The Mallard God Complex (7-1)

This story is split into two posts because of length.

7. Far From Any Road

           We drive through the night. I doze on and off, each time finding that we’ve hit a new set of road signs that don’t intend to elaborate on where we are any more than my companion. I’m through fighting. The night has been an exhausting one and when I surrender to sleep there are no dreams, only me and the inky blackness. I fall into it like a shroud and shut out the confusing mess that the world has become. There I stay for the duration of our car ride, and when I groggily awake bright sunlight shines through the windshield.

           Willow branches cover the sky, hanging over the road like sentinels. The ground is covered in water and mud. From the recesses of the forest around us my imagination produces the snapping of creatures I do not want to contemplate. I have never really much liked swamps. That’s another thing that needs to be added to the ever-growing list of things that displease me. Perhaps there will be a day when it shrinks, but I think it may be destined to the un-ending growth until I die (morbid, but I’ve accepted who I am).

            Midway is not known for its swamps, mostly just tall buildings and pricey prostitutes. How long have we been driving? Why am I in this car? I find the answers are not nearly as comforting as just sitting in silence. Thoughts are racing and the more that I think about it, the more I know the situation has gone far beyond my control. Being indecisive and following others appears to have left me at the mercy of a man who is likely clinically insane.  It’s a predicament to be sure, but one that my stubborn will is sure to see through. I cross my arms and try to enjoy the road.

            As we ride along the bog-ridden strip a familiar feeling begins to creep up inside me. It starts as a single thought: This man is going to kill me. I can see the words written in bold letters against the blank canvas of my unconscious.  Having just woken there are no other thoughts, only the big, bold letters, hanging in space, taunting me. I watch as they twist and shift into something ugly. Fear builds on fear, feeding, growing, and consuming all that is not a part of it. Soon my mind is a black hole.

            The scenery provides no comfort. Everything in this place is alien. In Midway there aren’t any trees, except for the few that have been planted  by rich philanthropists trying to give back to their communities. “Sorry about the wealth disparity, but here’s a tree!” It is a futile and feeble gesture of wealth distribution, but one that’s been made quite often, and as a result has produced little pockets of invasive plant life out of suburban curbsides. For the most part they serve to obscure the view of cars trying to cross and causing a myriad of accidents.

            By the time I’ve come out of the thicket of my disjointed thoughts we’re pulling off the road. This is it. A dirt turn off, a bullet to the head, and a group of pleasantly surprised buzzards. At least I’ll be giving back to the environment. The cynicism of my moments before certain death should bother me, but it doesn’t. When he pulls up to a church my dismay at being wrong seems to outweigh the joy that should come from theoretically being saved from death. I like to win, at all costs, even if it means losing…

            “Where are we?” I ask groggily, wiping the last of the sleep from my eyes.

            “A church!” He exclaims as if there is nothing more wonderful in the world.

            “Yes, I see that.”

            “Why would you ask then? Perhaps a better question would be ‘Why?’! The answer to that question is far more interesting than the obvious nature of our surroundings.” When it’s clear that he doesn’t intend to answer, I give in.

            “Why are we here?”

            “An excellent question Michael! You are catching on quite nicely.” I can’t tell if he’s patronizing me, or has just become momentarily thick. He continues on as if he hasn’t noticed. “There’s a man here who owes me a debt, and we need some spending cash. What’s that they say about birds and stones?” With that he steps out of the door and into the summer air. The buzzing of flies is loud and the smell of simpler people worshipping a divine being is strong.

            I’m not a religious man. Once I thought I was, but then the indigestion passed and I found that I wasn’t dying of stomach cancer. The important thing I learned was that anything that comes only in the brief moments before eternal sleep is probably a load of crap. Offending religious persons with my thoughts on their beliefs is never something I intend, but it does have a way of happening. For these as well as a multitude of other reasons, I am hesitant as I step out of the car and onto the gravel.

