The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole! (1) Read online

  The shimmer goes on for a long time.

  Antichrist Comes a-Callin’

  Lorna Jean Swallows is having a shitty day. Rose from 212 stopped by earlier and asked if she could borrow some sugar, just a half cup. Lorna is used to the frequent requests and gave her some. The old bat stops by at least three times a week, and she is sick and goddamn tired of it.

  So today she went off on a rant about how her friend should quit mooching off her all of the time. How she should plan ahead and keep stuff in her cupboard. Then she remembered that Rose is senile and can barely recall what she baked yesterday. She has been losing it for about a year now. Should get tested for Alzheimer’s, that bastard disease, but Rose can’t remember long enough to make the appointment.

  Lorna has been knitting a little sweater for her dog, Buttchunk, for a few days while the programs play on television. His lazy English bulldog eyes roll around when she holds it against his side like he is saying, “If you dress me in that thing, I will crap in your shoes.” But she knows the old boy will put up with it; he has for many years.

  It’s later in the day when, still knitting and with yarn in hand, she wanders down to Rose’s apartment. She wishes she could step outside for some fresh air, but the blazing sun over Las Vegas is an inferno that would send her panting to her air-conditioned room in about fifteen seconds.

  She strolls past Reverend Danske with his pipe hanging out of his mouth. Damn thing hasn’t had tobacco in it in an age, but he sucks on it just the same. He offers her a fine day and she offers him a blowjob. He declines, as always. Too bad; she hears from her male friends that her dentureless mouth is like a fine slice of heaven.

  The carpet has been freshly cleaned since Leonard Shelton went and had his little accident. Not much of an accident; he got himself one of those crazy spells and ran up the hallway with shit pouring out of his backside. Made the whole wing smell to high heaven.

  The shit stink still permeates the hallway, she swears it does. They need to pull out the drapes and hang them outside for a day. Let the scent of old Leonard’s crap filter out. But does anyone listen to her? No they do not, and if anyone in God’s waiting room knows how to get smells out of stuff, it is Lorna. She and Dan ran their bed and breakfast for almost thirty years before he keeled over from a massive coronary after taking up with cocaine at the ripe old age of eighty-one.

  White walls, bright curtains and gray carpet. The whole place looks like a hotel, but that is just fine with Lorna. If it looked old and run down, then she would have no part of it. She was always fond of nice things, and her place to die should be no different.

  Shuffle step because her hips grind bone against bone, and sometimes it feels like chunks of glass have worked their way in there. But she makes do, just as she always has. She strolls past Ernie’s room. Six birds and counting, but no one can count all the bird shit in the little apartment. She knows that the administrator asked him to get rid of the birds because only one is allowed, but the great thing about being old as dirt, or so Lorna has reckoned, is that you can put on a dumb expression, nod sadly and forget that the conversation ever took place. And that is precisely what she is hoping Rose will do. Forget her harsh words from earlier.

  She knocks on her friend’s door and calls out, “Rose? Love? Are you in there?” Her voice still has a good southern twang to it thanks to almost fifty years in Dallas. All those years in the same city and most of them with the same fine man. They had a good life that only got better when they became swingers. Her mother found out and told her she was the most sinful person she had ever known.

  Lorna took that as a compliment.

  “Rose!” She knocks again and the door swings open. But Rose doesn’t answer.

  She walks in and tugs her glasses up from the string that hangs around her neck. The room is a mess, the floor a gritty expanse of spilled sugar. The dark space feels empty, but she knows Rose doesn’t leave at this time of day. She watches sitcom reruns and laughs even though she has seen them over and over.

  Beside an overturned chair, Lorna spots a foot peeking around the corner from the kitchen. She doesn’t have to be a genius to guess that Rose fell out of the chair. And she needs no CSI team to tell her the foot isn’t moving.

  She rounds the corner and peeks at the figure, knowing what she will see, knowing it is her friend, knowing she is barely strong enough to roll Rose over and see about CPR if she has to. If it isn’t too late. If the old bat isn’t stiff. Stiffs are the worst.

