1/0: Entries from the End Times

I carefully unclipped the portable charger’s red and black wires from the car battery while waiting for <participant id =0> to put the emptied shopping cart back with its brothers and sisters.

I plopped down onto the passenger’s seat and locked my car door.

Zero eased himself into the driver’s and seized the steering wheel. He didn’t wear his sunglasses anymore, though he still squinted at the starlight. His foot fell, then ricocheted off the carpet, his knee recoiling rapidly at each stilted spring. A bit of ruby trickled from his nostrils.

“Hang on –” I caught his hand before he could torque the ignition key “– I forgot another item I wanted to get at the grocery store.”

“For fuck’s sake, is it that important?” he shouted, the sharpness in his sentence startling me. “You told me we would get out of here as soon as possible?”

“I thought you could use a tissue.”

His knuckles paled. He lifted his shirt to dab at his nose. His lips parted, then closed in, the Egyptian army of his rebuttal gulped down the gullet of his conscience’s current. His Adam’s apple, the fragment of the forbidden fruit pranced in his larynx.

“I don’t need a tissue.”

“But you could use one.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. He reached for the radio. Turned the volume dial until my eardrums practically collapsed at the first boom of the bass. Then, he reached across me, unbuckled my seat belt, and popped the door open for me.

“Two minutes –” he held up two fingers that paralleled the scintillating blades of the flower field we were parked in “–then we’re not spending another second here.” He pointed at my sneakers. “Take those off!”

“Excuse you, my brother in Christ,” I screamed over the music, “this is an apocalypse, not a strip club!”

“The scissors have shredded your soles!” he hollered as he handed me his boots. “If you walk through that field without proper footwear, your feet will look like they’ve been nailed to a cross. Now, take them off!”

I slid my sneakers off and tucked my socks under their tongues. I tightened the laces of his boots. Heavy, but warm and firm.

Like my mama’s embrace whenever I visited home after I went to university.

I couldn’t tell whether I liked it or not.

“Oh, and One –”

“What?” I shouted at him, the sharpness of my sentence startling myself.

“I’m…I’m sorry for lashing out at you,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not mad at you. It’s my headache.” He paused. “And the allergies.” Another pause. “And, well, the sun is gone.”

“I’m sorry, too.” I mirrored his grimace, glanced at him, then clocked the dust shimmering on his upper lip.

We didn’t look at each other for a little while.

“Oh, and Zero?” I asked timidly.

“Yeah?” he answered in an almost-whisper.

Allergies, my ass, I thought.

The Holy Spirit silently chastised me for my foul language and spoke in my stead, dryly, but not unkindly. “Thou shalt not lie.”

Because of Zero’s boots (and the fact that I didn’t have to pay because of civilization’s collapse) it only took about one minute to fetch the tissues.

He braced a clump of the feathery papers over his nostrils, his fingers flexing against the gear shift as the car rocked back and forth. And back. And forth and back. And back and forth. And back. And so forth. Scourged by a gale force that could rival whatever they whipped my Lord with before they killed Him.

Before the Father let them kill Him.

Diamonds dripped from the cotton candy clouds rolling over the pastel sky. Lighting arced through them, calling to the crucifix resting over my heart. It chiseled at my aorta. Soon, silvery sheets of rain soaked the windshield.

“How long do these storms usually last?”

“Could be for hours,” Zero sighed deeply, yanking out more tissues, craning his neck, and bracing his head against the car seat’s cushion.

“Like four hours, or…?”

“Ten.” When he turned on the radio, the music had degraded into eardrum-mauling feedback, playing at a frequency I suspected that the two-headed dog that loitered outside my cottage couldn’t tolerate. My heart leapt, and not for joy. I punched the power button, but by then, the damage had been done. Zero massaged his temples, his agonized groans half-muffled by the tissues, which he now clutched like a lifeline.

“Oh, oh, my head…”

“You play your music too loud.”

“It’s party music, it’s meant to be played loud.”

“It’s a driving hazard.” My eyes fixed on the compartment where my parents kept their CDs. “Do you have any hymns in here?”

“Hymns are a driving hazard, too.” He tossed the tissues into the center console. “They put me to sleep, and I don’t understand any of them.” He lowered his voice and suddenly seemed incredibly enraptured by the brake pedal. “I don’t understand any of it, actually.”

I stopped prying at the CD compartment. “Christianity, you mean?”

“In religion, in any god.” He sighed again and rested his forehead against the steering wheel, cradling its curve in his palm. “And if there is one, he sure doesn’t give a shit about us, and if he did, he definitely doesn’t anymore.”

