"When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says: 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings back with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell thereā¦"
āJesus, Matthew 13:43-45
"Devin Johnson", the social worker leaned over in his chair and fumbled with a piece of paper. He was a fat, louse like man with big, oversized lips and sparse strait brown hair that covered his head like an undersized skull-cap.
"The sole-survivor of the Zerahemlah disaster. Am I really to believe you are the only one who survived?"
"Hardly." replied a somewhat distinctive looking boy dressed in blue jeans and white buttoned shirt, who looked to be about fourteen with bronzed skin and wavy auburn hair. He was androgynous like many boys his age, but he also possessed so wide a forehead, such large, bright moss colored eyes, such high cheeks and a tapered jaw that the social worker knew that he would retain this beauty long into adulthood. Indeed, he was so striking that the man felt compelled to look down at the floor; whether out of fear or shame he could not stand to look this boy in the eyes. The only thing ugly about him were his lips. They were thin and too large for his face and there was something disquieting about the way they curved when the boy smiled. "There were two others with me, but I wouldn't tell you their names, not even if you tortured me."
"If you prefer to be so damn secretive then why did you say anything at all? The cops hauled you in for vagrancy, no one interrogated you."
"Exactly. Why would I lie about something that could get me into such serious trouble?" His casual attitude made it impossible for the man to believe he could have ever been involved in anything so horrific.
A year ago the rural town of Zerahemlah had been seemingly erased from the face of the earth. A couple who had driven to the isolated town last May had arrived to find a big, black scar on the ground where Zerahemlah had once stood. Not a fence post remained, though further investigation uncovered a few charred skeletons on the town's outerskirts. Everything else had been incinerated. The cause was unknown. Though when an eccentric survivalist, who lived a few miles east of the town with his wife and children, was questioned he merely called it "a judgment from God" and left it at that.
"I think you're just really bored and you get a kick out of all this attention." challenged the social worker. The boy's lips curled into a wide, disgusting grin that made him flinch.
"Maybe. But I have a feeling you're going to listen to me anyways and I promise you, lie or not, you won't be bored." The runaway stretched out his arms and made himself comfortable on the green, velvet couch. It was the type that was stuffed with feathers. The type you could fall asleep on if you weren't careful. The man pressed the play button on his tape recorder.
"Zerahemlah, I was told, had not always been such a dull place to live. Growing up I had heard from some of the adults how fun it had been in their day; though they used words like 'debauched' and 'decadent'. But that was before I was born. Before the prophet came and cleaned everything up."
"Oh that's just what they called her. She was no prophet, just a shriveled old witch who hallucinated conversations with God ā though I guess that's all a prophet ever is. Do you really want to know about her?"
"I've never heard of any prophet of Zerahemlah."
"No, you wouldn't have. Yes, she was regarded as a prophet but really she was a crazy old hag, a shit disturber who inherited her calling from a long line of shit disturbers: Isaiah of Judah, Jesus of Nazareth, Savonarola of Florence, Jean Paul Maratā"
"I'm impressed that you could list all those men in chronological order but please get on with itā¦"
"Gladlyā¦" continued the boy after a pause. "I was among the Sinless; that's what the prophet called the generation of us that grew up after her revolution. We were supposed to be a new creation, the prototypes of a redeemed humanity who would never taste sin and so would never die. We would inherit the earth after Armageddon andā"
"I'm sorry." he apologized. "As an outsider you wouldn't be familiar with the prophet's eschatology. Armageddon is when God wipes the sinful from the earth. It's supposed to be like the flood, except in Armageddon he uses fire instead of water. Anyways, everyone on Earth was supposed to be wiped out at Armageddon ā except for Zerahemlah and her inhabitantsā¦ Ironic in light of how things played out, isn't it?" he gave another disgusting grin which the social worker couldn't bring himself to return. "Anyways, yeah, we were the hope of all mankind. Quite a responsibility. I was the oldest of the new generation born thirteen years ago at the cusp of the prophet's revolution. My father died in an accident so I was raised by my mother. I suppose I was raised by Zerahemlah itself. Among all the other children who were born after, I was like a big brother. They envied me for my status, but they admired me for the same reason."
