Collected Kill: Volume 1 (3 page)

“But nothing matters down here…”

“Bullshit!” Alex knelt closer to the tiny chocolate deity.  “Everything matters.  The world is bad and everyone down here is losing hope.  No one can see heaven from down here anymore.”

“But it’s the people who have tainted this world,”  Chocolate Jesus explained.

“But it was God who created this world in the beginning.  And when He did, He created the bad as well.  He created things that made Dad leave me and He made things like Nick.”

“But I’ve finally come to help you, Alex.”

Alex felt rage.  He felt how his swollen rectum still burned from Nick’s last visit.  He felt loneliness and distrust.  “Well, you’ve come too late.”  

Alex picked up the chocolate Jesus and shoved him into his mouth.

He clamped his jaws shut over a tiny scream and chewed with delight.  He felt movement in his mouth slowly dwindle to an oozing layer he licked off his teeth and gums.  The chocolate tasted so…divine.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Alex returned home to find Nick snoring on the couch and a note from his mother that read: Alex—went to the grocery.  Fix Nick something to eat when you get home.

Alex felt his stomach cramp from eating the whole chocolate chunk on an empty stomach.  He ran to the bathroom, pulled down his pants, and released his bowels into the toilet.  Sweat trickled on his forehead as he strained.

Before he could reach for the toilet paper, Alex felt something splashing in the toilet, clinging to his butt.  An echo of a gurgle erupted as he leaned forward.

Peering at his behind, Alex gasped, seeing a tiny lumpy figure still sprouting from his excrement.  The oblong turd shifted as arms molded onto each side followed by legs.  The tapered point of the mass fell off into the water as a horned head suddenly formed with a face that smiled.  The pointed tail was the last thing that developed.

The figure used its newly formed hands to spread apart Alex’s butt cheeks.  In a gravelly voice, the figure muttered, “Damn, kid, he sure did a number on you, huh?”

Alex felt his face flush at the embarrassing fact.  He felt weak and worthless.

The figure slowly left the area, climbing up his back and onto his shoulder, leaving a wet trail of footprints in its path.  “How about we make your world a little brighter today?” the devil  asked.

Alex shrugged his shoulder by mistake, smashing the turd-figure into his neck. “How can we do that?”  

He felt the figure slowly regenerate into its natural (or unnatural) shape and, for the first time, he noticed the unpleasant aroma that emanated from the creature.  He glanced to the side and noticed that the devil had two pieces of corn for eyes and chunks of sunflower seeds for ears.

“We’re going to have some fun, kid,” the devil stated, speaking from the depths of a cavity comprised of a hollowed popcorn kernel.

“How’s that?”

“Let’s play three wishes,” the devil said, “What’s your first?”

“I want my dad back,” Alex blurted out.

The dark lump of a head shifted back and forth, sadly.  “Nope, sorry kid.  Jesus already killed your dad off.  Next wish.”

Alex’s frown suddenly turned into a slight smile.  “My second wish is to watch Nick suffer and my third is to watch him die.”

“Now that I can do!” the lopsided mass of excrement grinned.  “We’re going to make ol’ Nick a sandwich.  My favorite is bologna, with Miracle Whip, pickles and razor blades.  Add a dash of Draino here and there and you got a power lunch.”

Alex’s smile widened, feeling his loneliness suddenly fading.  “I think I’m going to like you.”

“I thought you would.”

RAISE THE LORD

It was on the sixth day of October that God was finally pronounced dead.  Suddenly the entire world was watching the news.  On a ski resort, somewhere in Colorado, God’s carcass slammed into the mountainside, killing hundreds of cross-country skiers.  

Christians mourned, Satanists cheered, while agnostics and atheists just scratched their heads and muttered, “What the fuck?”

Religions clashed over the event.  While some ignored the event as tabloid fiction, other religions claimed Buddha had fallen from the sky or that Jesus had taken a nose-dive during his second coming.

The final proof was announced.  Miracles suddenly ceased.  Holy statues stopped weeping.  Strange sightings such as pictures of Jehovah were seen no more.  And then the most convincing of all: the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

Christians all over the world wept for their fallen messiah.  Churches were abandoned.  Chaos crept into the streets.

