He reduced speed on his
two-wheeled intergalactic cruiser with butterfly handlebars from
interstellar to suborbital and gracefully soared up the cracked
cement driveway and into the cinderblock spaceport. He shut down the
power drive, which got its source from thought waves, and
disembarked, dropping the kickstand. He walked around the side of the
house, around to the front because he knew mother would be in the
kitchen where the back door led.
He walked quickly
through the living room, observing the gold sofa, father's matching
gold recliner, the dark wood knickknack shelf which displayed
mother's valuable vacation souvenirs, the console hi-fi that sounded
like shit, the hanging lamp with little amber colored plastic prisms,
and the gold carpet his feet were compelled to touch, because he
hadn't perfected his levitation suit yet. He didn't like to touch the
carpet; mother was wired to the whole house and if you touched
anything she could detect you. He noted the absence of plants,
animals, or people in the living room, and a velvet painting in an
elaborately carved wooden frame of an old Jewish sage in full white
whiskers, robed in a white with blue striped tallis, sounding a
shofar.
He heard mother in the
kitchen fixing dinner. It was Friday night – she would be making
roast brisket, kishke, chopped liver, and mandelbrot for dessert. She
kept a kosher home. Rabbi would be coming home with father for
shabbos dinner. Rabbi was a widower. Children had to wear skull caps
and recite the kiddush. This reflected well on father and mother. He
hated Friday nights.
He had to pass a doorway
that led from the living room to the kitchen. He reached down and
activated the invisibility screen on his belt. He silently slipped
down the hall past the open bathroom door, smelling the thick,
powdery air in the pink tiled porcelain room. He didn't like the
bathroom. It made him feel vulnerable, vaguely
nauseous. The bathroom could be a torture chamber or dungeon. Father
made him eat in there for talking back at the table, and washed his
mouth out with soap for saying dirty words.
His hand reached the
knob to his room. Shelter. Privacy. He swiftly shut the door, lowered
the blinds mother had opened, turned on the blacklight, turned on the
music. He lay down on his bed and fired up a joint. He looked at the
poster of a dark magical castle on an inaccessible mountain peak
rising out of a dense and mysterious forest. A crescent moon hung in
an inky sky impaled by a turret. He watched the banners flap in the
wind that the storm he knew was coming brewed up. He walked under the
shadow of the trees, the hard, cold ground beneath his bare feet,
sharp stones embedding in his flesh. Being the son of god on earth
was hard work. He was entitled to a rest. That unreachable rest.
He heard bitch little
sister come home from school as his will held the planets in their
orbits and the cosmos in its forward rotation, no matter how hard the
Evil Maldo tried to destroy him. The Evil Maldo – arch rival, equal
in power, but far far older. The Evil Maldo was a great overlord
commanding servants and spies so that the Web of Maldo was
intricately laced and spherically weaved around the universal cortex.
The gossamer strands like the scathing strings of an Eolian lyre
intertwined with the very life breath of the decaying stage; ignorant
actors disappearing through trapdoors and changing roles behind
jeweled curtains like kingly robes to carry out the drama:
“To be or not to be? .
. .”
And a zillion other
questions . . .
And a zillion other
quests . . .
And a million billion
answers . . .
And a million billion
goals . . .
And a million billion
zillion stars in the sky . . .
How many times that day
had he avoided the Evil Maldo and his spinning feelers only to become
entangled in other nerves of the all-encompassing brain who ruled
from his throne on a dark planet thousands of lightyears from earth?
Yet he had, as always, escaped – barely – to live out another day
another second another lifetime. How long would his sword remain
sharp, his lance keen enough to repel the advances of the Evil Maldo?
Only he stood in the way of the Evil Maldo claiming all existence as
his tribute.
He stood with a
scythe of silver and sea jade as a sea wall upon a sea mount. A
galloping sea horse ridden by a shimmering sea maid with sea green
eyes sailed past dancing sea holly as the sea king's slimy sea
serpent and baying sea wolves sought to overtake her. As stout as an
anchor he smote the wicked sea king's host into sea wrack.
SEA QUAKE ! ! !
Violent storm,
thunder and lightening, shock waves rolling, drowning, sea borne
gloamings in sea girt foam of sea lavender as sea eagles mate with
sea ravens screeching! . . .
