if the heavens ever did speak
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
You, he would have breathed had he the ability to move, but he is still stuck, so instead his frozen eyes watch the creature – the monster – come forward. His head lowers, though he fights it – and a finger strokes down his forehead, dry and terrible.
He has not often been an angry man, but the fury that wells within him at the sight of the creature crashes like waves against his chest in a frenzy of heartbeats, and he tries, he tries to lunge forward, to tear the creature limb from limb. Anything to make him stop.
He can’t, of course. He’s frozen. The creature slips something over his head, something binding, and when it’s fastened there’s a moment of peace and hope (a pathetic and determined thing) washes over him. Maybe it will be okay. Maybe he won’t be chosen, this time.
He’s a broken toy, after all. Who would want to play with such things?
They walk out of the stall and he has a moment to think I’m going home and even though home is nowhere, for he has no home – even then, the thought of returning to the meadow fills him with a wild, desperate hope.
But instead, he is led to a chamber, a vast and empty space, sealed save for the way they came in. He tells his body to struggle, to flee, but it still refuses to obey. He even tries to possess the man, but when he tries it’s like knocking on a steel vault, everything is locked, no way to enter.
“Now,” says the creature monster, “let’s get to work.”
First:
The chamber melts away, is replaced by a meadow. It is bright, sunny. The sky (for suddenly there is sky again, not the dim solidity of the cave’s roof) is a blue bright enough that it hurts to look directly at it. The meadow is filled with wildflowers, and under a vast and towering oak there is moss, enormous carpets of it. He wanders over, still blinking in this new light.
It suddenly comes to him, why this feels familiar, why he was drawn so immediately to this oak: this is home. His first home.
Suddenly a presence falls like shadow, and he hears a voice: “kneel, Sleaze. Like I taught you.”
Just as he always had, he obeys his father. He kneels. The moss feels soft on his knees; though he knows that in time they will begin to ache under bearing such weight that they are not meant to carry.
Garbage is beside him, also kneeling. He leads them in a prayer that borders on nonsensical – Garbage found religion piecemeal, half based on lore and half on his own imagination, what sprung from that was garbled prayers and, of course, this misbegotten son.
If asked, Sleaze would have said he no longer knew the words – he’d stopped praying, after
(she loves us)
the events, the ones that left him purple and strangely aching, the ones that left him with so many names on his tongue that all sounded both much too right and much too wrong at once.
But he is shocked to hear his voice rising along with his father, speaking in chorus. He feels the sun baking down on his back, warm, and he does not notice that his father is no longer praying, that he has risen. He notices none of this until he feels the warm weight of Garbage’s cheek on his back, an embrace, feels the curl of breath somewhere on his shoulder.
This is love, Sleaze thinks, as he always had, because this was all he’d had, for the longest time. Just him and his father, against the world.
Sleaze is still praying.
“I always wanted to fuck you, you know,” says his father, and Sleaze whirls, the prayers slapped from his tongue, the heavy weight of his father’s
(love)
embrace falling away.
It is no longer his father, standing there. Or, it is, but this is a terrible iteration of him. It’s Garbage, still – the orange eyes blaze bright – but he is emaciated, gaunt. His skin is gone in places, moldering, and where bone peeks through there are clusters of mussels. Coral grows from his chest like a ribcage.
What remains of his father laughs as Sleaze’s eyes widen, as he backs away. He spits out a bit of rancid seawater and the stench of salt and decay makes Sleaze’s stomach turn.
“Did you hear me? All those times I laid my head on you while you prayed your stupid little prayers, I was thinking about fucking you. Did you really not know?”
This is love, thinks Sleaze, wildly, stomach roiling like the same sea that took his father, this is love.
“No,” he says, because he never thought it – never allowed himself to think it. It was simply how they’d been, two men against the world, father and son finding some sort of comfort in prayer. In touch.
“Stupid boy,” Garbage scoffs, “I’m glad I left. I’d hoped you wouldn’t survive, but you failed in that, too. You fail everything. I loathe you, Sleaze.”
Funny, how close the word loathe is to love, but how far away at the same time.
Garbage reaches out as if to touch him and Sleaze cringes away. Garbage laughs, a watery, choking noise, and then the world begins to bleed, begins to spin, and –
Then:
He’s plastic again, purple with pink-striped mane. The air is thick with smoke, hard to breathe. But then, he doesn’t need to breathe, does he?
He feels an ache in his stomach, and knows the name that’s carved there. He’s not blind – he should be, he knows this story, this is the aftermath, when Nerissa set the house ablaze after washing him in bleach, scrubbing off the painted clouds that had once been so painstakingly applied.
“I wanted you to see,” says a voice, and from the smoke appears the clown. It looks much the same as it had when Sleaze had first encountered him the toybox – face painted white, a red, almost sensuous mouth painted on, a smile that makes no effort to conceal its fangs.
