Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End Read online

  “Is that supposed to be a chair?” Loki asked.

  Dionysus squinted. “I think it’s decorative.”

  “A decorative chair.”

  “Come on,” Dionysus said.

  A crowd of attendants, bell hops, and random hotel lobby trash stared in bewilderment as their little army approached the concierge. Their boots and heels clicked loudly on the marble floor.

  “D-do you have a reservation?” the concierge asked.

  “Watch and learn,” she said to Loki.

  Then, “Hey,” to the concierge, all smiles and breasts.

  Everything clustered around one focal point, a sublimely tranquil red center surrounded in the black fluttering of the mob.

  At first I can’t clearly make out this center. I perch on the tip of my toes despite myself, and then I see what the commotion is about. My God. No, my Goddess.

  The rest are a gauché pastiché of whatever they’re passing off as punk rock or beatnik these days. One of them may even be a transsexual. Post-op, pre-op, who knows. I’m not about to find out. This goddess shouldn’t surround herself with such garbage.

  I’m left clutching the table and reeling by the time we’re face to face. What is it that you’ve always craved, that’s always pulled you through another day? And what would you do if it suddenly manifested in front of you, clothed in downy skin?

  Anything, anything they say. She’s talking fast now, and for the first time in my life the only thing I can think about is myself. That’s funny right? I’m hypnotized by the smell of her breath, sweat, and perfume, and all I can think about is me. Climbing an endless ladder, pieces of myself doled out slowly, almost imperceptibly, in exchange for another rung. A grand luxury suite, fourteen hundred square feet, yes, yes. What has this long life of service given me? By all accounts, I had done well, but what had I done for myself? Why am I here? Why am I giving them a room on a tab? My best instincts reel, but I see my hands floating over the keypad, I see the key card grasped so delicately between her candy-tipped fingers.

  Fuck this place. I don’t care.

  Here is your room card, Miss Parsons.

  The troupe made their way to the elevator, Lilith in the lead with the key card in her hand.

  “That was like some kind of Jedi mind trick that you just did there,” Dionysus said. “And did I hear that right? Miss Parsons? Like Jet-propulsion laboratory occult nut, L Ron stole his cash and started Scientology with it Parsons?”

  They stopped at the elevator. “I really don’t feel like talking about my grandfather right now,” she said.

  The elevator dinged and the doors closed behind them.

  It was packed tight: the troupe, a nervous, middle-aged business man and his shrew-faced wife. Ding. A momentary wave of nausea passed through all of them. Amber was coiled around Lilith like a garment.

  Ding. Another floor.

  Jesus slid next to the business man and winked. “This is getting me sooo hot,” she said.

  The man swallowed, hard.

  She put her arm around his shoulder. “I know what you look at when you’re up alone in the dead of night. You dirty, dirty boy.” His wife looked away, blushing.

  Ding. Their floor.

  They stumbled down the hallway, high on giddiness, lust and hash. A maid rushed passed, saying Hail Mary’s to herself as she went.

  They approached the door to room 777. Lilith turned to Loki before opening the door. “Wait here. We need a guard.”

  “What? You want me to sleep in the damn hallway?”

  “You’ve got thinking to do. I like it when you think,” she winked at him.

  “Look. I’m not like that concierge. Like, I see your breasts and suddenly I’m just a brain-stem attached to a penis.”

  Lilith shook her head. “It was about catering to his delusions. The breasts only get you in the door. Anyway, listen. If you need something to keep those industrious hands occupied, I could really use the smoke detectors in our room shut off. Within about...ten minutes?”

  “That’s not–”

  Artemis patted her crossbow. How the fuck did she get that in here? “I’ll help. If you don’t mind, that is.”

  “I don’t– Screw it. Why not?”

  Lilith let them in and then shut the door with a loud click.

