'You ever been driving somewhere and you suddenly became alert and realized you didn’t remember the last twenty miles? I’m going to bring you to that state, Andy. I want you to lose all context and focus solely on the sound of my voice.
'You’re behind the wheel of a luxury sedan on a long, boring stretch of road. The dotted line moves beneath the wheels. Engine hums hypnotically. Sun shines in. You’re nice and warm, the seat soft and comfortable beneath you. And your eyes begin to lower and lower…and lower. And now your eyes are closed and the sound of my voice is all you hear. And we go deeper and deeper, and the sleepiness feels so good, so warm, that you want to go deeper and deeper…and deeper.
'My voice is now the only thing that exists. Squeeze my hand, Andy.'
I squeeze the voice’s hand.
'We’re going to talk about values, Andy. Right and wrong. Good and evil. I want you to picture a row of great stone tablets. The rules of man have been chiseled into these tablets, and all your life you’ve abided by them and been put upon by them.
'These tablets stand on the edge of a cliff. And now there’s a man lurking behind them. Do you see him? Squeeze my hand if you can see him.'
I see the man behind the tablets. I squeeze the voice’s hand.
'Now that man is pushing the tablets over the cliff. One by one. And they’re shattering, Andy. They’re shattering into millions of pieces on the ground. Squeeze my hand if you see them shattering.'
I see them shattering. Hear the rock breaking. I squeeze the voice’s hand.
'That man standing on the cliff is you, Andy. You have just broken those terrible tablets that have been imposed upon you. You’re free now, Andy. Free to make your own right and wrong. Free to create your own values. Good and evil, as you’ve known it your entire life, does not exist. Evil is an illusion. Good is an illusion. You’ve broken those awful tablets.
'So now, when you see something, violence for instance, you will laugh and laugh and laugh, because it’s hysterically funny. Do you know why it’s funny? Because it’s meaningless. It’s so utterly meaningless, and people have attached to it such grave meaning. When you see an act of violence, Andy, you will laugh and say ‘How meaningless.’ Values no longer concern you, Andy. You are above them. They are falling away beneath you. You have just taken the first step toward becoming something better.'
# # #
god comes to Vi after she pushes her third meal in a row through the slot beneath the door. god always waits until they try to starve themselves to death. It is a sign of their malleability.
When she hears the voice from the darkness overhead, she thinks she’s crossed into delirium. Weak, starving, she has hardly the strength to sit up, so she rolls over onto her back and stares into the blackness above.
'What’s up, God?' she says.
'Are you mad at me, Violet?'
'You do this to me?'
'’Fraid so.'
'Then I’m mad at you.'
Vi laughs in god’s invisible face. god laughs, too. The sound of god’s laughter is the most disturbing thing she’s ever heard. Her subconscious image of God is one of those oil paintings of a hippie, blatantly Caucasian Jesus in a clean, white robe, staring out of the canvas with sad, penetrating eyes. God isn’t supposed to laugh. Her God is holy and solemn, and if Vi were honest with herself, perfectly boring.
Under most circumstances, Vi would disregard any voice that intimated it was God. But after thirty days in soundless, pitch black isolation, when a voice suddenly speaks to you and tells you he’s God, you have no perspective from which to refute it.
'Everything you’ve been told about me is wrong,' god continues.
'I couldn’t agree more.'
'You want to die here, Violet?'
'No.'
'You’d like to see your husband again? Max?'
She lets that name and what it could do to her bounce off her like a rubber ball.
'Of course I would.'
'Then I need you to eat, Violet. Can you do that for me?'
'Why?'
'We have things to talk about, and you’ll be dead soon at the rate you’re going.'
'Why can’t you just save me?'
'I’m doing exactly that, Violet. Only the things I’m saving you from, you may not want saving from.'
'Like what?'
'Values. Comfortable illusions. Lies you’ve been told all your life by cowards.'
'I don’t un—'
'You will understand. If you trust me. Do you trust me?'
'No.'
'Then you’ll die here alone.'
'Okay, I’ll try.'
And she means it, and so begins the process of lying to herself. God has come to her. He’s come to save her. It’s so much easier to believe than the truth—whatever that may be.
# # #
And the captives sleep—two in darkness, dreaming of god, half-mad with sensory deprivation, one in bed, out of his mind on painkillers. They are being mindfucked each day. Whether the things god tells them will stick remains to be seen. Suggestion is powerful coupled with narcotics and exhaustion and isolation. But it can’t loose what isn’t there. god is looking for his diamond core. Where it is, he will nurture. Where it isn’t, or rather, where it can’t bear itself, he will make a brutal end.
But now god is sitting on a couch with his wife, a fire blazing in the hearth, Bing Crosby filling the musty corridors of his great stone house.
As he watches his son decorate the Christmas tree, his old wife rises to replenish her hot chocolate.
Would Rufus care for some more? He certainly would.
Luther hangs the final ornament, a wooden airplane he’s had since childhood, then comes and sits beside his father.
It’s a raw December evening beyond those drafty windows, and the cold fog spilling in from the sound has begun to enwrap the two live oaks in the front yard.
But they are warm, the logs hissing, popping, just the boys now. Rufus puts his arm around Luther, thinking of Christmas, fast approaching, his boy being home, the three souls now under his care, and the miserable little wretch named Horace, writing for his life upstairs.
You would think such a man did not know happiness, that his life of darkness would make him a creature of anger and melancholy and fear.
'Merry Christmas, son. Came together beautifully, didn’t it?'
And they sit watching the fire together, Rufus reflecting on the days to come. He’s quite joyful for someone whose passions direct them to go spelunking in the shunned caves of human psyche. It would be comforting to say that Rufus did not know happiness, that he was swallowed up in misery and self-hate.
But it would be a lie.
# # #
Next comes Christmas Eve. Maxine Kite carries the last casserole dish of candied yams up the staircase to the third floor cupola of the ancient house. Her guests have been dressed and seated. The long table is candlelit, moonlit. Through the west wall of windows, a thin moon lacquers the sound into glossy black. Through the east wall of windows, the Atlantic gleams beyond the tangle of live oaks and yaupon. The tourists gone, the island silently twinkling, the evening is cold and glorious and more star-ridden than any night in the last three years.
Breathless, Maxine sets the yams on the tablecloth beside a platter of steaming crab cakes. Then she takes a seat at the end of the table, opposite her husband, and releases a contended sigh. 'Mrs. Claus' is spelled out in