The electricity in my aorta ignited my indignation. I whirled around, my brow furrowed. “If He doesn’t care about us, why would He die for us?”

“How can you believe that?” He scoffed and shook his head, but he bore no blade in his question. He just flashed a smile at me. A pleasant, placating, practiced smile, a smile I’d practiced myself as a child.

The smile of someone terrified of speaking, lest they spoke out of line.

The spark chipping at my manubrium slowly, painstakingly smoldered into nothing. I wanted to tell him that it terrified me, too. That I would be the daughter of the viper. The tongue in flames. The hand, the foot, the eye that they would cut off or cut out, so they could enter eternal life maimed, because I caused them to stumble. That he was smart to not speak, because I knew what would happen if you spoke too much. Or only spoke a little, but wrongly.

“Why don’t you believe that?” I turned to him, surprising myself with the gentleness in my tone.

He sat too still for a little too long. Then, he left the vehicle, and I cursed myself for screwing up so soon. There were a few low thuds as the wind threw him against the metal. Some scrapes as he climbed over the sunroof, desperately clinging to them by his nails.

But then the trunk creaked behind me, and a moment later, he jumped in, ripped at the package of jujubes, and offered me one.

He began to bite out his gospel, if it could be called that.

“I have no faith in a God who told my mother to hate my father because of a book that said he should be stoned for the way that same God formed him in his mother’s womb.”

I chewed slowly.

“My mami was Spanish, Catholic.” He dabbed at his nose with his shirt even though the blood had dried. “He was half-Zapotec, half-Aztec – no, Mexica. The Zapotecs have a third gender: muxe. And the Mexica had gods who were both male and female.”

“So –” I traced my crucifix “–your father was male and female?”

“I asked him that, too, the first time I found him wearing a dress. I’ll tell you what he told me. He wasn’t a man. He wasn’t a woman. He was muxe. And he was beautiful.” A muscle in his jaw twitched, his teeth grinding against each other like a pestle against mortar.

“And whenever he wore a dress, my mami wouldn’t let him eat with us, she wouldn’t let him come to my judo matches, and then –” he drew in a deep breath “– and then, she just wouldn’t let him be with us.”

He glared at me, the sunglasses casting shadows under his watery eyes. “So, please, don’t tell me that God hates the sin, but not the sinner or any of that fucking bullshit, because all I see is a God that designed someone with sin so He, and everyone that believes in Him, could have an excuse to hate them.”

I tried to swallow the sparks in my esophagus, but it just burned like the bile in my stomach.

“You’re right,” I rasped, the lightning bursting out of its bottle. The pierced hands clawed at my vocal chords, but I didn’t care. Not when my carefully crafted facade had long since crumbled under the crucifix’s pressure against my collarbone. Not anymore. “It is fucking bullshit.”

He looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.

And then, gravity vanished.

My heart plummeted into the pit of my abdomen and my seatbelt strained against my torso as the Nissan Verda floated. The polyester snapped. As I shot towards the sunroof, only then did it occur to me that gravity hadn’t vanished. It had reversed.

“One, hold on!” Zero instinctively slammed on the brake, then stomped on the gas at the same time in his panic. “Just hold on, One, I’m not letting you go!” The engine stalled with a low sputter. His fingers constricted around the steering wheel, his elbows locked, his legs thrashing as the strange force tried and failed to tug him through the windshield. The wipers flicked left. Then right. Left. Right. Right. Left.

1st Thessalonians 4:17. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. The stars blinded me. Could this be it? Has the Lord accepted me at last?

Even though I could reach the edge of the sunroof, I didn’t reach for it. Instead, I raised my hands to the ivory pupils peering at me from the ebony shroud of the heavens. Where God would wipe every tear from my eyes, and death would be worth it, because there would be no sorrow, nor crying.

No more father looking down on me in disgust and disbelief after I asked him if he would come to my wedding if I married a woman. No mother trying to help me pack my suitcase before there would be light, and the light would lead me to that Sheol they called conversion therapy. No more nodding along as the preacher prattled on about Adam and Eve but refused to respond to my inquiries about David and Jonathan. No more Amens.

Lord, I implore you, no more having to say amen. Amen, I am the Sodomite leering at Lot’s daughters. Amen, I am an abomination. Amen, I should be stoned. Amen, I must let them beat me with Your book, hit me with their scripture like Baal hit his donkey with his staff, except the problem is I cannot close my mouth.

The stars smiled pleasantly, placatingly, apologetically at me.

1st Corinthians 6:9. Homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.

No.

No, no, no.

