Chapter 19
Isaac gritted his teeth in frustration. He was all blocked up. The traffic to Venice was so thick and throbbing that it reminded Isaac of the gossip around Liam Neeson’s legendary cock. The line of cars was just so long, long enough to pierce the horizon. And the girth! Six lanes wide, it ran. It was as impressive as it was terrifying. The backup on the boulevards was equally massive. The city and Isaac felt as if they were going to explode.
Despite what conventional wisdom would suggest, LA commuter traffic runs away from downtown and toward the coast. So here Isaac was, at 6:30 AM, jostling with the nine to fivers. Making matters worse, he still couldn’t connect with Seth once Isaac’s phone’s cell service returned, so he had to suffer through some small talk with his Uber driver as they inched their way to Anne’s office.
But the conversation soon became a balm. It was as idle as the car’s engine, lulling Isaac into a state of relaxation. Isaac needed this after the preceding traumas of the day. Forget about providing charging cables or bottled water for amenities, this was a true 5-star customer experience, plus the driver didn’t even mention how Isaac smelled like shit. Without a word, he laid out a towel for Isaac and some baby wipes. Isaac did the best he could with them.
To Isaac, there was no one better to turn to — to confide in — than his psychic. Who better to answer questions about PTSD, Illuminati blood offerings, thermal vision, and bipedal lizards? He couldn’t exactly go to Dr. Rousseau or the police. Unquestionably, both of those parties were in on whatever conspiracy he was confronting.
Theoretically, Seth could help him on matters of the occult, but Isaac would have to find him first. Unfortunately, his phone didn’t ring when Isaac called, and it didn’t go to voicemail either. The tone on the other side of the line told Isaac the number he had attempted to dial was out of service. Isaac grimaced. The lizards probably had their hands on him now. There was no other explanation.
How the tables had turned! The apprentice had become the master. Now it was Isaac’s responsibility to watch over Seth. That was another reason Isaac needed to consult his psychic. If Isaac dared rescue Seth from Illuminati lizardmen, a scouting report would surely help his cause. Because, as Seth had taught Isaac, failing to plan was planning to fail.
Anne wasn’t surprised when Isaac labored through her front door. She had been expecting him, of course, but she was too classy to point it out. She didn’t need to bother. Unlike his last visit, Isaac was a true believer now.
From the hangdog look on Isaac’s face, she could tell he had no more doubts about psychics or their field of expertise. His credulity for what was real, true, and possible in this universe had expanded. Tangling with an agent of the lizards will do that to a person. His belief in Anne and her abilities came easier to him now for another reason. He had been backed into a corner. He had to believe in her because if she were a fake, then he would be helpless. He would be hopeless. She was all he had for a resource. Not knowing where to begin, Isaac greeted Anne by keeping a stiff upper lip, using it to say, “I made contact with Captain Flapjacks last night.”
As soon as Isaac finished his sentence, the mood in the room became charged. His invocation of the Birman’s Christian name caused a stir amongst Anne’s army of cats. They tittered and muttered amongst themselves, tails bristling like rattlesnakes.
Isaac quieted himself out of respect for his audience and the cat who had sacrificed himself in a brilliant self-combustion explosion for Isaac only hours earlier. He shouldn’t be so suspicious, but he remembered the library explosion with quiet awe. Cat power! He looked around at the cats surrounding him. The sheer number of them in this room gave Isaac a nasty thought.
He may have had the power dynamics of this situation all wrong. Maybe Anne was the pet, and these cats were her masters. So, to play it safe, Isaac curtsied to the cat with the grandest, most impressive mane, figuring him to be their leader.
Anne frowned at Isaac and upturned her nose. “What is that smell? Is it shit? You smell like shit.”
“It’s shit,” Isaac admitted. “But I can explain!”
“Good lord,” Anne said with plenty of exasperation. “Here, use this.” She handed Isaac a bottle of something special to spritz on himself. “And don’t sit on anything.”
Isaac took it gladly and sprayed himself liberally with the tonic. “Is this one of your magical elixirs?”
“You could say that. There’s no potion on Earth with a scent stronger than this. It’s Fierce by Abercrombie and Fitch.”
