kingdom of god 16

Wade feigned ignorance at the girl’s name and Josea held his hands to the prisoner’s face as word of an otherworldly realm slipped through him. “A great child will be born of this woman bearing your seed,” the prophet declared.

“Who is the woman?”

Josea’s hands fell from Wade’s face and he returned from his godly trance. From his seat on high he looked at Wade and proclaimed that he cannot be permitted to enter the Nain. Wade pleaded with him.

“And what of Sheridan?” he asked.

“A blood sacrifice is still demanded of him.”

“Let him go. He has nothing to do with this.”

“Would you permit the woman to take his place?”

“But you said a great child will be born of her.”

“And a great sacrifice it would make.”

Wade spat at him and Josea ordered him away and he was ushered back to the chamber where Sheridan direly awaited news of his fate. Back inside, Wade looked to the ground and he shuffled unable to deliver the prophet’s decree. “They’re completely mad here,” he told his comrade.

“I know that,” said Sheridan. “But will they let us go?”

“The girl and I are permitted to go. You will stay.”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s not for me to say.”

“Goddamnit Wade! Be straight with me for once! Are they going to kill me?!”

“Likely Sheridan. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Nothing you can do about it?! You’re sacrificing me to save a piece of poon!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t save me! I hope hell burns hot for you!”

At sunup, the warriors returned Wade’s rifle to him and he and Seia were exiled from the pass and they journeyed southwards towards Khiva. Sheridan was taken from his chamber and was quartered first by hacking off his limbs and while he still breathed his belly was split open and his blood rushed into the troths where the warriors of Josea were cleansed and the bones of the old drifter were cast off to the flames.

TO BE CONTINUED…

kingdom of god 15

And she kept returning. When the day’s festivities drew to a close and the crisp air bit down she came into his chamber bearing goat meat and olives and wines for Sheridan. The older man drank of the wine and when he was fast asleep the two beloveds undertook their wordless dalliance first by a caress of the hand then a stroke of the cheek. And when he kissed her, she entered behind his chamber and he took from her what could not be given back. In the nights thereafter she took him out of the chamber and away from the prying eyes of the community and in an enclave nestled high in the mountains he would lay with her and look down to the Nain below and consider his escape. He could not convey to her the need for his Remington and buck knife nor plead on behalf of Sheridan. He would return to his prison each night.

They had been in the Yorkin Pass for a fortnight when the priest came to them. The holy man blessed them and told them that the time to take the Nain was near. “You will be a blood sacrifice,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” begged Wade. “I told you before that they have guns. You will need us.”

“And you have been told before that you must be washed of the blood to enter the Nain.”

“Then wash me goddamnit!”

“Your moment has passed. You have been sanctified.”

“I want to speak with Josea!”

“Not even the great prophet can change the will of God.”

“I will speak with him anyway. Give him my last testimony.”

But the priest only blessed them then departed. The next morning Wade was taken out his chamber and escorted to the temple and placed at the feet of Josea. The prophet held open his palm as was the symbol of Jonny and ordered the prisoner to speak.

“You’re making a mistake,” Wade shouted.

“It’s a decree of God. There are no mistakes,” Josea stated without interest.

“You will be slaughtered.”

“So be it.”

“Then why speak with me?”

Josea leaned forward and placed his hand on the head of the prisoner. He closed his eyes as if to receive a message from God and then he revealed to Wade his great revelation.

“Seia,” spoke the prophet.

TO BE CONTINUED…

kingdom of god 14

And for the next several days at moonlight, the holy man would enter their chambers and chant hymns in the tongue of Nain and place the seal of unity in ochre paints onto their heads and bless the prisoners before departing. On these nights, the priest’s eyes would turn white as lightning and his chantings were like a demonic serenade and when the ceremony was over he would wash his bear skinned cloak in the blood of an unknown creature and drape it over his shoulders.

“Blood will cleanse our land,” the holy man said to Wade.

“Who’s blood?”

“You will see.”

“Ours?”

But the priest departed and said nothing and then the Saranian girl entered the chamber and offered the men unleavened bread and meats and wine. Wade took of the wine and drank and then thanked her and asked of the ring. She heard him but said nothing.

“Do you understand me?” he asked her but she stood bewildered. “I’m Wade,” he said and thumbed his chest.

The girl nodded. “Sela,” she spoke.

“Sela,” Wade repeated. “You are beautiful.” He gestures to her face. “Very beautiful.”

The girl again faintly smiled and bowed and then swiftly left the chamber. Sitting in the back, Sheridan chuckled to himself. “You certainly have a way with the ladies,” he jested towards Wade.

