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HYPERAROUSAL






Guidry Lee was a nonpracticing coonass Catholic originally from Houston so of course going to an evangelical hell house seemed like the most contrarian and therefore correct thing to do all the way out in Pecan Sandy, Texas on Halloween weekend. Getting high and having a good time in a spoopy bar where jolly, sexy sluts were dressed like Fluxus prostitutes wasn’t really an option in such a curdled teacup town. “People come from all over to see that hell house,” said a woman over at the Odessa HEB who overheard him talking to his cousin Claude on the phone while she was sacking his groceries. “It’s a real big attraction for that New Life Church of God. Helps them compete with Odessa 2nd Baptist. It’s good for the local economy out there.” “Oh yeah?” he said. “Do you have to be Baptist to go to this thing?” “There aren’t any good country Baptists down at New Life in PECAN SANDY,” said the woman. “They’re non-affiliated non-denominationals! They’ll talk to anyone who can stand them. I think they’re owned by some kind of entity incorporated out of Oklahoma City? I think that’s where the big New Life’s at.” “So it’s like a haunted house?” “It’s Christian,” she said. “No dancing, no drag queens, no witchcraft. They spend a lot of money. You’ll be entertained.” “I’m not worried,” said Guidry Lee. Pecan Sandy had at least five different Protestant churches but no black people. Guidry Lee assumed that this meant that the whites had to find disruptive new lifehacks for how to be bigoted against each other, which meant strict delineations between all the different Protestant prestige classes. If you lived here for real, you probably had to know the difference between a Methodist and a Lutheran. There were some Mexicans in town, of course. But they were mostly evangelical Mexicans, which made them just as deranged as everyone else in Pecan Sandy as far as Guidry Lee was concerned. They had embraced the icepick-lobotomy religion of imperial Albion. They deserved their coming omnichannel enslavement (and selective deportation) by the pasty patriots that they exalted. Guidry Lee felt that his mild cultural Catholicism had inoculated him fully against other cults. The first time he’d had sex pretty much cured him of any real fear about hell. His curious mind easily fought off the weakened strain of Latinate religion injected into him as an infant and he rebounded utterly with rude gusto, a healthy cishet jock without any anxiety with respect to his own carnal appetites. A later no-holds-barred conversation over double bourbons with his parish priest (who was actually more excited by Guidry Lee’s interest in art and literature than his crisis of doubt) further convinced him of two things: 1) the Catholic church was the most successful professional-development organization for gay men in human history and 2) it was still possible to consider yourself Catholic without letting yourself be brain damaged by any of the obvious bullshit. Whole countries were Catholic in quotation marks: France, Italy, Brazil, Colombia, the Netherlands. God made the world, God made science, God separated out the tits from the asses and God saw that it was good. Life was a blessing, not a trap full of tricks. To think otherwise was actually heresy, which was comforting. People who thought God was testing them all the time were the ones whose souls were really in heterodox danger, not people who knew how to look around, love what they saw, and act according to what aroused their souls. Not that there was much to arouse your soul in Pecan Sandy. He was stuck here for the fall working on the cancer trucks as a technical outreach intern. This gig had seemed like a good idea at the time when he saw the flier on the Parlin Hall corkboard at UT, but holy cats, what a mistake! The cancer trucks went all over West Texas, bringing ultrasound, MRI, and CT machines to places that shouldn’t exist: elite communities of antisocial white people sustained by federal funding near tiny towns like Pecan Sandy, Gun Barrel City, Dos Pasos, Wet Elk, and Refugio. These towns were hundreds of miles away from the big hospitals in Abilene and Odessa. He’d never been west of San Antonio before, but he instantly understood why people out in these parts loved getting cancer so much. There was nothing else to do. All the women who worked in the office at Permian Mobile Imaging in Pecan Sandy had braces, even though they were in their forties. It seemed like getting your teeth fixed was the first thing everyone did around here once they got any real money. They were also all on a collective diet together and they therefore spent most of their time policing each other’s calorie intake. Guidry Lee quickly decided to avoid the creepy psychodynamics at play between all the female employees in the front office as much as he possibly could by volunteering to travel on the trucks every time the opportunity came up. It was less boring to be out on the road than in the office, but it was also way more depressing to spend your days taking pictures of the insides of people’s mutating bodies. At this point, he’d been working at Permian Mobile Imaging for two months, so he just needed to keep his head down for six more weeks before he was contractually allowed to escape back to Austin with his pockets full of irradiated cash, free to do nothing but chill until next semester. “I’m gonna take Lisette to that hell house,” he told Cousin Claude, driving home from Odessa with the trunk of his Jetta packed with good big-city groceries. “She’s on her way here for the weekend, might even beat me to my place. I think this hell house is the only thing happening here all October. We’ve gotta do something while she’s here besides fuck.” “The hell house will have little skits and scats,” Claude said. His cousin considered himself an authority on the evangelical mind on account of having once dated a distant relative of Pastor Joel Osteen, the “prosperity gospel” nepo-simoniac who ran Lakewood Church in Houston. Lakewood was so successful that it bought the Summit, the arena where the Rockets won two championships, where Queen once performed a sold-out show, where Barnum and Bailey hosted their bicentennial circus in 1976. Lakewood had turned this historic secular venue into a church so big that it warped gravity. “The only reason they’re doing this Christian haunted house is to try and recruit you. They gotta be extra aggressive because the available pool for converts in a place like Pecan Sandy is just different kinds of other fundamentalists and then angry opiate addicts–neither of whom have any real money.” “I think it’ll be funny,” said