“What is it?” he
responded to the knock on the door.
“We're eating!”
bitch little sister said.
He set the controls on
automatic so that the heavens would not run amok in his absence. He
shut off the music, and went out to dinner. “Oh, finally decided to
join the human race, huh?” said mother, eliciting a braying laugh
from father and a smile from rabbi who believed that when in Rome
don't claim to be the messiah.
Being the first born, he
was expected to say the blessing over the fruit of the vine, but he
did so mechanically, which was appropriate since he sometimes was a
robot.
Younger brother also
recited kiddush. He scoffed at younger brother. Younger brother was a
jock. Younger brother had friends. Younger brother had girlfriends.
Younger brother went outside and played. Younger brother didn't have
to worry about holding the universe together.
Rabbi said Hamotzi over
the challah.
Mother brought food to
the linen covered table and everyone set about eating. The flames of
the two shabbos candles in their brass candlesticks flickered as she
set down the dishes. Younger brother helped himself to the mashed
potatoes that mother had served in a china bowl. Usually she served
potatoes in the pot they were cooked in. Father asked bitch little
sister about school, asked younger brother about sports, asked mother
about housewivery. Mother replied, “I polished the silver.” He
wondered if she meant the shackles around her neck and ankles and
wrists that were obviously the cause of the back pains mother
complained about as she slumped around the house stopping
occasionally to rub her varicose legs. Mother's breasts were veiny
too. Father asked rabbi about religious matters, like the Men's Club
Bowling Nite.
He watched himself eat
even as he lay upon the safety of his bed surrounded by the music.
Who said you can't be in two places at the same time? Father then
asked him how school was. “Sucked,” he replied.
He was terrified of
school. Everyone there was an agent of the Evil Maldo. School took a
lot of energy to get through. After school he would fly to his
sanctuary, his intergalactic cruiser with black banana seat traveling
at incomprehensible velocities down the avenues of space and time. He
would park in the spaceport and retire to his quarters till the next
morning when the never ending - never changing parade charade of life
forced him into superficial conventionalities. Why couldn't they just
let him tend to the universe in peace?
“Dear,” said mother
to father, “we've got to do something about that attitude of his.”
“Why don't you take
your fucking attitude and stick it!” he shouted at mother.
“Alright! That does
it!” yelled father. “Get in your room and don't come out!”
He trembled as he closed
the door of his room and turned on the music. He moved his dresser in
front of the door. He laid down on his bed and used his psychic
electricity to set up a force field. He shut off the automatic
controls and took charge of the universe once more. He felt the
presence of the Evil Maldo mocking him, tempting him, chiding him,
deriding him, twisting his mind. He saw the grinning, leering face of
the Evil Maldo hovering in clouds of fog crowned with a halo of fire.
He saw, smelt, heard, tasted, and felt the pressure increase and beat
upon him, tossing and turning him in his bed, drawing tears from his
despair inflicted, despair inflicting eyes.
Loudspeaker blasts of
crushing decibels, shouts and anguished screams, monster amplifier
headphones of cackling laughter, gunshots through taut eardrums,
drumming, pounding, noise, sounds, voice . . .
“Open up, please open
the door. I just want to talk to you,” pleaded mother.
He focused his entire
psychic radiation into a slashing beam. The beam smote mother in the
heart. She stumbled back at the onslaught. Father sensing the
intensity of the attack came to her aid.
“OPEN THIS DOOR ON THE
COUNT OF THREE OR I'LL BREAK IT DOWN!”
He quickly drew up the
blind, punched out the screen of the window and jumped out into the
backyard. He raced around the house to the spaceport, boarded his
intergalactic cruiser feeling the strength return to him as he firmly
grasped the dirty white handlebar grips. He launched his vehicle out
into the night and sailed past the opening back door from which
father yelled and mother cried.
He increased speed down
the driveway, out into the street. He soared madly past rows of
flashing houses cursing everything and everyone to eternal suffering,
turned once more to look back at mother, father, younger brother,
bitch little sister, rabbi in the driveway.
Turned to meet the
oncoming eyes of the Evil Maldo, smiled, said goodbye, and kissed the
front end of a Mack truck.