  Lorna touches her friend’s foot, but it is ice cold. She gets to her knees and follows the curve of Rose’s body. Knees hook around the hallway, and her torso is on the kitchen floor.

  “Oh Rose, please be all right.”

  The room is so dark. Why didn’t she think to turn on the lights? She feels around, and something warm and sticky welcomes her fingers. She raises them to her face, her foreboding borne out by the sight of blood. She backs up and whacks her bony butt against the edge of the table.

  She doesn’t want to see what the kitchen holds. She has seen terrible things in her many years, from her own son dying after a tractor turned his legs to pulp, to the boy who came back from Vietnam as a poppy freak. Hollow-eyed, drooling, stoned out of his mind. Willing to do anything for his next fix.

  That son tried to get his life together; he found Jesus, and what a sight he made at church. Strutted around as a dean, talked the talk but did not walk the walk. Died when he got caught in bed with another parishioner’s wife. Technically out of bed, from what she could gather, but in the vicinity of the bed. And in the company of the cuckolded parishioner’s wife, another fella, and numerous cans of whipped cream.

  Lorna wobbles to her feet and turns on the light, which flickers and casts dull shadows on the wall. They dance tauntingly for a few moments before the lights burst to blinding life, then dim slowly to a normal level. Stupid power surges.

  Lorna moves to the body, stares down at it, at the blood, at the position in which Rose is lying. Must have fallen. Look at that blood by her head; it just poured right out. Poor Rose.

  “She was a good mother.” A deep voice speaks from across the small space. The apartments at the Shady Oaks assisted living facility are scarcely more than large rooms. Rose’s place doesn’t even have a separate bedroom, just a small mattress tucked in a corner near the lazy boy. The big plush chair is currently occupied by a man dressed in a sharp suit. Dark gray with big lapels down the front. In one hand he holds a cane topped with a huge knob. With meticulous motions, he wipes the knob with a handkerchief. “But she asked far too many questions.”

  His hollow eyes make Lorna take a deep breath and whisper a quick prayer. She clutches her knitting close to her chest. She should turn and run, grab someone, scream at the top of her lungs, “THERE IS A KILLER IN THE BUILDING!” But she remains transfixed.

  The man stands, straightens his jacket, and smoothes his pants. They are made of some silky material, makes her think of girl pants, and isn’t that just the funniest thing? Girl pants on such a big strapping man. He has that cane at his side, and she can’t take her eyes off it.

  A dark beard covers most of his lower face, and the hair at the center of his chin has gone to gray so that it makes a little point. Looks like a dagger. She thinks for a stupid moment about how it would feel to have that beard rubbing against her thighs, which used to be soft and smooth as cream. She imagines him impaling her from behind and gets a little excited for the first time in ten years.

  The man steps out of the shadows, which is a neat trick, because there aren’t any. He moves closer to her and he is sly and sinuous, she can read that in his body language, in his eyes, which shift back and forth but never really focus on her.

  “What did you do?” Lorna demands. Her teeth chatter on the last word, but she feels stronger for speaking. Like she has overcome a treacherous climb.

  “What had to be done. Poor Rose.” He sighs and his voice is like satin. It tantalizes and whispers dark prom
ises.

  “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am. Look deep.” He whispers the last two words as though to remind her of a shared secret.

  “I don’t know you from Adam.”

  “Adam? That twit. He should have taken care of business all those years ago.” His voice takes on a conversational tone as if they were old friends. It makes Lorna want to turn and run. “Rose never really wanted to keep me. At first she took to me because I was her only son. Her husband, well the man who took care of me for a few years before leaping to his death, didn’t have much input. My real father was always by my side, but he stayed in the shadows as he has for many years.”

  “Just let me go back to my room. I don’t care who or what you are. I just want to go and take a nap.”

