Love Me or Kill Me Read online

  “Oooo…aren’t we so angry and judgmental? As I told you, Cronus-Gor is only mostly dark and evil—not all. He might even drink and laugh with you. Depends on the day. Or he may delight me and vaporize you instantly into the purple mists! Then…I’d…I’d have the memory of your essence with me—indefinitely!” She giggled and if I didn’t know better I would’ve sworn she was demented. But somehow she wasn’t. It was all just a way for her to amuse herself in a world beyond the perpetual, the world of the immortals, those who never run out of time because they don’t live in Father Time’s constraints. And for Rhea-Saturnalia, her uniqueness must have forced her to keep that part of her psyche creatively alive—or else she might truly go nuts.

  “Well, if he vaporized me right up front, then he wouldn’t get any of the good stuff—you know, the Fen de Fuqin stuff.”

  She went white. Her face grew taut. “What did you say?”

  “I said the Fen de Fuqin,” I said, checking out some trepidation in those red-amber eyes. “That…seems to bother you…doesn’t it?”

  “I know what it is, but I’ve never heard it called that before. You must have known one of the immortal sisters—those who guard over it. No one knows where what you speak of is kept. The immortal sisters are Asian on your plane of existence. They are a very old race. Did…did you come into contact with one of them?”

  I knew she was pumping me for points with old Cronus-Gor, so I kept zipped up about anything having to do with Lei-Tao and in that moment realized what a risk she had taken whisking me off to the Cave of the Seven Truths. Not even these immortals knew where the original God of Our Fathers was! Although I still have to say the tantric sex was great and experiencing it with her burned into me a memory I will always cherish. In fact, just thinking about that crazy Chinese lotus dame made me a little homesick for those innocent, daredevil Cable Denning days back in ’27 when a naïve cop still more or less believed that the police were supposed to be on the side of law and order—and the bad guys weren’t. Well, it all got muddled up somehow.

  I ignored her question. “How about letting me see your dearly beloved. I’d like to know what odds I’m up against here.”

  “See? I have never seen Cronus-Gor…”

  I could’ve dropped my teeth. “Never seen him, yet you had seven children by him—what is he, a big drop of oozing pus or something?”

  “Eight children. I sneaked a girl by him. ” She walked away from me, then turned back to face me. “No…he’s just never—never been visible. Some gods stay formless…a kind of nebulous energy presence.”

  “Saturnalia, you mean you’re standing there telling me you’ve been with a man—uh—creature or whatever he is—and enjoyed his sexual favor, yet never seen him?”

  “I’m afraid that’s how it goes, Cable,” she said, giving me a rather naughty smile. “There are so many, many dimensions compared to what you’re used to in your little three-dimensional pretty blue planet.”

  “So how will I know where he—uh, is…when I’m talking to him? How do I know he won’t wallop me when I can’t see him?”

  “You’ll know…he’s quite an excellent conversationalist. He prefers those he has audience with to imagine what he looks like—and he often likes the varying descriptions. It entertains him.” She approached me and put a soft, feminine hand on my shoulder, then squeezed it. “But I can see you, Cable, and I far prefer looking into my lover’s eyes than closing my own and experiencing only the sensations.”

  She took my hand and we walked out of the cottage into a strange, dark land. The land was dusky and flat, the sky an unfocused steel gray, and there was no landscape except pulsing, glowing little rocks on a trail we walked on. Soon we saw what seemed to be a huge white granite tower in the distance. “What’s that?” I asked, marveling that the tower extended to what seemed like many hundreds of feet into the air.

  “Even gods die, eventually, Cable. You see, that is the Tower of Eternity. Every ten thousand of your years, a little bird flies from a long distance away, and alights on top of the white tower. There he sharpens his beak with one stroke to the left, and one stroke to the right. Then he flies off again, to return in another ten thousand years. When the tower is completely worn away by the little bird sharpening his beak, then eternity will end—and all of us will die.”

