The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, page 6
“But—”
“When you perished, he saw his opportunity. He fled.”
The crocodile warbles without ceasing, needing no breath, wanting no air, wanting nothing but Meng Po’s love. I can almost forgive him his transgressions against me now.
“From what?”
Meng Po sighs. “If you have not figured it out yet, you shall.”
Ordinarily, I like to think of myself as a reasonably smart man. Quick on his feet, quicker with the comebacks. Slightly deficient in the ‘knowing when to keep my mouth shut’ category, but no one is without their inadequacies. However, the effect of being slingshotted from quasi-normal to dead-by-crocodilian-dismemberment is something that takes a toll on a guy. Especially when the epilogue involves an angry mountain of livestock threatening to pulp your head like a berry. So, instead of saying something pithy, I add, “Bwuh?”
Before I can redeem myself, a familiar sensation hooks itself around the base of my sternum. A tugging, cold as a palmful of dry ice, before it snaps through my breastbone, and life drags me back, upwards, through the laminae of realities, all the worlds in between blurred into neon glare. There are fewer experiences more beautiful than this: the universe running through your fingers, every colour of what-is and what-could-be like a breath of pure hope, uncut, pristine, without even the faintest varnish of cynicism.
But Jesus on a jet plane does ithurt like a motherfucker.
FIVE
I WAKE UP on a mattress of crocodile guts, a whining noise in my ears, the air already jewelled with bumblebee-sized black flies who cannot believe their luck. That I’m here, sitting atop a mound of carrion like an unfortunate cake topper, is no issue to them: they wiggle into my ears, try their luck up my nostrils, cling to my lips. Their bodies are that strange kind of soft where you know, if you pinch them between your fingers, they won’t burst but pulp, smearing marmalade-like over your skin.
That is, of course, the exact moment when my lungs decide they need to breathe.
My mouth crowd with flies, their legs and their wings everywhere, fluttering against the roof of my mouth, around the bend of my gums; they clump around my uvula and my tongue goes up as I gag. My throat seizes. I twist sideways and retch, vomiting a shallow bilious soup, pebbled with half-drowned insects. The worst thing about it is that it tastes better coming back up.
“Hi.”
In the fugue that follows every resurrection, I’d somehow missed the man standing in front of me. I blink. He appears to be carrying a small, motorized hand saw.
“Hey.”
The flies billow upwards as he takes an uncertain step forward, one hand outstretched. I wipe my mouth on the back of a sleeve, grimace, then try again on a patch of bare skin which, though blood-soaked, is not flecked with torn intestinal tissue. He turns his palm upwards for my inspection, fingers slightly crooked. It’s a nice gesture, frankly. Under different circumstances, I’d have clasped that outstretched hand and hauled myself onto my feet.
But as it stands, I’m enthroned on a mountain of offal and the man, who has yet to identify himself in any meaningful way, is carrying a hand saw. Logic suggests that he was the one who freed me from the effluvium, but nice things don’t happen when your name is Rupert Wong. If I’ve ever been saved for anything, it’s for supper.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but what the fuck just happened here?”
“I… uh, I cut you out of a giant crocodile?”
“Yes, but why?”
He pauses. “Because Amanda asked me to?”
“Oh. Well. Okay, then.” I take his hand in mine and let him pull me upright, a Chaplin-esque process that involves him skidding forward on the grass, a pancreas exploding under the weight of my palm as I crowbar myself into verticality, and the flies deciding, despite initial appearances, that we are, in fact, eminently edible. The last is a particularly interesting problem.
“Ow, fuck, ow—”
“Will you watch where you’re swinging that thing?”
Abashed, my unnamed rescuer powers down his hand saw, and we resume our exodus post-haste, slapping at the flies, our skin already bubbling with bites. Luckily for us, the picnic spread of a thirteen-feet-long corpse is too enticing to ignore. The flies lose interest and we escape, panting, onto a lawn miraculously unoccupied save by a colony of fat, slightly furtive brown hares.