  “There will be plenty of time to lie down in the near future. Events are in motion that I cannot stop. Events that will see me take my rightful place at long last. My mother was just an … an obstacle. I shall miss her, but it is for the best; a kindness really. What I have done, the release I have granted her.” He pauses and looks up with a pained expression. “Am I not a dutiful son?”

  His words are refined and cultured, his inflection proper for the expression of loss, but it’s a sham and Lorna can hear the lies for what they are.

  Darkness whispers, tugs at her, makes her want to sit down, but she fights it off with a shake of her shoulders.

  “Let me go. You sound like one of those actors in the old black and white monster movies. Except you can’t act.”

  “But I’m not touching you.” He stifles a chuckle. “It would do you no good, you know. You could run to the authorities, but they can’t stop me.”

  “Blah blah blah. You need a new script. I don’t care about you or your plans. I just want to go back to my room.” She stomps a petulant foot and starts to turn around, but he is beside her quick as a whip crack. His hand circles her bony arm. She turns to confront him, but the big silver ball at the top of the cane catches her eye. She doesn’t want that to be the last thing she ever sees.

  “As I was saying.” His voice is right next to her ear, and she feels the back of her neck go livid as the hairs stand on end. Her body shivers again, and her knees threaten to give out.

  “We had a peaceful life while my real father prepared the world for me. For him. Now he rests under the city and waits to make his move. After I make mine, of course. Father is coming back for the end of days, and I will sit at his right hand as I lead the world to oblivion, and it will be beautiful. We will rule the world and we will rule the dead.”

  “What are you going to do with a dead world, sonny?” This man is wicked, but there is also madness in his words. She feels brave when she realizes he may be just a crazy person with some charlatan tricks.

  “Pardon?”

  “What are you going to do with a bunch of dead people and a world burned to a crisp? How will anyone live?”

  “That’s the point. No one will live.”

  “So you are going to rule a big empty burned-out husk of a world with daddy? Sounds like a real shindig.”

  “I … eh ...”

  “Do you like girls? Do you plan to keep a few around?”

  “I guess. I mean I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “And now Rose is dead. Rose Mary Lebouf, your own mother. For shame. She would be sad to see her only son saying such things.” Lorna may be more scared than she has ever been in her life, but she still knows how to play the disapproving mother card.

  “You cannot understand.”

  “Oh I understand all right,” she says and knees him between the legs as hard as she can. She may be old as dirt, but she knows this move just as she knows how to breathe.

  The man’s eyes widen, and he grabs his balls while staggering back. As he stumbles, she pulls the knitting needle out of the yarn. When the man looks up again, his mouth is a snarl that emits a string of profanities so vulgar that their viciousness sears the room. His eyes are great gaping holes that transfix her and make her want to scream. They are livid, beyond hate.

  Lorna swings the needle right into one of those wicked black holes. The needle thrusts through something hard before sinking into something soft. His body reverses the process in a grotesque parody. First it softens like the sly snake he was, then hardens like the corpse he is fast becoming. His hand claws at the needle, but Lorna has shoved it in so deep that he can barely get a hold on the slick piece of metal that is covered in white ooze and dark blood.

  He tries to curse, but all that comes out is a hiss. Then he falls forward, and the impact shoves the needle all the way into his head until it clunks against the back of his skull. The smell of ammonia fills the room as the dead man pisses himself. The most malodorous shit Lorna has smelled in her long life floods the room. Makes her eyes water. The corpse shrivels a bit, and his hand, outstretched as if in supplication, shrinks over the bone, leaving a gray oily material behind. Lorna has an urge to touch it, but she fears the stuff will burn her.

  She has just turned to leave the room when the body bursts into flame. Then it explodes, tossing her through the doorway. She smacks into the wall across the hall like a doll tossed by a child, then falls to the floor in a heap. One arm lies at a weird angle so she can clearly see her palm. It isn’t long before the pain of her broken arm, cracked clavicle and shattered hip rise to the surface of her mind. She takes a breath to scream, but her lungs feel like they are filled with glass. Her legs are numb, and when she tells her head to move it just lies there the wrong way so she can focus on a flea that is hauling ass across the floor. Better get while the getting’s good.