"But you didn't like it?"
"Hell no, I hated growing up in Zerahemlah! It was quaint, little hamlet full of backward people with backward values. Nothing was allowed without the prophet's permission. At least the Amish are consistent in their rejection of the modern. She forbade broadcast television, internet access, and any kind of entertainment from the outside while she used the same technology to indoctrinate us with her insipid and paranoid philosophy. We only had to attend church on Sundays but we had to listen to her every day. To this day I have a horror of television. But I pretended to like it. It was up to me to set the example and so I did. I was so well trained that I didn't know how miserable I was until I met Aradia."
"You didn't mention her before." interrupted the social worker. "Did Aradia survive too?"
"I had never seen eyes like that before she came to town" the boy continued his narrative with the air of someone who was too classy to even acknowledge rude interruptions. "Aradia was the daughter of a convert who moved to town when I was nearly thirteen. To look into her eyes was like looking into the eyes of corpse or of a lifeless doll. They were big, brown orbs that faithfully reflected back everything that passed in front of them, without coloring it with sentimentality or cynicism. Those eyes allowed her to see things as the rest of us never had: as they truly are. Do you believe in truth, Mrā¦?"
"Mr. Brown" the man replied.
"Well do you?" the boy asked after the man had not added anything to his introduction.
"I am not used to hearing such philosophical questions from boys your age."
The runaway smiled but this time it actually made him look half-way pleasant so that Mr. Brown forgot how ugly his lips were.
"I wasn't so philosophical until I met her. I accepted that there was truth in the way that most people who have never doubted their view of things accept it. But Aradia taught me that truth is how everything looks before you have time to judge it. That's why the whole world was a paradise before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Everything is good and beautiful until we judge it to be ugly and unworthy." The boy paused after this, as if he expected the man to refute him, and then continued. "Besides her eyes, there was something else really remarkable in Aradia's looks. If you can imagine how Snow White would have looked at twelve then you know her face: it is the closest a woman's face can come to being free of artifice. Of course, this was just a maskā¦"
"Is this your excuse for ignoring me?" It was the first thing Aradia ever said to me. I was at the town's only library with my face stuffed in a history book. Her question was so obnoxious I simply stared back at her with my mouth slightly ajar. "Not one of the kids have taken the initiative to speak to me since I moved here" she continued, "even though I can tell they all want to."
"It's because they're afraid you might say something like you just did to me. Stop being so candid and you'll make plenty of friends in Zerahemlah."
"That's a very candid answer.. what do they call you?"
"My name's Devin. You're Aradia?"
"Don't say it like you're asking a question." She frowned. "What are you reading?"
"It's about the French Revolution."
"No, I think it's tragic and predictable." I remember exhaling when I said this and it felt like I had been holding my breath for a very long time. "But it's for school and I'm very vain about my grades. Regurgitating facts is about all I'm good at."
"That's too badā¦" her voice suddenly seemed tired. "For a moment I thought you were being candid like me, but then you decided to hide your pride behind self-deprecating humor. You really shouldn't, you know. There are so many people in this world willing to look down on you and, besides that, nothing's more condescending than false modesty."
"I'm sorry." I confessed as I placed the book back on the shelf. After all, it had really only been a prop to keep people like her from speaking to me. "I didn't mean to be condescending. It's a bad habit I've acquired."
"You wanna go to the soda fountain?" she asked "It's on me?"
"There you go againā¦" I protested. She began to laugh at my discomfort and then locked her arm into mine. "What are you doing?!" I cried.
"Don't you know anything!" I ripped my arm away from hers. "Dating's forbidden to the Sinless."
I explained this aspect of the prophet's theology to her as we made our way down main street. She laughed as if I had told a bad joke.
"So you can never have children?"
"We will never enter puberty. Sex only came into the picture after death so the race would not die out. Once death is destroyed there will be no need for it."
"That's stupid, Devin." I looked at her as if she had just yelled an obscenity. "How old are you, twelve?"
I nodded. "I'll be thirteen in a month."
"Well then that will be the end of it. You're voice will crack soon and the prophet will be proven wrong. What a stupid prophecy to make. She should have stuck within the realm of possibility."