“Oh,” Isaac said with uncertainty, but his doubts were misplaced because the smell of shit was immediately tamped down by the overpowering smell of musk, teenage angst, and Auntie Annie’s hot pretzels.
Once Anne regained her olfactory system, she could focus on what was important. Namely, Isaac had returned to her empty-handed. Again. “And how is Captain Flapjacks? In good spirits, I pray.”
“He saved my life.”
“Cats have a habit for that,” Anne mused, “A classic ‘who rescued who?’ situation. So, what were you rescued from? For me, it was the bottle.”
“I was saved from a monkey and a lizardman,” Isaac said, finally saying his trauma out loud. And when he did, he collapsed into a chair and cried. It was simply too much. A lizardman attacked him! It had scales, for Christ’s sake.
Anne opened her mouth to chastise Isaac for soiling her chaise but ended up biting her lip in an amazing act of self-restraint. For the first time, someone had taken pity on Isaac.
Isaac’s weeping started as a little rattle before quickly becoming a honking wheeze. His hot tears did little to warm his heart. This was the most he had cried since his parents died in that terrible sneezing-induced automobile accident. But by the end of the cry, Isaac had begun to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“A lizardman attacked me! After a black mass sacrifice!” Isaac repeated to restate the ridiculousness of the situation. He was delirious.
But Anne remained stoic. “I admire your sense of humor because, in my experience, those fuckers are no laughing matter.”
Isaac’s face hardened, “You know the lizardmen?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Biblically, you could say, but that was back during my bad boy phase.”
“Hold up. You dated a lizardman?” Isaac was astonished.
“Sure. I dated Xzaylax-Delta.” Anne said with all the nonchalance she could muster to hide her bitterness. “But I wasn’t the only one….”
“Xzaylax-Delta?”
“Yes. And I was almost Mrs. Xzaylax-Delta, if you must know. We dated for a few years until the third Gogzac civil war, but that’s ancient history. It was a phase. I grew out of it. Everyone does. Apparently.”
“...”
Anne smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Sorry, I was busy congratulating myself. I had faith in you, and I was rewarded for it. You survived. Good job.” She said to herself. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, Anne.”
“Wait a second!” Isaac got to his feet to demonstrate his deep displeasure. “You knowingly sent me in there? Into that — that pit of vipers?”
“Nothing a certified Slytherin couldn’t manage, I imagine.”
“...”
“To be fair, the lizardmen connection to Captain Flapjacks was only conjecture on my part. Being a psychic didn’t have much to do with it.”
“What tipped you off?”
“The fact I couldn’t really rely on my abilities to crack the case. Like cats, lizardmen are a little trickier to pin down than humans, especially since lizardmen can shapeshift to human form, so it had to be one or the other or both. Guess it was both.”
“Shapeshift? So, you’re saying all those people at the black mass were lizardmen?”
“I’m sure some of them were and some of them weren’t. Plenty of treasonous humans to go around who love nothing more than to suckle from the sweet teat of power.”
Isaac chewed on this, recalling Elon Musk’s uncanny valley of a face. “But how do lizards compare to cats?” Isaac asked hushedly so the cats in the room didn’t hear him.
“No contest. Cats are on a different level, a higher plane of existence,” Anne explained, pandering to her audience, who appreciated her efforts. With their egos satisfied, the cats around them returned to grooming themselves and their neighbors unperturbed.
“...well.”
“Well, what?”
“Tell me about the lizards!” Isaac’s exasperation reached a crescendo. “Seems like a big deal that we got secret lizardmen walking around the streets of LA. What’s the need-to-know information? Give me the Wikipedia version if you have to.”
“They landed on Earth thousands of years ago.”
“Like from space?”
“The Draco constellation if you want to get into the specifics.”
“So, they’re not from Pittsburgh?”
“Not originally, anyway, but they did have a nest there during the Industrial Revolution.”
Isaac re-stated the facts for confirmation, “So the Illuminati is a collection of conspiratorial lizardmen who are also aliens.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“That’s a bit reductive, Isaac. They’re also Nazis.”