“I have a plan.”

“Oh I know you have a plan. And I can see it’s working.”

“There’s a reason why they’ve kept us alive for this long.”

“Of course. They’re gonna make us a part of their blood ceremony. See? You’re not the only smart one here.”

“Do you see any other way out?”

“I don’t. So keep working your magic.”

After finishing the bread and wine, Sheridan was fast asleep and Wade laid awake listening to the ceaseless chanting and drum beats before it all faded away into the night. And minutes after it did, Sela returned to the chambers and offered him more bread and then she took the dead hermit’s ring and placed it back into his hand.

“No no,” said Wade. He took her by the left hand and slid it onto her finger. “This is for you. Something to remember me by.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

kingdom of god 7

Satisfied with the representative’s response, Wade left the Agency’s office and headed back towards the inn. When he arrived he informed the innkeeper to hold his room for a few more days while he went north yet the innkeeper only moaned and protested.

“I took a closer look at that gold ring you gave me and it ain’t worth two rat shits put together. You’ll have to find another form of payment,” the man said.

But Wade spat on the floor and put his hands on the desk. “I’m gonna need the silver. I’ll pay you when I get back,” he told the innkeeper.

“No sir. I need payments up front.”

“And what about you snoopin around rooms while your guests are away? I doubt the Guild would take kindly to what’s going on here.”

“The Guild don’t have no say in how I do business! Now you get your shit and get outta here!”

“Then I want my ring back.”

“Why?”

“If it ain’t worth two shits then what difference does it make?”

“And what about the whore?”

“I’ll settle up with her later.”

The innkeeper gave the ring back and Wade gathered his things with the satchel dangling in front of him and rifle case around his shoulder and he departed towards the river’s edge. There a ferryman stood by and Wade gave him a piece of silver to boat him to the northern shore. As the ferryman cast off, more Nighthawks scrambled overhead and the ferryman chuckled.

“Ya know, they say that the longer you spend on this river that the river will eventually speak to ya,” the ferryman joked. “But I hear nothing from this water. The only thing I hear is that damn screamin from the sky. I found two bodies floating downstream yesterday. Last week I found six! I suppose the creeks from them mountains are washing the bodies down here. Goddamn. I don’t know what kind of fool would want to go up that a way but I imagine if anything is talkin these days it’s the folks up in those hills. The only folks they sendin down this way are their dead and a graveyards ain’t known for being jovial.”

Wade said nothing as he watched the waters glide underneath the boat.

“I can see you ain’t much of a talker neither,” the ferryman said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

PEENER (Part VI)

I appears that I garroted a guy dead, Phil thought. He was trying to keep the impending anxiety attack at bay. “This is only a dream…this is only a dream…” he began repeating.

Then an odd thought occurred: if this was only a dream, then I can do whatever I want. “What’s going on out there?” he heard a female voice from outside the garage. This was the perfect opportunity to engage his most deranged fantasies. It would be the perfect cure for my writer’s block, he finally concluded. Phil dropped the makeshift garrote and picked up a baseball bat.

“I’m out here sweetheart!” he shouted back. “I think I injured myself. Can you come out here?”

Phil readied the bat and stood by the door. The knob turned. A petite middle aged woman in a nightgown stepped out. She immediately saw her decapitated husband almost screamed. Phil slammed the door behind her shut and grabbed her mouth. Her trembling in his arms initiated a strange arousal.

“I killed your husband,” he calmly told her. “Scream and I’ll do the same to you. Understood?”

Through streaming tears, the woman nodded. Phil released her and she turned around to face her captor. He kept reminding himself that none of this was real despite what his senses were telling him. Now he gazed upon the shaking creature in front of him wondering what to do next.

“Please go,” the woman muttered. “I’ll tell them I saw no one.”

Phil chuckled. “I don’t think so,” he said. He couldn’t stop himself looking at her helpless body through the form fitting nightgown. “Remove your clothes,” he ordered.

The woman began to quietly weep, then she complied. Moments later, as she stood completely nude in front of him, Phil briefly considered violating her.

But this was all too real for him. He’s had lucid dreams before, and usually they ended the moment the lucidity began. Then thought of raping her began to disgust his sense of morality.

So he bludgeoned her to death instead.

Then burned the house down.

TO BE CONTINUED…

PEENER (Part V)

“What’s that thing on your head?” Tina asked right before bed.

Phil was sweating bullets. “Nothing, just a thing to help me sleep better,” he explained. “The therapist gave it to me.”

“Are you okay? You don’t look well.”