  The corner suite had the same aesthetic as the rest of the hotel, full of hard lines and stark, incoherent furniture. Ariadne whistled. “These are some digs. How much did this cost?” She started putting her hair in pigtails. Black and red, shaved underneath.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Lilith said, “Girls, there’s a hot tub in there just dying to meet us.”

  Mary, Amber and Ariadne looked at one another uncertainly. Jesus began sauntering towards the bathroom.

  “Not you, hon,” Lilith said.

  Jesus frowned. “What, I’m not a lady?”

  “I said girls.”

  “Point. But I do make bathing an exacting art.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Lilith said, walking up to her and patting her ass. “New initiates. Wheat from the chaff,” she said, quietly, after the three of them were already in the bathroom. With a silk bag casually flung over her shoulder, Lilith followed them, closing the door behind her.

  Cody swaggered to a nearby sofa and dropped onto it heavily. He managed to finish the bottle of whiskey he’d been nursing all night before passing out, still sitting up.

  Jesus and Dionysus looked at each other. Dionysus sighed, but then smiled wearily. “I was really excited about the hot tub, too.”

  Lilith handed a bundle of candles to Amber and contemplated the layout of the room. Not the bath-houses of Tiberius in Ancient Rome, but it would do. Most importantly, the hot tub could accommodate three.

  She made a circular gesture at Amber, who nodded and began placing them around the hot-tub. Lilith sat down by the bath and turned the faucet.

  “Leave your clothes over there,” she said, motioning to the far corner of the room. “Don’t be shy. I’ve seen it all before...Not that you aren’t fine specimens.”

  They did as instructed, and stood somewhat awkwardly in the center of the room. Lilith began lighting the candles. “Ardat li li. Lamashtu. Ahi hay lilitu.”

  She snapped restraints on Mary and Amber’s wrists, but when she approached Ariadne, she pulled away.

  “Hold on a second. I don’t even–”

  Lilith grabbed her by the throat. Ariadne’s eyes opened wide. “As a famous writer said: You bought the ticket, now take the ride. OK?”

  She let go. Ariadne rubbed her neck for a moment. “Christ you’re strong.”

  Lilith smiled, and bound her hands as well.

  “I’m not a fan of empty talk. But I’m going to tell you something that Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Hedwig and Macguyver out there haven't figured out for themselves yet. We are the scions of eternity. My memory goes all the way back to ancient Babylon.”

  “You’re serious?” Ariadne asked.

  “Women told tales of me...I would steal the men away from them. I would devour their children. I was an abomination. I lived inside mirrors to seduce the vanity of nubile girls. Can you imagine? They were afraid of me. I know. You're probably thinking I'm crazy, and at the same time wondering about all the voices in your head that won't let you sleep at night. The nightmares that soak your sheets. I'm not the only one.”

  “Only what?”

  “Demigod.”

  “Ah.”

  “We don't always remember. In fact, more often than not, we forget.” Lilith put her hand under the faucet, testing the temperature. “It can take a real shock to bring it to the surface. First, I've got to draw this bath.”

  “Now I know why you shackled us before telling us your little story,” Ariadne said.

  Lilith laughed. “I like you. I hope you make it through in one piece.”

  “One piece?”

  Lilith felt the water one last time before turning it off. She got out bronze incense burners,
dropped herbs in, and lit them. Thick black smoke filled the room.

  “Hope he got to the alarms or this is going to be short-lived.” She waited, looking up. Nothing. “No? OK then. It’s time. Get in.”

  The room seemed to distort with the swirling smoke. The girls slipped into the water.

  “Breathe in deeply. Let all it into your lungs. Breathe in... and out.”

  “So you’re going to drug us, and then we can attribute the effects of the– Wait, what the fuck?” Ariadne felt strange. It was nothing like LSD. “What’s it doing to me?”

  “Clearing out illusions,” Lilith said. She put a hand on Ariadne’s forehead. “Take your last breath.”

  She gulped for air. Lilith plunged her under the water, and broke into fractals on its surface.

