Too steeped in romantic possibility is my ghost heart to ignore this turn of events. I recline on the bed’s satin coverlet in what I hope is a not-unappealing pose. Into my ghost mind, unbidden, unwelcome, comes the image of my cigarette-smoking, wigless, panty-free nana stretched the length of my identical bed in the Rhinelander penthouse. To vanquish this image, I pat my postalive hand on the bed beside me and say, “So … you’re an angel; that’s cool.” If my Festus is unaware of my history of mauling fragile man parts, I’m not eager to educate him. Neither am I certain whether he knows my soul was damned to Hades. Finally I venture, “So, Heaven’s great. Don’t you think?”
Festus smiles at me with the same condescending sad-eyed expression my mom uses when she addresses the United Nations General Assembly. A flood of pitying tears, barely contained.
Undeterred, I say, “Yeah, Heaven is tons better than I figured it would be.…”
Festus silently continues to regard me, his lips trembling with compassion.
Defensive now, provocatively I ask, “Hey, when the combine machinery tore you to shreds, did it hurt? I mean, did it rip off your hands first? How did that work?”
At this, Festus settles his angelic self on the bed beside me. “Do not be ashamed, Miss Madison,” he says. “For I know you’ve been discarded by creation to spend forever in the scalding anus of Hades.” His placid face says this without a hint of malice. “I know that you suffer constant starvation with nothing to slake your hunger and thirst save a mighty banquet of fresh urine and excrement.…”
Ye gods. Gentle Tweeter, I am speechless. I haven’t a clue where Festus gets his information, but Hell is not that bad. I do not eat caca-doodie or drink pee. Don’t you believe a word of this.
Charles Darwin I am not!
“I know also,” he says, casting a look of ultimate pity upon me, “I know that you’re forced to copulate endlessly with leprous demons and subsequently bring forth their filthy progeny in circumstances of utter degradation.”
Hey, CanuckAIDSemily, back me up, here. Nobody is forced to get down with demons, right? As a virgo intacta, I have solid proof to the contrary, but there’s no way to submit such evidence for Festus’s inspection. Meaning: If I even try to show him my maidenhead, the gesture is going to look somewhat slutty.
“I know you exist despised by all worthy beings.” Festus blinks his blue cow eyes at me. “That every sentient creature considers you beneath respect. That in your present state you are more vile than—”
“Shut up!” I interrupt, lying rigid on the bed’s coverlet. My chest is heaving. My temper seething. I’d rather spend infinity snacking on putrid poo than be talked down to by some self-righteous angel. Possible boyfriend or not, I’m leaving. I stand. I straighten my glasses. I smooth my skort. “If you’ll excuse me,” I say. “I’m sure I’m supposed to be fornicating with some diseased corrupt gargoyle or something right now.”
“Wait,” Festus entreats.
I wait. There it is, my greatest weakness: hope.
“God cast you down unto the Pit not because you are vile, but because God knows you are strong,” says Festus. “God knows you are brilliant and courageous and that you are not weak and would not be debased by the torments which destroy weaker souls.…” Festus rises and hovers, fluttering in the air near my face. “Since the beginning of time God has intended for you to be His emissary into perdition.”
God, Festus explains, knows that I’m pure-hearted.
God recognizes that I’m exceptional. He believes me to be sweet and smart and kind. God does not think I’m fat. He wants me to be his supersecret double agent.
Like nothing so much as a celestial version of Darwin’s annoying little finches, Festus jets and darts in his golden fairy excitement, finally taking up a perch on my shoulder. Standing parrot-style beside my ear, he says, “God beseeches you to prevent a grave impending catastrophe.”
DECEMBER 21, 1:28 P.M. HAST
My Date with an Angel
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[email protected] Gentle Tweeter,
Even now storm clouds gather in the sky above the Pangaea Crusader. Clouds the color of blue lead, the color my mouth sees when I chew on a graphite pencil, these race toward Madlantis from every horizon, a dark canopy so low that the yacht feels sandwiched between this, this oppressive black ceiling and the gleaming, cotton-colored, plumped-polymer dreamscape. And, no, it is not lost on me that my situation is so like the seafaring Beagle adventures of Mr. Darwin. The both of us: boldly cast upon the cruel Pacific to seek our destinies. Being Mr. Darwin’s supernaturalist successor, I steel myself to bear witness even as Mr. K paces the passageway outside my locked stateroom door. Even while my upstate squire reveals his divine truths unto me.
