Thick saliva drools from the corner of the albino girl's mouth, bubbling as she screams. The flimsy table where she sits shakes with her convulsions. “Juvy never loved you. She's whoring herself out now.”
How does she know Juvelyn's nickname? She couldn't know that. There's no way in hell. Or purgatory. This fortune teller is demon possessed, that much is clear. The mob isn't far from demon possessed, either, converging on me with pure hatred in their eyes. I can smell them as they close, and they're a filthy, unwashed bunch. Earlier the girl shrieked about Saint Janith, only she called her Janith the Traitor, words that flipped a switch in the crowd and whipped them into a rage-filled frenzy. The rat butcher has grabbed his knife, and passed several more knives around. The women and kids are picking up stones, but the young toughs lounging against the inner wall of the city will get first crack at me.
The young men with faces full of scars, some of which are decorative while others are trophies of a life filled with violence, have been doing nothing all day, and this is a chance for them to be brave, be tough guys, show off for everyone and let the community know that while they don't have jobs and own nothing, they are big shots. And to have a little fun.
The crowd breaks to let the hard young men through, and the mob is eager to see the spectacle. The youths walk in a line, wearing only loincloths of the coarsest fabric. Their skin is nearly translucent, pale as the belly of a frog, ritually scarred by sand rubbed into fresh cuts. The wreaths of twigs and hair woven around their heads provide scant protection against the sun, so I'm guessing they want to crush me quickly and return to the shade of the inner wall. Their feet are bare and heavily callused. It's odd that the soles of their feet and the palms of their hands are colored no differently than the rest of their skin.
“He's come to bring Janith back from hell!” the fortune teller shrieks, sending spittle flying over her table. “The lizard man is her lover!”
The line of toughs starts to fan out into a 'U' in preparation to encircle me. I remember a tidbit from Mr. Tanner's Fresno City College sociology class. They're about to perform “the monkey dance,” wherein the group bonds by an act of violence against a stranger. Every member of the gang joins in stomping the victim, and afterwards they all gather around the campfire to relive their exploits and celebrate.
The fortune teller shoots to her feet, overturning her table. “You think Max is your child? You think he's still alive?”
I am going to shut up that damn demon.
The closest albino tough gets within range, so I throw out a right jab hurtling straight toward the point of his chin. Except I forget I have short arms, and my punch goes two feet in front of my chest.
The young hoodlum throws his wide right hand, which I instinctively catch in my beak. My teeth are short, but they grip securely. He shrieks while I whip him around to strike the punks closing in behind me, hitting them with the legs of their own companion. Continuing the spin, I release him as he wails “My shoulder!” and flies into a young tough with a scar running from his navel to his hip. On impact the two are bowled over and roll across the cobblestones.
Two others close in, and I spin.
“Go ahead and run, lizard man!” one yells gleefully.
But I'm not running, I've spun to strike them with my tail, which hits like a whip but with the impact of a baseball bat. Even over the noise of the excited crowd I hear a jawbone break.
I'm turning when someone strikes me from behind. It's a large rock, heavy enough that it has to be lifted with two hands, and it makes solid contact with my skull.
And just like that, I'm dead.
* * *
God has appointed me as his vicar, his champion to defeat the dark gods, and in less than forty minutes I'm killed by a fat albino woman with a rock. How embarrassing is that?
I've realized dying is just like anything else—the first time is difficult, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. A lot of people think of themselves as living, when in reality they're just death virgins. But I know something a lot of people don't know; that once you die, your spirit lives on apart from your body.
So I am standing at the edge of the crowd as a roar of sheer joy erupts from the pallid mob. My spirit is beside them, staring at the motionless body of a six-foot gecko lying belly-up on the hot cobblestones with its lidless pupils staring vacantly at the sun. That can't be good for my eyes. The throng is shrieking and whooping with their hands pumping into the air. They spontaneously break into dance, with the women squatting and shaking their butts at my corpse, while the men hop with their feet shoulder-width apart, thrusting their pelvises in the direction of my prone body.
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Several minutes ago, this was a dreary, run-down, filthy section of town where everyone was miserable, even those who were drunk to try to deaden their depression, but now that they have killed a stranger, they are filled with joy. I've started a party, but can't participate in it. If this were my wake, one of the Irishmen would at least hand me a beer. I hate frickin' albinos.
Oh, yeah, there is that damn demon to attend to. The young fortune-telling girl's eyes grow wide, because she can see my spirit standing above my dead body, or the demon possessing her can see it.
I remember lines from Psalms of Wholeness, more specifically The Dirge of Possession, and I hear an angel sing them.