  Amanda was seventeen years old again, clad in tight denim and a band T-shirt. Ear-buds dangled like earrings from her ears. Five feet of wristbands, tattoos and attitude. Not yet Ariadne. Riding a bus to Anywhere But Here.

  There was no way she could explain to the tear and mascara stained eyes of her sister why she knew she had to leave. It was more like the pressure before a big storm hits. The leaves turn up, there’s a faint smell of ozone in the air and if you are wise to it, you get the hell out. Most people don’t drop everything on a whim like that, but for Amanda, even on a regular day, it was common practice. Winding up like everyone else in that miserable town was worse than any fate she could dream of.

  There had been a price, even if she knew it was the right choice, the only choice she could have made. Her sister never called her “sis” again, never told her she loved her. She became a distant, cold, “Amanda,” delivered on the other end of a phone before she was passed on to their neurotic, equally distant and ever-confused mother.

  The bus ride that followed their parting was the longest trip of her life. As she sat stewing in emotional denial, the incredibly flatulent, obese Mexican that sat beside her the whole way from Biloxi to El Paso leered over at her as if they were sharing some private joke, his eyes surrounded by crinkles like balled aluminum foil. He shot her a disappointed look before he swaggered off at his stop. Maybe the fat bastard expected a blow job in the bathroom.

  Lilith pulled Ariadne out of the water. She was half-conscious, hyperventilating. Her eyes rolled up into her head. Lilith seemed incredibly pleased.

  “Why is she like that?” Amber asked. “What are you doing?!”

  “She’s about to have a vision.”

  “Should we call 911?”

  Lilith stared them down. “Quiet. We’re not nearly deep enough.” She plunged her under the water again.

  Ariadne’s eyes snapped open.

  She tumbled through empty space, landing in a stone labyrinth. Implacable wailing greeted her as she entered light and open air. Squinting, she spun around and saw a tree, heavy with babies suspended by their navels from red, pulsing limbs. At first, all she could hear was her heart, working hard to rush blood through terrified extremities.

  Drums beat in the distance. She felt an immediate sense of peril, and got to her feet. Strange murals, gouged with bleeding fingernails, children’s paintings and graffiti lined the walls. The ground was spongy, which made progress slow and exhausting. She heard hooves beating on the stone, drawing nearer. Panic overrode every nerve and she ran, her mouth open in a voiceless scream.

  Ariadne was screaming and thrashing helplessly in the hot tub. Mary and Amber tried to hold her still.

  She ran, not knowing what from – only that it was terrible and swift. There wasn’t time to think. She fled on shredded feet along a riverbank, through the cold and the wet and the wind. She was underneath the world she knew, retracing her steps along the river and out of the valley.

  Twisted buildings coiled around her as she fled through their remains. The collapsing structures were split through their hearts by trees and vines. The constriction of their limbs twisted basketball hoops in rusted arcs, SUVs toppled and bent, whole buildings crumbled as nature reclaimed it all, chewing it slowly as it recycled the materials once ripped from the Earth.

  Silhouettes stood amidst the rubble. Occasionally she would stumble on a root, or a discarded children’s toy. Some people stood idly, trying to rebuild homes as plumes of smoke and fog swirled overhead like peacock feathers. Other hopeless soldiers marched in ordered rows, ants or Roman centurions.

  Police sirens cried out in the distance, startling her. It is a lost cause, she thought.

  I don’t know why I just thought that.

  I just did.

  I am her?

  I’m looking down at my hands as I walk. If I look away from them, even for a moment, I feel that I might be swept away by an uncontrollable tide. I may become someone else.

  I’m still looking at my hands as I glide past, an apparition.

  I can’t help them. These people are already dead.

  I climb atop a log, straddling it in the water as if riding a bucking horse. The crowd disappears back into the mist as I float away, apparitions themselves.