Guidry Lee. “Maybe if you’re really, really high,” said Claude. Claude and the distant Osteen cousin had broken up after Claude refused to literally put him in the hospital by beating him up after sex. “Literally put me in the hospital,” the man had said. “I want you to hurt me so bad I can’t walk, baby Claudie, or I’ll find someone who will.” Claude had good boundaries about that sort of thing and had stopped returning his texts. “There’s some vast gray area between developmentally disabled and just normal average stupid that we’ve politely named ‘religious’,” said Claude. “There are even places where religious people can get accredited college degrees and put themselves into positions of real power. They’re scary, because like a Furby or something, they’ll believe the first thing you tell them about the universe forever and they’ll try and hurt you if you tell them anything new. That’s not really your scene, little cousin. Be careful. It’s very easy to say the wrong thing to someone like that. Don’t piss them off.” *** Lisette was waiting for him in the driveway of the storybook ranch house (with dovecotes) that he was renting from the brother of his boss’s wife as part of the imaging internship package. Lisette was wearing jean shorts that went all the way up her ass, cowboy boots, and a white H&M t-shirt without a bra. She was just standing there with one thumb in her pocket in front of the flower beds, smoking a cigarette under the shade of a water-greedy oak tree. Just another 90 degree October day. She was dressed in a way that said “I would like for us to stay a couple” which was instantly a huge relief to Guidry Lee. Lisette was studying communications at UT. Her goal was to eventually be a social media manager for the Texas Democratic Party, sort of like Kellyanne Conway but for the left. Guidry Lee loved how ambitious she was, even if they didn’t always fully agree about politics. It was often frustrating how it felt like there was no place for boring straight guys like him in the international fight for unlimited human freedom. “What’s with all the grasshoppers in this town?” she asked him after they’d fucked a few times. She reclined at his feet on the giant old bed (that he was also renting) that smelled like lilac and despair. He loved the way her ass looked with her legs curled up like that. It looked uncontainable. “I think they’re actually locusts, not grasshoppers,” he said, putting a pillow under his shoulder so he could sit up straighter. “So listen minou, I’ve got an idea for this weekend. I think we should go to a haunted house tomorrow night! I think it might be the only fun thing to do here besides plunder your treasures and I know you need a break from my privateering from time to time in order to resupply.” “They’ve got haunted houses out here? I find that shocking.” “Well, it’s at a church,” he said as if this made sense, grinning, daring her to demand an explanation. *** Saturday night after dinner (extremely good BBQ), Lisette and Guidry Lee smoked a joint in his car in the furthest corner of the New Life Church parking lot and then sprayed Febreze all over each other, giggling. “This is going to be terrible,” said Lisette. They passed a bald guy (tufts, not stubble) in a USMC VETERAN shirt sitting on the tailgate of a maroon truck who was playing with a quad-copter drone. The drone was much bigger than the ones that Guidry Lee assumed were commercially available. He was fiddling with a flange on the front end, trying to attach some sort of non-standard piece of equipment. Guidry Lee clocked his Bernie bumper sticker and the Ukraine flag decal on his back window next to the American one (right-side up, no thin blue line). The guy didn’t look like a Bernie supporter. He looked like a Trump supporter. Actually, he looked like an incarnated rage comic, summoned to life by quarantined subreddit sorcery. He looked like he had been awake for about ten years straight. “Bernie, right?” said Lisette. The man nodded, looking at them suspiciously. “Y’all going to that hell house tonight?” he asked. No front teeth. He had to slurp out the words. “Seems like it will be funny,” Guidry Lee ventured, hoping he was talking to a denizen of his own chosen memetic blister, confident enough about this to lightly test the sponge of the callous. “I wouldn’t go in there,” the man said. “Y’all know its all Russian sunbitches in there that run that quote unquote church, right? Y’all ought to run clean off in the other direction.” “Wild,” said Lisette. “Wild wild stuff.” “Hell house! Y’all know Trump is the antichrist, right? Making your mark on a ballot sheet and voting for him proves your loyalty to him against our lord Jesus, putting your name down in the book of the beast. It’s the last test before the apocalypse. Y’all know about nuclear weapons, right? How the Bible talks about them DIRECTLY?” “Totally,” said Lisette. “That drone is badass though,” said Guidry Lee, trying to divert what he now assumed was a conversation with a crazy person toward friendlier territory. “Have a good night, bro!” “Y’all do the very same,” the man said coldly. *** They thought the hell house was going to be inside the church itself, but there were signs pointing to a decorated row of corrugated tin sheds in an empty field behind the church building proper. The sheds were connected to each other by covered tubular breezeways. They turned the corner at the “Men’s Ministries Office” and found the actual human line to get into the maze of t-shacks. The line was extremely long, which explained the full parking lot. However, they were relieved to see that they weren’t the only people here who were attending in absolute bad faith. Guidry Lee pointed out a middle-aged man in an ancient, faded TOOL t-shirt who was wearing glitter make-up. “One of us,” he told Lisette. They bought their tickets. $30 a piece, which seemed high. Would this hell house really be worth two armchair seats down at the picture show (plus snacks)? “Guess all these people don’t have to worry about keeping up with fashion or their gym budgets,” said Lisette, looking around. “Don’t act like you’ve never had nutria jambalaya before or sucked on a crawfish head like a ring pop,” said Guidry Lee. “I SEEN you do it. You aren’t better than this.” Volunteers in black masks, cloaks, and hoods–most of them wearing pins that said “New Life Hell House: THE FINAL JUDGMENT”–walked up and down the line, asking the people waiting if they were Christians. They asked them if they loved Jesus. They asked them if they were prepared for eternity. One guy revved a chainsaw every few minutes. These tormentors were so obviously good-natured rural teenagers trying to seem scary that