Yet another bottle of wine had been drunk, and it had been his second bottle, and his eyes were still thirsty, flush-eyed, and his lushness desired more, more blood for his waning mind to drink. More liquid to satiate his hunger, more food for thought to quench him. His eyes, dry, bloodshot, he waited around to catch another ride to find another god he could murder for their money. He had money (but not nearly enough, he thought). He had power. He was looking for a fun time, cutting people's throats into searing holes, the blackness that he always enjoyed in seeing, in people's lives and in his.
The golden blade, he wondered if he ever wanted to cut his own throat too. He could feel no pain, no trepidation, except that he would be free of this god business, this rusty and ugly alcoholism, his eyes never seeing, but shut. He saw the sun sinking further in the sky, and he imagined it as his own eyes, the gold and silver ones, shutting the world into darkness, having the blind deaf and dumb people never traveling in this miserable world again.
He got on the bus. He sighed. He gave the bus man some change. Then he sat in his own chair, alone, lonely, a god who was never loved by the intelligent people, the bright people, and he knew everyone in the bus was smart, was as brilliant as the stars in the sky. They all ignored him, the lonely buzzard that continued to feast on the flesh of the dead.
He felt the dryness of his throat, how he needed yet more wine to feed himself, the holy water he needed to drink to gain salvation.
Horus was supposed to be a happy god. A bright god. But he never earned happiness. He read all about him in the Egyptian mythology books. Horus was a respectable god, a great god, and his sanity was tattered, as soiled as his blade that was never gold, but felt that it was nothing but gold paint that was chipping off the edges, with every person he had killed.
The bus rolled on, the night rolled on. He was salubrious, the drool coming out of his mouth, the blood he feasted on dripping from his maw. The regular, ordinary citizens of Seattle couldn't see he was a god, a god who decided who could kill the other gods. It was always him. Cutting the necks like ham and turkey. Another Thanksgiving feast for the poor and worthless.
He had dreams, dreams of what it was like to be with his sister and brother. They were a happy family, a wonderful family, their father was proud, and their mother was warm, and Storm used to be not so stupid, but normal just like them. But he never felt loved by them. Their eyes never gazed at him with respect. It was why he was here. He cried often, thinking of it.
He had a pack of cards. He scanned through them, trying to find the ace. Aces were a diamond in the rough in his card packs, always rare, always very valuable. He only, if ever, saw two. They never shined brilliantly in the light. They were pyrite, if anything. Coal. Black.
Seattle's blue-grays blended in his vision, the moody city beginning to sleet again on the bus windows. He saw the droplets of red, yellow, and green mercury, sliding across the windshield wipers, to the insides of the vehicle…
They looked like stars.
He wished he had another drink that looked like the stars. That would knock him out that he saw stars.
He rarely saw the stars in the night sky. He rarely looked up. He rarely appreciated life. Alcohol had solved everything for him. He didn't need to experience happiness. Or sorrow. He just needed to feel numb. Feel no pain. Drink until his body no longer tingled, until no more life was imbued with him, the alcohol was his food, his comfort, he had it instead of cake and ice cream for his birthday. Once he was 21 he had a chocolate cherry shot, and he considered it his birthday wish, 21 candles and all, engulfed in his throat.
Spitting fire! He often did that! He cursed, he screamed, he flew! Many things were destroyed. He had destroyed desks, telephones, plates, cups, hats, dresses, toys, vehicles, bottles, bric-bracs, knick-knacks, paddy whacks, bones, animals that liked bones, porcelain, ebony, ivory, piano strings, guitar keys, wicked wishes, wicked desires, family members, especially his brother and sister, his dad, his mom, his eyes, his soul, his fires, his wicked ices, his pain pills, his liver, his stomach, his heart. He took a couple tablets of Vicodin to help with the pain he experienced from being a lush drunk. His throat had scorched from the vomits he had splashed out. His legs were in pain. His arms were weak and tired. Gods can experience pain, he had told future god-wishers. If you want to be a god, you better wish to take some morphine with you, because it's a lot of pain, but morphine can't erase away the wretched moldings it can take of your heart. His was a hook, as it scratched underneath his pale skin, the alcohol weakening him, more and more and more…
He watched as the night cascaded into darkness. He left, as he walked beyond East Alder Street, which one of the gods had told him was where the prodigy god, Yahweh, had lived in, before he decided to protect people, to defend them from their own done-in fates. Suicide was a pathetic endeavor, yet he wished for it himself. But his hands were too shaky, too cowardly to commit the sin of murdering oneself.