  Still in a delirium, I look at my reflection in a slender dagger, gently held close to my breast – a silver sliver of lips and eyes. The knife flicked along my neck, bringing a gout of sweet-smelling blood; it rushed down my body in a hot stream, past my breasts and the small oval of my belly to the black water below. Black and polluted. As the blood merges with the water, it runs clear. Soon, I could see the rocks at the bottom of the stream.

  I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming, but this is real.

  “Wake up,” says a voice in my head.

  “It isn’t time.”

  “Wake up,” it says again, and I do.

  Lilith smacked Ariadne across the face. Her breathing returned to normal.

  “Where am I?”

  “Hey, hey,” Mary said, stroking her hair. “I was–”

  “Where am I?” Ariadne repeated.

  “You’re in a hot tub,” Lilith said. “What did you see?”

  “It was a few years ago. And then it was...you know how it is when you’re in a dream, and it can be many times at once? No. That doesn’t make sense.”

  Lilith smiled. “It makes perfect sense. An overlapping of many places and times.”

  She blinked. “I don’t know. I’ve got to think on it.”

  “It is like a dream,” Lilith said. “Before birth, after death.”

  Ariadne scrutinized her face. “I don’t follow.”

  “You saw a little piece of it. The place that exists between there and here, is a dream.”

  “Maybe. Maybe it was something like that.”

  Lilith kissed her on the forehead. “You’re one of us.”

  It didn’t take Dionysus and Jesus long to find the X-Box. The two of them were presently enmeshed in some horribly complicated space battle.

  “You don’t think they need our help in there, do you?” Dionysus asked.

  “Shut up and die, monkeyman,” Jesus said. “Mushrooms?” She held up a bruised blue cap.

  Dionysus shook his head. He began mashing on his controller, a crazed look in his eye.

  Lilith pulled Amber out of the water by her hair with a splash. She gasped and spluttered. “Ugh. I couldn’t breathe!”

  After inspecting her for a moment, Lilith chuckled. “Mm-hm. Ariadne, Mary...we’re done for now.” The smoke in the room was clearing.

  The two of them wrapped themselves in thick complimentary bathrobes before slipping out to rejoin the others.

  “What about me?” Amber asked suggestively.

  “Hey guys?” Loki asked through the cracked door. “Did someone order room service?”

  “Yes,” Jesus said from within the room. “Send them in.”

  A young bell hop entered with an absurd spread of food and champagne on a cart. The room looked like it had been trashed by Guns N Roses. A flat screen TV lay on its side against the wall for no apparent reason, playing a nature show. The sofa and love-seat were similarly upturned. Banging and moanin
g echoed from the bathroom, but there was sign of no one except a blissfully snoring Cody, now relocated to the floor.

  “...Hello?”

  Dionysus peeked his head from under the overturned sofa, like a turtle exploring outside its shell. The sound of Ariadne’s giggling followed him.

  “Are you sick?” the bell hop asked.

  “Oh no. I haven’t been in a mental asylum in months. Clean bill of health. Here, let me get your tip.” Dionysus started to emerge from his cave. Ariadne looked on from behind. They were both naked.

  “No need!” the bell hop said, backpedaling. He slammed the door behind him. The four of them descended into hysterical laughter.

  Loki and Artemis stood in the hallway like passengers on an elevator. There was a bang and then some loud moaning. Loki tilted his head, listening. Amber, from the sound of it.

  She would probably have another orgasm in 4, 3, 2, ...

  “This is just wrong,” Artemis said.

  “If you’d rather be inside...”

  Artemis snorted. “Soldiers never leave their post.” She paused. “Might as well call it in. We’re getting bagged.”

  “Good luck with that. State and local cops are jammed,” Loki said, grinning proudly.

  “How?”

  “Hired one of those Indian call centers. They’re hitting every line every few seconds with a phony push-poll.”

  “That’s... gorgeous,” Artemis said. “How?”

  “Lilith likes to get things for free, but she seems to be good at supplying resources when they’re needed. Frankly, the girl scares me. O brave new war. You want in?”

  “I’m not already?” Artemis asked.