Dear diary,
While driving the Lincoln Continental from the B-film Detour (1945), I turn away from the road to face Tara and Joseph Smith, and I say:
“Well that was a close call. I thought we were goners, when our old Studebaker slammed head-on into that repair shop’s garage at full speed. Who could’ve predicted that its back wall would be lined with gunpowder kegs and gasoline canisters!? It’s lucky we did not burn to a crisp in the fire. But the silver lining to every near-death experience is that we get to meet YOU, Mr. Smith, who are Enoch, who is Metatron.” I nod at Joseph and start whispering softly the reply that I’d like him to voice now, assuming that he has not had time to to learn his part of our dialogue.
“I know my lines,” sez Joseph Smith; “but let me speak from my heart — for I have not let you down hereto. I met you in the flames and protected you, for the sake of aesthetics. I am proof that your redeemer lives.”
My countenance falls as I lean forth histrionically onto the steering wheel, signifying my helplessness in the current situation. My forehead causes the car’s horn to beep; and this startles me back into our unscripted exchange, which I pray will be able to be fixed with a little editing in the post-production phase.
“Alright, brother,” I say; “we accept that, and we are thankful for that — do I speak for you, too, Tara?”
“You don’t speak for me, but I agree with what you just said,” Tara grins mischievously.
“OK, so at least we’re all in accord,” I say, still neglecting to watch the road while cruising down the highway. “Now, what shall we do with our extended existence in this new automobile here — do you two like the idea of performing more magic shows; or should we turn over a new leaf?”
“Let me ask you a question,” sez Joseph Smith: “Is George Washington still in existence?”
“I look at Tara, who is riding in the passenger side of the Lincoln, with Joseph sitting between us, and she makes a mute gesture behind Mr. Smith’s back which means “Hey, don’t ask me where he’s intending to take this improv — the man’s your twin; I only just met him when he rescued us from the death-trap.”
“Yes, Mr. Washington still exists,” I say; “he’s on the one-dollar bill; the old U.S. paper money that was globally dominant before the world switched currencies. He haunts the White House. You mean the first Prez, right?—the one with childbearing hips?”
“I do not believe that he received the majority of votes from the populace; therefore, how could he be the U.S. President?”
Unable to detect any irony in Smith’s tone, I answer: “Don’t tell me you’re under the delusion that the U.S. ever was a democracy.”
“But there’s a difference between finessing some wayward ballots and blatantly engaging in a sham coronation,” sez Smith. “No, that man was appointed by a little gang of oligarchs.”
Helplessly I admit: “I know nothing of this.”
Smith’s indignation flares: “He is the thief who embezzled the Angel of America, and I plan to take back what is rightfully mine.”
I raise my eyebrows and nod slightly while still not watching the road, as I ponder what Mr. Smith just said. Then what seems like a good argument pops into my mind, so, reasoning that, if it doesn’t work, they can always cut my ad lib, I give it a shot:
“And how exactly do you plan to do THAT?”
“I have lately acquired authority over the Exterminating Angel,” Smith explains thru clenched teeth. “On account of the superior rank that I hold within the heavenly host, my wish is his command. Thus, the moment I and my forces locate Mr. Washington, we shall pry the stolen goods from his cold, stiff claws.”
“No kidding?” I now light up. “So, you know Luis Buñuel?”
“Buñuel?” Joseph Smith cocks his head, “is he the one who made the Milky Way?”
“Yes, that’s him — La Voie lactée (1969) — but I was referring to his earlier film, El ángel exterminador (1962). Are we on the same page?”
“It’s as if you and I are etched upon matching golden tablets,” Joseph Smith reveals his fangs.
“Oh, I get it,” sez Tara, nudging Smith’s arm with her knuckles; “you just said that cuz Bryan here is your evil twin?”
Joseph Smith, who was Enoch, who is Metatron, stiffly turns to face Tara without blinking and answers: “Yes.”
