God of the Game (Dreamstate) (35 page)

   “Me, a paedophile?” he barked, “That hurts my reputation. I mean, how else can I get to the head but through the anus? Don’t ask me why? Ask the books...” he pointed at the alchemic volumes of encyclopaedia now strewn about; some on the floor, some hovering midair, and yet, some in between worlds – limbo, where evil spirits dwell. His poor apprentice would have to pick them up...by magic or manual, he’ll leave to that donkey.

  
“Ask god! Besides, it’s not that I fucked those poor children; all I did was I inserted my wand,” he winked, and swore he washed the twelve-inch enchanted stick after each kid. “And me, they imagined me with a dick...with a pitiable human organ...? How dare they?! I am
Nephlim
.” He zapped-pow the thick, bolted door and marched outside.

   
The Igor assumed housekeeping tasks. In the foreground, Master Wan is brewing lightning and thunder. The revered Wan has a habit of talking out loud to himself, perhaps the side-effects of too much isolation conjuring spells and potions. Outside, it’s a lush balcony of greens and creepers and rare and even extinct flowers. Overlooking, it’s fairytale land, the womb of bedtime stories, a child’s chronicle. “Everything starts with the kids. You want the world, possess the innocent,” Master Wan bellows. The stage is set for his young antichrist, the teenage anarchist; he’d forgotten about his earlier ostentation, he is now consumed by a new one. Master Wan glances at his cheap digital watch, presses a combination of buttons that go ‘dit-dit, dit-dit-dit’, and all over, in the government secured vault, the eyes of children twitch as they sit up and kill the first adult in sight.

This is not some Clive Barker production, neither the Village nor the Children of the Damned, and definitely it is not about cuckoo birds. This is the end of the world, William Borg thought. They’d caught the wrong person, or did they...? Maybe that fat bastard is piloting mayhem from his head...

He had no time to muse
however, for the children are no children no more. They are closer in resembling apparitions, or even angels right out of the Bible, an upgrade of the spontaneous combustion canine spectres witnessed around the world.

The scientists were the first to go, they just melted, disintegrated. William Borg didn’t believe in God. He was created by man. It’s not that he didn’
t want to by reason of philosophical rationalization or mathematical computation, he just couldn’t. It was out of his protocol. His priority was to contain the situation. Should the danger extend beyond the secured zone of the police headquarters, he was certain from the extractions of objective calculation that World War Four would begin.

Saved by the bell. The abominable two-headed cop rushed outside. Earlier they’d forced him to strip. They laughed at his uninterrupted erection; then one of them gazed leeringly. Muhammad ‘Tongkat’ Ali doesn’t know who’s worse; the one that’s rude and insulting and tempestuous, threatening to saw off his ancient rock; or the other, who’s always flying off to a flirtatious pose at the end of every ‘so called’ ominous sentence made, which sounded, to Ali’s seasoned mind, more like fantasy webcam sex, with the exception that this (unreciprocated) seduction was played out in front of the evidence recording camera. Good cop bad cop routine, all very perplexing.

Now, he’s tied up nude in a small white room, awaiting execution, which comes in the form of a ghost. A familiar ghost, one
whose manifest is durian and semen - white creamy plasma - as if melted flesh sloshing all over the un-rested spirit seeking retribution.

That was the substance of its last waking memories,
the anal torment by ‘Tongkat’ Ali administering fruit-enema. So now, with reckoning in hand, the ghoul approaches a whimpering Ali, and for once throughout his cursed lifetime, his appendage softened, and stayed that way.

Prior to the carnage, Roanna Fausi had already smelled something fishy. She has a sneaky suspicion concerning Pomelo Anderson’s business venture. “That brainless bitch is up to no good. And besides, how can someone as dumb as her start a chain of restaurants?” Roanna mused, “She
must
have outside help. There
must
be someone else behind the entire operation. It cannot be only Pomelo.”

