APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (4 page)

There was a loud thumping from the ceiling as the neighbor upstairs stomped his feet.
“Shut up would ya?”
yelled a muffled voice.
“I called the cops.”

Victoria
angled her head upward and screamed at the ceiling “Shut up and mind your own
fucking
business!”

“Vic…come on…”  Hito tried to calm her, touching her shoulder. The man that lived upstairs had recently been paroled after serving a two year stretch for assault and battery. Hito didn’t feel like mixing it up after a long day at work.

Victoria gaped at him as if he had just taken a hearty dump on the carpet and jerked her shoulder away from his leprous touch. “Don’t you try to manhandle me! I’ll kick your ass!”

PECKPECKPECKPECKPECK…

Hito fought to control himself. He turned and walked to the door. He wanted to get away from her before he said or
did
something in retaliation that he would regret.

She shoved him from behind with both hands. “You want to go? Go then!”

He sighed and reached for the door. She slapped his hand away from the knob and he looked at her, his face and neck coloring. “You said to go, Vic.”

She grabbed his shirt sleeve, ripping it along the seam at the shoulder. Her nails dug into the skin. “Get…
the fuck
…away…from the door!” she said, taking great pains to enunciate each syllable.

He hated it when she decided to get physical, it wore on his pride. Even though he knew he could snap her like a twig if he wanted to, he was also aware that she
thought
that she was capable of doing the same to him. Pride told him to show her, but restraint reasoned that it wasn’t necessary, and he fought to shake the thought from his mind.

“What do you want me to do, Vic?” he asked looking at the floor. He didn’t believe in divorce, but the idea of ticking off God was beginning to look like it might be worth the pay off.

“You don’t even touch me anymore,” she said ignoring his question and grabbed him roughly by the crotch. Her voice took on an evil gleeful tone as she screamed “Are you gay or something?”

“
I'll fuck the bitch!”
yelled the muffled voice from upstairs.

The truth was that Hito had no desire to have sex with a woman that acted like she hated every single thing about him. Even sex was a chore; what was supposed to be a mutually pleasurable experience always ended up being about her. He was too gentle. He was too rough. His breath smelled like coffee. He hadn’t showered good enough. His hair was in her face. The list was endless, and he would, honestly, rather
be asexual than deal with yet another of her list of irritations.

It wasn’t just the sex or the sugar on the counter or the slurping of coffee either. He didn’t do the dishes or the laundry the right way. He didn’t mow the yard in the correct pattern. He didn’t put the trash cans out in the right order. He left toothpaste spatter on the mirror. His shit smelled remarkably like shit. His feet stank. He didn’t cut his hair the right way. She coached him at everything and his heart had grown full of resentment. At times like this his heart was pierced by a dagger of hatred.

“Are you going to say anything?” she demanded, still nose to nose and screaming; spittle dotting his face.

Friday wouldn’t be Friday without having the cops stop over and see the marks on him and his clothes torn. He would have to see the look in the cop’s eyes as they shook their heads in distaste; mockery in their eyes.

Victoria grew silent, but, her words echoed in his mind…pecking and pecking like water torture.

Suddenly she changed her tone and backed off. “You’re going to have to order a pizza for dinner, I’m not cooking tonight,” she said as she turned to look at the television. Just like that the switch had been flipped, making his head spin.

              “I don’t think I’m in the mood for pizza,” he said, shaking his head in amazement as he walked toward the bathroom of their little two bedroom apartment. He just wanted to lie down and take a nap.

Victoria
snapped again and flung the television remote at the back of his head. The plastic remote control missed him by inches, slammed into the wall beside him and the battery cover broke open, spilling its contents on the floor with a clatter as they rolled into the corner.

“Don’t you ever listen to me, you stupid asshole? I said I am not cooking. I’m not your slave,” she screamed.
Victoria stood and then ran after him, pushing him from behind again, this time making him stumble.

He regained his balance and said over his shoulder. “Vic, I don’t want to fight, I just want to go to bed. If you want pizza then go ahead and order it, but I’m not hungry.”

              “I told
you
to order the flippin’ pizza. If I had wanted to order it I would have already done it. You are such a pussy! I suppose you’re scared to talk on the phone, is that it?  God, I hate you! How did I ever marry a nutless freak like you?”  Victoria screamed at him. This was the first time Victoria had come out and said those words and he was stunned for a moment.

He could hear the neighbors upstairs yelling for them to shut up. He honestly felt sorry for them because this sort of thing happened all the time. His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know why you married me either
Victoria. I really don’t.” Hito could hear the whine of sirens above the stomps of their neighbor and figured that he wouldn’t be getting to go to bed after all.

             
                                           
   
Prologue Part 5 - Hangar 18

Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton Ohio

              Far below ground was the above top secret installation of many myths and legend. Hangar 18 was by all appearances just another enormous aircraft hangar, but it was what lay below that had inspired countless movies and novels. The underground installation led to various other buildings by way of a system of secure tunnels and rooms. The walls were unpainted concrete and unadorned but for the clusters of electrical conduit, junction boxes and gray breakers.

              “Sir, The ship is online.”