He saw a light, a crevice of the daily life of Yahweh's father and mother, inside the house. The mother had clutched a wine glass on her hand, as if it was her daily cigarette, as her husband sat in the armchair, typing in a computer. He could see the husband was agitated, surly, his speech slurred, the wife not much more, drinking merlot until she blacked out cold on the couch, her head affixed between the cushions. The husband was rambling, pulling out his hair, a bald spot planted on his head on his silver, ashy hair, and the desk was a crumbled mess, of papers, of newspaper reports of government attacks and the riots in other countries, of terrorist attacks and men dying in the war so many countries away. He had cut out all of those events and plastered them to the wall, with red threaded lines needled with push pins, and he ate a turkey sandwich on the computer, the mayonnaise and bits of bread stuck between the keys.
Crazy family, he thought. My family just disappeared from me. Momma died of cancer. It was a tumor in her head. Father went to a sanitarium and never contacted his family again. He thought he had been committed, and didn't want to return after he possibly heard news that his wife was dead.
He was in the mood for vodka today. He went into the nearest liquor store, bought a large bottle, and drank right in front of Yahweh's parents, as his father soon passed out in front of the computer screen, in the middle of writing an email to someone, possibly about his latest rantings and delusions.
He drank, and drank, and drank, and he passed out, just like Yahweh's mother, on their lawn…
—
His mother, with such large breasts, her eyes shining so brightly against their sodium kitchen lights, her smile, radiating in their doling eyes that she would take care of them, and so would their father, the large-chested albatross, his wings so wide that they reached the city of Seattle by just stretching them, on their warm, sun-drenched town in Oklahoma. Their mother and father, so proud, so innocent in their beliefs, they had taught them about the word of God, and His Truths, and His Yearning for his loved children to grow. They had learned everything they needed to know in their cattle ranch that only had a few cows, a few horses, and their father, he made money as a preacher, though he had told them he needed medicine for his chest pain. And their mother, oh their mother, she was beginning to grow sickly and her feet couldn't reach the floor anymore, always on the bed, watching the ceiling resonate with colors. Her brain, it wasn't right, and they weren't sure if she had to go to the doctor. His father feared the worst, but she still had a smile on her face, always making pies for them, always belting out the milk and cookies after Bible class.
Wave was a very smart young bird, a very smart swallow, who always studied dutifully under her father's word. And Storm, he once was so smart, so handsome, almost as smart as his own sister! But Jet was always the least favorite. He smoked cigarettes at 14, had a drink now and then, often skipped his father's classes to smoke a little weed. Kids did it all the time. He expected his father to not be so shocked.
He guessed he couldn't complain too much about his family. They never abused him. Never said an ill word towards him. But his father never seemed to love him. He often was disappointed in him, whenever he found the bottles of Smirnoff in his room, littered like shed crystal shells from insects that lived in his walls. He wondered what he did wrong to have his son be drinking, loitering, abusing drugs, and he prayed to God often, a god he never believed in, but he could never tell his father that. He often left the Bible unread on his desk, his father hoping he could pick up on the so-called good words of the lord, but Jet had despised the book, the book that had caused blood, murder, hypocrisy, lies, and thieving. He had died when he read the book, and became a new bird, one who never believed in any sacrilegious life, or any life at all that held power over their lives. He just believed in himself, and that he was his own god of his own world, and he made decisions. Some were good, most were bad.
He drank his Smirnoff that he soon replaced with wine, and he thought he had to move to the big city, where people could understand him. He wasn't an addict, honest, especially with the alcohol flowing inside him. His eyes often cried of it, drips of apple-flavored Smirnoff flowing down his cheeks. He soon forfeited his mother's cookies and pies and other good home-cooked meals and drank alcohol and coffee, along with a small sandwich now and then. He lived on the drink, and the drink had lived on him, his body depending on it to feel calm, rational, outspoken. His tongue often wished for it, and it got what it wanted, like a babe in need of warm breast milk.
Wave never had any plans for what she wanted to be, but liked where she lived, and was hoping to at least go to college, to find what she could do to make her father proud. Storm wanted to be an engineer, his erector sets always piled on their floors, the Lego sets full of meticulous designs. He loved toys that required a lot of thinking. He thought Lincoln logs were too simple, and Tinkers to be too artificial.