Roanna Fausi will not accept the fact that
it is plausible under the dumb blonde deportment Pomelo Anderson could be a shrewd entrepreneur. Just using that stupid face to hide devious plots; now, that would make her arch nemesis an infernal contender. Roanna Fausi may deny this vehemently, but she’s worried because support is waning. See, Roanna, based on the advices of her publicist turned campaign manager, has merely been appealing to the emotional void of the public after the War. People are discontented over the current administration, but at the same time, they’d learn to live around the corrupt martial law. Through bribery and black markets, society survives, and some may even say, thrives.

For more than twenty years human
kind has sieved through the wreckage hoping to find a sliver of their former selves, but when vast natural resources have been swallowed by the tyranny of battle, tomorrow can always wait. Today we must eat. Leave cultural heritage out; let world-famous monuments be covered in moss and their facades dilapidate; allow commercial buildings to be desecrated, raped by homeless families. Let us only think about beauty, about aesthetics, when our tummy is fed, and fed continuously, at that.

A promise, Roanna gives a promise, a rally cry to hold our hunger pangs for a better future, delayed gratification; but Pomelo Ande
rson provides cheap food, food which not only fills the stomach, but models the masses after her.

What would women give to assimilate the
most lusted over female in the world, and men large diverse packages? Not much it seems, but because it is very affordable - only
4 dollars and 38 cents
for Tuesday’s buffet at the most - and it satiates their growling stomachs, Roanna didn’t stand a chance. It’s not that Pomelo’s running for office, but as long as Maslow’s physiological needs of sustenance and cosmetic beauty are met, humans won’t be bothered by her dream of a better mankind no more.

Pomelo Anderson, according to the campaign manager
, must be stopped at all cost.

Away from all this madness, in a closed-circuit community, Brit Patt is adapting to his new life. They grow their own produce, raise their own cattle; they don’t adhere to the self-imposed sufferings of those worldly deniers of Christ. They pray for them though, and leave the rest to the will and wisdom of the meek and gentle Saviour.

   “It is inevitable for
those who do not follow the narrow way to fall into the jaws of destruction; for broad is the way, and sheer cliffs are at the end of it,” the abbot preached.

In a private time with Brit Patt, strolling in the vineyard, the former
male celebrity of the year asks, “How do you deal with your inner demons? How do you deal with your compulsive sins?”

The righteous man of God quoted
excerpts from Romans chapter seven, and concluded that it is not Brit Patt who sin, but rather, sin itself that sin! And since Brit Patt and sin are not one and the same, they can easily exterminate sin.

This
the world does not realize. Men think they are hooked on to sin, and women think
they are
sin, and the world is evil because of their desires and sufferings.

  
“But you know better, man is separate and not responsible for sin,” the abbot concluded.

Another occasion
, in the abbot’s dank study, which smells of musk and rosewood, Brit Patt, who was still struggling with this doctrine, asks if there was any technique to secede sin.

He admitted
, due to the many years at the forefront of the entertainment industry, his spiritual senses had been dulled. Mr. Patt confessed, with phlegm and mucus, that he was an
Onanist
even in the midst of this holy environment and amongst pure brothers.

In fact, he felt even more condemned than before
, and in thrall to his weakness, he is professing the possibility of taking his own life.

The abbot smiled. He sta
rted telling the story of his youth, dealing with his own set of sins. And since it was many forgotten years ago, before the War, yes, even before the bitter battles of the decades, World War Three, which ravaged the Earth, the abbot was but a twenty-something-year-old young man just out of college, and he’d come upon the teaching, ‘
it is not he that sin but sin that sin
;’ and he grappled, yes he grappled, he struggled with his own set of sins, which he could not overcome, till the Master, the one who originated this thinking, suggested a simple exercise.