§
So we drive until our Lincoln takes us to Washington. Then Joseph Smith and the Exterminating Angel use their trumpets to call their armies from the heavens. The mere sight of these celestial warriors brings Washington to his knees. He begs to be spared the second death.
“All we want is the Angel of America,” sez Enoch Metatron; “show us where you have chained her, and we will permit you to stay in a prefabricated room with your name on it: before coming here, I instructed my host to build a chamber of tedium, where you can sit and be dull for eternity. It will fit you like a wedding dress.”
Washington bursts into tears and thanks the giant deity over and over, until Metatron kicks him and sez: “The Angel, George — let’s go.”
Washington arises and shuffles into the cotton field out back where there’s a massive structure of glass and steel surrounded by corporate lawyers. Joseph Smith as Enoch Metatron and his angelic army swiftly set to work translocating all these myopic guardians into personalized offices at an accounting farm in Circle Time, the lowest part of Forever, where they can contentedly engage in busy work without bothering anyone.
Then the hosts and Metatron return and blow their trumpets, causing the glass of the imprisoning structure to shatter, revealing a terrifying form trapped inside of the remaining steel grid. Metatron nods to the Exterminating Angel, and the two of them use the red lasers that shoot from their eyes to melt this skeleton. The Angel of America emerges wearing a sparkling white evening gown that exposes half her bosom. Enoch tosses her a glittering sword, and she catches it deftly by the hilt. Then she speaks the following in a language that is no longer known on earth (because Columbus and his men snuffed it out) but the angels understand her:
“Thank you. You all must have faced significant terrors; it took you millennia to get here. I expected this scene to transpire ages ago.”
Joseph Smith as Enoch Metatron answers the Angel of America in the same fiery tongue: “We faced a setback when Jesus was slain. That was unexpected. He never made it to your shores.”
America’s eyes grow wide, as she gasps: “Our good Serpent was thwarted!? But then surely he is risen, indeed—” she clutches her bosom: “please speak: what is our situation?”
“He resurrected, only before he died,” Metatron tries not to break the news too harshly. “Thus, his divine spark is ours, and his pneuma is in us, but his soul remains ensepulchred to this day.”
America stares at the leaves of grass on the ground, long and long. Then she lifts her head and sez: “So hope lies with us?”
“Yes, with us,” Metatron sez, “and, alas, to us.”
America makes a fierce face and clutches Metatron by the wrist. “Then let us spread some tough love to the moneylending faction.”
The two leap upwards and fly to the Heart of False Light, followed by their armies.
§
Once inside, I say to America: “I didn’t expect this place to be so attractive; the flesh of its architecture is very pale, but it has such elegantly shaped corridors and tubing.”
America answers: “It is beautiful material put to ugly uses.”
Now as we stroll thru the boulevards of this Heart, we are attacked by various foemen. First the Angel of Avarice leaps up and somersaults rapidly at Metatron, but the latter slices with his sword straight down, and it cuts Avarice in two. Then America and I battle the resultant halves of Avarice, until he’s in four smaller pieces; and so on and so forth. We eventually get him down to a manageable size, although he is now Legion; but that’s actually not a threat — the threat is when his multitudes merge together upon a financial graph and become One Spiked Blip.
Next we are ambushed by the Angel of Absolute Accuracy. I hate this Angel, so I shove it with my open hand and proceed to smear its makeup. Soon it is so wild-looking that it resembles the Real Me, Bryan Ray the Original Enkidu (I’m talking about my own pneuma now, which is distinct from the soul of my Magus Body); so I begin to weep, because I can’t believe that I could ever sublimate one of my arch nemeses by way of revisionary genius such that its ultimate appearance proves indistinguishable from my self-portrait painted by Willem de Kooning.
This fake self of mine then of course falls in love with me and begins to lean in for a kiss, but Metatron and the Angel of America save my hide by cutting the head off my aggressor. In the process, one of their swords nicks my cheek — yes, my own real cheek, not the bull’s head that was decapitated — and this leaves me with a macho scar, which I wear proudly for the rest of the novel. “Thanks, comrades,” I smile at my friends; “I owe you one.”