"No." I maintained. "You don't get it. I can't grow up. I had an operation when I was a little kid. I won't ever be able to impregnate a girl."
"They castrated you?" The social worker interrupted once again, "That'sā¦ that's monstrous! That's criminal!"
"They didn't castrate me." corrected the boy. "They only removed my testicles."
"Criminal!" the social worker repeated. "Did they do the same to the girls?"
"They had their ovaries removed. But it's not so bad. We'll live forever once the world is returned to a paradiseā¦ or so they told me."
I knew from the start that Aradia was a bad influence on me but I rationalized my interest in her by convincing myself that I would be a good influence on her. I feared what might happen to Aradia if anyone caught ear of her radical views, but thought she had the sense to keep them between us. It was the first Sunday after her arrival that I discovered how ruthless she was. It was the obligation of every young person to prepare a sermon for church. Since Aradia was new it would be her turn and the bishop had prepped her on Saturday so she would have time to prepare. Bishop Murphy was a fat, untidy man who no one really liked. He had full bow-shaped lips, but his face was red and paunchy and his restless eyes seemed to be constantly hungry as if he wanted to consume everything he saw. But the prophet had chosen him to administer her flock and so we were forced to put up with his unwholesome presence.
"My sermon today will be about the Eucharist." began Aradia. I could hear the sighs of the parishioners after she announced this for it was a very stale subject in our religion. "The first Eucharist was held by Jesus on the Jewish holiday of Passover. Passover celebrates the final plague God sent to the Egyptians which slew every first born Egyptian child. The Hebrews were commanded on that day to slaughter a lamb and smear its blood on their doors so God would know not to kill the first born in that home. I guess even the Lord is capable of mistaking Hebrew boys for Egyptian ones. The Hebrews were also told to bake unleavened bread, which is basically like crackers. Anyways, when Jesus held Passover he replaced the lamb's blood with wine, I guess because he was poor and couldn't afford meat. We consume the Eucharist every Sunday so that if it happens to be the day God decides is going to be Armageddon, he will see us dining on wine and crackers and know that we are his true followers and he shouldn't kill us along with the rest of the people on the planet. That is the purpose of the Eucharist."
Judging by the stunned reaction of the congregation, I figured this must have been the first sermon they had ever listened to in a long time. Bishop Murphy looked as if he were about to say something but decided not to. She had not, after all, gotten anything wrong.
We began to spend every day after school together. Aradia was ingenuous, but she was no fool and we were careful to not be seen in public together. You have to understand Zerahemlah was very close knit. There was no such thing as 'a friend of a friend'. A private relationship like ours would be seen as an affront to the community for the same reason a private business is an affront to a communist state. And of course my mom would never allow me to be friends with a girl. We would spend hours hanging out in the library, hiding behind book shelves whispering to one another about a certain book we might be reading. My lack of company all those years had given me plenty of time to become an intellectual and Aradia, with her natural curiosity, had become one too; though of a different sort.
If we wanted real privacy, we would meet in the woods, where hardly anyone ever went, each of us taking a different path to the meeting place and and each leaving in a different direction. Zerahemlah was surrounded by hundreds of miles of uninhabited woodland.
Most people were afraid of those woods, as if they harbored some primordial fear that the trees might come and swallow the town up and reclaim it for their own. Most folk stuck to the town like a bunch of campers who huddle around a fire at night.
"Why is it no one ever comes here?" asked Aradia as we sat under an oak playing gin rummy. I, of course, had never even seen playing cards before Aradia taught me how to play, as all games were forbidden by the prophet. Indeed, even possessing a deck of cards was enough to get someone shunned for six months if discovered.
"Because the woods are haunted." I replied. "Everyone knows thatā¦"
I nodded without looking up from my suit. "The prophet says demons live in these woods."
"But you're not afraid? Don't you believe your prophet?" there was mockery in her voice.
"They only come out at night." I sighed as I discarded a card into the pile. " The prophet says they travel on whirlwinds after nightfall, clawed and fanged, devouring everything in their path, screeching madly like a tornado. The girl demons are pretty and gentle, but they're cold and if any man touches one he won't escape until all the heat's been drained from his body"
We were both quiet after I said this and I continued to play.