  I tried to get my mind around what Rhea-Saturnalia was saying. No one could comprehend that, I thought. “Well, judging from the thickness and height of the tower,” I joked, “that’d be quite a spell from now, I’d say.”

  “Yes…” she commented. We continued on our way. In the distance, there existed a place where some kind of sun or bright light penetrated an opening in the otherwise dull sky. It shone upon what appeared to be a marvelous golden castle of some kind. When we got closer, I couldn’t believe how immense it was. I’d guess it was probably five football fields long and wide and grew to the sky with one stunning black tower that rose at least two or three hundred feet from the ground floor.

  “Well, this sure beats your cabin,” I crackled.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I love my little sanctuary.” Then she stopped walking and turned to look at me. “Will you kiss me good-bye now?”

  I was taken aback. “Good-bye…?”

  “I’m not invited. Only you are.” She came closer and put her arms around me. “Hmmm….oh, this feels so good…Cable…sometimes, just sometimes…I wish I were a mortal woman, able to feel all the terrible emotional risks mortal women must take with a man.”

  “Risks?”

  “Yes, like the risk of loving…being so different and all. We all live in different worlds, you know. It just appears we come together in physical union. But you cannot feel my joy or pain—and I cannot feel yours. So the experience is exclusive to each of us. If you’ll let me kiss you now, I will feel new things I’ve never felt before—but you’ll not feel them—because your feelings are your feelings.”

  “I guess…uh… I guess it’s okay—plant one on me…” I said.

  Ever so tenderly, Saturnalia fit her lips onto mine. A shot of electric something went down to my toes and I could feel my face flush. “Whoa, lady, what brand are you carrying?” It felt damn good.

  “Good-bye, Cable Denning…if I stay any longer, I shall wish to go with you, to the land of mortals—and careless, fatal love…”

  Just then I heard a man’s voice calling to me. “Sir, are you okay?” He was standing over me and I was in a small office with movie posters plastered all over the walls.

  “Uh…yeah…where am I—and who are you?”

  “I’m Bob Brown, the manager of the theatre here. The janitor found you at the end of the lower corridor beyond the restrooms.”

  Suddenly I realized I might have dreamed the whole thing! “Was there…uh, a girl with me—pretty young thing by the name of Sarah Mapleton, about five-four, hazel eyes—?”

  “—we found you on the floor, detective, and no one else. I took the liberty of checking out your identity in your wallet. Mr. Denning, right?”

  “Yep, that’s me…but no girl, huh? And there’s no elevator that goes down several floors beneath the one you found me on?”

  “No sir. Was she in your company when you entered the lobby of the theatre? I saw no one. Do you wish me to call the police?”

  “No, thanks…in a way I am the police in this case.”

  “Of course, I understand.”

  I thanked Mr. Brown and left the theatre, more perplexed than ever. Did I or did I not meet the comely little half-alien in that theatre—and did we not take an elevator ride deep down into the lower sanctums of the building? Was I pummeled by The Three Bears or not? Did that nurse shoot me with something that put me into the land of Saturnalia? I knew one thing for sure. Sarah Mapleton did come into my office yesterday before Zelda Blodgett marched in with her plants.

  How could I have dreamed the whole damn thing? Some answers had to happen soon, otherwise I would start believing my mind was going. I took the
yellow and green car toward Hollywood. I was worried about my Adora and had to get home to her.

  Egrets That Die in Springtime

  The late afternoon air was smelly and stagnant. I thought to myself, if I had gotten to my office by noon and down to Bard’s Theatre by one—and it was five-thirty now—that meant I had dreamed the whole sequence from the time Sarah Mapleton grabbed my hand and we started for the elevator that didn’t exist—at least not in this dimension. It had all seemed so real—from the fireplace in the cottage, Rhea-Saturnalia’s voice, our conversation, the description of this Cronus-Gor character—walking on the bleak landscape towards the golden castle with the magnificent obelisk—the thousand-foot granite tower where the little bird came to sharpen his beak every ten thousand years. Where did all that come from?