“Fear not, Miss Madison,” says he. In my sealed stateroom full of stuffed animals and shed cat hair and dead fleas, the angel Festus says, “God has decreed your existence and God dictates your every perfect thought and action.”
Angel Festus glows with a soft pink light, like a Park Avenue lamp shade lined with cerise silk, and his light flatters everything upon which it shines: the unread copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves on my bedside table, obviously a gift, the spine unbroken … a dog-eared copy of The Joy of French Cooking, my own favorite bedtime reading … a silver-framed photograph of my parents grinning naked on an eco-resort beach in Cambodia. Weensy Festus, his angelic features, his fingers as well as his nose and cleft chin, look to have been piped from a pastry bag filled with butter-cream frosting.
As he speaks, his open expression suggests the delicious invitation of a pastry cart, a bakery window, a box of chocolates. “God has gifted you with travails—not to test you, but to prove to you your own innate strength.” His voice is as soft yet as robust as the ocean swells; his words sound as faint as thunder rolling from some great distance.
“God brings all spirits into mortal bodies so they might test themselves and more fully comprehend their own power,” explains this pint-size beau, the upstate cow manure still clinging to his booted appendages.
From beyond the locked stateroom door, another voice shouts, “Angel Madison! Where are you?” A sputtering barrage of flatulence follows, the so-called “Hail, Maddy” of a devoted Boorist. That voice, the quavering vibrato of Mr. K, continues, “I’m really needing to talk to you!”
As Festus explains it, the rapid growth of Hell in recent history is beginning to unnerve God. At current earthly levels of rudeness and uncouth behavior, nearly all souls are damned. “Precious souls as young as three or four, raised on the misplaced multicultural priorities of Sesame Street,” he claims, “are doomed before they even enter the godless morass of the public school system.” In comparison, he says, the flow through the Pearly Gates has slowed to a trickle, and God worries that soon Heaven will be rendered irrelevant, nothing more than a quaint ghetto populated by a few squeaky-clean products of homeschooling. If some global cataclysm were to wipe out humanity at this moment in history, all souls would go to Hell. No one would be left to breed on Earth. Satan would win, and God would be humiliated.
Therefore, God had used me to infiltrate Hell. Meaning: I am God’s secret agent, and even I didn’t know my own strategic undercover purpose.
In the burdened silence that follows, I ask, “Why doesn’t God like Sesame Street?”
“Yours, Miss Madison, is a singular perfection like the flame of a candle,” insists Festus. “This is the reason God cast you into the inferno. And why God set you in battle against the worst souls in human history, and why in all of these trials were you victorious.” So passionately does Festus deliver this speech. So vehemently. His corn-fed frame fairly dances within his Sunday-school clothing.
Simultaneously, heavy seas lift Madlantis and drop us. Stuttering flashes of lightning flash blazing Morse code in the portholes. Ye gods. All is turmoil without.
“God almighty does not labor to create souls simply for Satan to steal them away,” says Festus, his eyes b
right with reflected lightning.
The angel says it’s my purpose to vanquish Satan and to rebuild God’s church on Earth. To roll back legal access to safe on-demand abortion and birth control … to righteously forbid marriage between sodomites … and to end the financial drain of welfare entitlement programs.
“You will be God’s flaming sword of punishment!” This sturdy man-boy angel, his fists raised above his blond head, he flares like an arc, a spark, a stubby bolt of divine fire. His hummingbird wings buzz. His shouts ringing loud as cathedral bells, he exclaims, “Join us, Miss Madison! Join us and rejoice!”
Meaning: I’m supposed to thrash Satan and cut funding for public television. Meaning: I’m conflicted here.
And no, Gentle Tweeter, I might be somewhat enamored of my angelic suitor and his flattering message, but I am not deaf to the draconian objectives he describes. It’s enticing, the idea of myself as a messianic figure, the hand of an omniscient savior, but not if it means I have to be a dick. In reasonable protest, I insist, “I can’t! I can’t best Satan! He’s too powerful!”