“So,” I begin, scratching vigorously between my shoulderblades.
“So?”
“So.”
He stares at me, befuddled. Ignoring the fact he just disembowelled a crocodile to save me, the man’s not exactly what anyone would call hero material. The baby blue button-down, the khakis, even the white tennis shoes: it all contributes to an image, one that can only be captioned with the word DAD in block letters. Preferably in crayon, too. The fact that Amanda told him, of all people, to come procure me means one of the two things. Either the Internet couldn’t care less if I survived to my next status update, or this is—
“You’re Cason.”
“Yes?”
“You. You’re Cason.”
“Yes? I—were you expecting somebody else?”
“Wait. Wait. You’re the half-human son of the Devil that Amanda and Fitz have been talking you? You.” I look him over again. I guess I can see it. Upon second round of perusal, I realize the dad bod’s as much camouflage as the wardrobe. What extraneous weight he has is laddered over a boxer’s physique. One that has spent a few seasons on the bench, sure, but you can see the potential in the cabled shoulders, the oversized forearms. I massage my chin, frowning with escalating intensity.
“I’m beginning to feel like I should be getting offended by this. You know, my wife—”
“No, it’s just”—I fumble for diplomacy and fail—“you’re a lot less intimidating than I’d expected. Wait. What about your wife?
“She had some excellent ideas about why we do what we do.”
“What exactly?”
“Cut down the other party. Wisecrack. We’re scared.”
I look our surroundings over. “In fairness, this seems like a good environment for that.”
“Yeah. That’s fair. Also, what the fuck?”
“I think you’re supposed to say thank you.”
“Look, you expect knights in shining armor. Not dads in white tennis shoes.”
“Well. Polka dot.”
“What do you—” I study the new patterns on his shoes. “Oh. Right. Er. Hope they didn’t cost too much.”
“Actually, it might be more of a Pollack.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
“It’s kinda impressionist. Picasso in red?”
“I said I’m sorry!”
Cason shrugs a shoulder. A few scraps of white cloud tumbleweed across the technicolour blue of the Florida sky, driven by a breeze that smells faintly of swamp. “Anyway, that isn’t technically correct. What Amanda and Fitz said. I actually don’t know what the exact percentage is, to be honest: Lucifer said he was my grandfather, but in that ambiguous ‘I’ve spent eons debauching virgins’ sort of way, and Cernunnos is absolutely a god, and my father. So, I guess it has to be at least somewhat less than half human.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“That would be my father, yes. And only if you’re a neo-pagan. I don’t like assuming.” When I fail to laugh, he palms the back of his neck and chuckles nervously. “Sorry, sorry. I was just trying to make a joke—are you okay?”
“You make dad jokes.” I wheeze, doubling over in slow-motion, a hand flapped in his general direction. I know I’m making a sound like a live rabbit being fed through a grinder, a hitching, high-pitched splutter that has to be disconcerting to hear, but there is only so much surrealism that a man can take before he breaks. Give me gore. Give me gods. Give me a firmament glazed in kicap manis and garnished with guts. Anything but this.
“I am a dad.”
“Of course you are!”
“Seriously, should we get you a doctor or something?”
I unfold so fast that I splatter Cason with bilious run-off. He flinches away, one eye scrunched against the blood now dripping from his brow.
“What the hell is going on here? Amanda said you couldn’t deal with sharing a room. I thought—I thought—you know, I’m not sure exactly what I think anymore. You just hacked me out of a crocodile. I’m not a good judge of normal. You tell me what’s going on.”
Cason spends a few seconds patting himself down before, with great deliberation, drawing a square of plaid cloth from a pocket. Miraculously, it is still pristine. He hands it to me.
“Look, I’m forty-two. I’ve got a real job, two kids. It’s just a question of standards. I mean, I’m sure you’re all nice people, but I’m too old to be doing the college dormitory bullshit.”