Everyone was proud of their family, so happy, so soaring in the air like albatrosses and hawks and swallows they were, except Jet was falling deeper into Hell, drinking his many bottles of Smirnoff, vodka, whiskey, and soon, wine.
To get the wine, he often stole a couple of bills from his father. His father, complaining of the constant chest pain he ushered in his body, he claimed the stress coming from Jet was beginning to be too much. He did his preaching sessions at the church less and less, his epiphanies of the good word of the lord beginning to die down, a candle wittering away. Their mother, oh their mother, she cared about his health more than hers, as the headaches increased, as she was driven to depression where she locked the doors and shut the blinds, wishing her eyes were never graced by light coming from the heavens of the god she so loved. She wished she was dead sometimes, but she remained in her room, in the bed, rarely coming out anymore. She had told their father to be committed in a sanitarium where he could get rest for his chest. She didn't think of what will happen when her children were alone with her, telling her children to "just microwave something, my ol' bones are too tired to cook you guys somethin' to eat. Too tired…too tired…"
Their situation was getting worse. Their father flew to a state of the art hospital, and Jet had counted the years he had last seen him. Seven years ago, he disappeared, never telling his children at all about where he was, how his health condition was, and the police never told them that he was dead. He was still alive, possibly committed in that sanitarium, his church that once had his devoted believers, now empty, abandoned, never a soul walking there anymore but the spirits of those who died who once believed and loved their father, and their father may as well have been a walking spirit, his feet dissolving in the air, never reaching the gray carpeted floors that looked like lint and wolf hair.
Wave had researched their mother's condition, and she had told her that she needed to go to the doctor, as she could've had a brain tumor. She cried, raising her palms in the air, saying that Jesus will heal her, and she didn't need any chemotherapy, no pills that could drive the tumor away. She saw the spirits that her husband had once saved, surrounding her, giving her blessings, spectral roses, and she said she could see the future in all her children's lives, that Jet, her proud, smiling boy Jet, will soon learn the word of God and become a god himself.
They had assumed their mother was long gone, rambling about a new universe being born under the plight of her husband's disappearance. She had written rambling letters to Seattle, telling him to come back to their humble home, but she never got a returning response, and her hands were so cramped, so tired from the letters she kept sending to her holy husband, and she had cried her affixed tears, as the spirits had comforted her, gave her more apparition roses, but she banged the table with her large, pudgy fists and had wished to die. Her children had locked her in her room, giving her only microwaved food and water. She was tired of burning her tongue on crusty hardened brownies from TV dinners.
Jet had listened to the wailings of his mother, yet could not see himself crying.
He felt his mother had died a long time ago, when she was planted the tumor in her brain, the one that his father's so-called god had decided she needed to have, even if she was so small, so frail, so precious, and he knew they were next, as the groceries their father had spent for a month was beginning to run out, and he could no longer steal bills off his old man. There was the trust fund, the credit cards that Wave had discovered on his desk, but she knew that wouldn't last forever either.
As the sun began to drift away from the Oklahoma ranch, as winter soon flourished into being, fall's red orange and yellow leaves beginning to turn gray and layered with snow, their mother had died, her mouth waiting to kiss the lips of God, her eyes closed, a beautiful epiphany relaxing her in her final moments. She had died without pain, but the children couldn't decide what to do with the body, but rather let it rot in the winter frost, her body as curled up, as dried as the leaves, as the snow had surrounded her, the spirits of God covering her with a blanket of love and trust.
Wave could no longer go to college. She felt unsafe telling people of what happened to them. She didn't want to hear the news that their father had died in the Seattle sanitarium, and they now had to live as foster children. Orphans. She didn't want to be separated from her brothers, as some foster systems were wont to do. She couldn't imagine herself away from Storm, even Jet, believing she could solve his drinking problem, his constant wasting of their father's trust fund on weed and morphine. Wave had believed she could save him, as God had saved her, and she had spent the lonely days in the house with no heat with Storm, who was too obsessed with his savant abilities in machines and engineering to notice anyone. Wave dabbled in machines as well, but could never understand them as well as Storm, as he disassembled watches to see their inner organs and their heartbeats, then built them up again; performing surgery so he could see what had made a machine alive and breathe. He thought machines were alive, were creatures as conscious as humans, and he didn't consider them blind deaf and dumb. He considered them lost, autistic, devices that wanted to be a part of the human world, but were only used for their one lone wondrous ability.