Everything changed except that, somehow, Catholic priests still found altar boys to molest.

People came together for one last question: how could this happen?  How could an almighty, omnipotent Creator just die?

 “I’ll tell you one thing’s for sure,” said an old man on the street, “The fucker sure was old.  Probably just bit the dust like my friend Bill in the nursing home.”  The old man cleared his raspy throat.  “Yeah Bill got up one day, took a piss, then bang!  Head-first into the toilet bowl.  Drown in his own damn piss.  What a way to go.”

I just smiled.

 “What the hell do you think happened, mister?” the old man asked.

I looked up to the sky.  “Well, I would guess He just finally took a look at the world and realized what a terrible, worthless piece of shit He created.  If I were Him, I’d feel so distraught that I’d probably just jump.”  

The old man’s nose crinkled.  “The Lord was a jumper, you think?”

 “Yeah, if I made something this wretched–something that was actually worse than the abyss it was created from–hell yeah, I’d be so damn depressed, I wouldn’t think twice about it.”

 “You sure are a sick fucker,” the old man commented.

 “I was made that way.”

As the world fell apart in the months after, the Pope visited the mountainside in homage to the Great One.  Ironically enough, the Pope looked older than God himself, but kept on living.  He was escorted up the mountain by his posse of altar boys, blessing every inch where God’s protoplasm splattered the earth.

As luck would have it, the impact of God did little damage to the earth.  Months before, astronomers spotted a strange mass headed toward earth. They feared the worst: that a meteorite would break the earth’s atmosphere, causing catastrophic tidal waves and a crater that would stir enough dust to block out the sun for months.  Closer to the earth, the mass appeared, looking like a giant human body.  It changed shapes and positions and disintegrated much faster that a meteorite.  Only about one-hundredth of his original size ended up coating the mountainside with a congealing gelatinous mass that oozed like lava, but smelled more like burnt chicken.

I still thought God was lucky to go that way.  It could have been worse.  What if he didn’t break the earth’s atmosphere and was pulled into a gravitational stream between space, the way some comets orbit certain planets?  I could picture parents teaching kids with telescopes how to tell the difference between Haley’s Comet and God’s Carcass.  

Although the aforementioned ski resort God crashed into was put out of business, they quickly recovered, charging one hundred times the amount to “Ski on top of God’s corpse.”  The owners were kind enough to allow the world to place a memorial on their land, since no one could find a way to properly bury the Creator as He was strung across three miles of private property and the ski season was in full swing.

But wars soon broke out between the different religions on what symbols and what sort of memorial should be placed at the scene.  Some sects wanted a football stadium-sized mausoleum built for the Master, others argued that it would take too many tax dollars away from building the proposed Homeland Security Branch of the government.  In the end, the debate was mute, since the ski resort owners insisted that the memorial be no more than 7-foot square.

A simple wooden cross was inserted in the mountainside.

An official place of memorial was set at the Sansdorf Cemetery, a privately-owned graveyard that collected some of the world’s most notable figures.

I had traveled days to visit the spot of God’s headstone.  I ran my hand across the cold marble, careful not to touch the used condom that someone had flung atop the marker. I traced the lettering with my finger:

GOD

BORN: At the beginning of time

DIED: October 6

The current year was eclipsed by the words EAT ME spray painted in red.  

I looked across the yard and saw an elderly couple.  The old man stared down at a grave marker with the name Jack Kevorkian on it.  The couple wept out loud.  

Down one aisle, a pack of hooligans were kicking over headstones and firing a gun into the air.  The noises didn’t bother me.  This type of behavior had erupted everywhere.

One boy ran to the elderly couple and howled like a dog.  The old man held onto his wife with both hands while the boy scampered closer, thrusting his head up the old woman’s dress.  Another one of the boys shot the old man in the head.  They took turns on his wife.

Shortly after, they came my way. I stared at them.  They instantly grew calm.  The leader of their group nodded in my direction.  “Evening, sir,” he said politely.

“Evening gentlemen,” I replied.

They slowly walked away, each one bowing their head in my direction.