God would not wipe every tear from my eyes. He would draw them out. There would be sorrow. There would be crying. There would be the gnashing of teeth. My teeth.

“Hold on, hold on, One!” Zero fumbled with the seat belt, his sunglasses lost to the gale. “I’m not leaving you alone, so don’t leave me all by myself, okay?”

“Zero, help me!” I cried, my lips parting like the Red Sea, flailing my limbs like he did on the carpet after he crashed through my roof. “Help me! Please, don’t let me go –”

Somehow, he had tied a seat belt around his waist, fastened the other end to the steering wheel, and clambered over the center console. And his arms were around me.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” he murmured against my ear, his breath sweet, floral, and buttery from the jujubes, patting me between my stiffened shoulder blades, the heat of his heart spreading through his shirt and the patches the wind tore through my ruined dress. “You’re okay, One, you’re okay.”

19/Pig

The car is still in the clouds. I didn’t know what to talk about, so I told Zero that I never noticed the fleck beside his right pupil because of his sunglasses. Zero has informed me that I have some silver hairs – not one. Some. Multiple. Multiple silver hairs. This is ridiculous. I have no reason to be this stressed. What’s next, sweating blood? Why would You place silver hairs on my head? I’m only twenty-one!

This is why it ticks me off when people say You work in mysterious ways. There’s mystery, and then there’s just stuff that doesn’t make sense. And most of Your work doesn’t make sense.

The two-headed dog is here, too. We tried to tell it to get out from under the car – Spanish, English, and Mandarin – but it didn't understand any of them. Aren’t those the top languages in the world? I thought dogs were supposed to be as smart as five-year-olds and have better hearing than us, but the world is weird now. I tossed a few scraps of San Yao. If it turns out to be toxic to the dog, I will eat the lead from Zero’s machine gun.

I told Zero that, too, but he didn’t laugh, and he told me it’s because he can’t tell if I’m joking or not. He also told me that I shouldn’t lie, which made me laugh.

I told him I’m joking, but I think he knows that I don’t know either.

Takes one to know one, eh?

20/Pig

Fed the dog again. It has occurred to me that we do not even have the means to cook the food we purchased from T&T/Cardenas. We have half-emptied the package of jujubes. The San Yao seems particularly delectable. Can we eat it raw? Is Zero willing to eat it? How would we peel it?

He snores.

Loudly.

Lord, give me the strength to not smack him.

21/Pig

The car has fallen down. In the middle of the night, no less. No one was wounded, including the two-headed dog waiting under us, but when I came to, I had to climb off Zero. We reviewed the route to Neon Jerusalem. There is a steaming river at the next pit stop, the Copper Palace. I look forward to it. It’s been a while since I had hot pot, and Zero has never had hot pot. He is, however, very willing to try.

I’m glad I could let the dog eat out of my hand this time.

Why don’t You like them?

I am sorry for letting unwholesome talk come out of my mouth, and for letting the sun go down on my indignation. How do I let go of the indignation? Remove the veil. Cleanse my conscience. Sanctify my vessel. Let me be an unblemished lamb, as single-sighed as the dove. Let me look upon the index of your eyes. Let me be in the presence of your smile. Keep me under your wing and shield me from the darts of the enemy.

Not that you ever have. Is that why suicide is a sin? Because You want the satisfaction of stoning the abomination Yourself? You’re omniscient, aren’t you? You should know I’m sick of myself, too. I’m sick of my sin. I’m sick of confession. How about You say sorry to me for once?

I’m sorry for that, too.

22/Pig

Today, I fed the dog, I helped Zero repair the car, and he helped me practice driving. I never had to drive before and I never liked learning how to do it because I had to look out for the lights and the speed limit and the pedestrians and the lanes and the other cars changing lanes and my baba would yell a lot and then I would yell and then the cops would have to pull us over and the cop would look at us like “Ah, that makes sense” and I would want to tell him that it’s not because I’m an Asian woman, it’s because my baba is in my ear. I just took the subway. I miss the subway so much.

And I didn’t trust myself with a steering wheel.

I think I just didn’t trust myself.

But driving with Zero is not so bad. I mean, there are no traffic lights, or speed limits, or pedestrians, or rules about the lanes, or other cars changing lanes, or cops, or someone shrieking at me to slow down, so that helps plenty.

We let the dog sit in the backseat. Zero rolled the windows down and blasted his worldly music. It’s actually catchy. I loosened my seat belt and leaned out to let the wind whip through my hair. It’s already a mess, anyway. Maybe it blew away some of the silver hair. It would be nice if it did.

23/Pig

Tonight, I forgot to feed the dog, but Zero did it for us.

Please look after the iguana.