He had sympathized with them. He felt the machines had sympathized with him over the loss of his parents, the cold nights he spent with only Wave, and never his bigger brother, Jet, who was too busy dabbling with drugs and alcohol.
Jet soon had enough of living in such a religious state, one that frowned upon his lifestyle of booze and high-chasing, that he had left his brother and sister, took a bus that would travel all the way to Seattle, and used the rest of their father's trust money. He thought he could also try to find their father, to find out why he had left them and never spoke to them in so long, but as he thought it over, their father was probably committed under some sort of mental disorder and was never let out, and was too ashamed to tell his children. He imagined the death of his wife soon made him fall into a deep, psychotic depression. Their father never was diagnosed with anything, but he thought he had obsessive tendencies, worried a lot, often spent some nights coming back working depressed and hollowed out. His hands were always on his face, sobbing quietly as his God continued to make the world turn, his feathers about to become blades and saw off the side of his face. He imagined that. He imagined a lot of things in his magical, hallucinatory thinking.
Wave and Storm had lived alone in the house, soon realizing the money was gone. There were only very few microwavable dinners left. Wave had got a job at a movie rental store near the middle of nowhere, and the money wasn't enough to keep them away from the realities of the hopelessness they felt, as the sun was extinguished in the cold silver clouds of winter. They didn't know where Jet went either. She soon used her cell phone to track Jet's, and it told her he was in Seattle, in 3rd Avenue. She was sure that he was drinking his wine, smoking his hashish, and abandoning his role of the forgotten brother, the brother that Storm had always wanted, and as he vivisected yet another machine, he had asked Wave if they could travel to Seattle, just to find him.
"I have a job to go to tomorrow, Storm. I can't just abandon my duties. If Jet wants to go to some snobby city and smoke and drink and inject drugs he can go do whatever he wants. I'm not responsible for him anymore. He's only responsible for himself."
Storm shook his head, slowly, the feathers on his head ruffling, his wings becoming wide, nearly reaching the end of the globe. He was just like his father. Oh, how much he was like his father, before the storm that had taken away his intelligence and his passion, his life.
"We have to find him. He's family. You don't want to be like dad. He abandoned us, never contacted us, never contacted our mother. I don't want that to happen to us. I want us to be a tight family, as tight as the screws in this machine. You're going to have to quit your job, for emergency reasons. We're going to live in Seattle. Sell the horse and cattle, we don't need them. Sell them and we'd have enough to get there by bus or plane. Whichever you prefer."
"And why? He's an ass, Storm! He never was a part of our family! He never joined us with our father, he never appreciated our mother, he never…he never…"
She wished she could cry. Her feathers were rolled up in her fists, and she hid her face, like her mother had done before she died. The bastard of the family, the false machine part, the false idol in the family, he had to be found, and they had to become together again, an amoeba finding its split piece.
They pretended their mother and father had been sleeping in their ranch. They wore long, black boots, in mourning of the home that once was their abode, their warm colored canvas, and they sold the horses and cattle that were only there because Wave couldn't imagine losing the last remnants of the home she loved, the Promise Land that God had told Moses about. She looked in the skeletal remains of her mother, buried underneath the rime and permafrost of the earth, and she wanted to knock on the surface, telling her mother that they would now live in a city of sin, the city that her father had been trapped inside. She heard of her father's symptoms that could've had him committed, his anxiety and OCD, and she wanted to see him too, to find that her loved father wasn't dead, but trying to get better for them. Her wings couldn't reach Seattle. She didn't have her father's genes. Storm and Wave held hands as they paid the same amount of money it took Jet to take him to that city of sin, and she held her little pocket Bible, praying with her one feather, her one eye that closed as the moon rose up.