I put my face in my hands. It’s something I immediately regret, but not as much I might have without Cason’s kind donation of a handkerchief. The thin cloth soaks up an impressive film of offal, before that familiar sourness pricks at my nose again. “Guan Yin save me, I’m going to die. This is the end. These goddamned ang mohs—”
“Are you really sure you don’t need a doctor?”
“Probably do,” I pant, shambling over to Cason so I can drape an arm around his shoulder. He winces as I crush him to my side, his head jammed between my shoulder and the edge of my jaw. “But you know what I want? What I really, really want?”
“A zig-a-zig-bath?”
“We’re either going to kill each other or be good friends. You know that, right?”
“Yup.”
WE RETURN TO the Best Western, squelching, a pair of bedraggled uncles in sodden clothes, having hosed down on the way back. Fortunately, we’re in Orlando, so no one gives us anything but a wide berth. Disneyland, after all, is a holy land for middle-aged hopefuls desperate to see if a pilgrimage to the happiest place in the world might restore their enthusiasm for life and possibly, wanton yet predictable and responsible sex. Which is to say, more than a few guests have likely come into the lobby drunk as skunks and drenched from the local water park.
Cason and I file into the elevator, and I lean against the rail as the doors close and we begin to climb.
“What’s in this for you?” I ask.
He stows a last-generation iPhone into a pocket and rucks his brow. “This whole debacle? I don’t know. The usual, I suppose.”
“Fame? Fortune? Access to all the female bodies you can hope for? Other nice things beginning with the letter F?” I tick off possibilities on my fingers.
“Yeah,” Cason interrupts, voice quiet. “Family and future, specifically. You know, for a long time, I thought I’d never do”—a flutter of a hand—“this bullshit again, but as it turns out, it takes exactly two minutes of conversation to change my mind.”
“What was their sales pitch?”
“If we fail to save the world, my family will be horribly devoured by forces too terrible to comprehend?” Cason tilts his head. “You know. That sort of thing.”
“Yeah. Okay. Sorry.” I study our shoes. Pink water still drips from the soles, a reminder of our recent adventures. “God, I’m really bad at small talk. Shouting cheap bravado in the face of danger? Sure. But actually talking to a human being. Man…
“You’re in good company. I think it’s easy to laugh in the face of danger because it doesn’t care. But when you’re being evaluated—”
“Judged.”
“Observed for acceptable human behaviour. That’s just hard.” Cason sighs. His eyes skate to the mirrored wall behind me, possibly taking note of my expanding bald spot. “You have any kids?”
“Had a kid. Buried him last year.”
Cason’s expression is stricken. “I’m so sorry—”
“No, no, no.” I throw my hands up, trying to negate any further expression of sympathy. I won’t lie and say I hadn’t grown attached to George. You love your partner’s children, even if they’re skinless horrors, unable to sustain themselves on anything but blood from a freshly opened vein. Nonetheless, there’s only so much despair you can muster when you know someone is, without question, in a better place. “It’s fine. He was dead already.”
“What?”
“What?”
In the horrified silence that follows, I realize the immensity of what I’d said and palm the back of my neck, staring down again at our waterlogged footwear.
“That probably needed some context. Let’s see. Ah, my ex-partner’s child from their last marriage was an undead monster who I had to bury once the life fled from them.”
Cason’s eyes dilate infinitesimally. “Is that your way of saying that you killed the—”
“No. Yes. Maybe. Depends. Technically, I was responsible for George’s death. And Minah’s death, but no,Jesus, not like that—” I start forward as Cason recoils, his repulsion blatant. “It was… complicated.”
“I’m sure Ted Bundy probably said the same thing.” Cason looks me over. His brows crook upwards. “Listen, I’m not here to judge. We’re just colleagues. What you do on your own time isn’t my problem right now.”
I consider my options. On one hand, it’d be nice to build our professional relationship on something other than a bedrock of justified distrust. Cason already has reason to feel awkward in my presence: vivisection involves breaking bones, not ice. And Guan Yin knows what he saw in Sobek’s flayed belly. No one has ever explained to me the precise science of resurrection. It’s possible that I pop back into existence, fully formed, limbs and ligament restored. But more likely than not, it involves traumatising amounts of body horror, the kind that, if documented, would win every award for special effects imaginable.