“Nay,” my barnyard Romeo says, “but you already have!”
“What?” say I.
“You’ve already once bested the Prince of Darkness!”
I haven’t a clue what my postalive, postfarmer boyfriend is talking about.
“Angel Madison,” bellows the voice from the hallway. “We’re running out of time!”
“The end of the world is scheduled for three o’clock this very afternoon,” says Festus.
According to my noncounterfeit Rolex, it’s already one thirty.
DECEMBER 21, 1:30 P.M. HAST
Dictating a Desperate Edict
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[email protected] Gentle Tweeter,
From the portholes of my stateroom aboard the Pangaea Crusader, the view in all directions is clear rain pelting polished white. Everything is crashes of blue lightning like blinks of crooked color, like towering neon signs that advertise God’s wrath. These flashes illuminate the polystyrene hills and plains that stretch toward every horizon. Unbridled winds lash.
The stateroom door is still locked, but a luminous blue figure slowly enters. At first the blue is a pale glow swelling in the center of the door, bleeding through the wood; then it’s a blue stomach lined up and down with a vertical row of shirt buttons. Following that, much higher on the door, the tips of a blue chin and a blue nose appear as a familiar blue form emerges. Last to flow through the locked door is a not-appealing pigtail of braided blue filth. With that Mr. Crescent City stands among us.
Having once more taken leave of his overdosed body, he blinks, looking around at my Gund stuffed monkeys and Steiff bears. His rheumy eyes settle on the radiant golden Festus.
According to the angel Festus, God chooses a messenger every few centuries to deliver an updated game plan for righteous living. Moses or Jesus or Mohammad, this person disseminates the newest generation of God’s Word 2.0. Noah or Buddha or Joan of Arc, the messenger upgrades our moral software, debugs our ethics, upgrading our values to meet modern spiritual needs. If you believe angel Festus, I am nothing more than the latest version of God’s earthly mouthpiece.
“After you prevent today’s cataclysm,” declares the beaming Festus, “you must halt all human forays into the evil field of stem-cell research.”
“Beg pardon?” I ask.
Festus rails, “As God’s voice, you must curtail the freewheeling civil rights of women.”
Flattered as I feel at being so chosen, I’m not thrilled with the news I’m being given to deliver.
Lifting his tiny arms into the air and flailing his hands, preacher-style, my upstate boyfriend rants, “It is God’s will that all women abstain from voting and birth control and driving automobiles!”
While my pint-size Aryan poster child rattles off the rest of God’s demands—no more blacks marrying whites … no men marrying men, ever … absolute mandatory circumcision for all members of both genders … veils, lots of veils and burqas—I turn to Mr. K and make my introductions. Not even death negates my years of decorous training in Swiss etiquette and protocol. “Mr. Crescent City, this is the angel Festus.” With an appropriate cant of my head, I politely say, “Angel Festus, this is Mr. K. He’s a ‘psychic booty caller.’ ”
“Angel Madison means ‘bounty hunter,’ ” says Mr. K. He gazes upon Festus, that golden blaze, as if my upstate swain had summer sunshine coursing through his veins. Giving a deep, blue sigh, Mr. K says, “I wish I were an angel.”
It’s here, Gentle Tweeter, that the idea strikes me like a bolt of blue lightning. To Mr. K, I say, “You really want to be an angel, huh?”
“I just want to die,” says Mr. K, “and have everything be happy and painless. Forever.”
“Find God,” says Festus, “and you’ll find peace.”
To that I say, “Angel Festus, shut up.” I add, not wishing to offend, “Just for now, okay?” Already I can see that Mr. K’s blue is fading from cerulean to turquoise, from azure to French blue. Our time is running out as his not-healthy liver is winnowing the ketamine from his bloodstream. As he fades from robin’s egg to powder blue, I offer a bargain. “Take my parents a message, and I promise to make you an angel.”
“A message?” he asks.
“Tell them to stop with all the cataclysm stuff, okay?” I say.
Mr. K returns my gaze with puzzled stoner eyes. “And I’ll be an angel?”
“Tell them,” I say, “that they’re stupid hypocrites, and that they shouldn’t have not told me about Tigerstripe having a gruesome kidney disease.”