As soon as they arrived in Seattle, they lived in a hotel, using her cell phone that had told her he was all over town, trying to score hashish, booze, and morphine. The needles of morphine had littered the town, inside the phone booths, near the bushes that were parted like her so-loved Moses had done to the sea, and the winter had blew and chilled them, her eyes nearly frozen in their sockets. She once believed in her father's hallucinations, and she believed in hers. She heard Jet's shrill voice everywhere she went, but he soon disappeared, after the winter's wind dip into the atmosphere, and she shuddered, her heart continuing to miss the big bro she wanted to have a together family again, and she developed a cough, a cold with phlegm in her throat, and Storm would place his hand on her shoulder and tell her to come back inside the hotel, where he ordered a warm pea soup. She sighed, her phone's power dying as much as her hope, and she walked with him, leaving the phone behind. Her charger was broken (broken in the pain of losing her loved home), and she was losing money to replace anything they had.
She couldn't find a job. They found her Oklahoma dialect not "sophisticated enough" to work in restaurants, her education considered trivial, her desire to go to college meaningless. They were on their last night that they could stay in the hotel, and they would soon be homeless, out in the streets.
Storm might've had a form of Asperger's. It was the only reason he didn't try to find a job. He found socializing with people other than his own family boring, he found the jobs too stressful to perform, he was very much like his father, worrying about the projects he had to complete for his machines, the projects that Wave had thought were pointless, menial, and not at all important to the situation at hand. She had told him to stop playing with his toys and try to help her earn money so they can get away from the cold.
"They're not toys, Wave. They're machines. And they're wonderful."
"They're toys! Why aren't you helping me? If you care about your own fucking brother so damn much why don't you get off your ass and help me? We were living somewhat comfortably in Oklahoma Storm, then all of a sudden you just had to fucking wish your big brother Jet was with us, even though all Jet ever was was a fucking lush, and it's all he ever will be! We don't need people like that in our lives, Storm! We need someone like our father, who's in a fucking mental hospital or something, never contacting us after six fucking years! We could see him, but he didn't even give us the name of that damn place! Face it Storm, just face it, our mother is dead, our father is gone, we have absolutely nowhere to go, and we're going to be homeless!"
Tears poured from her eyes. She hid her face again, like mommy had done. Like daddy had done. The momma and papa she will never see again.
Storm couldn't process her emotions. He thought she was laughing, a maniacal kind of laughter. He had never seen his own sister sad, except with her tentative crushes and break ups in high school. He sat, motionless, emotionless, and Wave threw their family heirloom they had kept with them to remind themselves of their loving family, the crystal stork that was shattered from its head and neck, and she sobbed, and wished their father could save him. But he couldn't. He was trapped in a hospital, never to come out again.
The next day, the hotel kicked them out. They had to survive on the streets. Storm often tried tricks to launder money off people, but this rarely worked out. Wave wanted to eat trash, be cold without her shredded coat and boots she slashed in her insanity, and find the drunken idiot who made them come to Seattle in the first place. She still could not sense Jet anywhere. She had been through all over the city, through the spring, through the summer, through the fall, through yet another cold, desperate winter, and Jet, the lush who wanted to drink all of the world's wine, was never found.
She only wanted to find him, so she could kill him.
She would twist the pocket knife she had in his stomach, slash the organs that were black and shutting down, twist his body, twist his life, twist his sense of believing in gods and being a godless heathen, and she would have her brother as dead as her mother, as dead as her father.
Wave did not have the power to see gods. Her vision wasn't impaired, but gods were visible only to those who believed in them. And Wave did not believe in the Egyptian god Horus, who flew around the city, killing other gods, burning them in the cinders of the sun he was supposed to represent, the white fires reaching out and licking and consuming everything that had defied him, all the people in his family who never believed in him. Chip had come to him, his own little maroon and fey god, and he had looked up to him, and had wished his wish, and he sat and wait, watched as the leaves turned brown, curled and dry, and they fell off the trees as all the moisture in the world had left them, for yet another dry and frozen winter, the ponds beginning to crack with ice, the sun becoming distant, the clouds gray, slushed, as the streets in Seattle were scattered with snow, the white coats walking on four legs, and freezing the boots that she wore since their home had died away at the drink of the glass green bottle, and sometimes she wanted a candle to adorn in her hands, to remember of the mother and father who suddenly disappeared who loved her and her brother very much, and the snow accumulated, their own little snow globe surrounded with the small bits of flakes.
The winds struck like daggers. She wondered if she would be able to survive it, the snow storm that was said to spread towards all of Washington and the surrounding states, if she hadn't cut her coats like slabs of black, nearly plastic meat, cushioned with feathers.
