[Pt. 12 of an ongoing text...]
On the morrow, our gang wakes up in this new diner. We thank the owner for letting us sleep there; and we also thank the diner’s crew for sleeping with us (for the whole crew slept with us). The crew is very kind and loving: they awake early and prepare us a breakfast of eggs benedict, hash browns, pork sausages, biscuits and gravy.
The best part of this meal is that I notice my wives from aforetime sitting across the table — the young suburban mother Mary and her adult daughter Teresa (whose actress you’ll recall is a few years senior to the one playing mom). I wave them over, and they join me on my lap. My date from last evening, the triune person of Cinnamon-Dove-Eyeshadow, is sitting to my right, left, and far left at the long-table, still clad in the white skirts and golden swim-tops that her persons wore during my robot-slaying prophecy; but I haven’t had a chance to wed these deific entities yet; whereas yon maiden and her daughter left their respective husband and father to elope with me a while ago, and I haven’t had a chance to hang out with them since we all consummated our vows, because I’ve been following Jesus Christ and speaking in tongues. Jesus is sitting on the other side of Cinnamon, with Bloody Mary at his left hand. (To be clear, the mom-half of my own dual wife-combo shares that same name with Christ’s Magdalene, but mine is the popular Virgin Mary.) Jesus is still heavily armed.
I introduce my wives to the Trinity that I’m courting, and all the women fall in love at first sight and perform a tasteful kiss before our tablemates. I then introduce them to Jesus and his Magdalene, and they all shake hands. So now the extended gang is fully acquainted, and my virgin bride and her firstborn daughter Teresa cannot wait for us to marry the personhood of Cinnamon, Dove, and Eyeshadow. Christ even suggests that we also wed Bloody Mary: “While you’re at it, you might as well,” he sez — but she ultimately objects, stating that she feels a conscientious obligation to remain a free Magdalene. This makes us love her all the more.
Now the first thing that happens when our gang leaves the overnight diner is that Jesus shoots a deer. It’s the same deer that pranced past us when my soulmate was Myala the Black Panther and I was the titular hero, in my novel Bryan the Tyger, during that scene when we were reclining near the daffodils with the Emilies Brontë and Dickinson. So, after Christ hits his mark, we all fall upon the carcass as a team.
“This is really good venison,” Dove remarks.
§
Next on the agenda is a string of church visitations. Jesus Christ expresses an interest in surveying his kingdom.
So we hop from one place to the next: St Peter’s Basilica to Cologne Cathedral to Milan Cathedral to Hagia Sophia to St Stephen’s to Seville Cathedral to Notre Dame to (etc…) — and here’s what happens:
In the first church we visit, Jesus approaches an Archbishop and sez hello, then he pulls out his revolver and kills him.
“Why’d you do that!?” I gasp, completely shocked at what just happened. “This isn’t going to help us fit in with the hierarchy…”
“Hey, it’s my church,” sez Christ. “I can do with it what I want.”
“But… but…” I try to think of some moral plea that might sway him.
“Listen,” the rich, handsome, heavily-armed Christ smooths my necktie mock-unctuously; then grabs me by both shoulders, so that I’m forced to meet his eyes: “when the Archons inflict YOU with cleaning up the Godforsaken Churches of Earth, you can treat your own boss-hogs as nice as you like. But this is MY problem, and I’m going to solve things MY way. Are we clear?”
I nod and gulp and say: “Clear as a clarion!” Meanwhile, I’m blushing in shame.
“Very good,” Christ smiles and pats my chest. (I fall to my knees and begin to bow, but he taps me gently on the forehead with the barrel of his handgun and mutters: “Get up.”)
Now Jesus Christ, in his fine Italian suit, paces swiftly towards the exit. I and the rest of the gang scramble to follow him, as he hastens out to visit the next diocese.
Christ greets a bishop emeritus and pistol-whips him to death.
The Lord now immediately leaves for Milan. Soon he encounters the next diocesan bishop, whom he shoots two times in the head.
We then all follow Christ to the next church, where he hails the major archbishop and strangles him with a rope. The man quickly expires. (Looking at his corpse slouching there with its tongue out, one can’t help but note that the man is obese.)
Then Christ meets up with a certain region’s primate. He shoots this man in the forehead with his pistol. — “Normally I hit em twice, but that fellow’s obviously finished. This way I save a bullet,” Jesus teaches us as we leave.
Christ now encounters a suffragan bishop. Our Lord grabs a nearby chair and knocks the man to the ground. The bishop falls face-down. Jesus uses his loafer to flip the fellow onto his back, so that he’s now facing upward — the churchman is panting and has a terrified expression; he was either paralyzed by the blow or is just too scared to move. Christ aims his revolver between the man’s eyes and empties the cylinder.
Next, Christ seeks out a titular bishop. The man is at the far end of a hall, walking away from us. Jesus tosses a knife, which hits the man in the spine. He then paces calmly down the hall, nudges the body with his shoe, and shoots it twice in the head. Turning to face me, Christ explains: “Always finish the job.” Then he blows the smoke from his pistol.
There are far too many of these scenes to relay them all — I don’t want this chapter to go on forever — but I’ll just tell of one more, cuz it’s memorable and sorta stands for how the average errand befell:
A coadjutor bishop hears the noise of footsteps behind him while he’s sneaking towards the children’s quarters at night. He stops and listens, but the footsteps stop as well. Suddenly, Christ pops up and decapitates him with a double-edged sword.