On the other hand, it isn’t as though I had a particularly virtuous youth. I’ve beaten, battered, bruised, bludgeoned, broken and brutalized so many people, done so many things that are, in the most literal sense of the word, terrible, it isn’t factually incorrect to see me as a bad person. So what if Cason decides this because of a misconception? He’d still be right.
And more crucially, it’d take me time to fully explain what had happened, time to discuss who Minah was, what she meant to be, why I’d bartered with a dragon god for her ability to escape the karmic cycle.
Nonetheless—
“Hey, it’s not like you can talk.”
Cason stares at me. “Sorry?”
“You’re the grandson of the Devil.” I shove my hands into my pockets and shrug.
“Just because my parentage is mildly diabolical. Also, weren’t you the one going off on how impossible—”
“Mildly? Do we need to go into a discussion about what the Devil is, precisely? Because last time I checked, he isn’t just ‘mildly’ diabolical, he is literally—”
A soft ding interrupts the stand-off. The elevator doors rattle open, revealing a clutch of Scandinavian tourists, sheepishly huddled to one side of the cramped passage. To a man, they’re all wearing ‘I <3 Disneyland’ shirts. Their gazes trace a route from our faces to the pink puddles spreading under our feet.
“Pool party,” I declare with sudden enthusiasm. “Lots of bottles of wine in the pool. American tradition.”
Cason fixes me with an incredulous look. “Whiskey tango fuck-trot.”
“Very exclusive American thing,” I continue, aware that mendacity isn’t strictly required but just in case, it wouldn’t hurt to have a cogent narrative, however improbable it might be. “You might get lucky and be invited to one of these events.”
All attention, mine included, pivots then to Cason. The Nordic delegation—who could well be a family, but I’m not about to assume anyone who looks the same is necessarily related, even if turnabout’s amusing play—tack on encouraging smiles.
“Yeah.” Cason draws out the vowels, his answering grin sickly. “What he said.”
I direct finger-guns at anyone who will make eye contact, sidling out of the elevator as I do, Cason letting loose a tired groan behind me. “Awesome. Yeah. Okay. Let’s go! Enjoy Disneyland. Woohoo!
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Cason stage-whispers as the doors close behind us, drawing up lateral to my right shoulder.
I shrug. “I get that a lot.”
SIX
“YOU’RE SHORTER THAN you looked in pictures,” Fitz announces from his perch at the windowsill, a leg drawn to his chest, the other held straight, heel anchored on the musty carpet.
Best Western tries, it really does; but the turnover for this place must be absurd. There is an exhausted jocularity to the room that puts to mind kindergarten teachers, or fast food mascots on the brink of a psychotic break. The walls are an irradiated shade of bile, the valances are faux red velvet, the flooring is redolent of pine, and the white paint on the ceiling is considerably fresher than the smoke-tinged bedsheets. Amanda and Fitz have every light turned on and the windows open, letting in the noon-light.
“How long was I dead?”
Every head turns again in my direction.
“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to make this about me. I was just wondering if anyone knew. ” I stoop and crook a finger through a cabinet handle, tugging it open. Jackpot. The mini-bar, like everything else about our accommodations, is comfortably mediocre. I pry a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels from the selection and pour the contents into a styrofoam cup.
Amanda blinks slowly. For reasons best undeciphered, she’d sloughed her original outfit for a variant of what Fitz and I are wearing: Hawaiian shirt, sandals, shorts belted high. If a stranger walked in, they’d probably decide we were the detritus of a once-famous musical ensemble, now reduced to the status of a cover band, and Cason our down-on-his-luck manager, disgraced and dismissed, desperate to make us his redemption.
“Eight hours. Give or take,” she declares, at last. “Depending on how closely Sobek’s digestive system mirrors that of a real crocodile’s.”