The frost, it piled up. Her cough had got worse. Her bones had become ice pricks; she imagined her body having its very own lobotomy in her heart…
The god had flown over the city, gazing at the misery of his sister, his brother, the ones who were so smart. The storm roared, it gasped and cried and slashed its claws against them! Wave's ribs, they were the small arches of her building that protected the heart, and as the snow had spread its discord, she had fallen against a railing of the bridge, holding on, her one arm seeming to be rubber, the bones dislocated, her ribs cracked and broken, the building falling apart, and it hurt, how it hurt! She cried as Storm was lost in the snowstorm, the intelligence of the once somewhat Aspergian albatross was lobotomized, by a crash of icicles against his eye, as he lied against a building, the wind howling, growling, the bruise being born like a black fetus…
She was losing consciousness. She gripped onto the railing as the storm had subsided, quieted, the snow only the sprinkling of a Christmas that she wished she had forgotten.
She fell asleep, listening to the whistle of the wind, the sun bleeding against the sky like a golden rose…
Wave had surmised her thoughts as she had awakened, the sun orange, the afternoon falling into night. She felt as if she died that few hours ago. Her arm, it was shattered as the wind had taken her away, against things with solid bodies, hardened steel, while Storm was a new albatross, with his wings still so wide, but his brain was bludgeoned, as the bruise appeared, something burning to get out of his skin.
She felt sore. Her body was sickened with the flu, sleeping in the steely cold. She couldn't move her one arm. It had hurt too much to cough, to move around. She wished she could lay here and die, but she still had to find her brother. And kill him, for what he had done to their lives. And if her father was still alive, maybe kill him too. For abandoning him in this awful city, never giving any sort of clue to where he was getting treatment at. He may never have been in Seattle at all. He could've been in another country, with a dumb bitch as his wife, leaving their mother because he knew she was so sick, cursed with a cancerous tumor.
And Storm said, "I'm tired, Wave. Let's go home."
She wanted to cry again, but the tears were inside a steel box, frozen.
"We can't go home, Storm! We have no money you fucking idiot! And it's not like we can walk all the way back to Oklahoma! You know how much those bus trips cost?"
The once stoic and emotionless Storm, he once could stand Wave's abuse, but as the mark appeared more purple, rounder, nearly black like the tar on the side of the roads, he cried, just as much as Wave had used to, and asked, "Do you really think I'm…dumb, Wave? Do you really think I'm stupid? Storm won't do that no more; no he won't do that no more!"
She wasn't sure what happened to Storm that day, his intelligence melting away like the spring to snow. She wasn't sure how he had found her, why he now had the mentality of a five year old child. The interest in engineering, his little intelligent toys, had vanished, and he played with cars they found in trash or stolen from Toys for Tots bins, Hot Wheels, sometimes dolls. He was never sure how he could keep Barbie's hair well-managed, her head always a mat of ratty hair.
But she could smell the air, the melting of the sun in the oxygen, the smell of blood, and wine, and whiskey breath. She could smell that someone had wished for these terrible things to happen to them, and if she could, she could tighten a fist with her right arm, that was now in pieces, and the kill that sun and make it turn into a chromium red…there was a god responsible for their suffering. And it wasn't their own. Their own God wouldn't make them become incapacitated, the bruise becoming blue as the sun had roared and fanned its flaming wings, Storm thinking nothing of the pain he experienced during those two months, the headaches that resulted from him missing about a few pieces of his brain.
They droned on. Storm often whine and cried and wanted more food, Wave telling him to "cram it", irritated from the loss of her arm. She was smart, but she had no medical knowledge, not even knowledge on what had caused Storm's retardation, and she left her arm dangling from her body, the bones melting and molding into a puddle, the icicle pricks becoming nothing more, no longer protecting her little glass heart.
The old them had died, as the home they lived in, as their mother and father, had died away, blown in the winter air. The ashes of their former lives couldn't be recovered, they had become what they feared the most, what their father had warned them about since they were little: lonely. Sad. Miserable. And God decided to not save them, the one they knew so little about.
