Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days

Simon shut his eyes. Dream fragments arrived. A room that was somehow full of stars. A proud and happy man whose hands were flames.

He woke with a light shining hard and white in his eyes. For a moment he thought he might still be dreaming, dreaming of a terrible light.

A male voice said from behind the light, “Here’s another one.”

Another what, Simon wondered.

A second voice, female, said, “He’s not a Nadian.”

“Nope. He’s not.”

Simon got off the bed and stood blinking in the light. He said, “We just needed a place to sleep. We weren’t going to steal anything.”

“What are they doing here?” the female voice said. “Ask him what they’re doing here.”

Simon’s eyes adapted. He could discern two figures standing behind the glare. One was tall and hooded, the other shorter, with a nimbus of crackly hair standing out around her head.

Simon said, “We’re travelers. We don’t mean any harm.”

“People say that,” the male voice answered. “Harm comes anyway.”

A third voice sounded from down the hall. It said, “What did you find in there?”

It was a boy’s voice. A boy speaking with unboyish authority.

“APossessionless,” answered the man shape behind the lightglobe. “Looks crazy to me.”

Simon was still wearing the filthy stolen sweaters and the stained pants over his black multizippered kit from work. Looks crazy. Right.

He was briefly, strangely embarrassed.

Other people entered the room. Simon said, “Could you maybe drop that light a little?”

A pause followed, during which the man with the lightglobe seemed to be checking for permission. It apparently being granted, he aimed the lightglobe down slightly, out of Simon’s eyes, and revealed the following: himself, the bearer of the lightglobe, a man of seventy or more, wrapped in an old Halloween costume: Obi-Wan Kenobi. The crepey synthetic of the robe billowed around his lank frame; his gray head blinked out from under the hood, which was far too small for him and fit him like a skullcap. Beside him stood a girl around seventeen, a Blessed Virgin, cloaked in blue and white. Just behind them stood Catareen, in the grip of a Full Jesus. He’d had his face done, with the thorn implants at the brow.

The Jesus and the Blessed Virgin both carried stun guns.

From some invisibility in Catareen’s vicinity, the boy said, “What exactly are you two doing here?” His voice was like the sound of scissors snipping tin.

Simon answered, “The myth of heaven indicates the soul; the soul is always beautiful.”

“Poetry doesn’t really answer the question, does it?”

The boy stepped forward. He was probably eleven or twelve years old. He was disfigured. His head, big as a soup tureen, squatted heavily on his thin shoulders. His eyes were larger and rounder than they should have been. His nose and ears could barely be said to exist. He wore what appeared to be a man’s bathrobe, with the sleeves rolled up and the tail trailing on the ground. Ornaments hung from strings around his neck: a flattened Aphrodite tuna can, an orange plastic peace symbol, a bottle of MAC nail polish, a yellow-fanged cat skull.

Simon delivered a silent, futile plea to Catareen. Help me out a little here. See if you can muster something more useful than just standing there quietly captured, as if captivity were your true and natural condition.

He said, “We’re just driving through. That’s all.”

The boy asked, “Where would you say you were driving to, on a road like this? It only leads to other roads like this.”

“We just got off the podway for a little while. We wanted to see what the country was like.”

The Jesus said, “This is the country. This is what we’re like.”

The boy said, “I am Luke. Of the New Covenant.”

“I’m Simon.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Her name is Catareen.”

“We found your pod out front. We saw the window you broke.”

“I’m sorry about the window. I could, well, I could leave my name, and if the house’s owners ever come back, I could try to make it up to them”

“This is unusual, the picture you two present,” Luke said. “A man and a Nadian in a pod full of soymilk. I’m trying to think of the reasonable and innocent explanations.”

Catareen said, “No money. Not nothing, we have.”

The old man said, “We don’t use money. We never touch it.”

“Never,” said the Jesus. “We keep clean.”

Simon said, “We keep clean, too. We’re trying to get to a brotherhood in Colorado.”

There was a chance of impersonating Christians in flight. It was a small chance but nevertheless.

“A brotherhood that accepts Nadians?” Luke asked.

Simon said, “That I could look with a separate look at my own crucifixion and bloody crowning.”

Oops.

The Blessed Virgin cried out, “They’re with Satan!”

“Oh, I suppose they are,” Luke said, with an expression of weary disappointment.

The old man said, “Should we slay them here or take them back to the tabernacle?”

“Tabernacle,” Luke said.

The Jesus said, “Let’s do it here.”

“No. We’re taking them to the tabernacle,” Luke replied. He was clearly accustomed to command.

“Oh, well, okay,” said the Jesus, clearly accustomed to obedience.

Simon and Catareen were taken downstairs and out of the house. There, parked on the road in front of the deliverypod, was an ancient Winnebago covered in faded decals that depicted guns, fish, and mammals.

“Give Obi-Wan Kenobi the engager for your pod,” Luke told Simon.

Simon obeyed. The old man snatched the engager from him like a squirrel taking a nut.

There followed a debate, rather lengthy, about who should go in which vehicle. It was determined that Luke and the Jesus would take Simon and Catareen in the Winnebago, and the Virgin and the old man would follow in the deliverypod. Simon and Catareen were put ungently in the back of the Winnebago. There was a miniature house inside. There was a small kitchen and a table with seats and a bedshelf. It was brilliantly colored, in the way of old things. It smelled of bread mold and warm plastic.

Luke got in back with Simon and Catareen. He took the stun gun from the Jesus and leveled it at them. The Jesus stood in the doorway, jingling the ignition keys in his pierced palm.

“You think you can manage them back here?” the Jesus said.

“Absolutely,” Luke answered. “About the gun, though. It’s set to stun, right? A five is nonlethal, right?”

“It’s on five?”

“It is.”

“Okay. Five is good. Five’ll knock ’em out, but it won’t kill ’em.”

“Good.”

Luke aimed the stun gun at the Jesus and fired. A bright blue beam struck the skinny, white-robed chest. The Jesus looked at Luke with an expression of profound bafflement. Then his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he crumpled away, out the door of the Winnebago and onto the street.

“Quick,” Luke said to Simon and Catareen. “Let’s get out of here.”

Simon stared at the fallen Jesus. One of his sandaled feet, surprisingly small, twitched on the Winnebago’s threshold. The rest of him lay sprawled on the asphalt in an attitude of ecstatic release.

“What do you have in mind, exactly?” Simon asked.

Luke handed him the gun. “Take me hostage,” he said. “Grab the keys and drive like hell.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Absolutely. Aim the stunner at me.”

Simon had no trouble with that, considering the boy’s unambiguous wishes.

“I’m going to go out in front of you,” Luke said. “Pick up the keys, and get us out of here. Do you understand?”

“I guess so.”