            The sun is momentarily blinding and so I stare at the ground. From the gravel there pokes a single clump of grass. A green island in an oasis of grey. I think of it as myself as I float through the hostile environment that is organized religion. We walk and it dawns on me that I don’t even know the man’s name. I don’t know his name, and I’m following him into a place that I frankly find frightening. If anything goes wrong with his ‘plan’, I’m fucked. There’s no room for optimistic interpretation in a situation defined by the pessimistic attitudes of realism.

            Walking through the congregation as they flock to the church is like something out of a sci-fi movie. I am the plucky hero, unfamiliar in a strange land, making my way past foreign creatures that want nothing more than to devour me alive. I’m not saying that all religious people are cannibals (I’m pretty sure that’s against religion right?), only that they strike me as the type of people who don’t like outsiders.

            A man wearing a faded trucker cap, and sporting a beer belly that is doing its best to protrude from his oversized, elastic jeans, spits on the ground in front of me. Customs of other cultures have forever eluded me, and so I’m not sure if this is a greeting, a challenge to fight to the death or a mere evacuation of excess saliva. To be safe I nod at him, indicating that I have seen his gesture, but with enough ambiguity that his brain spends the next minute pondering, rather than deciding to charge me. I live to fight another day.

            “Hurry up Michael! It’s starting!” He says in a hushed voice from the door of the church. His hands fold in a solemn pose of prayer and he walks into the building. Unsure of what to do, I too fold my hands and follow. The world b evaporates and transforms into a mix of hardwood and marble. Prayer is never something I have been good at, but I say one anyway.

            Please God, if by some oversight of science you do exist, please don’t let me get raped and murdered by hillbillies. Although judging a book by its cover was not expressly forbade in The Bible, something tells me my prayer isn’t getting through. I would imagine that most prayers are probably of the pious sort, and those praying for deliverance from death, usually come in a more humble tone. And that’s not really the way I roll.

            The silence in the church is stifling. I feel as though I am in the coffin once again. On both sides stacks of candles burned, lined with pictures of loved ones alongside a plethora of crosses and what are either items for adult pleasure, or rosary beads. I have to stifle a laugh at the thought and a man in a dark hat glares at me from the corner. He is dressed from head to foot in black with a white strip of cloth running down both sides of his robe. On the ends of the white cloth are gold tassels that sway as he moves toward the front of the congregation.

            “Michael, tread lightly” whispers the well-dressed man who brought me there. How much a name would help steady the pace of my inner monologue and make for pleasant flow. Unfortunately he still does not want to give me one, and instead is interested in the flock of people now gathering in the pews. The sheer amount of them makes their silence all the more impressive. There is a reverence in it that for a minute threatens to crack the bubble of sarcasm that has taken residence about my head, then a tin is passed around, people throw money into it, and I’m back to normal.

            Watching people throw money blindly into a box funding an organization that they barely understand whilst they can hardly feed themselves is demoralizing. I slump back into a humble prayer stance and follow the man to a pew. We sit in one of the back rows. It’s just far enough back that the intimidating church man in the black robe with the white cloth and gold tassels can’t see me, but also far enough forward that we don’t look as though we are trying not to be seen.

            I look to the man for any indication of what my ‘friend’ plans to do, but he has pulled a bible from the seat pocket in front of him and started to read. Once again I follow suit, and soon find myself dozing in the warm afternoon air. The bible’s teachings hold no interest to me, and even the interesting parts with the floods and fire are bogged down with overzealous piety. Who trusts a man that builds a boat just to watch the rest of humanity drown? They might have been sinners, but at least they didn’t stand by and watch as a cranky old man committed genocide. Isn’t there something in here about that?

            Sure enough, there isn’t. With its thousand or so pages the bible says absolutely nothing about social loafing or the bystander effect. Typical Christians, moping about the problem, but can’t do anything to solve it. I don’t much blame them; last man that tried went and got himself nailed to a cross. The finer points of religion and debates of a higher power seemed to have confused me long enough for the sermon to start.

