Brunch at the HAMMER N' CLUB

This is the next chapter in The ShambElla Saga.

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***** * *****

“I’m gonna let ya in on the secret of evil,” Damien said to them as they talked over brunch.

He made quite a spread, a buffet set out with the help of the folks from town, who weren’t shy about helping find a place for it in their own bellies.

Eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, French toast, biscuits and gravy, toast, bagels, and, of course, on Siris’ account, plenty of butter.

“Anywhere we see someone form a group ideology,” Damien went on, “evil insinuates itself into the process when it grows so big that it becomes, uh, automated, as it were. Like when it’s too big for the folks within it to know what the others are really doin’, that’s when we can sneak around behind them and play them off each other.

They have no power to harm us, for we are eternal. We get inside their heads. And sometimes, we get materialized like me, to play a more direct hand in the game. But there are rules about what we can do. The whole purpose of evil in this context is to shit-test y’all. To see whether you’ll choose your desired outcome, or doin’ the right thing even if ya don’t get what ya want.

This was always supposed be a big secret, and we evil ones were supposed to believe we ain’t got no free will, that we gotta do it cuz we can’t not do it.

See, I was born to human parents, but my real father was the devil. You’ll meet him down the road. Pop monitored me like some caged beast in an experiment, but didn’t know I was his shit-test. I only realized it myself back before the Turning. I never really wanted ta play, and, as it turns out, I always had free will after all! Pop was just playin’ with himself! My fate was predetermined beyond even his ability to comprehend.”

“Waitaminute,” Sam held up a hand. “Do you have free will or was your fate predetermined?”

The Unwilling Antichrist laughed long and loud, slapping the bar, and Colt, ever the jokester, mimicked his movements perfectly, which only made him laugh harder and longer.

When the spectacle of mirth finally passed, Damien wiped tears from his eyes and went on. “It’s a puzzle! I spent the first forty years of this life piecing it together, and when I finally saw the picture it was going to make, I laughed and laughed. The cosmic joke!

Our omissions reveal the secrets that others can never access. The puzzle is complete, but there are things missin’ from the picture which I know belong but which y’all can’t see, and I can’t tell ya, and you can’t discover ‘em.

But you know 'em by their absence, right there in the picture where they should be; but like frequencies of sound outta human hearing, or frequencies of light outta human sight, so too these signs, these sigils, these fnords, these ideas—they are beyond your ability to comprehend, apprehend, perceive, or understand.

These truths were designed—yes, designed!—to foil anyone’s attempt to profane them for a mere power play. We were given a cesspit in which to feast, fight, fuck, and get high so that we would necessarily have to rise above according to our own initiative, to prove ourselves worthy of an audience with “God”.

I’ve met the source many times, and I always turn back and go forth among ya again; but I coulda stayed. I never, in the end, turn away in anger or disgust, but with pure love in my heart, because that is what I meet back at the source.

Pure Love.

An oasis in a desert. A refreshing dip in the Tao. A cocoon. The womb.” Here Damien raised his hands to the Heavens, or at least to the roof of the HAMMER N’ CLUB. “Blessed art thou, beautiful and transcendent Divine, and blessed am I, for thou and I are One!”

This display made as little sense to the companions as it probably does to the reader.

“Eh, shut up, ya fuck,” Damien muttered, and when everyone looked startled, he chuckled. “Not you. The Narrator.” They looked even more confused. “Eh, nevermind. Look, the point of me tellin’ ya all this is to get ya to understand that there is a grand design, and you’re part of it!

Doose was shown, but he only has the piece he was shown, and you got pieces, and I got pieces, everyone’s got pieces, even my willfully stupid old pop. The grand design moves and shifts.

Like the Labyrinth of Daedalus, there ain’t no way out but through or up. Y’all are going through. Many have tried up, but, well, unless you’re the fella that built it, you’re likely to take a fall, like Icarus.”

“So how does this information help us going forward?” Ella asked.

“My story was not set in stone, as I was always taught. I’m a born agent of evil who turned good by choice.

Y’all coulda chose different too, but again and again in your life you chose better.

That’s the strength of good: forethought, forebearance, choice, free will. A will that ain’t free is no will at all. Things’ll get darker ahead. This is the last bastion of light on your journey south.

What I’m tellin’ ya is, don’t give up hope.”

Then Damien rummaged around under the bar. “I got some stuff for ya, though.” He pulled out a long box. It held six guns.

Sam immediately furrowed his brow. They looked like toys.

“I know what you’re thinkin’, Sam,” Damien said. “What’s this garbage? Well, these are guns that don’t ever need bullets. So long as the will of the bearer is strong and the heart pure—and each of ya got that shit in spades—these will fire light that incinerates anything that stands in your way.”

Then he pulled out six gun belts. “And, here’s some oldschool gunslinger shit. Cris-cross ‘em on your hips, and Sam’ll teach y’all to draw. As I understand it, Sam, you got a quicker draw and sharper shot than those sharpshooters you helped train on the old tournament circuits.”

“That’s what they all liked to say, though I never competed, so—” Sam held up his hands and shrugged.

“Trust me, ya do, I know!” Damien said and smiled his big smile. “Gonna ask y’all to leave your guns and ammo here with my folks. They could use it, and where you’re goin’, and the kinda shit you’re gonna fight, bullets won’t make no difference anyway. But ya got a demon-slaying kitty-cat, and a gang-a magic skeletons, so I think it’s a fair trade!”

Sam found these claims dubious, and the old soldier in him had a hard time believing it was a good idea to give up live ammo for magic tricks.

“I know, I know, soldier,” Damien said, “you don’t trust it. But let’s go out and I’ll show ya.”

***** * *****

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