"Gin!" I announced and looked up, but Aradia wasn't there. Then I felt something wet and cold wrap around me and heard her laugh before I had time to scream.
"How'd you get so wet?" I asked as Aradia continued to tease me, still draped around my shoulders.
"There's a little creek just beyond those bushes." she pointed to some shrubs and I noticed most of her upper body was drenched. "You never heard it?"
"No." I admitted somewhat ashamed.
"I bet if we follow it we'll find a fishing pond. You ever fished?"
"You know we're vegetariansā¦" Aradia never lost an opportunity to remind me of how deprived I had been.
"Yeah" she teased, "because that was God's original plan."
"God only gave Adam and Eve permission to eat fruit and herbsā¦" I repeated what I had been taught. "It was the devil and his angels who taught men to hunt and eat flesh."
"How would you like to try it?" she asked.
"You've got to be joking! Besides, I don't have rod or hooks and neither do you."
"Well I've got string" said Aradia, "and I can use one of my earrings as a hook." She removed it and poked the end with her finger. "How 'bout it, Devin?"
"You've already snuck out to the woods, played gin rummy, and got yourself a girlfriend. Where's the harm in one more sin?"
"Now waitā" Aradia's laughter told me I was blushing intensely. She seemed to get a thrill out of my embarrassment. Finally, she walked over and took my hand.
"If anyone ever finds out, you can tell them I kidnapped you and forced that fish down your throat. I won't dispute it. I promise!"
We followed the creek for the don't know how long. Aradia took great, vigorous strides as if to keep up with the water as it rushed towards our destination. She grasped me firmly, as so I couldn't escape. Finally, we sighted a growth of willow trees ahead of us, much like an oases, and followed the creek into their shadow. Sure enough, there was a good sized pond beyond them, surrounded on all sides by willows.
"Told you!" exclaimed Aradia with a toothy grin. She found a strong, straight willow branch and broke it off expertly and then assembled her pole. "We'll need bait. Go look under some rocks." she ordered without looking up.
I obeyed, or at least pretended to. Maybe if I didn't find any worms she would give up on the idea. But when I returned I saw that she had already cast her line.
"You were taking too long so I found some myself." she said in a hushed voice.
"Why are you whispering?" I asked at my normal volume.
She shushed me harshly and explained that we had to be careful not to scare them off.
"I didn't think fish had earsā¦" I whispered with not a little sarcasm. But Aradia was paying no attention to me. She was focused on the line which seemed to go taught periodically and then slack again. Suddenly she thrust the rod up only an inch but with an abrupt jerk and I heard a splash.
"I've hooked it!" she announced in triumph. Now she got on her feet and began to step back slowly as the rod heaved back and forth. I made sure to get out of her path. The farther back she stepped, the louder the splashes were and the farther the pole bent.
"It's big!" she exclaimed. "I'm gonna have to land it quick or it'll escape!" She now gripped farther up the pole and began to walk sideways away from the shore while I got closer to get a good look. It was big: a catfish, nearly a foot long! When she finally landed it the fishing line snapped out of its mouth and Aradia yelled at me to grab it before it could get back in the water. It was too slimy to get a hold of, but I managed to push it away from the water while Aradia ran over with something gleaming in her hand. She answered my surprised glance with an "I took it from the kitchen." and had stabbed the end of the blade into the fish's head before I could protest.
Once she was quite certain it was dead, Aradia cleaned the fish in pond water and then took it back to were there was grass so she could put it down without getting it dirty.
"Go find some kindling. If I leave it something might take it and it's too slippery to carry." I nodded and went back through the trees to where I had spotted some dry grass just outside the oasis. Even though I had done nothing, my heart was pumping wildly, though more out of excitement than fear. I remember that I had an erection and wondered why. When I returned with some dry twigs and grass Aradia had already removed the head, tail, and entrails.
