanted to destroy the foundations of myself and mold myself around her. But nothing happens for a reason. Life as a demon has taught me that logic can only explain so much. It's like an extra pillow for people to rest their heads on; the sound belief that each sorrow humans endure is a message from above. I looked to heaven and I saw bright light shine on a smiling face. Billy Dee Williams offering a cool, refreshing forty ounce bottle of Colt 45. Available where liquors are sold.
On Forbes Avenue a bus honked at a pedestrian crossing the street with an open copy of the Post-Gazette. The bus stopped after its left wheel had run over the person. The newspaper fluttered over the corpse like a body bag. I saw lifeless legs and a pair of loafers protruding from underneath the bus. For half an hour we watched as an ambulance followed by three police cars rushed to the accident. The bus driver was a fat bald man who kept his hand dangling over his forehead like a genteel woman. Despite the officers' assurances it was just an accident he pounded his fists on his bus. The passengers filed out with middling interest in what they saw, like a freak show or a movie shown for free.
Cerise was frozen in her tracks. I asked, "Why do you think that guy was run over? What was the reason for that?"
"Shut up!"
I replied, "No no no. I want to know what you think."
She whisked away with her head down.
I shouted, "Wait. Hold on. I didn't mean to upset you."
"It wasn't you," she replied
"But do you think somebody is telling us something?"
"What would they be saying?" She said, still walking.
"That we should forget what we thought in the past. That I should be with you. That things in the past are as dead as those legs dangling underneath the bus."
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen."
"Are all of you womanizing little assholes?"
"What do you mean?"
"Nevermind. Go home. I'm going home."
"You're walking the wrong direction."
"No I'm not."
"What would it take for you to think about me?"
"Erase the last twenty years of my life." She shouted back.
As she disappeared down a cobblestone road I looked up. In a heavenly glow the face of a teenage girl pouted. The background was black, and over her eyes in red letters the billboard read, "Never Talk to Strangers" And a rage poured through me like none I had ever felt. A frustration that had welled inside had come boiling to my eyes. I wept. Demon's tears are said to be poison, a sign of a fallen man. I ran to her and asked, "What has he done to you? What horrible things has he done for no reason other than his own pleasure? What is wrong with you? Tell me. I care, please, I need to know my brother."
She told me. When I returned to the apartment I stared into the black holes in James Deans' eyes.
~
Night after night I dreamt of a cloaked figure climbing a skyscraper. At the summit, the sky was an empty black canvas that erupted with white-hot electric sparks. The cluttered energy would web into a design, Cerise's face - lit by a canted lantern. The shadows obscuring half her face didn't scare me, but her pale skin left me blind, shining like a comet of camera flashes. The figure says nothing each time, but her face speaks at a thousand decibels. During the day Luke was always a step behind me, hiding in a corner or lounging in a soggy alley, smoking and smiling like a date rapist. He whispered nonsense words as I fixed myself in the mirror. The red blots of acne cleared to reveal a face as direct as any Alldred. The bulge at my belt wasted away until the hint of a muscle grew peeks and valleys over my belly. My jeans became so loose I had to buy a smaller belt and twist the waistline until it fit. The irony was in the mirror. As I grew closer to the suppressed instincts, I became less hideous and more like Luke day by day. On my afternoon strolls through Oakland women of any age appraised me from the lowered corner of their eye as they passed by, a subtle conceit. I was worth the trouble. Matt and Gabe said nothing to congratulate me but the teasing grew less and less. However, "the Beez" remained no matter how much I insisted on Adam.
I had only seen Cerise in nightmares, but I knew our lives would intersect at another point along our future. Power flushed through my face now. There was no doubt I had become a young demon. I began using facial soap and squirting an appropriate amount of my own cologne. Each day I tried to catch some stranger's eye outside of Craig Street Coffee. August swam by like the exhaust escaping from heavy load trucks rumbling down Fifth Avenue. The more I grew into this skin the more I found myself yearning to find the green foliage growing over the gray concrete. The streetlights became hindrances to the stars and the moon. The passing cars muffled the crickets more and more. When the last weekend of the summer arrived it ended up just the three Alldred brothers driving out to Portersville.
The second we drove under Mt. Washington through the Liberty tubes and out onto the open gray highway and away from electrical lines, traffic lights, radio waves and fast food, the pulse of civilization faded into non-existence like a radio frequency overcome by static. The sky filtered every kind of gray and blue under an advancing army of clouds. White lightning seared the darkness each time I almost fell asleep. The thunder lulled me into a daze as we road towards Portersville. Aside from our headlights and the red taillights of distant cars, the road was as dark as night. I stopped reading my copy of the I-Ching and listened to my brothers talk. They went from a list of girls they wanted to hammer to the days before mother left us, days I have no recollection of. I had become a bastard demon before I realized what plans lay in store. Perhaps I was happier before knowledge. They say ignorance is bliss, but how happy do the animals seem? Are deer happy or sad when their parents collide with a big rig on Interstate 79? Is their life more depressing because they have no concept of happy or sad? Tell me.
