The driver slowly lowers his sunglasses, revealing yellow goat eyes, the irises running side to side.
Written down the outside margin in my nana’s hand, the words
“Were you not,” I persevere, “in fact
Stymied by my revelation, the liveried Devil can only stammer.
Gentle Tweeter, I have succeeded in my last-Halloween vow to kick some satanic ass. The damage inflicted at my chubby hands has far surpassed any I dream I’d ever had of my own ability. Here is proof that I exist as someone beyond Beelzebub’s sweaty pedophile fantasy. What mere fictive character could so cripple her author?
More telling than any verbal response, the driver’s crimson hide flushes even deeper scarlet. His horns elongate, lifting his cap. His claws lengthen, pushing off his gloves.
Heedless of the cataclysm taking place around me, I keep up my harangue. Immolating plastic mountains create a flaming skyline. All creation is this mix of tragedy and farce as a trio of people approach. The succubus, Babette, my former best friend, leads my mom and dad forward, prompting them with the murderous point of a large, ornate knife. It’s the same antique blade with which Goran executed the pretty Shetland pony.
The sight of my parents, brought forth in the Devil’s presence, clearly to be utilized as hostages, this unnerves me. Regardless, I boldly thrust out the corrupt book, asserting, “Show us, dark master, if anything remains of your butchered wing-wang.” Puffing my chest to showcase the gummy chambray shirt, I demand, “Is this
Livid and trembling, Satan dashes his script against the ground. He turns and reaches into the Town Car, extracting something pale. Dangling from his fist is an orange rag. Given a vigorous shake by his outraged arm, it emits a plaintive
Ye gods. It’s Tigerstripe.
Before I can shush him, angel Festus seconds my challenge. “Yes, Prince of Lies, show us your chopped-off pee-pee.”
Nana escalates the chorus, shouting, “Show us! Let me see your twisted little wormwood!”
And in response, wicked Satan calmly turns to the demon holding my parents, and he says, “Kill them. Kill them both now.”
DECEMBER 21, 2:48 P.M. HAST
Satan, Enraged
Gentle Tweeter,
You think it’s going to be a breeze, watching your mother get murdered, but it’s not. I’ve witnessed my mom get lynched by redneck backwoods sheriffs, and I’ve watched her bludgeoned by the henchmen of Big Tobacco, and chomped on by the bulldozers of Big Coal, and garroted by the hit men of Agribusiness.
Once my mother was bitten in half by a renegade manatee. Blood poured out of her eyes. Blood gushed from her ears. Her guts pushed up and out of her mouth. That’s how I knew she was dead. It took days to film. It took an entire team of special effects wonks just to get the blood right. Easily a hundred people were present on set. Stylists and makeup people, grips, dialogue coaches. Caterers. You name it. All of these people stood around, yawning and eating potato chips, and watched my mom gasp and choke on her own gore.
The happy memories of ordinary kids might include their homemaker mothers phoning Bulgari to have jeweled tiaras sent ’round for approval, or Tasering the Somali maids, but my fond recollections include looking on as my mother was burned at the stake by a cabal of Big Pharma drug companies.
I’d sat in a folding chair and peeked between my chubby fingers while she was stoned by angry Puritans. I’d perched on my father’s lap and held my breath as her lovely face disappeared into a rank pool of quicksand.
And she never flinched, my mom. She never winced.
The director shouted, “Action!”
And my lovely mother died beautifully every time.
She died bravely. She died cleanly. She died thin and noble and calm. When the script dictated, every time, she died perfectly. Her final words were always so eloquent.
She never required a second take.
My father, my dad I’ve heard expire loudly and wetly through a hundred locked bedroom doors.
Whatever I expected, it’s not like that in real life. On the flaming peak of that plastic volcano, as the continent of Madlantis sinks into the Pacific Ocean, Babette lifts the large knife and plunges it into my father’s heart. A beat later, at Satan’s command, she swings the ornate cake knife in a wide arc to slash my mother’s throat.
DECEMBER 21, 2:53 P.M. HAST
The Inevitable Result of Overly Intellectualizing and Suppressing What Would Otherwise Be Appropriate, Natural Expressions of Grief by a Precocious Albeit Insecure Adolescent, Who, Frankly, Has Been Through the Trauma Olympics Lately, What with the Deaths of Her Grandparents and Her Nice Fish and Her Sweet Kitten, Not to Mention Her Own Prematurely Cruel Demise, but Who Keeps Plugging Along with Her Plucky Chin Held High and Does Not Succumb to Blubbing, but Has Striven Gamely to Rise Above Her Circumstances, Dire as They’ve Become, and Who for the Moment Finds Herself Unable to Embrace Yet Another Unhappy Turn of Events
Gentle Tweeter,
The Camille-shaped and Antonio-shaped balloons of blue ectoplasm inflate. Floating before my eyes are the international tycoon and the media superstar. Their ghost eyes meet mine.
Just as I feared it would, back there in the PH of the Rhinelander hotel, my ghost heart balloons like an aneurysm full of hot tears. It bloats like a deceased kitten in the backseat of a limousine. It’s astonishing, but the heart of me engorges like a rapidly inflating, much-turgid man-banana in a fetid toilet. And just like all those things, my heart explodes.
Forgive me, Gentle Tweeter, but what takes place at this juncture is not something one can keyboard. Such are the limitations of emoticons. Upon contact with my parents’ ghosts, I suffer all the emotions which failed to manifest themselves in my life. And for the first time since Los Angeles and Lisbon and Leipzig, I’m happy.
DECEMBER 21, 2:54 P.M. HAST
Shucking This Mortal Coil
Gentle Tweeter,
My mother looks over the melting, flaming landscape that surrounds us. Baroque ruins stand outlined in smoke against the ember-filled skies. Scalding ocean waves sweep inland as the continent sinks lower. Superheated convection winds carry the poisoned fumes of everything to kill everyone and everything everywhere.
Surveying this scene of total planetary annihilation, my sweet mother, her ghost, gasps and says, “How