             
The Officer of the Day, Lieutenant J.P. Fischer spun on his heel and looked incredulously at the wall of monitors that showed every angle of the alien spacecraft
“What?” 
He marched purposefully over to where the junior scientist sat in front of his computer. “I don’t hear anything and the ship hasn’t moved.”

             
The scientist shook his head. “Sir, the sensors have picked up an energy signature, it is in a range I have never seen before.”

             
“You’d better be right Rix or it’s your ass,” said the Lieutenant ominously. He grabbed the red handset from the phone on the wall. “I need to speak to General Bradshaw,” he said then waited for a moment. “Sir, this is Lt. Fischer in Section 5. We are getting energy readings from the ship.”  The scientist could hear a string of expletives through the phone where he sat then heard a click as the Lt. winced and gently replaced the handset to its cradle. He eyeballed the man in the white lab coat as he chewed on his bottom lip nervously. “The Response Team will be here directly to relieve us. Following a briefing we’ll be quarantined indefinitely,” said the Lieutenant and then added, “My wife is gonna be seriously pissed.”

             
                                 
Prologue Part 6 - I See You (not I.C.U.)

Mercy
Hospital 

Charleston
, West Virginia 

             
Regeliel raised his head from his starched, white pillow and his long red locks hung over his bearded face and fell past his shoulders. He squinted as the morning sun glinted sharply into the two man room and he ran a large calloused hand over his scarred face and tugged at his braided beard. He had been on the sixth floor of Mercy Hospital for two weeks now and although the staff was generally caring and friendly they also treated him as if his cheese had slid off his cracker.

             
He shared a room with an older man of about forty years or so. The man in the next bed was still in pretty good shape, but his face was a road map of thick pink scars that stood out brightly against his pale skin. One of the man’s eyes, around which the majority of scarring was, was milk white,
blind
Regeliel knew. The one-eyed man spoke with a strange accent that Regeliel recognized from the cartoons that he incessantly watched of one amorous skunk that had a fetish for cats, and much like the cartoon skunk, he spoke a broken form of English. Napoleon was his roommate’s name: Napoleon Bonaparte; or Your Imperial Majesty as he seemed to prefer. Regeliel quickly realized that The Emperor became wildly furious when some of the staff got him confused with another patient named Earl. The staff made this mistake often and it would unfailingly send the Emperor into a tirade of name calling. His favorite name to call them was idiot (which sounded like
eediot
) and more foul profanity, until they were forced to plunge a needle in his shoulder. Only after those measures would he relax into a state of calm and soon after, drool would hang from his lips in copious drops as he stared at the cartoons that had transformed into a psychedelic blur of bright colors on the television.

             
Regeliel always called him Your Highness. Regeliel believed that you had to pay royalty their due; it was the noble thing to do. Napoleon enjoyed watching cartoons on the television and so Regeliel, who had never watched them before, had taken up that pastime as well. The Emperor waved the remote control like a scepter and Regeliel could only imagine that the staff had taken the Emperor’s weapon away from him fearing violence. Regeliel had noticed Napoleon’s small but fit stature and thought it odd that he would be a great leader. Regeliel himself was an imposing figure of a man. He stood at a towering seven feet tall and weighed over three hundred pounds. His face was ruddy and scarred and covered in a thick red beard that matched his long, shoulder-length mane. He was thickly muscled and the straps that they secured around his wrists at night could barely go around their thick diameter. The staff had to shave the thick coat of red hair from around his wrists so as not to pull the hairs when they strapped him in each night.

             
Today he was scheduled to talk to his physician Murashell Rangwalli for what would be his tenth session.

             
Dr. Rangwalli was a dark-skinned man originally from Pakistan. He accent was thick and Regeliel had heard other patients and the resident staff talking about not being able to understand a word that came out of his mouth, but Regeliel understood him perfectly. He thought that the doctor had a musical quality to his voice and that maybe Rangwalli had missed his calling.

             
Rangwalli was enthralled with Regeliel’s stories and especially the armor and heavy broad sword in his possession when the massive red haired man had been brought into the hospital two weeks before. The red haired giant had been shot twice by a large caliber hand gun, probably a .44 magnum, but had recovered in what Rangwalli called a remarkable fashion, “unheard”, of he had said. The doctor had Regeliel’s armor standing on display in his office; in its two steel gauntlets was held the enormous broadsword before the suit, its deadly sharp point piercing the tile floor.

             
Two orderlies escorted Regeliel into the doctor’s office and sat him on a couch that was made for much smaller people. Rangwalli’s face lighted up with genuine joy when he saw the gentle giant, his teeth bright white against the darkness of his skin. Regeliel smiled back; he enjoyed talking to the doctor. In Regeliel’s estimation Rangwalli was brilliant, somewhat misguided, but brilliant.

             
Rangwalli stood from his desk, circled around it to stand in front of Regeliel and reached up to put his hand on the giant’s shoulder. “Good to see you again, Regeliel. How are you today?”

             
“I am well, Doctor.  We are well met.”

             
Rangwalli laughed gleefully. “Yes, yes, we are well met, indeed.” The doctor backed up to his desk and leaned against it. “And how is our illustrious Emperor doing today?” he asked of Regeliel’s roommate.