Jarett Kobek - Only Americans Burn in Hell

She saw an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians , in which a family of multimillionaires proved that the biggest existential threat to the African-American male was not the Ku Klux Klan or the organized brutality of law enforcement or the school-to-prison pipeline but, in fact, the family themselves.

She saw an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show , in which a multimillionaire comedian excreted a synthetic variant of sisterhood.

She saw an episode of My 600-lb Life , in which a multimillionaire doctor ritualistically abused poor people who’d destroyed their bodies with a toxic diet of repressed homosexuality, junk food, and prescription painkillers.

She watched CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, which were 24-hour news channels dedicated to obsessive, and non-stop, coverage of Donald J. Trump.

These television networks were watched by the elderly and the insane.

These networks served a valuable social function.

They were voluntary euthanasia through informational poison.

Celia shut off the television.

She wanted to go home.

The next day, Celia stood in the living room of the house on the hill.

She looked out over the infinite vastness of Los Angeles.

She cast a spell.

It was some bullshit magic that was intended to solve an intra-narrative problem while moving forward the storytelling.

The spell was supposed to create a direct line of smartphone navigation to Fern. It was supposed to be another bullshit tendril of ropey saliva.

But Celia’s spell did nothing.

It fizzled.

Here is why Celia’s spell fizzled: Fern was nobody’s fool.

Fern knew that her mother would try to find her.

Months before Celia took possession of the house on the hill, Fern had cast her own spell, which blocked any attempts to establish a ropey strand of smartphone navigation.

As Celia’s spell fizzled, Rose Byrne watched from the alpine-blue couch. She looked like a teenager who’s been told by her parents that the whole family is going on a sea cruise themed around an intellectual property geared towards children.

Celia tried to recast her magical bullshit spell.

It fizzled for a second time.

The two women from Fairy Land conferenced as to what was wrong.

Neither of them suspected Fern of blocking Celia’s spells.

Rose Byrne said that perhaps Fern was no longer in Los Angeles, but it was pointed out that this wouldn’t block the ropey smartphone navigation.

Besides, Celia could sense Fern’s presence in Los Angeles. It was one of those fucked-up faery things, just a green feeling that her daughter was present in the same rough geographical locale.

Rose Byrne suggested that as they were in the United States, they could emulate the practices of the American security apparatus.

She proposed that they track where Fern had spent her money and then triangulate her location based on clusters of purchases in a localized region.

Celia cast a spell.

It did nothing.

Fern was from Fairy Land.

She was using an older, weirder form of magical bullshit than money.

Rose Byrne suggested summoning Rusticano.

But no one wanted that.

The women of Fairy Land were stumped.

Then Celia remembered something Maeveen Licksweet had told her.

There’d been a period, back in the Nineteenth Century AD, when Maeveen Licksweet had spent a great deal of time away from Fairy Land. She’d traveled around the world for reasons that she never shared with anyone.

But she did talk about something that she’d noticed in Udine, where she’d spent three weeks.

Maeveen’s landlady in Udine was a widow who’d convinced herself that whenever she slept, she went on a spiritual journey into barren fields where she did battle with witches.

In her dreams, the widow would beat the witches with bundles of fennel and the witches would beat the widow with stalks of sorghum.

One day, after Maeveen returned to her lodgings, the widow asked if Maeveen’s room had been painted.

Of course not , said Maeveen. Why would I paint a room? And what is paint, really?

Then why is the room the color of wolves? asked the widow.

Maeveen thought this was more witch nonsense, but she followed the landlady into the room.

At first, Maeveen couldn’t see what the widow was talking about. But then she caught it out of the corner of her eye. A faint glow permeated everything.

If Maeveen acknowledged the glow, the widow would chatter on for ages about the color of wolves.

Maeveen cast a spell that messed up her landlady’s mind.

The widow shut the fuck up.

The rest of Maeveen’s time in Udine was quiet.

As Maeveen traveled throughout the Italian peninsula, she kept looking out of the corner of her eye. In each of her quarters, in each new city, the glow appeared after she’d been in residence for roughly a week.

Maeveen spent some time thinking about the glow’s cause.

She realized that it was herself, in her magical puissance, having an effect on her lodgings.

It was a byproduct of being a citizen of Fairy Land in the mortal world.

After Maeveen reported this story to the women of Fairy Land, the few who did leave the island noticed that they too had the same effect on their lodgings.

Celia recalled Maeveen’s story and realized that although she was unable to find Fern, she could seek out the radiation traces of her daughter’s puissance.

Celia cast a spell, with as broad a mandate as possible, to look for sources of preternatural power in Los Angeles.

But Los Angeles was as bad as Fairy Land.

It was full of magical bullshit.

It had been built on magical bullshit.

It was nothing but magical bullshit.

About fifty ropes of smartphone navigation saliva emerged from the living room of the house on the hill and stretched out into Los Angeles County.

“We have little choice,” said Celia. “We shall follow each until we find the one that brings us to Fern.”

Two practical matters arose.

Celia pointed out that their clothes, the haute couture of Fairy Land, were going to attract attention.

She cast a spell.

Celia wasn’t well versed enough in contemporary American fashion to pick clothes, so she let the magic do the work of a personal stylist.

The magic made the women look like recent transplants to Echo Park, which was a traditionally Latino neighborhood that had gentrified into a fashionable enclave of upscale dining and high-level annoyance.

The women’s fur-clad haute couture transformed into designer denim, vintage metal T-shirts, Balenciaga sneakers, and Marni handbags.

Rose Byrne’s T-shirt said: EMPEROR.

Celia’s T-shirt said: SAVATAGE.

Neither of the women knew it, but the magic had failed in its job as a personal stylist.

Vintage metal T-shirts were the hot look of the previous summer.

The other practical matter was one of transportation.

Los Angeles was too big for the women to walk, and the smart-phone saliva didn’t interface with magic windows, so teleportation was prevented.

Celia remembered the former Francis Fuller’s vintage black Jaguar XJ-S, which was parked in the driveway.

The women went outside and looked at the car.

Neither of them knew how to drive.

Celia suggested that she cast a bullshit spell of knowledge which would teach Rose Byrne how to drive.

For the first time in her life, Rose Byrne was about to find a natural place for her ingrained psychosis. She had become a driver in the hellscape of Los Angeles, just another murderous freak steering several thousand pounds of death machine.

Celia got in on the passenger’s side.

Rose Byrne got behind the wheel.

Her bullshit magical training took over. Her psychosis flowed into the machine and then back into her own body. She was ready.