  I got off the streetcar and crossed the street. Just then I felt a gun in my ribs and a rough man’s voice said, “Keep moving, buddy, toward the alley—over there.”

  I did as he said and we turned off the main street into a dirty alley where a garbage truck was picking up the trash along the narrow corridor between buildings. “Uh…you don’t need the gun, buster. I’m not gonna turn around and bust you one—”

  “—shut up and keep moving,” he persisted. As we approached the garbage truck, the stupid thug hit me hard on the skull and I went limp as he and the garbage truck driver tossed me into the trash. Then I lost consciousness.

  When I came to, I was on the floor of some large room where everything from floor to ceiling sparkled with gold flecks, lighted by some invisible florescence. My head hurt like hell and the whole area around my right elbow felt numb. I must have banged against something. Then a dark, commanding voice spoke. “Did you know…more Egrets die in springtime than any other time of year? It seems the parents build the nests over water…and cruel little chicks, usually the pesky first-born, force the weaker chicks out of the nest into the water below. There, many creatures ravenously devour them. Quite tasty, I hear.”

  As I sat up, my gut did a series of somersaults and I knew I was in his presence…the creature-who-would-be-God…Cronus-Gor. “It’s been a long chase, hasn’t it? Like the Egrets, it’s always been the survival of the fittest between us. Why don’t you come out so I can see you?”

  “Gods are never seen, Denning. Human brains are so deficient that I can cloud your mind from ever seeing me. Let me assure you, I am very present…and do not fool yourself, it has never been a contest between us—only you run the risk of not surviving.”

  I carefully felt the bump on my head. “Well, one thing I can say, you’re a hell of a lousy host. I could use a couple of aspirin and a hefty jigger of gin just about now.” The room had an interesting reverberation to it and our voices echoed back and forth.

  “You were dealt with harder than I instructed. I will provide what you request.”

  In an instant those very same items appeared in front of me as I sat on the floor. “Well, I’ll be damned—are you a magician?”

  “Ha! Like children’s play toys—transubstantiation of molecular substance. Energy becomes moldable clay in my hands.”

  “Let me get one thing straight. I didn’t dream going to the theatre with Sarah Mapleton—or meeting your dearly beloved, Saturnalia, right?”

  “You may call me Gor.”

  “Alright…Gor. What about those sisters, Sarah and Rebecca Mapleton?”

  “They have already enriched the purple mists. Rhea informs me she would be most grateful if I presented you—as a gift to her—in the form of that which is breathed in nightly before any other mode of repose can take place, the purple mists.”

  “I see. And you have no conscience about simply killing two young women and reducing them to this—this horrible ‘mist’ you and your significant other keep talking about?”

  “Conscience signifies guilt—and since I have no moral code to concern myself with as you and your earthlings do, then taking vital life has no more significance to me than stepping on a bug.”

  That was rather one sided, I thought, but my head began to feel better. “That’s something I always wondered about. What is existence like without conscience or any kind of moral code?”

  “Law and order is established in the universes, not by gods or goddesses—and humans are uniquely unqualified to bestow a modicum of fairness upon themselves or other creatures, due to their self-delusion and corrupt nature.”

  “Hmmm…so I take it your opinion regarding humans is kind of low on the totem pole of the cosmic hierarchy?”

  “Humans are abominable, deceitful and treacherous…that is why it is so easy for me to manipulate them. Their weaknesses are always the same: greed, lust for control and power—which in your world society translates to financial accumulation.”

  “You are right on that score.” I cleared my throat and looked around the gold room. Strange lighting that slowly changed color every few minutes emanated from seemingly nowhere and filled every corner. The room had high ceilings and smelled pleasant, sort of like a faint wisp of a billionaire’s expensive after-shave lotion. “So, let’s get on with it, Gor. We both know why I’m here and why I’m not dead yet, right?”

  “Ravna failed me. Your dealings with Lei-Tao and her little overseer, Toggth, led me to believe you know where the Fen de Fuqin is hidden—for I know it functions to keep the equilibrium in the balance of things. It would be better for me to have it for safe keeping…”

  “You see, Gor, you’re as rotten as the rest of us—just singularly more powerful. But your bottom line is still power, control, greed, lust—I mean, look how you stole Saturnalia from her happy home planet?”