"I've never cooked one without a grill or pan." she admitted as she cleaned her knife on the grass and removed some matches from her pocket. The smell of the animal's flesh as it cooked had my heart thumping again and my mouth watering. I had never, in my life, smelled anything like it. I knew then that I would partake, no matter how my conscience might upbraid me for it afterwards. Aradia took a slice of it with her knife and held the blade up to my mouth. I took tender, hot flesh in my mouth and tasted sin for the first time. We devoured the poor creature within minutes and I threw the bones into the pond despite Aradia's protestations. My penis was as stiff as a bough and wet with sap and I embraced Aradia and kissed her without knowing why. She held on to me and began to fondle me through my pants until I came. I had never even masturbated until then. I wanted to ask her what had happened and why she had done that, but I fell asleep in her arms and when I woke up there was no time to talk. It was late and we had to run back into town before the sun fell behind the mountains.
It was a few days before I spoke to Aradia again. I saw her at school, but there it wasn't safe to ask her the questions I wanted and small talk seemed impossible. Aradia, for her part, seemed to understand and waited for me to approach her. Meanwhile I had tried several times to do for myself what Aradia had done for me in her arms, but the magic was gone. No matter how much I rubbed and played with it, nothing happened. This fact, more than anything else, drove me to speak to Aradia in private at the first opportunity. We were in the woods again, at the oak where we played gin rummy.
"You mean you've never touched yourself before?" she asked in genuine amazement. This time she wasn't teasing.
"How did you do it? How did you learn it?"
"It's not algebraā¦" she shrugged. "You just stroke the tip until white stuff comes out. My dad taught me how to do it for him when I was little."
"Your dad?!" I stepped back appalled. "Aradia, do you know what that is?"
"I know more about it than youā¦." she quipped.
"That's incest, Aradia. It's a sin!"
"But this is serious! It's not like playing cards. You've got to report him to the bishop!"
"Should I report you as well, Devin? Do you really think half the girls in town aren't doing the same thing? What makes you think the bishop isn't doing it too?"
"Devinā¦" she put her hand on my shoulder. "You forget that men like my dad and the bishop aren't like you. They didn't have their balls taken out before they knew what they were for. Men have needs. If they don't get what I gave you out in the forest at least three times a week they go crazy. That's just the way it is no matter how your prophet would have it!"
"That's weirdā¦" I said, still wondering if I believed her.
"I didn't think you needed it until you got on top of me and I felt your prick. I guess they must have messed up when they fixed you."
"I still can't believe you do that with your dadā¦"
"That and more Devin. I put it in my mouth sometimes."
"In your mouth?!" I wretched.
"You want to try it?" she smiled.
She laughed. "Just tell me when you change your mind." And then after a short silence."You wanna go fishing again?"
"I don't knowā¦." I leaned back against the tree. "I think fishing's what caused it."
"You mean what came over you?"
I nodded. "I think the two are connected. The prophet says that before death came into the world there was no need for sex. Sex and death are connected somehow. I think killing that fish made meā¦"
"But I killed the fish, Devin."
"I know. But I helped you. And I ate its dead fleshā¦"
"We're only really alive when we're fucking or killing."
"What did you say?!" I had never heard Aradia use a curse before.
"It's something my dad told me once. He said he only felt alive when I was doing him and when he was killing people in the war."
"Why would someone like your dad ever come here?" I asked.
"Because he loves my mom and she joined your religion. She won't touch him now, of course, which means double duty for me."
"He's my dad. I love him." she was looking away in the distance now.
"I love my mom too, but I wouldn't wannaā¦"
"I didn't either at first, but I got used to itā¦ And he does stuff for me too now. And even if he didn't, he's my dad. He needs me." And then she turned to me. "And if you ever need meā¦".
And I did and she knew it. And not just for that. I didn't even know I was lonely before I met her, and now I couldn't do without her. It was a downward spiral from then on. Aradia taught me more card games. We graduated from fish to birds. We drank some of her dad's moonshine. She let me put it in her mouth and, eventually, in herā¦ Well, her dad was right. I've never been able to feel alive since then unless I'm fucking, or killing, or doing some other bad thing. In the face of our desires, conscience is as delicate as a cobweb. Flies might get caught in it, but most plow right through it, hardly even feeling it tear.
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