Fight not against the man, but against the shadow controlling him
In the noonday sun he is free, but as the daylight wanes his shadow lengthens
and he is a slave to his shade, even in the palace
The taller the crown, the longer the shadow
We battle not with blades but with the Psalms of God
bringing light to the darkness and freedom to captives
The main idea of these lines is that the enemy is not the person, but the spirit possessing the person. The girl is merely the puppet of the demon controlling her.
I pass through the crowd like a breeze through a thin muslin cloth to confront the spirit inside the girl. I can see the demon who is possessing her, with a bulbous head and a gaunt, lined face, like Edvard Munch's “The Scream,” only anorexic. He yells with the girl's voice, “You'll burn in hell!”
“Been there, done that,” I reply, and in an instant, as fast as thought, I am on him, seizing him by the throat.
That's the odd thing about spirits. To a person on a physical plane, a ghost is intangible, but on a spiritual plane, spirit against spirit, they have substance, at least enough substance for me to throttle this pain-in-the-ass.
In a nanosecond I've hauled the demon to purgatory, back to my familiar corner. I'm burning, but I'm fine with it, because he's burning, too. I've got him in a full Nelson and I'm shoving his face into the coals. I can't see any coals, I've never seen them, but I know they've got to be there, because I can feel them. I work him into a wrestling hold called a “twister,” where I've laced my leg through his, and while lying behind him I wrap an arm around his chin, then cinch in while thrusting my hips forward into his lower back. It's a punishing move that twists up a person or a demon like a Twizzler, or the stripes on a barber pole.
“You know what?” I hiss in his ear. “I'm going to sing the Psalms of Wholeness, every word of it. I'm going to sing about Lord Riyel, Saint Janith, and God the Empowerer, the Healer, and the Protector. I can't die, remember? So how many times do you think we can go through Psalms of Wholeness in a century?”
Just the mention of Lord Riyel, Saint Janith, and God has got him sputtering and jerking like a live fish on a hot plate. When I get to the word “century” he is shrieking incoherently.
Before all else there was dust,
blown by the wind in the darkness
until God formed the whirlwind.
I've started singing the very first lines of Psalms of Wholeness, as if I'm about to go through them all, which makes the demon wail horrifically. Juvelyn, like all Filipinos, loves karaoke, and I learned not to worry about my mediocre voice and just have fun singing at get-togethers of Fil-Am couples, but in purgatory my voice is strong and melodious. I hit the highest notes effortlessly, and my voice is so unexpectedly, so miraculously good that Tom Jones wouldn't want to take the mic after I'm done singing. I notice the fire doesn't seem to burn so intensely.
The demon is writhing in my arms, wailing hideously. “I'll give her up! I'll move out, I swear!”
“Do you swear by Lord Riyel?”
“Noooo! Please stop!”
I know he can't swear by Lord Riyel—he can't even say the name, but I'm twisting the knife. The bastard possessed a young girl, and I'm going to make him suffer.
“I'll leave the City of the Possessor!” He jerks and flops, but he's going nowhere.
“I thought the city's name was Saint Janith.” I'm messing with him, and I haven't had this much fun since I died in a car accident.
“I'll leave the city!” He blubbers and stops resisting as I grip him.
In the blink of an eye we are back in the midst of the mob dancing around my motionless corpse. I release the anorexic demon and can hardly follow him as he races into a pig tethered to a table. The pig's eyes grow wide, and she begins snorting. The sow shakes her head from side to side, then slams into the table leg beside her as if scratching herself. With a series of rapid grunts the swine bolts down the street, hauling the table behind her. Foam bubbles and saliva trail in a long stand from her snout as the table bounces and whacks the stones. The pig is racing frantically, headed toward the city gates. Each time the table strikes the stone street, a piece breaks, and pieces fall off and tumble over the lane as the table shrinks, collapsing in on itself until the last piece skitters away and the pig is only trailing a rope.
The guards at the gate are surprised to hear the commotion behind them inside the city, but by the time they turn, the squealing pig dashes past them, running out across the salt flat.
An elderly albino man breaks from the crowd and starts to follow the pig, but realizes he's too late, and gives up. He curses and stomps his bare foot before dejectedly rejoining the dancing crowd.
I thought the crowd would be done with their celebration by now. I mean, how much entertainment can you get from a dead gecko? But they're still dancing and whooping, and some of the women have started to take off their sackcloth dresses.
One of the young toughs picks up the stone that killed me, and raises it up over his head. He's dancing, hopping up and down, then circling with the stone above his head, showing off how strong he is. He hops around my tail, which hasn't moved except for a few post-death twitches, and moves up around to my head. To my horror, I realize he intends to smash the rock down onto my head. If he does that, my skull will be crushed, and I won't be able to return to my body.
Right now, I'm just a spirit, so I can't stop him.