“Yeah yeah! I’m fine. I’ve just been working out before bedtime. You know, to help me sleep better.”

Tina wasn’t convinced. “Phil, you can talk to me, ya know? I know you’ve been struggling to write for awhile. I’ve been worried…”

“You don’t have to worry about me! I promise. It’s just a little writer’s block. All writers go through this.”

Tina took by the hand and looked him in the eye. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I can be a worrywart sometimes. Just promise to open yourself up to me.”

Phil nodded. “Okay, I will,” he told her. “But I promise that what I’m going through is nothing that you have to concern yourself with. It’s just a passing phase. I promise.”

Tina held her gaze for a moment. “I believe you,” she said. She kissed him on the forehead, turned off the lights, and soon both were laying together in bed. Phil activated the small device on his temple and made sure the dream emitter was functioning. This better fucking work, he thought.

He was fast asleep; faster to sleep than he had ever been before.

What felt like seconds later, Phil was standing wide awake. He was in an unknown garage.

He looked around to a workbench. In his hand was two wooden handles, seemingly sawn off from a broom, that were connected by a blood soaked steel wire. “What the fuck?” Phil said aloud.

Obscuring his vision from the other side of the garage was a vehicle, a large black 2043 Porsche SUV. Beneath the vehicle, a puddle of blood was forming. Phil cautiously walked to the other side.

“Jesus!” he screamed.

On the ground was a body. Moreover, the body was missing its head. Blood was still pouring out from the neck.

TO BE CONTINUED…

PEENER (Part IV)

Wade was coughing uncontrollably as a cigarette dangled from his lips. The emitter box was laying in pieces across Phil’s floor. Wade would pick up an individual piece and study it closely. He was meticulous; a little too much so for Phil who was pacing back and forth.

“Tina will be here in an hour. Will you be done by then?” Phil asked.

“Shhhhh,” Wade replied with his index finger up to his mouth. “With what little time I have, I need to focus.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time. This is illegal. Besides, how do you know May?”

“I don’t know May.”

“Then who do I need to go to if this doesn’t work?”

“Uhhh,” Wade thought. “Just go to May.”

Phil sighed. He sat down at the edge of his bed and watched Wade put the emitter back together. When he was finished, Wade hooked the box up to a computer. “What are you doing?” Phil asked.

“I’m downloading an encrypted software to the emitter that will alter its programming.”

“Okay? What will that do?”

“Well,” Wade paused as he pondered his words, “it’s difficult to explain. The software will allow the emitter to provide a more, let’s say, rewarding dream experience. We call the software Psychological Energy Emanation for Nocturnal Energy Rest.”

“That’s quite a mouthful,” Phil said.

“We call it PEENER for short.”

Phil was puzzled. After Wade finished downloading the software, he packed up his computer and handed a small device to Phil. “Before you sleep, put this on your temple,” he instructed. “This will connect you directly to the emitter so that only YOU experience the dreams emanating from it. Believe me, you don’t want your sleeping partner to have any of those dreams if they’re not prepared for it. Plus, if she does experience any of it, that might dilute your own experience. So wear that device.”

Phil held the small gadget in his hand. “So I can for sure contact May if I have any questions, right?”

Wade paused once again. “Sure,” he said. “Sweet dreams!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

PEENER (Part III)

“Philly, baby! How’ve you been darling?” May greeted her top client, Phil.

“I told you not to call me that,” he said. “I hate Philadelphia.”

“Please forgive me, sweetheart,” she pleaded as she hugged him. “Can I get you something to drink? Some champagne, perhaps?”

“What’s the point? There’s nothing to celebrate. I can’t get anything onto paper.”

“Nothing?! Phil, please, take a seat. Tell me: is therapy not working?”

Phil sat down in a large mahogany leather chair. “Dream therapy is a joke,” he explained. “I’m sorry to disappoint the publisher, but it’s going to be awhile before I’ll have anything to give them.”

May poured herself a champagne and began to think. “Look,” she said, “I know I’m your agent, but I’m also your friend. So can I give you a suggestion? Have you thought about a memoir? You’re a war hero after all. There’s probably something there that the publisher may be interested in.”

Phil hem and hawed. “I don’t know if I’m ready to go down that road, May,” he said. “I think I’d rather stick with fiction.”

“Okay…alright,” she said, “I have an idea. Now feel free to shoot this down if you want. But please, bear with me. Dream therapy has worked really well with my other clients, but they had to do something a little extra…”

“What do you mean?”

May took a big sip from the champagne. “Well, they kinda had to tinker with the dream emitter a little before they got their desired results.”