The sedan eased onto the exit, past gas stations and diners and highway signs. The last billboard was an ad for McDonald's that featured a gargantuan cut-out of Ronald McDonald advising travelers to take a detour and enjoy a happy meal at any of the listed locations in the three mile area. I wiped my thick black glasses on my white T-shirt. After looking again I had no doubts that they were flies darting across Ronald's cheeks. I opened the window and inhaled air thicker than any I could remember. The heavy musk of moss mingled with the stink of road kill wafting off the interstate. And as we turned onto the dirt road to Noah's bungalow the scent of wood filled the damp air. When we all got out, jokes and playful rough-housing over with, we had to choose who climbed down the ravine to place the guide rope down to camp. Matt tied the rope to a stout tree. Gabe unloaded three cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a book bag full of liquor. He said, "Beez, you've never been the first down. Matt only did his last year for the first time. Keep the rope wrapped around your shoulder and don't allow it to get caught on anything that could cut it. Especially today with it being as slippery as it is."
Matt tossed me a pair of construction worker gloves and a flashlight before he added, "Watch out for the insects and shit, it's muggy today, they'll be out in numbers."
"I think I can handle a freaking mosquito bite." I replied as I tied my boots and pulled up the hood of my rain jacket. They gave me their "break a leg" looks as I descended down the first few steps.
Matt shouted down to me, "Hey, you better start looking down instead of up before you get clocked by a branch."
"I think I know what I'm doing Matt."
"I don't think you do." He said with a laugh.
I jumped off the three inches of footing I had and freefell eight feet, until I caught a root jutting from the cliff. Its grain trembled as I flailed for anything else to balance weight on. Around me I saw the changing sediments of the earth, the layers of color and rock and roots. The rain pattered against my black raincoat as mud slid down the cliff like molasses. Finally the steep cliff leveled out along a boulder that had split open centuries ago. I sat down. The last five minutes had seemed equal to two days, hanging on a rope as I descended deeper. I pulled out my machete.
I knew Luke was here. I had assumed since the night Cerise told me what he had done. The last days of August were haunted by his laughing face, his unrelenting smirk. Justice is not the office of demons, but the hack of a limb, the slice through family flesh, removing a heart from its owner, this was what my mind had set itself upon weeks before we came to Noah's Bungalow. I would deliver Luke's head to Cerise if she had asked. Everything happens for a reason, I began whispering. As I descended the trees became sparser, the rocks more jagged. I looked up for Matt and Gabe and swallowed the raindrops trembling from the heavens. It had just passed seven o'clock when I reached the second plateau. The flashlight's waterproof guarantee failed, I threw it into the creek rushing by below. From this vantage I saw the bungalow, the yellow shack had been hit by some sort of mudslide, and the windows were open. If it had been a clear night there would be nothing to hide Luke's footprints. No way for him to hide. As I lowered further, I wondered if it was the police that made Luke flee. If Cerise had registered a complaint or issued an assault notification or something ridiculous like that. It was all paper and no action, just notification after verification after justification. Out here there would be nothing but justice I thought. A knife into flesh.
The ground at the bottom of the ravine wobbled and crumbled under my feet. Pebbles and roots held the mud in between together. I shouted, "Luke, it's Slopy McHunkerstein." It echoed throughout the ravine. The rain soothingly hit the earth, falling like a million pieces of spit. My glasses had fogged up from my breath so I removed them. I rushed towards the bungalow. Lightning reflected off the machete, and struck the ground a hundred yards away from me, the pulse shook the valley. Inside the first room Luke's stereo littered the floor. It had been mangled, ripped open with its circuit boards and copper wiring sprawled about. The rain dripped through the ceiling. I found the oxfords and the khakis, muddied and torn. Where is he, I thought, he knew we would come today, what does he have planned for us? The rope was still slung over my right shoulder, like an umbilical cord waiting for the doctor to sever it.
I kicked the door down in the second room and leapt towards a rat, assuming it was Luke. The VCR tapes had been stacked in a waterlogged pile. The foam mattress on the floor stunk from mold hanging underneath it. Next to the bed a formation of G.I Joe men, little toy soldiers wielding oversized guns and swords, crowded around one fallen action figure that carried no weapon, who had no protection but the plastic hands made to carry weapons. Tacked to the wall by four nails (except the top one that had fallen out) was a crude pencil sketch of a young man with blonde hair and a passive look written on his eyes and lips. James Dean. I screamed, "Luke. Come face me. Stop hiding!"
I wandered outside and saw a swarm of flies, thick as a piece of armor, buzzing around the creek's edge. I heard them calling, I stepped towards the water, knuckles clenched around the machete. Luke lay there, naked and half-submerged in the brown creek, he had spread his arms wide along the pebbles. I touched the cold, precise incisions at his wrists. The flies licked and sucked and bit. The chiseled cheekbones had become a hollow empty tarp stretched over a skull. I counted his ribs, cupped his face, and kissed the rotting cold lips of my departed hero. His eyes looked skyward. I searched for the bright white lights of Pittsburgh, but only the spit of gods wandered down my face. Damned. My poor brother was damned. For what reason I wanted to ask, if everything happens for a reason why did I come here to murder him? Are the animals happy or sad without emotion? Do the animals kill themselves? The flies buzzed around my face, sucking on an empty life. I did nothing to fight them. I picked up Luke's carcass and dumped him in the wild stream that coursed by Noah's bungalow. Neither happy nor sad, but damned.