mikoroshi

-Preacher-

“There is a point in life where all your childhood understandings of—of what, right or wrong, good versus bad… The black-and-white morality of Saturday morning cartoons and the Sunday-school oversimplifications of saint against sinner—whatever the fuck it is you’d call it, at this point in life, it’s now laying in a pulpy red mass on the curb, twitching as flies shit and flitter in its shocked, gaping mouth, gurgling in amazement and terror.”

The man in the black coat takes a moment to inhale. To let the image swell in the minds of his flock. Two dozen men and women from all the tiers of the city. Hipsters and winos, executives and whores.

“Morality is dead and gone, my friends. If it was really ever there to begin with; If God gave Man free will, then why set out the Ten Commandments? Why forbid fruit? Why set Man any rules at all?” He runs his right hand through what stringy, silver hair he has on his head, tugging it almost hard enough to tear it from the root.

“The devout would argue that it’s because Man is something greater than Beast, and the rules are there to stop Man from becoming Beast.”

“The Beast!” the gathered faithful reverently murmur.

“Morality is obedience.” A hush comes over them. He paces, cracking the knuckles of his index finger and his middle finger with his thumb. They want to hear what’s next, he can smell their sweat, hear their pulses rise.

The old man’s face is red as he raises his voice. “The Beast is something to be feared, because it has no rules, no morals, no code of honor to warp and manipulate, but man does. The Beast is cunning! The Beast is ancient and patient!”

Again, but louder, the crowd repeats, “The Beast!”

“The Beast created Man, who in turn created God. The Beast manipulated man in to believing God set him rules. The edicts of the God meme keep Man soft, keep him shallow, and weak.”

Louder still, and with more fervor, they cry, “THE BEAST!”

“Penned by God’s laws, restricted by his morals, Man becomes little more than sheep. Man becomes something kept and maintained, cultivated, observed; and once Man ripens… well, on that day… Man will be harvested by the Beast.”

“THE BEAST! THE BEAST! THE BEAST!” the mass exalts. A toothless, muddied Veteran of some forgotten Vietnamese rice-paddy conflict smiles for the first time in a decade as he shouts the words, tears cleaning the grime from his cheeks. Next to him, hair dyed black and wearing his sister’s pants, a sixteen year old boy with punk rock dreams orgasms for the first time in his life without touching himself.

The chant continues, four more times, and peaks. The preacher extends both his arms up as far as his two-sizes-too-small jacket will allow, and slowly lowers them. With each inch he drops, the crowd loses a decibel. Eyes wide and lip curled, he hisses. “The Beast is so very hungry.”

His flock leans in, they don’t want to miss a word of it.

“My children,” he says, and begins to turn away from them. “We must feed the Beast this night.”

Through the shattered beams of the factory ceiling, moonlight lands on the old man’s face, but in it, he is not old. He turns back to them, the scar beneath his right eye gone, his hair black and full, a half-foot longer than it was a moment before. With each step, he angles his head to the left, then the right, vertebrae cracking and popping in to place.

Eyes widen and heads turn. Frenetic whispers are exchanged. He smiles, fangs grazing his lower lip, and points to the woman in the blue Abercrombie hoodie and embarrassing Ugg boots. “You. Will you go to your glory, will you sustain your master? Will you become immortal within him? Will you give yourself to the Beast?!”

She trembles and smiles. She nods and lets out a squeal of joy.

“Come.” He beckons her forward with two fingers extended. She stumbles and gasps as she walks forward. She obeys the literal command to move forward, and the double entendre simultaneously. He stretches his arms out as she scrambles up the rickety wooden ladder to him, legs shaking. The crowd coos as if they were a theater full of middle aged women watching the end of some shit romantic comedy, as he takes her into his arms. “Will you feed the Beast? Will you let your master take from you?”

The girl arches her head, and pulls the rim of her hood down and exposes her neck. “Please, yes, please, take my… my… take me, my master…” she stutters.

He shoves her away with both hands. As she falls back, her ankle twists and snaps. She cries out. The crowd swells into laughter and guffaws. She is on the verge of tears, confused. “But Master--?”

“I am not the Master!” He kicks her. A rib snaps, and she rolls half her length towards the other end of the sheet metal stage, a flap of skin shredding on a rusted bolt. “I am more than you!” another kick, another wet crunch. “But I am so much less than the master!” Again. “Master! Feed! Take!” Again. Again. The crowd roars with each kick. With each word, another impact of a boot to the abdomen. The girl, gasping, bites her lip so hard an incisor bursts through it.

Through the white and red electric vision of pain, somehow, she focuses. The crowd goes silent, and somehow she knows it isn’t just shock making her hearing go. The pain stops, and she sees the preacher smile at her, then turn and walk away.

She gurgles, and tries to push herself up with her left arm, and then she sees it.

Black, reflective. Wet, salty-smelling ooze sloughing from the joints. A scraping sound, like nails on a chalkboard, but unnaturally pitched downwards as each section snaked upwards towards the moon. The moon, so full, so bright. White light glistens off of the chitin of the Master’s arm. Her Master. The Beast; beautiful and terrifying. She smiles, finally understanding.

The razor wire tendrils wrap around her. “I love you, Master,” she chokes back tears. The black pincer envelops her. “You are so warm,” she gasps. Her head spins as the pain fades; the needles of Master’s claw feel no different from when you sit on your leg for too long. And the blood, draining at a snail’s pace through the skin, a sensation she never felt before, and never will again.

As the master pulls away, the dried thing that used to be a woman twitches and shakes spastically, her eyes rolling to the back of her head. The preacher passes a hand down her once-full cheek, now a pruned piece of leather, and he smiles. “Do you understand now?”

“Yes…” she wheezes with a smile. “Yes…” and with that, she goes.

The gathered let loose a roar of approval, and the man stands over the dried out corpse, making a gesture reminiscent of Nixon.