it was hard to take them seriously. This was such a fundamental Christian fantasy–to be asked about the tenets of your faith before being murdered by demon-worshippers–that it was no surprise that there was a fetish cosplay community dedicated to gratifying this powerful but pathetic need. “This line moves pretty slowly,” Lisette said. “People go inside in groups,” said Guidry Lee. “It’s an immersive experience, minou. I think we’ll be in the next tranche.” “Is this really the only thing to do in this whole town? There aren’t ANY Halloween parties or anything?” “Maybe I just haven’t been here long enough to get invited to one.” “What if we just went to a bar or something?” “There are literally no bars in Pecan Sandy. If people drink here, they drink alone watching YouTubes of MMA. We’d have to drive an hour away to get to a Chili’s. Which we can totally do if you want.” “I guess we’re already here,” she said, sighing. “Also, I think I might actually be too stoned to drive,” Guidry Lee admitted. “We can just go back and sit in the car if you want. I’ll be okay in like twenty minutes.” “Nah, someone’ll call the cops on us if we’re just sitting in a car alone together,” said Lisette. “Town like this.” Two medium-sized angry black dogs started barking at them, straining against a forking chain leash. They were being held back by a cloaked figure who was wearing a latex mask with a zippered mouth. The man had to plant his feet to keep his dogs from breaking free. The leash jangled as the dogs tried to leap up at them and tear out their throats. “Jesus fucking Christ,” shrieked Lisette. Several people in the line turned to stare at her, their mouths twisted in disapproval at this particularly tendentious profanity. “They can smell your fear,” said the man with the dogs, really hamming it up. “Y’all must have a guilty conscience.” Guidry Lee’s heart was indeed pounding now, a side effect of the weed which always made his blood pressure plummet, making him feel dizzy and untethered, like a panicking bird trapped in a windowless attic. He took a knee in the grass. The dogs kept barking at them. Lisette sat down next to him and put her arms around him. Thankfully, this inspired others in the line to also sit down, creating a small seated revolution in the general vicinity that made their profligate recumbency less weird. “Those are fucking DRUG dogs,” whispered Lisette. “I think that guy in the cuck mask must be a fucking cop.” “We’re already in the line,” said Guidry Lee. “It would look suspicious if we left all of a sudden just because drug dogs were barking at us. They might even search our car. Let’s just be cool.” “The people who get caught are the ones who stay cool. Cops love it when you stay cool. They love it when you stay cool all the way to prison.” “I literally just can’t even drive right now,” he said. Eventually, a person dressed in a “Gay Aidan”-meme mask counted them off on a clipboard, asking if they were together. “Absolutely,” said Lisette. “We definitely don’t want to split up.” Guidry Lee whipped his head around to look at her, surprised, appraising this sentence with all the analytical rigor of the truly stoned. “Okay, then y’all just go on inside with the next group,” said the line supervisor. “Good luck in there, kids!” *** “This was a bad idea,” Guidry Lee said as soon as they entered the snaking hallway filled with lighting effects and smoke machines right out of Spencer’s gifts. “No way, this is awesome,” said Lisette. “Just try and relax, baby!” We definitely don’t want to split up, she had told the line supervisor. Guidry Lee had a sudden premonition–a sudden gut-punch of heartbreaking paranoia. Lisette was cheating on him. If she was still faithful, she wouldn’t be so performative about their togetherness. She must be fucking somebody at her new job. There probably wasn’t anything to do at Fry’s electronics in Austin but fuck her new boss, fuck her new coworkers, fuck her new regular customers. She was probably fucking lots of new people, actually, to fill the enormous void created by his devastating absence. It was his fault. He had trained her to be so accommodating sexually, to help her grind out some of the libidinous contradictions that came from being a professional feminist. He groaned as the weed throbbed in his constricting veins. He could still taste it, still feel the smoke burning in his lungs. “Are you okay?” she asked him, holding a curtain back so that he could walk into the first room. “You don’t look good AT ALL.” “I’m fine,” he said, letting the black curtain drop behind him. He heard the now-familiar rattle of the bifurcated chain leash. The cop with the two black dogs had followed them into the building. Guidry Lee heard the dogs growl somewhere in the air-conditioned gloom. Blacklights revealed that the room was painted with swirling “drug people” slogans from some 1960s set dec Fiebertraum: “LEGALIZE IT” and “MAKE LOVE NOT WAR” and “SAVE THE WHALES.” Hadn’t all the whales been saved already? Weren’t there too many whales now or something? These slogans were painted alongside peace signs and at least one sassy swastika. A DJ in sunglasses was front and center on a raised podium. Thick-legged, double-chinned girls in short shorts were dancing the watusi to blaring electro house. One guy wore his visor upside down on his frosted tips. This was the only nod to verisimilitude, albeit 20 years past any reasonable cultural expiration date. “Pretty accurate portrayal of actual hell,” said Lisette. Another kid in rainbow cargo shorts, arm fishnets, and a t-shirt that just said PRIDE stepped off the stage and into the audience. He had a giant plastic fishbowl full of brightly-colored pills. “Takkkkkkke one,” he lisped. “Don’t be SHY.” He was really pushy about it. He wouldn’t leave you alone until you took one of the candy pills from his bowl and put it in your mouth. “Gotta SWALLOW HARD or it won’t work,” he said. The pill was sweet and chalky, but it had the same kind of gel enamel coating as a real pill. Lisette took a whole handful. “Time to get FUCKED UP,” said Lisette. “Right???” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” lisped the kid with the bowl. “Don’t be greedy” He momentarily lowered his chin and whispered something furtively into a twisted hank of his shirt. Guidry Lee could see that he had a microphone clipped to his collar. The music abruptly came down, even though everyone on stage continued to dance like it was still going. This was quality black-box improv theater. Now two young girls entered the scene. The way that they were dressed told you that they were the main characters. They were both wearing plain cotton dresses and cardigan sweaters that were supposed to signify that they didn’t really belong in this olid abyss of mephitic degeneracy. “Tina,” one of them said to the other. “I don’t think we should do it. I don’t think we should smoke crack here just because you broke up with Tyler. You’ll get over it!” “We have to do it, Jessica,” said Tina. “You promised you would smoke crack with me like Hunter Biden. We’re here to dance like strippers and forget our commitments to our faith and to our family.” “Then bottoms up,” Jessica said. They both pulled out pipes from their bags. They flicked twin lighters and pretended to inhale. Guidry Lee could see that they actually EXHALED into the pipes, sending up plumes of fake smoke powder. The music came back in full-force. Two aggressive gentlemen instantly started dancing next to them. The girls barely had time to enjoy their crack. “Hey there bitches,” one said. “New here?” “You look hot,” said the other. “You should take off your clothes. You’re wearing too many layers!” “No thank you,” said Tina. “I don’t feel so good.” “I feel great!” said Jessica, who was no longer concerned about the downward trajectory of her life. “You can do whatever you want to me and I won’t care at all. Tell me how to feel and what to do!” “You should feel sexy and free,” said one of the ravers, leading her away. “And you should come with me to my van in the parking lot to express your radical gender politics.” The music got even louder as Tina fell to her knees in the dance club. People boogied around her. Lisette whispered the names of the TikTok dances they did: the Renegade, the Cosby Walk, the Smeeze. The dogs barked just behind the curtain and Guidry Lee could imagine them straining to sink their teeth into his face. His consciousness was a thick gassy fug. He really identified with Tina on her knees, addled into brainless permanent victimhood by too much heartbreak-bender crack. He focused on the scene, trying to figure out the actual relationships at play here between the actors. Whoever had been cast to be Tina must have really worked hard for it. She was one of the first speaking parts in this whole hell house and she was meant to set the tone for the entire production. She was attractive in a wholesome, desolate way. She was probably somebody’s girlfriend here. She was probably faithful. She was probably nurturing. She was probably helpful, simple, and sunny. He looked over at Lisette. Her eyes were flat and shining and she seemed simultaneously pissed off and bemused. Tina sobbed, praying on her knees as one of the frosted-tipped club kids stroked her hair. “Alright Tina, no more crying,” he said. “Time to become a woman!” He and two other men dragged her into the next room. None of the other men or women stopped dancing or seemed to care about this abduction. The room filled with rape-colored mist. “I’m so fucking high right now,” Lisette whispered to him. “This is amazing.” There were screams of protest and screams of laughter. It was obvious what was supposedly happening just out of sight. There was one last overdetermined shriek and then the room went dark. Moments later, an adult man in a devil costume swooped into the scene, carrying Tina in his arms. Her cardigan was gone. The crotch of her helpmeet sundress was covered in blood and her eyes were slack and haunted. The devil danced with her as she gyrated reluctantly. She was no longer fully conscious. Finally, the devil bent her backward in a mouth-covered stage-kiss and the curtains came down on the scene as the electro house music started blaring again. “I guess she’s in hell now,” said Lisette. “Good job, Tina!” The side curtain opened and the man with the dogs was standing there again, restraining his animals. He moved toward their group slowly, forcing them in the other direction. They had no choice but to go the way that was indicated, out toward the door on the other side. In the next room, there was a large oak table below fantasy-themed blacklight posters. There were posters for Harry Potter and posters for Lord of the Rings. A Frank Frazetta print of a muscular naked warrior woman was front and center. She was kneeling at the edge of a cliff, raising a broadsword to the sky. “Extrapolating from both of these scenarios,” said Guidry Lee. “It seems like the fastest way to hell is to buy cool decorations for your room.” Four teenagers were seated at the table and one of them was reading from a chest-sized purple grimoire with a pentagram on it. The book said “Witches and Warriors, 6th Edition.” “You have to complete the ritual, otherwise the gate won’t open,” said one of the teenagers loudly in a screechy “nerd voice.” He sipped from a comically-large 7-11 Big Gulp container. The other teenagers in fake plastic “nerd” glasses each rolled their dice one after another. “I got a 6,” said one. “I also rolled a 6,” said another. “Three sixes!” said the third teenager. “666,” said the teenager holding the giant purple book. “I’ll have to check the DUNGEON GUIDE to see what that means. That’s never happened before!” Suddenly the lights started strobing and there was the sound of a hissing snake intermixed with the noise of a crying baby. The dogs started barking again and Guidry Lee felt his panic-pulse rising. Was the man with the dogs going to follow them to every room? The same costumed devil from the scene before appeared, leaping onto the table, capering and showing off his skin-tight haunches. Guidry Lee couldn’t tell if it was the exact same man running from room to room, or if it was just the costume that was the same. “You’ve summoned me to feast on your souls,” said the demon. “Now you will roast like tailgate brisket for all eternity!” “But we didn’t mean to summon a real demon!” said the dungeon master. “It’s all just a game!” “I don’t even believe in hell,” said one of the other nerds. “I’m transgender,” said another. This got huge laughs from the room. “You think witchcraft is a game? You have each created new identities that you care about more than your real lives. Your false selves–yes, even your transgender persona–will come with me and live on as proxy demons. This is the bargain you’ve made. And your true eternal souls will burn forever. Sadly, those eternal souls are the real you.” “Noooooo,” shouted the nerds. “We’ve been tricked!” “One million experience points for your demon selves,” said the demon. “Now come with me Girondas the Bard, Heelix the Transgender, and Captain Crunk the Elf Barbarian. Come with me, Dungeon Master Jacob. Come with me to be my Princes of Pandemonium while your corporal meat burns forever! The strobe lights returned as the players were led away. Lisette couldn’t stop laughing. “Corporal meat!” she shouted, relishing