“I’m not following.”

“Well…the emitter is, of course, heavily patented so that makes it exceptionally difficult to hack into. A lot of safety measures are put into place so that users won’t experience any, well, unpleasant side effects. But from my understanding, there is a way to break into it to provide, I guess, a more rewarding experience.”

“Okay…”

“Now hear me out,” May interrupted, “I don’t think that there’s anything dangerous to the user about this, it’s just not entirely legal.”

Phil was confused. “May, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You mostly have pleasant dreams? Correct?” May asked. “Well how about instead of GOOD dreams…you have, let’s say, more INTENSE dreams.”

Phil chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know. This sounds crazy.”

“Can you at least try it out?” May pleaded. “Now I know a guy who knows a guy who might know a guy who knows how to ‘tinker’ with the emitter. I can get you set up. What do you say?”

TO BE CONTINUED…

PEENER (Part II)

“Dream therapy just hasn’t been working,” Phil explained to his therapist. “Sure, getting in a gangbang with Bill Nighy and Kenneth Cranham was amusing, if not strangely arousing, at first. But now these dreams are getting bizarre, and frankly downright annoying. Some nights, I want to turn the emitter off and get a plain nice rest. Face it doc, maybe I’m just not cut out to be a writer. I’m an empty vessel, void of anything creative.

“First off,” the therapist retorted, “I’m not a doctor. I’m a simple ass therapist. And secondly, do you think your emitter needs calibrating? Are you sure that it isn’t malfunctioning? Most of my clients have found dream therapy to be thoroughly beneficial.”

“No, it’s not malfunctioning. You know I’ve been suffering from writer’s block for a long time now. I think I made a deal with the devil to write one successful novel and now I’m paying the price. I’m a one hit wonder.”

The therapist shifted in his seat and placed his pen up to his lips. “I think you’re running away from the real problem here,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. The off world rebellion. You are a highly decorated soldier in that war.”

Phil threw his hands in the air. “Come on! You know that I haven’t had any symptoms in nearly two years. Not since my novel was published. That has nothing to do with my current problems!”

“Something like that doesn’t just go away, Phil. Just because it’s been awhile since you’ve experienced symptoms doesn’t mean that it’s something that no longer affects you. You were evasive of it then and you’re being evasive of it now. You can lie to me all day. I get paid the same. But if you want to get your money’s worth out of this, you have to start being honest with yourself. And besides, this issue you’re avoiding might be the solution to your writer’s block. If you want my professional advice, be honest with yourself and perhaps this dream therapy will start working.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

PEENER (Part I)

Phil was flying his phallic shaped spaceship around the Jovial moon of Io. He crossed the thin atmosphere and scanned the surface of the sandy and red terrain. “Initiate landing procedures,” he ordered the computer. Almost instantly the thrusters fired and landing gear was lowered.

“Surface conditions?” he asked the computer.

“The atmosphere consists of mostly sulfur dioxide with trace amounts of oxygen,” the female voice reported.

“Prepare my space suit,” he ordered.

After gathering his gear, Phil lowered himself onto the surface of the dusty moon. He took out his scanner and began recording his findings. “Mission log,” he said, “there are no signs of life and Io appears to be a barren wasteland.”

Suddenly something caught his eye. Phil walked over to a rock that was emitting large amounts of radiation. He readied his phaser and radioed in. “Mission Control, it appears I found something…,”. But before he could report his findings, he was struck from behind.

Phil was suddenly chained up, nude, cock hard, in a bunker seemingly under the surface of Io. Three large-breasted women dressed in silver garments appeared before him. “We are representatives of the Pussyonida government,” they said in unison, “we are here to confiscate your semen so that we may repopulate our planet…”

A loud buzzing noise pierced through the air. “Wake up sweetie,” Phil heard. There was a brief moment of lucidness before he opened his eyes. “Coffee is brewing,” his longtime girlfriend informed him. Phil had been dreaming this whole time.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered as he rubbed his eyes. Phil climbed out of bed, put on pants, and observed himself in the mirror. “I’m one disgusting mother fucker,” he said to himself. His hair was disheveled, his face heavily stubbled.

Phil shuffled into the kitchen area, plopped down in a chair, and Tina placed a cup of coffee before him. “Did you dream well last night?” she asked.

He shook his head and looked out the window. “Fuck no,” Phil replied. “It was all wholly unoriginal. Unoriginal thoughts. Unoriginal ideas. Face it, Tina, I’m a hack. I can’t even have an original dream.”

TO BE CONTINUED…