Doomed

hypervigilant as the big hand of my wristwatch ascended minute by minute toward the twelve. Once the three Miss Sleazy O’Sleazenicks were well laminated in pelts of their own fragrant upchuck and gummy doo-doo, I hightailed it for my waiting Town Car.

My trusty getaway vehicle remained where I had left it: parked at the frosty curb beside the snowy lawns of the school residence hall. The keys dangled from the ignition. The dashboard clock read eleven thirty-five, a reasonable allowance of time for my return trip to Hell. I climbed behind the steering wheel and fastened my seat belt. Ah, Earth, I thought somewhat indulgently, even nostalgically as I glanced at the old edifice where once I’d crept, nibbling on Fig Newtons and reading The Parasites. Tonight, every window blazed with light, and many were thrown wide-open to the wintery Swiss clime, their drapes flapping in the frigid wind which blew down from the glacial slopes of the tedious Alps. Of those wide-flung windows all now framed the heads of wealthy schoolgirls who leaned out and puked long banners of foody yuck down the building’s redbrick facade. The sight was vastly too pleasing to abandon, but now the dashboard clock gave the time as eleven forty-five.

Bidding it all a fond adieu, I twisted the key in the car’s ignition.

I twisted the key again.

I stepped my sensible Bass Weejun on the gas pedal, giving it a little stomp. The dashboard clock said eleven fifty. I double-checked that the tranny shift lever was set firmly in Park, and tried the key a third time.

Ye gods! And nothing happened. No car-ish sounds reverberated from beneath the vehicle’s hood. To those of you blogosphere busybodies who think you know everything—especially concerning cars—no, I had not neglected to turn out the headlights and thus exhausted the battery. And, double no, the car was not short on dinosaur juice. Desperate, I tried the ignition repeatedly while watching the clock creep steadily to eleven fifty-five. At eleven fifty-six the car phone began to ring—issuing one old-school bah-ring after bah-ring—which I ignored in my frantic efforts to open the glove box, locate the driver’s manual, and troubleshoot my mechanical crisis. The phone was still ringing four minutes later when, almost in tears, I grabbed the receiver from its cradle and answered it with a curt “Alors!”

Through the line a voice said, “‘…Madison was almost weeping in frustration.’” A wheedling male voice said, “‘Her sweet triumph over her bullying schoolmates had turned to bitter panic as she found her getaway vehicle would not start….’”

It was Satan, the Prince of Darkness, no doubt reading from his dreck manuscript, The Madison Spencer Story—a supposed story of my life which he claims he’d penned even before my conception. In those pages, every moment of my past and future is allegedly dictated by him.

“‘…little Madison,’” Satan continued reading, “‘recoiled in shock at the sound of her supreme master’s voice over the Town Car’s telephone—’”

Interrupting, I asked, “Did you monkey with this car?”

“‘…she knew,’” the telephone voice said, “‘that her Great Evil Destiny awaited her on Earth….’”

I shouted, “No fair!”

“‘…Maddy soon would have no choice but to venture forth and trigger the end of days….’”

I shouted, “I’m not triggering anything!” I shouted, “I’m not your Jane Eyre!”

The dashboard clock now read midnight. A bell in the steeple of eine far-off alpine kirche commenced to toll. Before even the sixth knell, the receiver in my hands began to evaporate. The entire Town Car was disappearing around me, but the voice of Satan continued to drone. “‘… Madison Spencer heard the distant church bell, and she realized that she didn’t exist. She’d never existed save as a puppet created to serve the supremely sexy, insanely handsome Devil….’”

As the driver’s seat dissolved, my tubby, chubby-girl bottom was slowly settling to the pavement. The last stroke of midnight echoed into the canyons and ravines of tedious Switzerland. The windows of the school residence hall were closing. The lights winking out. Their curtains drawn. The safety belt, which only a moment earlier had squished my generous tummy, now became as insubstantial as a shred of mist. Nearby, as if dropped in the street, sat the fake Coach purse that a friend, Babette, had left in the car’s backseat.

With the stroke of midnight the Lincoln had dwindled to nothing more than a nebulous fog bank, a small gray cloud in the shape of a Town Car. I was abandoned, sitting in the gutter with Babette’s soiled, faux-leather handbag, alone in the blustery Swiss night.

In place of church bells, the wind carried only a tinny synthesized dance tune. It was the song “Barbie Girl” by the Europop band Aqua. A ring tone. It was a PDA I found buried among the condoms and candy bars in the purse. Listed on the screen was a Missoula, Montana, area code. A text message said, “URGENT: Stow away aboard Darwin Airlines flight #2903 from Lugano to Zurich; then catch Swissair flight #6792 to Heathrow and American Airlines flight #139 to JFK. Get your butt to the Rhinelander hotel. Go now!” The text, it was from a certain postalive, blue-haired punk rocker currently serving hard time in Hell, my friend and mentor Archer.

DECEMBER 21, 8:00 A.M. EST My Homecoming

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Gentle Tweeter,

If you asked my mom she’d tell you: “Religions exist because people would rather have a wrong answer than no answer at all.” Meaning: My parents didn’t believe in God. Meaning: My family didn’t celebrate Christmas.

If my parents ever imagined God it was as a towering, mountain-size Harvey Milk healing the ozone hole with winged dolphins in place of cherubim. And rainbows, lots of rainbows.

Instead of Christmas, we celebrated Earth Day. Sitting zazen, we celebrated Swami Nikhilananda’s birthday. Maybe we’d Morris dance, naked, around the base of an old-growth California redwood, its branches lavishly festooned with the soiled hammocks and poop buckets of crunchy-granola tree sitters mentoring spotted owls in passive-resistance protest techniques. You get the picture. In place of Santa Claus, my mom and dad said Maya Angelou kept tabs on whether little children were naughty or nice. Dr. Angelou, they warned me, did her accounting on a long hemp scroll of names, and if I failed to turn my compost I’d be sent to bed with no algae. Me, I just wanted to know that someone wise and carbon neutral—Dr. Maya or Shirley Chisholm or Sean Penn—was paying attention. But none of that was really Christmas. And none of that Earth First! baloney helps out once you’re dead and you discover that the snake-handling, strychnine-guzzling Bible thumpers were right.

Like it or not, the road to Hell is paved with sustainable bamboo flooring.

Trust me, Gentle Tweeter, I know whereof I speak. While my living-alive mom and dad have burned soy- based candles and prayed to John Reed for the better part of a year, I’ve been dead and learning the real truth about everything.

DECEMBER 21, 8:06 A.M. EST Alone at My Own Welcome-Home Party

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Gentle Tweeter,

While hardly the fragile homesick type, in light of my current circumstances I do seek out an old family haunt. For as long as I can recall my parents have kept a penthouse at the Rhinelander hotel. There, sixty-five stories above Lexington Avenue, across from Bloomingdale’s, my first impulse would be to hide in my old bedroom among my stuffed animals and Jane Austen novels and watch on-demand streaming episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs on television until next Halloween. Possibly, I’d reread The Forsyte Saga. The coast should be clear, because, according to Page Six in the Post, my parents are at sea aboard their three-hundred-foot yacht, the Pangaea Crusader. At present they’re in the Bering Straits attempting to foil the