“...” Isaac didn’t know how to react. Did Isaac know they were Nazis already? He couldn’t keep the clues straight anymore. His head hurt so much that he held it in his hands gingerly, tenderly, cradling it like an egg. It was all he could do to keep it from cracking open and spilling its contents all over Anne’s nice shag rug.
After daydreaming about the the cats in the room lapping up his leaking cerebrospinal fluid off the floor with their sandpaper tongues, Isaac peeked out at Anne from between his fingers. “What do they want?”
“The lizards want what we all want: to survive and thrive. Reproduction is a universal phenomenon, and I do mean universal.”
“How do they accomplish that, exactly?”
“Uh, well, it’s complicated. When a lizardman loves a human...”
“Does it involve human sacrifice?”
“Only if the stars are aligned.” Anne reached over to a side table for her handy-dandy star chart and grimaced after seeing the results. “Oh. I see,” she said after letting loose a long, low whistle. “Yes, that is unfortunate….” she trailed off, whispering the rest of her words under her breath. Presumably, they were spoken for the poor souls whose fates she read in the stars.
Then, out of respect, she lit the three votive candles on the same side table where her star chart resided. To Anne, the candles represented the father, the son, and the holy spirit, or, as you and I would know them, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and Jar-Jar Binks.
“Do they sacrifice children?” Isaac asked, thinking of what Seth had said while they trailed the school field trip at the Annenberg.
“Only human children.”
“...” Isaac stared through Anne. “Be honest with me, please. I trust your opinion and authority on this subject: Am I dead?” He tried to pass a hand through his chest to test his corporeal form, which held firm despite his best efforts. “I died, right? That’s what you predicted, right? In the Tarot?”
“Enough of that. This is no time to have delusions of grandeur. You’ll need all your faculties if you’re going to stay alive.”
“Okay,” Isaac groaned, his worst fears confirmed. Of course, if he were dead, then at least the worst would have been over by now. “Then I need your help.”
“Of course you do, sweetie. And there even some lizardmen who need my help, too, despite what they or their passive-aggressive brood mother may think,” Anne said, referring to her ex, Xzaylax-Delta.
Isaac screamed, rocking back and forth. “The monkey saw my face. He’s going to out me!” He groaned, knowing the question wasn’t if “They” would find him but when. “Tell me more. Tell me everything there is to know about these lizardmen,” Isaac pleaded, hoping there would be a secret trick to evading their capture.
Maybe his salvation would be as simple as moving somewhere north. The deep recesses of his brain recalled a factoid about how cold snaps in Florida caused iguanas and other lizards to freeze up and fall out of trees. But that wouldn’t work. Isaac hated the cold more than he feared death. He was a SoCal boy through and through. If he moved north, it would be over his dead body.
“Forget Wikipedia. The quickest explanation of Illuminati lizardmen is that everything you’ve ever read on Reddit is true.”
“...”
“Yes, and so is about half of what is posted on 4chan. In fact, Wikipedia entries are the most unreliable, but the Wikias are pretty okay. That’s an important distinction. Same goes for the answers to the Quora questions so long as they are from the lizardmen school of thought rather than the ones that blame the Jews.”
Whatever Isaac had read from those various sites flashed through his mind, but mostly what he could remember came from the memes he saw. One that stood out, particularly, was of a transforming Queen Elizabeth. In the image, part of her face peeled back to reveal a hidden layer of scales and a yellowed reptilian eye.
That was important.
If Isaac remembered Illuminati lore correctly, eyes were a big deal. An evil eye was even hidden in the Taco Bell logo, something Isaac couldn’t unsee after it was first pointed out to him. Belluminati. But he was fuzzy on the rest of the details of the Taco Bell conspiracy. Maybe there was a connection between the Illuminati pyramids and Taco Bell’s triangular tortilla chips?
Luckily for Isaac, Anne was willing to lecture him on the subject. She told him that the lizardmen, upon landing on Earth, infiltrated the ranks of their earthly hosts, living amongst them, ruling over them under the cover of skin and occasionally slaughtering them for sustenance whenever the stars crossed.