He, like Brit Patt now, was also in tears, contempla
ting suicide, disgusted with his prurient self. He therefore understood what the new recruit was experiencing, the torment, the will wanting to do what’s right, but inescapably submerged by the flood of iniquity. If this dogma is so easy and natural, why then is it so hard to adhere? To carry out? Yes the abbot could relate every inch; and Brit Patt felt comforted in the presence of one so wise, one so strong, so experienced of his own turmoil. But most importantly, he was with someone who had rooted out his carnal dilemma. Surely he can learn from this man.

  
“That simple exercise,” continued the abbot, “which the Master suggested was to imagine sin as a person. This person is on his knees. This person is grovelling and begging for his life. This person is dirty and filthy and dressed in rags. This person has a gun in his mouth, or at the back of his head.” He paused. “This person is crying...he is crying out to you. He is begging you for mercy; he is saying, ‘For the love of God...please...I have a family’, or whatever else
crap
he’s got coming out of his mouth. This person is promising you riches; if it’s a girl, she’s promising you a good time. This person, he is promising you fame. He is promising...if you let him...if you let him go...you can have anything, anything you want in this world, all your troubles will be over. In fact, this person is promising, if you spare his life, a trembling tone in his voice, if you spare his life, you won’t see him again...you won’t
sin
again...he’ll disappear...it’ll all be all right.” The abbot shakes his head and warns the younger, “Don’t believe this person. No!” he bangs the table; Brit jumps. “Don’t ever believe this person! This person is Satan! And no matter how much he begs, no matter how much he cries,” the abbot’s eyes are ballooning, he’s taking something out of his drawer, “you hold that gun firm in your hand. Like the way I’m doing now...” Brit’s pupils dilate, his jaw vibrates... “And you pull that fucking trigger!”

Another man staring down the barrel of a weapon is Manny Masculine. Madam Medusa is oblivious to this – everyone is, in fact, everyone except for the dealers - but the small bodybuilder has got a drug problem: the pressures of the ghetto and staying at the top of competitive sports. That’s where his money goes. And with Rex’s ineptness to the cops, and the mismanagement of his cash prizes, Manny is owing gangsters big time.

Will he ask the Madam
e for help?
Of course not
. On the contrary, she is not to know. This is his problem; he’ll
deal
with his own problem.

But Manny ain’t dealing too well. Right now
, the big, two-meter-tall guy just crushed his knuckles;
and he’s thinking how the hell is he gonna keep this from her?
Next, they kick him in, five, six of them. He’s no good to them dead, corpses can’t pay, they just give a little warning, and an unwanted souvenir. Then they leave him to recuperate in the ditch.

The boss -
hairy chest under a gold chain and some swanky suit - says they’ll see him again next week. Make sure he has the Ks along this time, if he doesn’t want anymore dysfunctional body parts. They laugh their gangster laugh as they enter their gangster cars. The engines vroom, they pull away, and suddenly, tyres burst, and the wheels give way, splayed under the deadweight of concrete drivers and cemented passengers.

Big boss, having just lighted a cigar, and planning to jac
k some high-class call-girls whilst getting stoned in the limo, gets his wish; not the thousand-dollar-a-night social escorts, just the stoned part. He got stoned, alright.                

Question: How do you love a man when you can’t look into his eyes, when he can’t look into yours?

Answer: b
y wearing a veil.

Medusa cradled her lover.

He asks, “How long have you know?”

  
“Always,” came her reply, accompanied by a smile he spots for the very first time. The mouth muscles flex upward, and Manny Masculine sees her lips, red, and says how wonderful they are. He is more accustomed to viewing the labia. Medusa smiles again, a tear streams out of the black lace shroud; Manny wipes it off even as she laughs at his affectionate joke.

Inside, something was churning, her heart is melting away; and pain, confined all these year
s, mollified by male sacrifices, is liberating. There on the lonely road, with Manny lying, and Medusa bent over on her knees, embracing him, they both snigger and cry at the vulnerable redemption of their souls revealed; their weaknesses, nowhere to hide; and secrets, flung out in the open field.