  A groaning from under the building shakes the foundation, and then a great rolling earthquake sends her body tumbling over and over. Flames are everywhere, and when they reach her feet she is glad for the numbness. The last thing she hears as the world burns around her is a great booming voice that shatters her eardrums before the line can even finish.

  “Imbecile! Fucking do everything myself …”

  Quick and Greasy Like a Truck Stop Whore

  Leon wakes to a scream from the theater below him. His eyelids snap open, and his blue eyes dilate in the near-darkness of his room, which is lit by the soft glow of a Care Bears screensaver and two strings of multi-colored Christmas lights. The scream fades into moans and sighs of ecstasy. The bass turns up, and the moans are so low that a good portion of Leon’s collection of Bic lighters and wild-haired troll dolls spills off his nightstand to the trash-littered floor below.

  “LICK IT!” he yells to the floor, but a chorus of groans and passionless grunts muffles him.

  He scoots off his bed, his tighty whities drooping and stained. Leon walks across his room as the screams resume loud enough to set his one small window rattling. The sounds below fade into nothing, but the hum of speakers pushes to their maximum. Leon knows the silence is just the space between scenes, the calm before and the bloodcurdling war cry that will signal the next round of fucking. He recognizes the yell and knows Jerome is watching Ugandan Midget Gangbang (most likely volume 3 or 7).

  Leon reaches into his drawers and gives his pud a few halfhearted tugs before he grabs both his pairs of overalls and looks them over. The white and black striped ones have more than one inconspicuous stain, while the muddy green ones have only one. He smiles and drops the striped ones back onto the pile on the floor. He climbs into his green overalls and digs through the collection of rock tee shirts conveniently piled next to the door. He settles on his faded and worn White Lion shirt from ’87, and he slides his bare feet into his work boots.

  Leon sweeps the fallen lighters and trolls into a pile and drops them back on his nightstand. He sets one troll upright, but the screams of two females send the lighters and dolls tumbling back to the floor. Leon recognizes the shouts of ecstasy from a scene in which two midget ladies pleasure three tribesmen hung like rhinos while bouncing ass to ass on a seven-inch-thick double dildo. Yup, Leon thinks, Volume 7,
before opening the door and heading down to the theater.

  Leon clomps down the narrow staircase between his apartment and the busy porn shop/theater below. Jerome waddles out of the big theater buckling his pants. Leon’s beer-bellied boss shoots him a smug grin. “Do you love that scene as much as I do, Leon?”

  Leon rolls his eyes and shakes his head. Just because he still jerks off to it every now and then doesn’t mean he entirely enjoys the scene. He is sick of waking up to the same midget screams every morning.

  Jerome smiles and asks Bud the same question.

  Bud doesn’t look up from the Daily Gab spread out on the glass case containing the flavored anal lubes and beads. He turns the page lazily and tells Jerome, “Nope.”

  Jerome grunts and asks, “How ya doin’ this morning, Leon?”

  Leon walks down the last step and replies, “Cock cock Jesus cock.”

  Jerome adjusts his crotch and laughs, “Jesus cock you’re weird, Leon.”

  “Sins sheep blowjob lamb,” Leon tells him and then makes his way to the peep show hallway where his janitor closet and mop bucket await him.

  “Mornin’, Leon,” Bud says without looking up.

  “Anal twins hail Mary, Bud,” Leon says with a nod and a smile.

  Jerome waddles past a display of Jaime St. Pucker Pocket Pussies (his current bestseller) to Bud at the counter. “I don’t get it. Leon don’t act retarded, but he talks like some sacrilege pervert.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Bud’s bloodshot eyes glare at Jerome over his skinny-rimmed glasses.

  Jerome huffs and stares at Bud with confusion etched on his fat face.

  “You are slowly frying his fucking brain, you asshole,” Bud says with a look of disgust. “You and your fucking bathtub acid. You use his straw to stir every batch of that shit …”