the malapropism. “Um, nobody goes to hell for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Does Super Smash Brothers also doom you to hell? What about Candyland?” The dogs started barking. The lights went off. They were again being ushered into the next room without analysis and without argument. “Okay, fine, questions are for losers,” said Lisette. There was a giant “Planned Parenthood” sign on the wall here in pink letters. A teenager was confined to a hospital bed. Her feet were strapped into stirrups. She was barefoot with painted red toenails. The hospital beeps, whirrs, and gushes were almost as loud as the music from the other rooms, probably to drown out the noise from the other groups who were moving through this immersive theater experience in parallel. “Oh man, the only thing more addictive than crack is abortions,” said Lisette, loud enough for everyone to hear. Even the lady in the stirrups caught what she said. She stared at Lisette with death in her eyes. The sound effects cut off and a male doctor in a lady’s wig and lipstick entered the room holding a clipboard. Underneath the drag, he was an older, bearded man with infraorbital edema under his eyes so thick you could chuck the bags like baby cheeks. He had bleary blue eyeballs rimmed with red that swished unfixedly in his bland, rosacea-addled face. “We’re all ready for that procedure now, babydoll,” said the doctor, who had such a thick Southern accent that he was unable to alter it even for the sake of performance, even as he affected a feminine lilt. “But I’m afraid we cain’t ford to use any anaketics on you, on account of how all our anaketic drugs are going to queerbos like me gettin’ plastic surgeries and gender transitions up in these big city hospitals.” “That’s okay,” said the woman. “Will it hurt?” “You ain’t gonna feel a thing, babydoll,” said the man. “Aint’ no human life inside you, even though it got them sweet little eyes, and got them sweet little legs, and got all them sweet little baby dreams.” “Goddamn right,” said Lisette. Everyone turned to look at her. “Ain’t no human life,” she explained. “Maybe I’m making a mistake,” said the woman in the stirrups. “Maybe I should reconsider.” “Too late for that, girlfriend,” said the doctor, flouncing. “You signed your name down on the form! That’s forever!” The doctor wheeled her past a partition to a different part of the stage. He pushed aside a hospital screen to reveal a giant clear fishbowl full of bloody red water and floating doll pieces. The fishbowl was affixed to another machine on wheels and there was a hose attached to this gantry. Guidry Lee clocked that the fishbowl was purchased from the same place as the fishbowl full of candy from the first room. “This is so badass,” said Lisette. “Peanut butter fetus pieces! Good job, Corporal Meat!” The doctor glared at her and then picked up the hose. “Time for your legal liberal bortion!” said the doctor, brandishing the hose. “Never did get around to asking how old you are!” There was the noise of whirring blades as if they were at a sawmill. There was demonic laughter. The lights flickered. The woman screamed but she couldn’t move her legs out of the stirrups. She struggled against her restraints as the doctor came closer. This was just the sort of porn that Guidry Lee liked to watch sometimes, except with a cock coming menacingly at a struggling middle-aged mom instead of an abortion hose coming at a teenager. The doctor shoved the hose under the flaps of the girl’s hospital gown. The girl screamed as the fetuses in the tank whirled around, juiced by a jolt of pressurized gas in the red water. There must be a hole cut in the bottom of the fishbowl to let the gas in, thought Guidry Lee. The dogs barked. The fetus hose whirred. “I’m so fucking turned on right now,” stage-whispered Lisette, also caught up by the overtly pornographic nature of the scene. Guidry Lee laughed. The rest of their group glared at Lisette. “Lady, what in the name of sweet baby Jesus is wrong with you?” asked the doctor, breaking character, dropping his hose, dropping his drag. The woman on the gurney in the stirrups also glared at Lisette. Lisette was momentarily caught off guard by the way they all broke character but she recovered instantly. She got up on stage right next to the doctor, waving a finger in his face. “Oh no,” Guidry Lee said. “Baby…” “Guess what, Monogamouse: nobody has ever gone to hell for having an abortion,” Lisette said to the doctor. “I know that for a fact. God told me. He whispered it right in my pussy.” Lisette was stoned, she was in a good mood, and she was grooving on her own rage. If they attacked her, she was going to fight back. He ordinarily liked it when she got like this in Austin around tech bros and fraternity dumb-dumbs, but they were extremely far away from Austin right now. Guidry Lee wanted to shut her up and just steer her away back to the car, but he was paralyzed by the amount of tension in the room between Lisette and seemingly everyone else. Did Lisette think anyone here was actually on her side? The doctor pulled out an ancient walky-talky and barked code words into it. The man with the dogs came out from behind the curtain, cinching up the leash in his hands all the way to the dog’s metal collars, keeping them close. “You know, smart people who aren’t fucktarded rednecks have always known when life begins, because it’s obvious,” Lisette said. “Maybe you’ve heard of something called the quickening? That’s the moment when a baby first kicks. That usually happens about three months into a pregnancy, which is also known as the first trimester. Remember that word? But life really begins when any animal takes its first breath and can live on its own without being a parasite. That’s just an obvious fact.” “Looks like we got a college book come to life up in here to tell us how stupid we all are,” said the doctor. “You just miss the days when having babies used to kill women,” said Lisette. “Then you’d always be able to have a fresh new teen bride instead of your fat ugly wife who won’t fuck you anymore.” The lights came up on the entire scene. Everybody in their group took out their phones and started texting. Some were laughing. Some were booing. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Guidry Lee. “She doesn’t mean any of that, sir. We don’t mean to fat-shame anyone here.” “What?” said Lisette. “Of course I do. He’s wearing a wedding ring. Show me a picture of your wife, sir. If she’s not obese and ugly with chicken fried hair I’ll suck your cock right now. Aren’t you doing an impression of her?” “Lady, you are totally gosh darned all-the-way bananas,” said the doctor. “Nature gives a woman nine months to decide whether or not the place where she’s TRAPPED makes any sense to have a baby. For instance, if I found out my partner was secretly anything like you idiots, I’d chop the baby’s head off with a cybertruck door and put the video on the internet.” “You said it,” said the woman in the stirrups. “You said it right out loud! Do you hear her, everyone? She’s a fat shamer and a baby murderer!” “Your whole politics is tiny dicks,” said Lisette. “All you men around here need ‘penis confirmation’ surgery if you ever hope to impress any actual girls that aren’t scared to leave your cult. Just being cruel and stupid isn’t as hot as you think it is. And fucking women in spiritual captivity is essentially rape, even if they say yes. Ladies, there are good men out there. You don’t have to settle for these dumb crackers. For instance, my boy Guidry Lee here has a dick like that of donkeys and his emission is like that of horses. And he doesn’t own a single gun.” “She exaggerates,” Guidry Lee said to the crowd. “I have a normal-sized penis. And I’m pretty much a libertarian and I have no problem with guns even though I do not own any guns myself.” As far as Guidry Lee was concerned, the political designation “libertarian” existed exclusively so that people in red states could have liberal points of view and still get along with the people around them. It was a nice little cloak of invisibility for cowards. Republicans in red states didn’t actually mind if you were far left either. They thought private school leftist radicals were maximally destructive to the people they actually hated: the hard-working, attractive people who fled the poisonous small towns where they grew up and became boring party Democrats in big cities. Lisette glared at him and was about to argue with him for tarnishing her point. But before she could open her mouth, there was a hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come with me,” said the man with the dogs. He lifted up his cloak, revealing a police badge. “You can’t be harassing the performers like this.” “Corporal Meat here harassed me first,” said Lisette. “And I’m a paying customer. And anyways I’m trying to tell you how none of you here actually worship Jesus! By your own logic you’re all going to actual hell for your wild hypocrisy. I’m participating in the experience as advertised.” Now the doctor and the man with the dogs were joined by a new woman. She was thin and pale with pool-table-green eyes and high cheekbones. She had blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and she was wearing bright red lipstick to match her bright red-high heels. Her skirt swept the floor, showing no leg, but it was still tight enough to show off her firm haunches. “You will come?” she asked. Guidry Lee was surprised to hear her Russian accent. The man in the parking lot had been right! Somehow this was the most mind-blowing thing of all. Guidry Lee and Lisette gawked at each other, trying to process this new fact. “Whoa, you really are Russian?” said Lisette. “Belarus,” said the woman. “But I’m an American Citizen. And I did it the right way. Where I grew up, the public worship of Our Lord Jesus God was made illegal by the state. It could happen here again because of people like you. But you know that very well, don’t you? And now you will please come with me.” The Belorussian woman looked at the cop and the cop nodded. “You are just going to kick us out because we think your haunted house is crappy?” said Lisette. “Do we get our money back?” “We suspect you of being drug traffickers,” said the Belorussian woman. “You will be searched and detained.” “Jesus fucking Christ,” Lisette said. “You can’t just hold us here. That’s kidnapping. It’s a federal crime.” “So is smuggling cocaine,” said the cop. He grabbed each of them by their upper arms and pushed them forward. They had no choice but to go along. As they were led away, the rest of their group started to clap. What had Lisette expected? Did she think she was really going to persuade anyone here about anything by yelling at them? Guidry Lee wished she hadn’t gone in so hard on their tiny dicks. She had just been reaching for the easiest thing to hurt them with, but she didn’t really realize the true extent of the problem. As far as he knew, Lisette had only ever been with mixed-blood Southern Europeans and good Catholic East Texas swamp boys. Most of the other dicks she’d seen had been in porn, so they were at least average-sized. But Guidry Lee had been in locker rooms in this state. He knew that pretty much every stout Republican-looking white dude only had about three inches to play with when they were hard, and that was only measuring from what they called their fatpad. By the time they were twelve or so and started to realize what they were missing, they were already resplendissant with pure rage on account of their slapdash biological engineering. All you could do was stay the hell away from them. They weren’t safe to the men around them and they sure as hell weren’t safe to the women. The lady in the tight dress led the way. The cop with the dogs brought up the rear. It didn’t feel quite real. It felt like they were entering another room of the hell house, the room where the real sins happened. The conversion trailers were discrete, decoupled temporary shacks behind the tube-connected labyrinth. These new buildings were teed up on giant concrete blocks in the dirt. There were wooden steps leading up to them that had sharp yellow banisters cut from fresh unsanded lumber. There were dazed looking people flowing into these shacks. These lines moved much faster than the line to get in. As they passed, Guidry Lee saw people inside the shacks praying together and attending one-on-one counseling sessions. These were people who had been turned on by what they’d just seen, people who were ready to commit themselves not just to Christ but to whatever specific version of Christ’s message that New Life was spinning up here unwatched, untaxed, and unregulated. The cop shoved them into one of the trailers and the Belorussian woman followed them inside, shutting the door. The cop didn’t join them yet. “This is my office,” she said. “Do you like it?” Guidry Lee’s head felt heavy and his tongue hurt. He was thirsty but he was also a little nauseous. Even though they were trapped, he didn’t feel like they were in any real trouble. It all just felt like such a joke. The woman wasn’t even an American. Her office was surprisingly lush. There was real wallpaper here flecked with gold paint. There was a rose and ivory chandelier hanging from the ceiling that clashed with the exposed particle board. There was a thick Near Eastern carpet that