This marked the day when the old world ended and the new one began.  I was born the day that God died. I was awakened when God fell from the heavens.  It took almost three decades for his cadaver to drift through space and reach earth.  In that time I developed my calling, grew to understand the nature of balance. I knew the importance of my role.  Because it had to be done.  

If nothing ever died, nothing new would arise.  

I raised my hands to the sky, gazed across the shadowy graves before me, and yelled, “Let there be darkness!”

I paused, drew a breath and whispered,  “Rise. Rise. Rise.”

The earth quaked, the ground split.  The soil moved with things slithering from sealed and forgotten tombs.

To my left, the Easter bunny emerged from its tiny grave.  Its ears were worm-eaten, its eye sockets were hollow.  It squealed and lurched as if to hop, but spoke with a monstrous, low voice, “I want eggs!”

It made its way to the elderly woman sprawled across a tombstone, her flowery dress hiked up over her face.  The hideous rabbit shoved its nose into the woman’s crotch. In an echoed, muffled voice, I heard, “Eggs?   Need eggs!”

Next the tooth fairy scampered out of its grave.  It took flight with a pair of skeletal wings and punched the old man in the mouth.  His dentures fell to the ground and the tooth fairy grabbed them with hooked talons.  “Teeth!” it screamed, then: “Oh well, these will do!”

Santa Claus finally managed to wiggle his fat ass free from his tomb.  He flung a dirty, lichen-covered burlap sack over his shoulder and said, “Must find children.”

The entire graveyard was now alive and the only resemblance to any zombie movie was when the Man in the Grassy Knoll flopped out of his grave with a rusted rifle and yelled “Brains!”

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, on a remote mountainside ski resort, the giant carcass of God came to life, morphing into the image that it once was.  Skiers in lifts were the first to witness the mammoth thing regenerating into what looked like a malformed wombat with hazel eyes.

The thing screamed “Souls!” and the skies darkened.

Back at the cemetery, a young man tapped me on the shoulder, breaking my trance,  “What is going on?  Did you cause all this?”  He motioned toward the graveyard activity.

 “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.”

 “But why all this strange shit?” he asked.

 “If you ask me, people take their jobs too seriously,” I replied.  “Why not have a little fun in the process?”

 “I guess you have a point.” He said smiling, as the tooth fairy approached, punching him in the mouth.

It would take a few years for the undead God to finally clean up his mess.  He would consume souls as he lurched and swam across the world, collecting all His bastard children.  In the end, he would finally come for me, as this would be the final battle.  If I triumph, I inherit the power of creation.  

If I win, I plan to trap the essence of God and cast Him into a mere mortal that will become the only living thing on this dead planet.  

And I plan on teaching Him other lessons about responsibility.

The hard way.

BLESSED IS HE WHO TRUSTS IN THE LARD

1.

Outsiders claim we’re a cult.  Others say it’s a fat farm.  I know it’s the last step toward heaven and that we’re the chosen.

I was born in Beefleham, on a small farm where my father raised pigs and crops.  I remember that night when it all changed.  

I was only seven when my father ran into the house, his hands bloody, his face scared white.  Ma told me to stay put as she left the house.  My father led her to the barn.

Moments later, I heard her scream.  I ran for the barn and that’s when my life changed forever.

A pig’s innards were strung across the floor.  A pool of blood had spread beneath the tractor.  I looked to my mother and father who were both transfixed by the pig’s shuddering body.  

It wasn’t the first time I had seen my father slaughter pigs.  He had let me watch, had taught me the ways in which a farmer must sacrifice an animal to feed the family.  And the blood didn’t bother me, or the pig’s body jerking as the last of the blood circulated out of its pale body and onto the hay beneath our feet.  But what did bother me was the thing that crawled out of that pig, pulling behind it a mass of fatty tissue.

My father raised a pitchfork above his head and I flinched as the thing crawled closer to my father.

“Kill it, Maynard!”  Ma screamed.

But my father’s eyes were glazed.  Instead of fear, there were only tears as he threw the pitchfork away and knelt to receive it.

Ma’s scream left my ears ringing, disturbing even the chaos that had already settled in my mind.  I didn’t know what was happening.  It felt like a terrible dream, one that made no sense, but hinted at a secret meaning which only frightened me even more.