Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

These flies came pouring out of the ragged neck of that golden body. They were big, the size of horseflies. All at once they were everywhere, and they came right at me. They came pushing at my eyes and my nose and my ears and flying right into my mouth, crawling down my throat. It was like stuffing yourself with raisins till you choke, except these raisins crawled and buzzed and bit at me.

The worst was they got all over me, crowding into my butt crack and pushing on my asshole and wrapping around my balls like Uncle Reuben’s fingers right before he squeezed tight. My skin rippled, as if them flies crawled through my flesh.

I jumped around, screaming and slapping at my skin. My gut heaved, but my throat was full of flies and it all met in a knot at the back of my mouth. I rolled to the ground, choking on the rippling mess I couldn’t spit out nor swallow back down. Through the flies I saw Doug Bob’s golden body falling in on itself, like a balloon that’s been popped. Then the choking took me off.

I lied about the telescope. I don’t need one.

Right after, while I was still mostly myself, I sent Pootie away with that old knife to find one of Doug Bob’s kin. They needed that knife, to make their sacrifices that would keep me shut away. I made Pootie seal me inside the bus with Doug Bob’s duct tape before he left.

The bus is hot and dark, but I don’t really mind. There’s just me and the flies and a hot metal floor with rubber mats and huge stacks of old Bibles and hymnals that make it hard for me to move around.

It’s okay, though, because I can watch the whole world from in here.

I hate the flies, but they’re the only company I can keep. The taste grows on me.

I know Pootie must of found someone to give that old knife to. I try the doors sometimes, but they hold firm. Somewhere one of Doug Bob’s brothers or uncles or cousins cuts goats the old way. Someday I’ll find him. I can see every heart except one, but there are too many to easily tell one from another.

There’s only one place under God’s golden sun the Devil can’t see into, and that’s his own heart.

I still have my quiet place. That’s where I hold my hope, and that’s where I go when I get too close to the goat cutter.

One day when I was driving home from work, I saw him there on the side of the road. He startled me at first, but I managed to control myself and apply the brakes. His face was fixed with a look somewhere between agony and elation. That thumb he thrust out at an odd angle was gnarled and had a long nail. The sun was setting and red beams danced around him. I stopped and leaned over to open the door.

“You’re Jesus, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said and held up his palms to show the stigmata.

“Hop in,” I told him.

“Thanks, man,” he said as he gathered up his robe and slipped into the front seat.

As I pulled back onto the road, he took out a pack of Camel Wides and a dark blue Bic lighter. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, but he already had a cigarette in his mouth and was bringing a flame to it.

“Go for it,” I said.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“Home, unless you’re here to tell me different,” I said, forcing a laugh.

“Easy, easy,” he said.

After a short silence, Christ took a couple of deep drags and blew the smoke out the partially opened window.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“You know, just up the road a piece.”

We stopped at a red light and I looked over at him. That crown of thorns must have itched like hell. I shook my head and said, “Wait till I tell my wife about this.”

“She religious?” he asked.

“Not particularly, but still, she’ll get the impact.”

He smiled and flicked some ashes into his palm.

We drove on for a while through the vanishing light, past fields of pumpkins and dried corn stalks. A few minutes later, night fell, and I turned on the headlights. I didn’t see it at first, but a possum darted out into the road right in front of the car. Bump, bump, we were over it in a microsecond. I looked at Christ.

He shrugged as if to say, “What can you do?”

“… and Heaven?” I asked as the car traveled into a valley where the trees from either side of the road had, above, grown together into a canopy.

“Angels, blue skies, your relatives are all there. The greats are there. Basically everybody is there. It gets a little tense sometimes, a little close.”

“You said that ‘basically’ everybody is in Heaven,” I said. “Who isn’t?”

“You know,” he said, “those other people.”

We kept going past the fences of the horse farms, the edges of barren fields, until Christ had me stop as McDonald’s and order him a quarter pounder with cheese, and a chocolate shake. I paid for it with my last couple of dollars.

He said, “I’ll pay you back in indulgences.”

“Hey, it’s on me,” I said.

He wolfed down the burger like the Son of Man that he was.

“So what have you seen in your travels?” I asked.

“You name it,” he said, sucking at his shake. “The human drama.”

“Do you ever stop anywhere?”

“Sometimes. I’m always on the look-out for an old Howard Johnson.” There was a short pause and then he said, “Could you step on it a little, have to be in New Egypt by eight.”

“Sure thing,” I said and put down the pedal. “You meeting someone?”

“I’ve been seeing this woman there on and off for the past couple of years. Every once in a while I’ll appear, give her a little push and then split by sunup.”

“She must be pretty special.”

“Yeah,” he said, and took out a flattened wallet. “Here she is.”

He showed me an old photo of this forty-five-year-old ex-blonde-bombshell in a leopard bikini.

“Nice,” I said.

“Nice isn’t the word for it,” he said, with a wink.

“What’s she do?” I asked.

“A little of this, a little of that,” he said.

“No, I mean, where does she work?”

“At the funeral parlor. She sews mouths and lids shut. She lives in a small house in the center of town. When I get there, she’s usually in bed. I step out of the armoire, minus the robe, and slip between the sheets with her. We eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil for a few hours and then lay back, have a smoke.”

“Does she know who you are?”

“I hope by this time she’s figured it out,” he said.

“She’ll end up going to the tabloids with the story,” I warned.

“Screw it, she already has. We were in that one recently with Bigfoot on the cover and the story about the woman who turned to stone on page three.”

“I missed that one, but I remember the cover.”

All of a sudden Christ sat straight up and pointed out the windshield. “Whoa, whoa,” he said, “pull over like you’re going to pick this guy up.”

Only when he spoke did I see the shadowy figure up ahead on the side of the road. I could see it was a guy and that he was hitchhiking. I passed by him a few feet and then pulled over to the shoulder. We could hear him running toward the car.

“Okay, peel out,” Christ said.

I did and we left that stranger in the dust.

“I love that one,” said the savior.

A few minutes passed and then I heard a hatchet of a voice from the back seat. “You fuckers,” it said. I looked in the rearview mirror and there was the Devil-horns, red skin, cheesy whiskers in a goatee. As I looked at him his grin turned into a wide smile.

Jesus reached back and offered a hand.

“Who’s the stiff at the wheel?” asked the Devil.

“You mean fat boy here?” Christ said and they both burst out laughing. “He’s cool.”