felt good to step on. There were lurid posters in Cyrillic that advertised Slavic versions of Terminator 2, Die Hard 3, and Home Fries (starring Drew Barrymore). There was an incredibly nice-looking gaming PC in front of a black ergonomic chair. There was a small couch. Guidry Lee and Lisette sat down on this sofa. The woman took out a vape pen and removed a purple drop cloth that was covering another chair. Improbably, this chair was made entirely out of screaming fetuses molded from pink plastic. “This is the chair made of dead babies that Satan sat in last year,” she said, explaining. “I was told by the steering committee that it was too much kitsch. People found it funny. We don’t think there’s anything funny about dead babies here at New Life Church of God.” She winked at Guidry Lee and Lisette. They exchanged glances with each other, perplexed at what this wink might mean. After a moment the cop returned, tying the leash of the dogs to the inner door handle and then grabbing another stool to sit on. “So you just thought you could come here and make trouble and get away with it,” said the cop. “Protestors. Probably paid to do it. But you weren’t smart enough to leave your drugs at home. My good boys here Rusty and Fallujah can smell ’em. They could smell ’em as soon as you walked your dubious asses up to our humble place of worship.” “We don’t have any cocaine, okay?” said Guidry Lee. “I work here in Pecan Sandy for Permian Mobile Imaging. We didn’t do anything wrong. We’re sorry for talking to the performers. We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to interact.” “What is this Permian Mobile Imaging?” asked the Belorussian woman to the cop. “Is this an important business?” “We have imaging machines in trailer trucks,” said Guidry Lee. “MRIs, CT, ultrasound. We go out to the little towns without hospitals and we look for cancer. We check to see if any ranchers got kicked in the head.” “You think I’m supposed to treat you differently because you got a job here in Pecan Sandy and you ain’t no drifter?” said the cop. “That makes it worse, honestly. I should call your boss.” “It does seem to me that this type of job situation with trucks and medical equipment and so on would indeed be a perfect opportunity for moving around large quantities of narcotics,” said the Belorussian woman. “Excuse me,” said Lisette. “This is supposed to be some kind of holy roller church, but who the fuck are you? Where did you even come from?” She turned to the cop. “And why are you letting her boss you around, cowboy? Don’t you know commies hate America?” “I am very much NOT a communist,” said the Belorussian woman. It made perfect sense that someone from another country had helped build this place. That was partially why it was so unsettling. Texans would have had rooms with strobe lights and people with rubber hatchets revving leafblowers whether the place was supposed to convert sinners or not. But this place was too cerebral. Too baroque and too weird. It was almost a satire of Texas values. “So what are you really doing here then?” asked Lisette. “Are you some kind of spy?” “My name is Maria Gorky-Sladky,” she said. “As if you will remember my name. I know you Texans. You are all like golden retriever dogs. You will barely remember this night at all. It hardly matters if I introduce myself or not.” “I honestly think this hell house is awesome,” said Lisette. “I mean, I disagree with all the rhetoric or whatever, but it’s goofy as hell with top notch production values. Your English is perfect and you seem smart. So what the fuck is going on? You are some kind of alt right contractor that the church brought in? Some kind of international culture programmer but for fascist idiots?” “It’s honestly very simple,” said Maria Gorky-Sladky. “There’s no future for the Orthodox church here in the United States, so I have converted.” “She’s a convert,” said the cop. “And a very gosh-danged capable one.” Guidry Lee could tell the cop was infatuated by her. “Don’t you miss being in a big city though?” asked Lisette. “Doing real work that matters in a place that doesn’t suck?” “What makes you think I am from a big city?” said Maria. “I love small towns, but you are right that we don’t have places like this where I am from. It is unfathomable to me that a country would allow uncontrolled religion to propagate so completely. Doesn’t your government fear uprising by cult? The only protection you have had thus far as a country from the rapacity of your own Constitutionally-protected religious institutions is the greed of the people running them. These charlatans are content to steal. They do not know how to wield power or how to influence the simple-minded in ways that get permanent results. The leaders heretofore of these popular Christianities have been too greedy to weaponize their own flocks. They have been too provincial to truly terrify your intelligentsia. But these churches can be pruned. Tended. Gardened. And this must be done by outside hands. If more capable leaders with actual strategies do not take over, these people here will do nothing but develop their chemical dependencies and ruin their bodies with parenthood. That’s why I’m here to help. It is true that currently the urban opponents of churches like this last longer as agents of influence–people in publishing and Hollywood and so on–but this can be reversed with proper discipline and conditioning. We are investing in the future. The people here will benefit immensely.” “Are you hearing this?” Lisette asked the cop. “She hates you, bro.” “She really keeps us in line, I’ll tell you what,” said the cop. “Ain’t she something?” “I get it,” Guidry Lee said to Maria Gorky-Sladky. “You’re a vampire.” “A vampire?” said the woman, leaning forward and fixing him with her green eyes. “Ah, you are so flattering. If I were a vampire, would I hide myself so openly in a church like this? No, I am a believer, perhaps the victim of vampires. But I love my country. I love my country just the same as you. Only I’m willing to work hard for what I believe. You are barely willing to craft a tweet to fight for your own right to health care or housing.” “Your country?” asked Lisette. “What country is that?” “America,” said the cop. