Jarett Kobek - Only Americans Burn in Hell

“You are right there, Rusticano,” said Freita.

This went on for hours.

By the end of it, Freita and Bianca had agreed to share the love of Youna Shifa. It was going to be the Fairy Land version of San Francisco polyamory. The only problem was that no one had bothered to ask Youna Shifa if she loved Freita or Bianca.

She didn’t.

The centuries passed.

Rusticano grew bored with the island. He asked Celia to send him to the mortal world, where he would make his way.

She agreed.

The only condition was that once Rusticano left the island, he could never return.

He departed.

Word filtered back through the usual channels.

Rusticano was in Spain.

Rusticano was in Germany.

Rusticano had opened a business.

Rusticano’s business sold luggage.

Rusticano’s business was evolving into fashion.

After the psychic cataclysm of World War One, there were no more reports.

At the very moment that he disappeared in a flash of untamed magic, Rusticano was sitting in a Coffee Fellows at München Hauptbahnhof’s northeast corner.

He was eating an egg bagel sandwich and talking to his friend Liv Lisa Fries.

And then, like that, he was standing face-to-face with Celia in the house on the hill.

“My lady,” he said. “It has been too long.”

“I have need of you, Rusticano,” said Celia. “The debt comes due.”

“Payment in full,” he said. “I am yours to command.”

Celia told Rusticano about her children and their conversion to Christianity.

“What would you have me do?” asked Rusticano.

“Talk them away from their folly,” said Celia. “Get them out of that building. Convince Fern to come back to Fairy Land.”

Celia tried to drive Rusticano to Stanford Avenue, but Rusticano insisted that before they departed, he be allowed to drive the Jaguar around the neighborhood.

He said that he was a fan of vintage British engineering.

“How will you find your way?” asked Celia.

“Rusticano keeps a smartphone upon his person,” said Rusticano. “But I require that you cast a spell and turn on its international roaming.”

Celia cast the spell.

Rusticano owned a Samsung Galaxy Note 8. He’d installed LineageOS 14.1, an open source fork of CyanogenMod, which was itself an open source fork of Google’s Android OS.

When Rusticano returned from his neighborhood sojourn, he carried a black duffle bag.

He did not explain the bag.

He informed Celia that she could drive them to Stanford Avenue.

They headed downtown.

“In my experience, people with religious beliefs are the least open to reason,” said Rusticano. “Yet Rusticano has his ways. My only request is that you do not interfere with my deeds.”

“By my leave,” said Celia, “I vow that I shall not interrupt you.”

“No matter the action?”

“No matter the action,” said Celia.

“The nature of the problem is that they are in this building and will not leave this building?” asked Rusticano.

“They believe they are doing the work of Jesus Christ,” said Celia.

“They always do,” said Rusticano.

“Have you read the Bible?” asked Celia.

“Once,” said Rusticano. “Many years ago.”

“Jesus was weird as fuck,” said Celia.

“I imagine that had he come to Fairy Land, a crucifixion would have been the least of his worries.”

Celia parked the car in front of the TUNA EXPRESS CO.

They followed the line of bodies inside the building.

They went up to the second floor.

They went into the backroom.

Fern was pumping out her brother’s blood into the mouths of several homeless men.

The Fairy Knight was on the table, half dazed.

“You say that you believe in Jesus Christ and do his works?” asked Rusticano of Fern.

“We do,” said Fern.

“Nothing can shake you in your faith?” asked Rusticano.

“Nothing,” said Fern. “We have been baptized. We are his.”

“What say you, Fairy Knight?” asked Rusticano. “Are you too unshakeable in your faith?”

“Totally, completely, utterly,” groaned the Fairy Knight.

Rusticano paused.

Rusticano thought.

“You may not remember,” said Rusticano, “but the Red-Rose Knight was my bosom friend. I knew the man when he was still Tom a Lincoln, and I was there when we crowned his head with a laurel of roses.”

“We remember,” said Fern.

“I wager that I knew the man better even than your mother understood him,” said Rusticano. “I never shared his bed, but I spent more time with him than any other.”

“Our father would not object to our service,” said Fern.

“Oh, I have no doubt that he would not,” said Rusticano. “The Red-Rose Knight would offer no dissent from this practice. But do you heed Rusticano when he says that the Red-Rose Knight was the stupidest man that he ever met? Your father was a jumped-up fool who believed that he was better than Lincoln, and for his delusion, all he earned was a few years between the thighs of a fairy queen before he drank a glass of water filled with filth. I grant you that this is more than most men, but it does not change anything. Children, your father was a jackanapes, and while the royal blood of England and the royal blood of Fairy Land flows through your veins, I fear that you have not inherited any of your mother’s wisdom. Do you know that the woman asked me here to dissuade you from your perverse hobby? Rusticano agreed. Rusticano thought about his best method of attack, considering every possible avenue of criticism. Then Rusticano remembered. There is only one way to deal with religious people, and there is only one way to deal with the grandchildren of King Arthur, a man who I also met, and who, if I may say so, rivaled your father for his stupidity.”

Rusticano had left Lincoln with the Red-Rose Knight because he’d hated the grotesque meanness of the English. When he returned to the mortal world, to mainland Europe, he found that not much was different.

It’d been 1,000 years and there was still so much evil.

The names had changed but shits were still ruling the world.

Everything was violence. Everything was war.

The poor were still starving.

The only difference now was that Rusticano himself could not die.

And he could not return to his cave by the Babbling Brook of Sorrow.

Rusticano decided to embrace the values of the mortal world.

He married a woman named Evette, a tanner’s daughter, and with her started a family.

The early years were good.

Rusticano was in love.

But it wore off.

After a decade, nothing about Evette or their children could alleviate the hollow feeling.

He didn’t want to see his wife die.

He didn’t want to learn that his children were not immortal.

He didn’t want to pretend that a domestic life had any meaning.

Food, clothes, shelter.

Every fucking day.

Without end.

Faking his own death, Rusticano abandoned his family and made his acquaintance with those who had passed the Cash Horizon. He went to interesting parties, he hoarded money, and he had reckless sex with people who were bored out of their minds.

These antics could amuse for a moment, maybe even for a week, but in the end, everything was empty. The parties and the people were dull as dishwater.

Alcohol helped.

Alcohol always helped.

Thinking that honest labor might give his life some purpose, Rusticano took up a trade.

Rusticano founded his own company.

He had great success with handcrafted luggage. The company expanded and Rusticano experienced even greater success with fashion.

But the rewards of his business were only iterations of the same boring things.