Astrology was actually real, Isaac learned. (The women had it right.) Whenever mercury was in retrograde, lizardmen killings peaked, as that’s when adrenochrome harvested from human pineal glands had their highest yields. It was all written in the Hollywood stars.
Anne warned something big was probably coming, blaming the upcoming summer solstice for the uptick in lizardmen activities. The longest day of the year was only days away, and this one held a special significance.
Of course, Isaac thought. Lucky him. “Why, what’s so good about this year?”
“It marks the end of the 33-year lunar cycle.”
But Isaac couldn’t understand the importance. It was too hard to follow. She kept going on and on about it and how he should beware that number—the number 33. Why? There were 33 levels in Freemasonry. The 33rd element in the periodic table? Arsenic. Jesus died at age 33. Larry Bird, basketball Jesus, wore number 33. The author of this book you’re reading? Wrote it when they were 33.
“So the Freemasons are Illuminati, too?”
“Yes and no,” Anne said, “they’re more like JV Illuminati. They’re at the bottom of the pyramid.”
“This does sound a lot like what I’ve read on Reddit.”
“I know.”
“So what do I do?”
“What you were born to do. Fulfill your duty — your destiny — as an upper-middle-class, white cis-male. You must ascend to your rightful place at the top of the food chain, thereby knocking the lizardmen down a peg. You will save the human race from continued enslavement through the sheer forces of will known as white privilege and failing upwards.”
“You think? White male privilege? Failing upward?” The whole idea seemed a little preposterous to Isaac. “And I take down the lizardmen by saving the cat, correct?”
“Yes!” Anne sighed with exasperation. “What don’t you understand? You got any better ideas? Are you — a moron — possibly seeing angles of play that I — a world-renowned psychic — can’t?” Anne tapped her third eye as proof of her authority.
“And how do the cats figure in with the lizards? What’s the story there?” Isaac asked, but he no longer really cared for the answer. This was exhausting. Isaac had to get creative. There were other ways he could employ his powers of white privilege.
He could use them defensively.
A shield made of Teflon, white privilege meant never having to say you’re sorry. White privilege meant inoculation from risk, responsibility, and consequence. He didn’t need this hassle of saving the world. No thanks. His life had remained stable through recessions, pandemics, and war. Why should the Illuminati be any different? This temptatious Eve will not upset him or his apple cart. “I quit.”
“Excuse me? You can’t quit.”
“I quit! I’m off the case! Murder, lizards, aliens. This is all a bit above my pay grade. I can’t handle that, especially when my compensation is a single complimentary psychic reading. This juice isn’t worth the squeeze.” Isaac neglected to mention his newly acquired superpowers to Anne. While he was anxious for answers on that front, he (correctly) worried that Anne would use them as leverage to shame him back into his role of savior. He knew she’d invoke the superhero mantra of “with great power comes great responsibility” against him, a line of rhetoric that Isaac would be powerless against.
“It’s not nearly as bad as what you’re making it out to be. You’re being hysterical. The aliens and the lizards are the same things, so you’re just repeating yourself.”
“That just makes it twice as bad! And don’t forget they’re Nazis. Triple bad!”
“This is a small hardship for one of my psychic readings, which are priceless because they are peerless,” Anne answered ominously. “Here. I’ll show you. I can’t believe you’re goading me into this again,” she said as she twisted all of the rings off her fingers and placed them on the coffee table to search through them. She had so many rings! There were gold ones and silver ones, ones with gems set into them, one that looked like a prize from a box of Cracker Jacks, and even one plain ring inscribed with an evil elvish script. “There you are!” She brought a particular ring to her eye to inspect a hazy bulbous stone set into a modest copper band.
Isaac leaned forward to get a better look. He understood now. He was looking at a mood ring, a crystal ball in miniature. Inside the stone, the colors swirled, hypnotizing Isaac.
Anne had him right where she wanted. Without warning, she thrust the ring against Isaac’s forehead and pressed the stone into the center of his third eye, the seat of his pineal gland.
A shock of cold energy swept down his spine, paralyzing him. But the pain was short-lived because Anne pulled the stone away as soon as he realized what had happened. Then, ignoring his protests, she squinted at the gem. It was changing color. Isaac watched as it shifted from bubblegum pink to a June Gloom gray.