  “She told you that?” There was a silence. “Gods take what they claim as theirs—who would contest me?”

  “Another god, maybe more powerful…but it really comes down to the big question, ‘just because you can, should you?’ And creeps like you hide out in some smokescreen disguise so no one knows you’re just as corrupt as the next guy—or god, in this case.”

  “Silence!” his voice filled the cavernous room. “The Fen de Fuqin…where is it? Take me to it or I shall apply tortures to you so hideous that even I wince at the very thought of the pain they inflict.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had a go at your style, in a little underground lab where Ravna and his little bulldog surgeon got it. They were gonna start by de-balling me, you know—then just in the nick of time I was rescued. I’ll bet that one disappointed you.”

  “I hate priests. Your mythological creature churches maintain an arsenal of well-trained men and women because they want what I want…only they are primitive compared to me…and the Order…”

  “Ah, you must be speaking of Father Carlo Tortelli and his flying priests. Well, they sure saved my ass! I’d be ground up meat destined for alien dog food by now if it hadn’t been for them.”

  “Enough talk, Denning…you have a big mouth with very little to say. I have decided that mortals are ultimately useless, helpless little things. I will begin torturing you tomorrow. But before we do that, I invite you to spend your last sane night watching the Eve of the Purple Mists.”

  Something he said scared me a bit. “Last sane night, did I hear you say?”

  “Yes…the nature of the torture will unfortunately alter your brain waves and normal cognizance will be permanently disturbed.”

  “Hmmm…I see…if that’s the case, then how in the hell are you gonna extract the location of the God of Our Fathers out of me?”

  “Once the brain is softened, if you will, all that information will come ‘dripping out’ of you without your consent and we shall be able to view all of your life’s outstanding experiences. A form of brain control, which as I said, has unfortunate side effects.” Then Cronus-Gor dismissed me. “Tomorrow then, Denning. I hope you shall be co-operative.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I mumbled half under my breath.

  The room began to dim and I was led out into very spacious quarters where I bathed, rested s
omewhat and donned a thin gold robe that was accompanied by a pair of golden slippers. They were solid and I thought of OZ and Dorothy from Kansas. What if I clicked the heels together as she did the ruby slippers? I had escaped to the Oz books as a child and thought of L. Frank Baum as the kindly grandfather I never had as my bedtime story teller. Yet I felt these slippers had magic in them. What a silly fantasy, considering I was on the verge of having my brain sucked out by some alien “god” who was on a power trip.

  As I was sitting on the edge of my bed contemplating my fate, suddenly a shadow flashed across a curtain outside my room. Soon someone walked right through the wall and approached me! It was Saturnalia dressed in a knockout nightgown with a thin gold belt. Those solid, ample breasts stood to attention for me and she came right up to my face and kissed my nose. “Well, don’t you know better than to enter a strange man’s room without knocking?” I chided her.

  She attempted a weak smile. “Cable…listen…I don’t want you to have brain damage—I want you whole and real when Cronus gives you to me—because your impairment will affect the potency of the purple mists when I breathe you in.”

  “Oh, that’s swell—you come rushing in here like on a secret mission to tell me I’d best be in good health so you can kill me tomorrow or the next day as you inhale my essence through your nostrils? Yeah, that makes me feel a whole lot better!”

  “I really wish you could be my lover. But Cronus is such a stick-in-the-mud about things like that. The last time I tried with some handsome Urantian, he hung him upside down. His toes stretched until his body reached clear to the floor! And he smelled terrible.”

  “You know, Rhea, I kind of like you, but I’m not really interested in your past lovers, the night of the purple mists—and I don’t look forward to being lobotomized tomorrow. If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.”

  “You can’t. Cronus has ordered me to escort you to an Eve of the Purple Mists so you can see first-hand how wonderful it can be.”