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” The woman just smiled. Maria was compelling. It was poisonously charming the way she could effortlessly flow political bullshit. Neither Guidry Lee nor Lisette knew how to respond. They just sat on the sofa, stoned and impressed. “You can leave us now,” Maria said to the cop. “I’m convinced that these children are no threat. But thank you for bringing them to me.” “Just give me a buzz when you’re ready for me to take them to the station,” he said. “Of course.” The cop slunk out, unroping his dogs and letting the door to the t-shack bang closed. “So we are alone now,” said Maria Gorky-Sladky. “Perhaps we can really communicate now. Perhaps I will be able to convert you.” “Good fucking luck,” said Lisette. “You have come to a hell house to mock the people here and to feel superior,” said Maria Gorky-Sladky. “You have come here and you have taken drugs in order to position yourself above the beliefs of your peers. But you have been exposed to the same toxic conditions. You are from Texas, are you not? Do you really think you have been able to create a personal imagination concordance that does not include hell? There must be terror for your eternal soul deep down somewhere. This part of the world is not a materialist place. How could it be? It is too ugly. Too disgusting.” “Texas is not ugly,” Guidry Lee said. “Texas is beautiful.” “And you’re beautiful, too,” said Lisette. “Why are you hanging out with all these gross losers?” “Thank you,” said Maria. “But these are my friends.” Maria Gorky-Sladky spread her legs open in the fetus chair, pushing up her skirt and taking a long drag from her vape. Maria spread her legs so wide that that they should have seen panties by now. Was she even wearing any panties? Was she trying to get them to look? For a moment, Guidry Lee’s erotic imagination spiraled out of control. Were they about to have a weird, stoned threesome? Did she want them to dive down between her legs and eat her out together in exchange for their freedom? “You think I’m beautiful?” said Maria. There was a noise from the shack next door, somebody banging open the door and running down the stairs. Suddenly there was high-pitched screaming from the parking lot. Loud pops. And then there was another wave of screaming that came from all around them. It didn’t go away. It got louder. Guidry Lee and Lisette assumed this was some sort of climax in the hell house, but Maria stood up, perking her ears, putting away her vape. “Gunshots,” said Maria. “Did you hear gunshots?” She opened the door and stepped outside, distracted and confused. Guidry Lee made eye contact with Lisette who eyeballed him back just as hard. They both ran for the door at the same time, slipping outside behind Maria, who didn’t even notice them leave. People were fleeing in every direction. They saw the cop running toward the actual church building under the breezeways, his gun out, his walky-talky crackling. Maria turned in a full circle, scanning everything around her. The church was on fire. The hell house was burning. Just as Guidry Lee decided to run in the other direction toward their car, a quadcopter drone turned the corner at the end of the tunnel created by the t-shacks, swooping toward the cop at chest level. The cop was so surprised that he lowered his gun. It was dark enough now that the jet of red flame that poured out of drone blinded them. Thermite poured down on the cop as the drone spewed out liquid fire, flammable cohesive accelerant that coated his clothes and melted his flesh down to his bones in seconds. The drone kept coming, vomiting fire, moving toward them. Lisette pushed Guidry Lee into an alley between the t-shacks, sprawling over him when he lost his balance. They duckwalked to the far corner by the fence, crunching on the gravel, digging down into it. They were trapped in here. “I’ll boost you over the fence,” he whispered to Lisette, making a foothold with his hands. “What about you?” she asked him. From the alley, they saw Maria run back into her office and then they saw the drone swoop toward her, closing the distance. “Chto eto za idiotskiy plan?” she yelled at the drone. “Ne menya! NE MENYA!” She tried to shut the door but she wasn’t fast enough. The drone pissed more fire onto her shack, melting through the ceiling. They heard her scream. It was a scream of agony, not fear. Somewhere people were shooting: short loud pops that didn’t stop the rotating star of fire. They didn’t see what happened to Maria but eventually she stopped screaming. The drone shot backward away from her shack, still leaking drops of liquid flame, and then swooped away in the opposite direction. There was more shooting. They heard police sirens. More gunfire. More screaming. “Now who’s the faggot?” they heard the bald man from the parking lot screaming from far away. “NOW who’s the faggot you Russian faggot sunsabitches?” “Oh my god,” said Lisette. “Don’t talk,” said Guidry Lee. “Help is coming. Come on, get over the fence, minou.” “They’ll think we were involved,” whispered Lisette. “We SAW him. We TALKED to him. We fucking TALKED to him.”” “He’s a veteran though,” said Guidry Lee. “We didn’t know…” “That doesn’t matter. Of course he’s a veteran. People were filming me. I saw them tweeting about me. And you just let me stand there ranting and making fun of these people!” Lisette started sobbing. She was terrified. Guidry Lee could tell that everything she had said to the people in the abortion room was rising up inside her like food poisoning. “You didn’t do this,” said Guidry Lee. “This isn’t your fault.” Guidry Lee heard footsteps on the other side of the t-shack. Footsteps were okay. Footsteps weren’t a drone. Footsteps might be help. Guidry Lee and Lisette didn’t move as the footsteps came closer. The footsteps belonged to the two dogs, set free when the cop was burned to death. The dogs were still attached to each other and dragging their chains. Guidry Lee put up his hands, trying to seem nice. Trying to seem like he wasn’t a threat. They growled at him and then they leaped. Lisette screamed as they went for his face. Then she stifled her own scream, looking around, terrified that someone had heard her. Lisette tried to get the dogs off him. She was sure the dragon drone was coming for them as the dogs punched through his jeans, ripping open his arms and legs, tearing at his face and ears and eyes. He kicked at the dogs, but they wouldn’t let him go. Lisette tried to beat at the dogs but she was too terrified of the drone to raise her voice louder than a pathetic moan. She couldn’t command them, couldn’t make them listen. The drone was out there somewhere. It would hear them. “Please, please, please…” It would be weird to burn to death in a church. Even if there wasn’t any hell. Even if there wasn’t any heaven, either. Even if it was all so much more terrifying and complicated and permanent than that. It would be so strange to die here without being ready for it. Without knowing what anything meant or what was waiting on the other side. You’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll see. more stories
(c) Miracle Jones 2024