As I said, these acts of heavenly justice happen over and over, and we visit so many churches that I lose count. After Catholicism, we move on to the Lutherans and then the rest of the Protestants; and eventually we visited every fundamentalist church on Earth — not limited to the Christian sects. And all the ogres get executed. Jesus is especially harsh with those who’ve harmed children.
§
Then we go to an ice-cream parlor and order some dessert.
Then we rent a lawnmower and drive it off a cliff.
Then we rent another lawnmower and drive it off the same cliff. (We pay full price to the owners of these mowers, on top of the rental amount, to reimburse them — we do not want to be unfair; we’re just having some fun.)
Now I run into a woman who is in trouble. Or, rather, she runs into me. She opens the door of my room and sez “Oh, I beg your pardon; I’m sorry, I entered the wrong room by mistake,” then she adds: “funny that my key worked in your lock. Or perhaps you didn’t lock your door?”
“Oh, I locked it. I bolted it shut. But I’m glad your key worked, and you are welcome here anytime, because I favor beautiful women, as you can see,” and here the camera pans very slowly to get a view of all my wives who are posing half-clad in the room — some wear tops; some wear bottoms; none wear both. “Have a seat,” I pat the bed beside me, “and tell me your troubles.”
The woman sits down and begins to pretend to cry. She dries her eyes with a scented kerchief.
§
Later I run into Jesus in the hotel lobby. “Christ!” I say. He turns around on the spiraling stairway and squints; then he comes back down.
“I was just heading up to my room,” he explains, “where I’ve got a number of chambermaids a-waiting.”
“Is Mary Magdalene with you?” I say.
“Of course; she’s the one who got the ducks in a row,” Christ slaps my back.
“Hey,” I grab his arm firmly, “I was just wondering if you’d be OK with me helping out a mysterious woman who claims to be in trouble. She broke into my room last night, apparently by using a skeleton key; and I think she’s pretty.”
“Do you think she was planning to burglarize you?” Jesus Christ asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But if she was, her plan was foiled; because my wives and I were there, spending quality time together.”
“Posing?”
“Yes, posing.”
“Hmm… Now, about this woman that you just mentioned,” Jesus sez: “Could you discern the shape of her body by noting how her garments fall?”
“No,” I say. “Her pantsuit was made of a thick fabric that’s very well tailored. Only a man with X-ray vision could tell what’s beneath.”
Jesus thinks hard for a moment, then he sez: “There’s no other way: you’ll just have to marry her.”
“Do you think she’ll accept my proposal?” I say.
“It’ll happen,” sez Christ. “Just give me fifteen minutes to make a call. I have friends in high places.”
§
So the next morning, I am enjoying some exquisite poses done by my wives, when we hear a knock on the door. — Immediately we all go quiet. — I motion with my hands for all the ladies to cover either their top or their bottom; and once they’re all half-decent, I clear my throat and say:
“Who goes there? Is a robot at the door that wants to break in?”
A muffled voice answers: “No, it’s me…”
“Christina? Is it really you again?” I shout.
“Yes,” the muffled voice sez from the other side of the hotel door. “I came back.”
“Are you still in trouble? Do you need more help? Why didn’t you use your key?”
“I simply desired to see you,” she replies; “but I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Do you have your key, right now?” I ask.
“Yes,” she sez.
So I tell Christina to go ahead and use that same key of hers to enter: “If it worked the first time, it’s bound to work the second,” I reason. — Thus, she steps into the room. As soon as she regains composure, after being shocked yet again by the sight of such fleshly opulence, she bows formally to all the beauties of my semi-clad harem and sez, in a timid voice with downcast eyes:
“Look, I don’t know how to say this, but I am in big trouble; and, although you’re not to blame, all the evils that are now making my life so difficult can be traced back to you.”
I stand up from the bed wearing my crisp Italian suit and sporting the look of one who is offended.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” the damsel weeps, “but I shot my husband with that pistol that you lent me, and now I’m here to accept your proposal of matrimony.”
My expression softens into one of tender love. “Ah, then there’s no need to cry,” I now offer Christina her own scented kerchief; which I had been employing as a pocket square after saving it from our initial meeting, in hopes that this moment would come. Then I take a step back and say: “You claim that you shot him; but — is he truly gone?”
Christina touches the kerchief to each of the corners of her eyes and then exclaims: “Yes! O, yes! God, yes! He is dead! — I did as you instructed and shot him twice between the eyes, after flooring him with a chair.”
I smile widely, “That’s a trick I learned from the savior himself!” Then we embrace.
I now ask my wife Cinnamon to go fetch the damsel whom we always see operating the hotel’s elevator, and ask her if she will do the honors (“...seduce her, if you must…”) of wedding Christina to all the rest of us for eternity. Because I recall this lift attendant explaining, during one of the times when we were flirting while waiting for the cab to reach ground level, that she has always wanted to perform a group-wedding ceremony.
When Cinnamon returns with the lift attendant, the woman is beaming with happiness. While laughing, she explains that she affixed the “Out of Order” sign to the sliding doors of the elevator, even tho there was a large group of businessmen waiting to board. She then announces that she’ll gladly perform the service, provided that we allow her to join our nuclear family as well. We all agree, excitedly, of course.
Then, just as she begins to officiate, I interrupt, saying: “Hold on — I don’t believe we even know your name yet!” — So the lift-girl introduces herself as Shirley. Yet before she can speak her last name, Christina places her soft, perfumed hand gently over the maiden’s mouth: “No past at our back — that’s our pact.” Then we all get wed.
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