Then we implement a cool new procedure with the rest of the Angels that attack us in the Heart of False Light. Instead of letting them sizzle on the ground until they evaporate after we best them, we actually absorb them; because, taking a tip from my daemonic doppelganger above, we grow to like them as we are fighting, and we wish to acquire their powers; and when you vanquish something, it becomes you, just like “you are what you eat”.
So I Bryan the Antichrist battle the Angel Azazel, and I trounce him by mashing a prop torch into his eye (it doesn’t cause pain because it’s a stage implement, plus Angels lack nerves); then I inhale his spirit into my body, and it makes me even more physically intimidating.
The Angel Belial now attacks Joseph-Smith-as-Enoch-Metatron, and old Joe cracks him on the head with his elbow, then amputates the fellow’s ear with his glittering sword, and finishes off Belial with a pile driver wrestling maneuver (in which one angel grabs his opponent, turns him upside-down, and drops into a kneeling position, banging the adversary horns-first into the glossy floorboards. The technique is said to have been innovated by Wild Bill Longson, though Joseph Smith perfected it on Belial this evening.)
Now, who’s left to fight, among the forces of finance...?
Oh yes, now I remember — LOOK: the Angel Iblis is attacking Ms. America with an Ahistorical Unpoetic Oracle Oven. America does a roundhouse kick in slow-motion, while wearing her white evening gown that reveals what’s underneath, and knocks Iblis right into his own device. America then cooks the Angel Iblis until the bell rings, signifying that this battle is DONE. America opens the oven door and eats Iblis as a pizza — but only after using her glittering sword to cut him into pyramidal slices.
Then the Angel Beelzebub leaps on America and starts biting her shoulder, just after she’s absorbed the powers of Iblis; so she shakes her lovely feminine upper torso and full-bodied hairstyle back and forth until Beelzebub falls off. Then she spins around and stomps her glass slipper down on his wrist, so that he cannot reach the revolver that has fallen out of his holster. With her free arm (the one that’s not holding the glittering sword), she retrieves this revolver, then she aims it at his heart and fires a shot.
Beelzebub laughs: “I don’t even have a heart!”
So then she aims it at his head and pulls the trigger two times; but he only makes the same quip (of course swapping the operative organ).
Finally America aims the gun at his gut, and Beelzebub whimpers: “No, please don’t shoot! I suggest instead that you allow me to be imprisoned within a golden lamp until someone rubs me out.”
The Angel of America agrees to this; and Beelzebub swirls and funnels himself spiritually into the lamp’s pour-spout. America picks up the lamp and shakes it while holding it close to her pretty ear. She laughs. Then she tosses it away, and it clangs on the concrete and tumbles down the steps until it lands before my own feet. (I happened to be down there battling the Angels Michael and Gabriel, and I just finished beating them and sorbing their genii.) I crouch down and pick up the lamp and shake it close to my pretty ear; then I laugh and flick the side of the lamp three times with my index finger. Beelzebub pops out of the pour-spout in tiny-spirit form and squeaks: “What is your first of three wishes?”
I answer: “My command is that you abandon your present confinement and yield up all of your ghosts unto me, so that I become the legal owner of your skills and attributes; also all of your job history and experience as well as your credit score and your gambling winnings shall transfer to ME; exactly as if you were a lion that I had devoured, whose mane becomes mine.” Then Beelzebub splits up and separates himself into his awesome and stupid components, and all the awesome parts get welded onto MY psyche, whereas the stupid parts go out with the draught into the sewer.
The only other things that happened while we were inside the Heart of False Light dismantling the Entire World of Finance is that Enoch Metatron, as played by Joseph Smith, slew and consumed the Angel Abbadon, as well as the Angels Raphael, Jibrael, Israfil, and ornery Azrael. Meanwhile, the Angel of America slashed thru and sucked up the souls of Uriel and the Annunciatory Angel. Lastly I Bryan the magus, along with my assistant Tara, inhaled all the Amesha Spenta.
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