            “Hello friends, family, neighbors.”

            “That’s the man.” He says in a hushed voice. I look up and find myself staring at the man in the black robes once again. I don’t know much about him, but I do know he is the last person I want to collect a debt from. It’s a bit like walking into a bear’s dean and trying to pull out a handful of its fur during mating season. There are just certain things that shouldn’t be done.

            “I notice our congregation today and how it has grown over the years. I can recall a few years back when it was just me and old Jim over there. We had a dream…” The piety is quickly drowned out by the cynicism of my own mind. I’m surprised we haven’t been noticed with the high horse I’m riding. I will full well admit it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do a damn thing to change it.

            “How exactly do you propose we get money from him?” I whisper.

            “Well, as a start, I think we should have code names. It helps keep anonymity, and I think keeps a certain level of fun about a rather serious task.” Code names might have been a real suggestion if we weren’t the only ones not in farm attire or church cloth. As it stands we stick out like a pair of dinosaurs in a chicken coop (people might think we’re related, but only in a very distant and extinct sense).

            “How can we have code names if I don’t even know your real name?”

            “Never mind that. I’ll be Snake, you can be Spunky.” I don’t much like the name Spunky, but if I have no choice in the matter. A new theme has arisen in my life, that of being a passive observer, floating through it, taking orders, and watching as it passes me by. It’s not exactly unpleasant either. When I’m not the one in charge there’s almost a sense of relief. That is when I’m not being buried alive or chased through a graveyard by God knows what.

            Is he going to know that I thought his name in vain? Sorry about that God, I’m still getting used to this nonsense. Shit, probably shouldn’t have called it nonsense. Fuck! Shouldn’t have sworn like that. If there is one thing that is clear about the day it is that I am terrible at being pious. I make a cross across my chest in hopes to atone for some of the sins I’ve just committed, but find halfway through that it’s sarcastic. My hands fall limp in prayer once again.

            “Ok Snake…” The word comes out like vomit. “What do we do next?”

            “We? We do nothing. You—you go up there and get the money from him.”

            “How in the hell am I supposed to do that?!” Members of the clergy shoot angry glares at me. Snake quickly crosses his chest (I’m not even sure the church we’re in is Catholic) and bows his head.   I shake mine in disbelief.

            “Well, you’re not making it any easier by shouting. I think he’s noticed us.” The whole situation is absurd. Collecting money from people who actually owe it to me in the past has been difficult enough. I once helped a friend move across state lines and couldn’t even muster the courage to ask for gas money. This preacher is far more threatening, and even if God doesn’t exist, I’m half convinced that he’s hiding some voodoo up his sleeve.

            “How much money does he owe you?” A man steps out the back of the church in a hurry.

            “Quite a bit.”

            “Well how much do I ask him for?”

            “Just do what you think is fair. And remember that it has to get us out of here. I haven’t even got money for gas.” He stares blankly at me once again. Somewhere deep in his head is another world that he keeps on visiting.  When he snaps back he immediately folds his hands in prayer, attempting once again to blend.

            Confusion does not even begin to describe the state I am feeling. It would be more accurate to state that I am looking at a mental image of a brick, and trying to figure out how to turn it into a lemon. There are some things that just can’t be done. Snake says nothing more, and remains with his head bowed. Well, what’s the worst that could happen? I find that this train of thought never leads me to the right station, but regardless I seem to board it anyway. With that in mind, I stand and walk to the front of the congregation.

            “God has given us the gift of this great church and for that we thank him. Praise the Lord.” The preacher says it with a subdued fervor. He is a snake, poised to strike, defending its territory. The reaction is immediate when I stand. From the very beginning he has made out who I am and why I am at the church, which is a damned fine skill as I still don’t entirely understand but that doesn’t seem to matter.

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Will continue on the next post, I ran out of words!