Mr. K begins to nod, his eyes closed, as if deeply comprehending my words. Eyes closed, he smiles.
“And tell them,” I say, “that I accidentally killed Papadaddy Ben by semidetaching his wing-ding because I thought it was a malevolent, rapidly inflating dog boo-boo.” I ask, “Does that make sense?”
Eyes closed, Mr. K nods sagely. His pigtail bobs in agreement.
“Also tell them,” I say, “that I only invented Jesus on my mobile phone, but it turns out that there is an actual Jesus.…” Turning to Festus for confirmation, I say, “Right?”
“Correct,” Festus affirms.
To Mr. K, I say, “What’s most important is that you tell my mom and dad that I really, really love them.” Leaning closer to my blue confidant, I whisper, “And please tell them that I did not suck on any spider monkey ding-dings or do the Hot Thing with any water buffalo, okay?”
The slack look on Mr. K’s face suggests I’ve overloaded my messenger. As his soul vanishes, gradually leaching backward to wherever he’s left his physical body, the pale blue of him fades to grey. The gray goes to white.
The walls of the stateroom begin to vibrate, and a not-unpleasant hum suffuses my bed. The megayacht engines of the Pangaea Crusader have started. Outside, increasing gales scour the decks and thrum the rigging.
“Above all, please,” I entreat my fading go-between, my meaty hands balled together in prayer, “tell them to die with all the full-size candy bars they can carry.”
DECEMBER 21, 1:45 P.M. HAST
The Abomination Spurs a Cataclysm
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[email protected] If we compare the ancient codices recorded by scholars since Solon, we see almost identical depictions of the end times. The so-called global Doomsday mythos depicts a beautiful thing-child leading a procession of disciples up the slopes of a gleaming mountain. The mountain rises at the center of the Pacific Ocean, and this ceremony takes place in the waning sunlight of the shortest day of the year.
For the first time, Persephone will not return. Dawn will come, but no one will be alive to witness the next sunrise.
In place of plastics, now the she-child is borne along by a retinue of human beings. Instead of dry-cleaning bags and soda bottles, serving as attendants are earthly potentates and rich chieftains, everyone dressed in costly crimson raiment. This vast throng parade
s upward across the barren architecture of artificial clouds. Their steps follow winding switchback trails. This procession mounts ever higher, swinging censers of sweet incense and bearing lit candles.
Around the horizon in every direction, great plumes of black smoke rise like tornadoes into the afternoon sky. Underfoot, the ground shakes. This mountain they scale is the tallest in the land. Its towering peak is level, a plateau, and waiting at the highest point is a massive shining temple. This bright palace appears as a pastiche of Gothic and baroque and attic shapes, of domes and spires and colonnades, the caryatids and cartouches rendered from glistening fluoropolymers. This part-cathedral, part-skyscraper crowns the summit.
It’s in this glorious sterile sanctuary, overlooking the entire world, where two millennia of scholars vow that human history will end.
DECEMBER 21, 2:05 P.M. HAST
Thwarted by Continental Drift
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[email protected] Gentle Tweeter,
We’re running. My chubby legs scamper. My tubby knees pumping high, I barrel along, sopping with perspiration. My loafer-shod feet stomp, scale, vault up the steps of a staircase molded into the steeply pitched flank of a nothing-colored mountain. A white, cipher-hued precipice. Scarcely without pause do I leap upward in pursuit of the cadaverous Mr. K, who sprints the stairs ahead of me.
Moments before, we’d emerged from my stateroom to find the yacht deserted. A veritable Marie Celeste. An unmanned Flying Dutchman. The salon was vacant. The decks not occupied. My borrowed PDA emitted its Europop ring tone, and Archer bade me, “Look outside.” He said, “Look out a porthole or whatever.”
In this landscape it’s hard to miss: A procession of people are walking single-file, ascending the slope of a peak in the middle distance. To a person, they all wear hooded red robes. Thus attired, the thin trickle of them resembles a rivulet of blood flowing uphill, following a narrow channel of steps which zigzags from the base of the white mountain to its peak. If my parents are among them, it’s impossible to tell, so identical are their scarlet-hued vestments.