“So?” Isaac asked.
After several anxious moments, Anne broke her trance off to offer her assessment. “I see hearts, stars, and horseshoes. Clovers and blue moons. In short: nothing but good tidings are coming your way!”
“...” Even Isaac, with his stunning lack of emotional intelligence, could tell she wasn’t coming clean with him. Whatever she saw in that ring must have looked like the leaves at the bottom of Harry Potter’s divination teacup, grim, thus confirming the wisdom of his choice to become a conscientious objector. “I wish you the best of luck to you and your endeavors,” he explained as he got up from his chair, hoping that was that. He didn’t need the nuisance of an intergalactic battle. Who had time for that? He could barely keep up with his laundry.
This little excursion to save the cat was never his idea anyway. It was only an exercise prescribed by a false therapist whose ulterior motives were unclear to Isaac, and they would stay that way. He wouldn’t wonder or worry about his role in this event anymore. If he were a cat, he’d no longer be curious. Ignorance was bliss. Lesson learned.
“You can’t leave,” Anne decided.
“Why not?”
“Don’t do this for me or my psychic readings. Don’t do it for the world. Do it for Captain Flapjacks.”
“No. Not for Captain Flapjacks,” Isaac lowered his voice to try and keep the cats in the room out of the conversation, “from what I’ve learned about cat power, not only can he save himself, but he should be the one saving me.”
“He already did, remember? Happened like ten minutes ago. He blew up the library. And now you owe him a life debt,” Anne said like it was as simple as a matter of accounting.
“He’s got nine lives, and I’ve got one.”
“You want to say that again?” Anne threatened, indicating her furry friends. “And what about the world? How many lives does Earth have?”
“If it’s so important, why don’t you do it?” Isaac whined.
“Heavens, no!” Anne scoffed, “And run the risk of crossing paths with Xzaylax-Delta again? I couldn’t.”
“Why? What happened? He leave you for a lizard lady? Must be hard to compete with a forked tongue,” Isaac snorted.
“...” Anne’s narrowed eyes were positively lizard-like, forcing Isaac to recalibrate.
“Fair enough. Well, you have your reasons, and I have mine.” Isaac began making his way toward the door. Any more time spent with Anne was time that he could be melting his mind by watching police procedurals on network TV, with commercials. Isaac loved commercials. (Sometimes Isaac would watch supercuts of 90s commercials on Youtube just to make himself feel something. The Sears AC one was his favorite, and he’d recite it often. ”Yesterday, you said you’d call Sears.” “I’ll call today.” “You’ll call now.” “I’ll call now!”) That was what he was craving, the safety and comfort of 60 minutes of repetitious plots with no loose ends.
Whatever else Anne tried to say to get him to stay and fight fell on deaf ears.
Isaac knew he might be at the mid-point on his journey to “Save the Cat,” or just past it, but he was closing the book on his story here. This was as good of a time as any to leave it all behind because the “Fun and Games” of it all were clearly over, and if the beat sheet was to be believed, then what lay ahead for him didn’t sound all that appetizing. Isaac could do without going through the stages of “Bad Guys Close In,” “All is Lost,” and “Dark Night of the Soul.” No thanks. Those trials would be best left to someone else. Isaac was going to go out on top.
As he was exiting Anne’s, Isaac turned around for the memories, wanting one last look at this chapter of his life to commemorate his accomplishments. When he did, his eyes fixated on Anne’s wall of fame again. There was a portrait of interest to him.
Hung between photos of two titans of culture, Keanu Reeves and Mr. Rogers, was a black-and-white headshot of Zee Shirley, the missing Super Jesus screenwriter. Oh yeah! Isaac remembered how Liz indirectly outed Zee as Anne’s client, a lead that deserved some more follow-up questions for Anne, but oh well! That was a piece of the puzzle for someone else to fit into the larger picture. It wasn’t his problem anymore. Anne would take care of it. She would have to because this sleeper agent was committed to hitting the snooze button. So sleep tight, world, and don’t let the bed bugs bite.