The Heavens Rise

shut your goddamn—” And then his grip on Ben’s neck went slack. His weight lifted off him and the breath suddenly rushed back into Ben’s lungs. The bastard hadn’t finished fastening the ball bag to the band in back, so Ben was able to spit the thing out onto the pillow. He threw himself onto his back, grabbed for the nightstand drawer and pulled out the handgun he’d never drawn on another human being before that moment.

His attacker was now wide-eyed, slack-jawed and standing a few feet from the foot of the bed, as if he’d been drawn off of Ben by an invisible cord. But there was a dullness to his eyes, a vacantness there. Maybe it was a trick of the light streaming into the darkened bedroom from the living room, carving strange shapes on one side of the man’s face. The gun, Ben finally realized. He’s not looking at the gun. I’m pointing a gun at him and he’s not even looking at the damn thing.

“You deserve better than this,” the man said, his voice drained of all aggression. “You are beautiful and you deserve better than this.”

“Get out! Now!”

“You are beautiful and you deser—”

“Get out!”

Ben’s scream was loud enough to wake the neighbors, and in response, the man pivoted on one heel, walked toward the doorway, grabbed the edge of the door frame in both hands and brought his own forehead into the wood with a crack that turned Ben’s stomach. Without flinching or hesitating, he did it a second time. Then a third time. Blood sprouted from his forehead, painting the bridge of his nose.

“Get out! Now!”

The man turned on one heel and headed into the living room. Ben shot to his feet, gun raised and sighted on the man’s back as he headed for the front door, steps steady. Blood from the giant man’s gashed forehead dribbled into a neat trail along the hardwood floor. He left the front door open behind him so Ben moved through it, gun raised.

His neighbor Elsa lived in the other side of the town house, which meant they shared a front porch. She was a surgical resident used to blood and long hours but she was still given pause by the sight of her tiny gay neighbor in boxers and a T-shirt, holding a shiny gun on a giant, bloody-faced man who was shuffling toward his pickup truck with the casual air of someone who’d left his cell phone inside it.

“Give him three minutes,” Ben said, his voice shaking. “If he’s not gone in three minutes, we call the cops.”

“Three minutes,” she responded.

“Three minutes,” Ben repeated, only now it was a trembling whisper.

As soon as the man slid behind the wheel of his truck, he jerked as if he had awakened from an alcoholic blackout. Split personality disorder, Ben thought. It had to be. Whatever it was, Ben didn’t give a shit. Whatever it was, it was dangerous and his skull was still singing and he’d fire at the fucker’s kneecap if he made a run at the house.

The nearby streetlight threw enough dull light inside the truck’s cab that Ben could see that the man’s eyes were focused now, and full of wild hostility again. But there was confusion there too. And for the first time, he seemed to notice the gun in Ben’s hands. Maybe that’s because Ben was now standing only a few feet from the truck’s driver-side window, gun raised, his hands finally steady.

With the careful enunciation of a kindergarten teacher, Ben said, “Get the fuck out of here. Right now.”

The truck sped off, giving Ben a glimpse of the Confederate flag sticker and pissing Calvin on the rear window. Once the taillights vanished around the corner, Elsa joined him on the sidewalk, portable phone pressed to her breasts.

Ben lowered the gun.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “What did you do to— Whoa.” Her fingers went to the bruises on his face, bruises he hadn’t seen yet so he had no idea how bad they were.

“He did it—”

“No. The blood on his face—”

“I know. He did all of it. He threw me on the bed and then it was like he changed his mind. He smashed his head into the door frame.”

“Ben . . .”

“I’m dead serious, Elsa.”

“How’d you get him off you?”

“I didn’t. He just . . . stopped. I don’t know.”

“Because of the gun?”

“No. Before I got the gun.”

“Crazy,” Elisa whispered again.

“Pretty much. Yeah.”

“You got a permit for that thing?” she asked him.

“Yeah. Why?”

“ ’Cause I’m calling the cops,” she said, heading back toward their front steps.

“And what are you going to tell them?”

“His plate number. I wrote it down.”

She was almost inside her front door when she said, “And Ben. This might not be the time, but maybe you could try meeting men the old-fashioned way.”

“What’s the old-fashioned way again?”

“I don’t know. Dinner?”

“I wasn’t in the mood for dinner,” he said.

“Were you in the mood for this?”

He returned to his bedroom, turned on the lamp, put the gun back inside his nightstand. Then he shook for a few minutes

What had he been in the mood for? He’d never dated anyone for longer than a few months because that was how long it took him to feel the upsurge of desperate possessiveness within him that he knew would destroy any chance at a healthy relationship. So instead, he’d nuke the thing with the usual platitudes and cliches. He had his career to focus on. He wasn’t all that big on gay bars or leaving the house when he wasn’t working or blah blah blah. Some guys were pros at the Internet sex game and as far as he was concerned, more power to them. But he was different, always had been. For him, these quick, late-night assignations had become a grim compulsion that protected him from the terror of being abandoned again.

You are beautiful and you deserve better.

Insane that the guy had chosen those words. They must have been fueled by some kind of schizophrenic self-loathing; maybe the sick bastard saw himself as Ted Bundy one minute, Ted Haggard the next. It was a good thing Elsa has insisted on calling the police. At the very least, they had to give them the guy’s plate number before he hurt somebody else.

You are beautiful and you deserve better.

There was a pad and pen in his nightstand. He wrote the words down exactly as he remembered the guy saying them. And as soon as he lifted the sheet of paper in his hands, a flood of adrenaline-fueled warmth coursed through him, causing his extremities to tingle and the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end in pinprick formations. He could hear the sound of his own breathing.

Hand of God wrote that note, Benny. A few nights earlier he’d held a piece of paper similar to this one, and the phrase written on it had been just as brief and direct. Of course, his story wasn’t the same as Anthem’s. He hadn’t come out of some blackout to find this note sitting on his desk, in his own handwriting. But the words themselves had come from somewhere else, they’d tumbled from the suddenly slack jaw of his attacker, who had just been seized up and off Ben’s prone body as if by the . . . hand of God.

Belief. Faith. Maybe those were the only apt words to describe the sensations that were moving through him now, edging out the stark terror of his assault, replacing it with something softer and more malleable. He hadn’t been lying when he told Anthem that he believed in more than one god. But his faith in some kind of higher power was an untested thing, more of a bet on fifty-fifty odds than the result of an actual spiritual experience of