We all float here, Sleaze thinks, dazed, and inhales a lungful of smoke (breathing is still a habit). He chokes, and the clown laughs, a deep and terrible sound that sets Sleaze’s bones on edge.
“All this,” the clown gestures with his free hand. In the other hand, he clutches a bunch of balloons, all different colors. They bounce wildly in the air above the clown. They should be popped, in this coming fire, but they aren’t.
“All this, thanks to you, Sleaze. Or should I say Velvet? Or Cloud? Which do you prefer, buddy?”
Sleaze is silent. Mostly because he can’t engage the clown. Partially because deep down, he doesn’t really know.
“Sure, I gave her a little nudge, but you were the catalyst, weren’t you?”
She loves us.
“You know what happened, right?”
Sleaze doesn’t answer.
“Lena’s mom died in the fire. She was sent off to foster care. And Nerissa, well…”
The clown laughs again. Sleaze wonders if he’ll ever stop laughing. The smoke burns his eyes.
“She just went off the fucking rails. I couldn’t have planned it better myself! Oh, I still visit her, sometimes, give her an idea here or there…but really, she does a splendid job on her own.”
The clown is silent. There is a crashing noise as part of the house falls in. Sleaze wonders why he hasn’t melted yet. He remembers that part. Melting. Going away.
“She killed her. Lena, I mean.”
Sleaze can’t help it – he cries out, short and desperate. He remembers the girl, how she had loved him and all the other misfit toys, had stabled them and cared for them.
“She didn’t make it quick, either. Police straight up though it was some kind of Satanic ritual, that’s how mutilated she was! Shame Lena didn’t just die in the fire with her mom. Probably would have been a blessing. Quicker, for sure.”
“All because of you, Sleaze. One stupid plastic pony. This is why it burns.”
The clown pulls down a balloon – a red one – and pops it with one sharp fingernail, laughs again when Sleaze jumps.
“You stupid boy. You deserve to be here.”
Then:
The fire is gone, and now Sleaze walks in a world of ash. The earth is buried in it, almost up to his ankles. The sky above him is gray and dismal. Ash floats down, like snow. The air smells faintly of smoke, and decay. There is an ocean in the distance, black and bleak, but it never seems to get any closer, or any further away, no matter how much Sleaze walks.
He walks, and walks, and nothing changes. So he starts to run. Still, nothing changes. He passes the same burnt trees, the same rocks. One tree has a bird perched on it. He stops to look.
It’s a vulture, but it’s gaunt, most of the feathers falling out. It lets out one feeble cry then tumbles to the earth, dead.
Sleaze takes a step back, disgusted, when he hears a voice.
“They’re all right, you know,” it says.
He turns to face it, and sees himself.
The same dark purple form, and when he sees it, he wonders if it’s a mirror of how he looks now, or a prediction of some future form. Either way, it is terrible – the coat is ill-kempt, mane falling out in patches. The creature is thin, nearing emaciation. And the eyes are the worst – too big for the gaunt face, and haunted, full of ghosts and ash.
“You were too stupid to see. You were always so stupid,” it – he – spits the word like it’s a slur. Maybe it is. Sleaze tries to run away but the creature is always there. Just like a shadow.
“It doesn’t matter, though,” the death-Sleaze says. He laughs, a sound like dry twigs snapping. It’s a rare-used laugh, a desiccated thing, the only thing reanimated in this terrible, ashen world.
Sleaze runs. It’s never fast enough.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” begins to death-Sleaze, then, “this is it, you know. This is your valley. I’m your shadow.”
That laugh, again. It’s getting stronger. It’s almost started to sound like the clown’s laugh, another dark thing bred in the dripping corridors of insanity.
“Here’s the kicker, though,” says death-Sleaze, “none of it matters. You don’t make it out of this alive anyway. So fear no evil, right?”
Then:
The other self is gone. The valley is gone. The fire is gone. The clown is gone. His father is gone.
Sleaze stands alone.
He’s on his knees, and weeping. The exertion of his sobs calls attention to his stomach, where he is suddenly aware of how it hurts, that blood is dripping down. A name is carved there, on flesh rather than plastic.
He doesn’t know whose name it is.
“See? There’s nothing for you,” says the monster, “your father, Lena, even yourself. They’re dead, or hate you, or both!”
It laughs. It sounds like the clown. Sleaze wonders if they’re one and the same. The monster’s mouth does look awfully red.
“So, Sleaze – if that’s what to want to be called?”
There are so many names. But he nods. It’s as good a name as any. He wonders what name is carved across his belly. The blood has begun to congeal, but every movement breaks it open again. He will bleed for a long time.
“Whaddya say, then? Are you in?”
There’s nothing for me, back there thinks Sleaze. Just like the creature said. So he nods, again. Still on his knees, as if bowing to the monster the creature the master. A loyal solider in whatever war is brewing.
He shall fear no evil.
sleaze
cancer x garbage
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