—
Storm became a god. He could tell because he said he wanted Wave to feel better. He could tell because Chip had told him about the new god, the thunderbird, the one with only the intelligence of a five year old child. He promised to kill other gods because he wanted Wave happy. He wanted Jet happy too. But he knew if he went back to his family, he would be forgotten again. His father still had his influence over the affable bunch. Storm was now mentally retarded. Wave had her arm and chest recasted and rebuilt after Storm's wish, but she tried to tell Storm that she could tell this was what Jet was, a god who was ruthless, selfish, violent, and she knew the only reason she looked for him, and Yahweh and Yehl, was only to kill them with her own mortal hands. Choke their cut necks until the blood spurted out like a fountain. He didn't mind the death of the two most powerful gods right now, but he…oh, he wouldn't mind if his sister killed him, could he admit that? His sister, he wished he could forgive her, but the scorn, the scolding, the coldness he received all of his days when his mother was alive and his father wasn't committed, it was what made him drink in the first place! And to drink, as much as he did, was to die.
He watched the silence consume the house. Yahweh's mother soon rose, her head beating against her as much as he could imagine it did when Storm had received his lobotomy, and his father still asleep, his face half masticating a turkey sandwich on the keyboard, the cheese and mayonnaise oozing from his mouth. He was going to choke. And he was sure Yahweh didn't care.
He looked into a room, the dark blue paint as bright as the Caribbean ocean, the eggshell color shining brightly as the typewriter had sat in its little corner of the desk, typing out words, an invisible pianist. Words to a story. The keys had clicked and clacked, the piano playing some haunting melody that matched the story on the page, Jet's story, the story the page had told him he wanted everyone to pity him, but he was a bastard, a heartless bastard.
He went inside, the godlike invisibility never being picked up by the parents' of the ignorant and selfish blue hedgehog. Ghosts couldn't possibly exist, Anansi was dead! Forgotten! Gone! He wasn't alive, still typing out his mediocre stories (Read one, wanted his five cents back)! The god of his webbed tales, his crystalline lies, the spider was still spitting out silk, telling a story of a very selfish and drunk bird, who was hated by his family in secret, who had drank and drunk into oblivion, and he was leading himself to a nowhere world, a world built by Satan, the demon he believed in. He would be never seen again from his family, especially his father who was dead to him seven years ago, but carried no official death certificate.
THIS BIRD WAS VERY SELFISH, VERY SELFISH INDEED. HE HAD WISHED PAIN ON HIS BROTHER AND SISTER. HE HAD WISHED FOR THEM TO BE MISERABLE. THEY WERE SAD AND LONELY. HIS SISTER NOW WANTS TO KILL HIM. AND SOMEONE ELSE WANTS TO KILL YOU, JET FLINT FEATHERCREST
TELL ME JET; TELL ME…DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?
He had stared at the typewriter, expecting further clacks of the alphabet, but the room was rolled and wrapped in silence, as he had told this ghost that had lived on in this piano-typewriter, that no, he never believed in a god. Only himself.
DO YOU BELIEVE IN EVIL? DO YOU BELIEVE PEOPLE CAN COMMIT HEINOUS ACTS AND GET AWAY WITH IT? DO YOU BELIEVE IN SATAN? DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF?
"Yes, I said that already! I believe that evil does exist, because it makes the world go round. Do I believe in that red-skinned goat man? No! The Bible is a stupid story invented by stupid Arabian people just to get suckers to spend money on made-up holidays and to talk to an imaginary friend. That's all it is."
THEN I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL, JET.
Was it true that there truly was a heaven and hell that threatened to consume the people in this city? Were his parents, his brother and sister, was the whole state of Oklahoma completely ripe with the belief of something that was true? The thought had made him panic. His heart had pumped electricity throughout his veins. His fists clenched. He breathed shallowly, in and out.
He had heaved the typewriter above his mighty, golden arms and tried to smash it on the floor, destroy it with his golden gun, his golden dagger, but he could hear the sounds of melancholy, the sounds of misery, the disdain and hate coming from the typewriter, the keys clacking crazily, the words shuddering off the page, forming a black chasm, a black miasma that dripped like acid inside Yahweh's home, the death of his drunken mother evident, the death of his schizophrenic father, soon swallowed inside the black hole of the universe.
Jet had seen a pair of sulky, slit dark green eyes gaze at him before he died, before a long string of purple crystals had twisted his organs, slashing them and making them turn black, and Jet became nothing but a black piece of cloth, a piece of the stars, the universe, and Jet was forgotten in memory.
Satan had killed him, the fallen angel who had lost his wings, and they turned into rock-hard crystal.
His wine spilled on the floor, the blood running all across the city of Seattle, telling the world of The End…