Read Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1 Online

Authors: Peter Giglio (Editor)

Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1 (4 page)

BOOK: Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1
3.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

God shakes his head, but he’s full of it and they both know it.

“You’re a long way from Sunday, preacher,” Sharpe says and smiles. “You talk her into leaving with us and I’ll turn her inside out.”

The old man harrumphs. If they’d been playing cards Sharpe would have pushed all in.

“No glamours,” Sharpe says. “No hoodoo. Straight pick-er-up.”

“I’m not interested—”

“Then don’t play.” Sharpe goes back to nursing his Slurpee.

“So you’ll just let her walk out of here, then?” The old man’s cheeks tremble as he tries to keep it below a whisper.

“There’ll be others. She’s just alright.” Sharpe’s making his bluff, and he knows there’s a red-hot tell pulsing against his thigh. It makes him feel stupid, that hard thing. Was that the point of the Adam story?

Sharpe looks at the Creator. The old man is incredulous.

“You don’t think I can do it,” God breathes. “You don’t think I can speak to a woman.”

“I think you’ve got the personality of a sandwich,” Sharpe replies.

God rises from his seat. His face flushes red, but it’s not anger—and maybe that’s why he likes Sharpe, after all, because who else has the stones to mouth off to him like that? Grieving mothers and fallen clergy don’t count. They’re just screaming into their hands. Only one other gentleman has ever dared say anything salty to the old man’s face. Maybe this outlaw has that same charm.

Then the old man walks over to the girl, and that just reaffirms Sharpe’s long-running theory that he’s but a god gone soft and looking to see some Old Testament torture porn.

Sharpe leans forward and listens as God stands beside the girl at the dryer. She glances at him then goes back to putting in quarters.

“You,” God says. “Do uh, I mean I, do you…”

He sits back down and Sharpe says, “Quite a rap you got there.”

“This is nonsense.
Madness
.” God turns on Sharpe, and this time it’s anger. He speaks quietly. “How dare you?
How dare you
?”

“You made a bet with the Devil once. What’s the big deal?” Sharpe pats the back of God’s T-shirt. It’s a damp red rag that says SURF SHACK on the front in faded letters. “Listen,” Sharpe tells him. “She can’t emasculate a feller what ain’t got no hang-low, right? That was the point Adam didn’t get, right? What I don’t get? So go on and introduce her to her maker.”

“You think you can patronize me?”

“I think you’ll let it slide long enough to win this wager.”

God grabs the sides of his seat and kneads the plastic. “I wasn’t made for this.
I
wasn’t
made
for anything, you understand?”

There’s a back pocket in the girl’s jogging shorts, and Sharpe sees the folded book, a notebook, tucked halfway in and pushing up her shirt just enough to reveal some ink. On her, not the notebook. But he tells God, “Ask her what she’s writing.”

“What she’s writing?”

“No,” Sharpe corrects himself, “ask her
if
she writes. Then, when she says yes, then what.”

He slaps God’s knee. “Get onto it then!”

And by gumption, it works.

The little ½-scale composition book is for free writing, she says. She can’t concentrate to write while out in public, so she just lets idle thoughts flow through her pen. And her name is Amy.

“How about you?” She offers God her hand.

Shaking it lightly, he mumbles, “Ah, Max. Max Korn.”

“And how about the shy one?” She waves over God’s shoulder at Sharpe.

“Blacula,” Sharpe answers, matter-of-factly, and makes no expression when the old man gawks at him.

“So, you published?” Sharpe meanders over. “I’ve taken a hack at it in my day but never had the nerve to send anything off.” That’s not true. His inbox is full of rejections. He realizes too late that telling the truth might actually have been more endearing to her, but either way she’s smiling.

“A few things in the university lit journal,” she says. “And my blog, I guess, but that doesn’t count.”

“That’s wonderful. What sort of things do you write?” God asks, leaning in slightly, and as Sharpe stands beside him and watches Amy, she doesn’t have her guard up at all. Not the least bit threatened by these encroaching white-haired bums—

She thinks we’re queer together

Sharpe sighs and supposes it doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t anyway.

God is trying his best to move the conversation along, as is his charge, but Sharpe is no longer interested in watching him squirm. He interjects to ask the girl, “You know of any groups that get together ’round here and talk about writing? It’s just me and my books anymore.” He pinches God’s hip. “And this one.”

“Some of the people from my writing class get together,” Amy says. “But you know what they say, reading is a writer’s best teacher.”

“I didn’t know they said that.” Sharpe smiles.

 

*****

 

The sun almost
seems to shudder in its firmament as God paces the sidewalk outside. He spins toward Sharpe and demands, “What possesses you to defy and DEFILE your God?”

“Maybe just that I can,” Sharpe answers. He folds and unfolds the swatch of paper bearing Amy’s phone number. “If I couldn’t then what’s this bit we do all about?”

“It’s
meaningless
if you don’t play!” the old man hisses. He pauses, as if he expects Sharpe to be taken aback, but there’s no reaction. He stamps his feet.
Clap clap!
goes God’s terrible wrath. “This all began as a lark. I mean
all
of it. You, her, the stars. Life! There’s no inherent purpose. That’s for you to make yourself. From the ant to the prince, that’s the gift I’ve given each of you. And you, Emil, you more than anyone had seized that will and exercised in a way that I found—most enjoyable. I admired it.”

“Past tense?”

“Now you’re just another walking hard-on.” God throws his hands in the air. “Her
phone number
, Emil. A
writing group?
A farce!”

Sharpe pockets the phone number and turns. “I’ll see ya when I see ya.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere more interesting.”

“You—I—”

“Right.” Sharpe shrugs his back at the Creator, who does nothing.

God used to have a certain odd, if uninspired, appeal, like a haunted bed & breakfast, but now he’s nothing but boring. Sharpe supposes this realization is what evolution feels like.

 

*****

 

“I don’t know.
Do you feel like going?”

Amy drives a scuffed-up hatchback. The back seat is piled high with school stuff and the floor is littered with straw wrappers and receipts. It smells like maybe she used to smoke. There’s a red fir tree hanging from the rearview, but it doesn’t smell like anything. Sharpe has never trusted the red ones.

“That’s a stupid question,” Amy continues, brow knitting as she looks at him. “Of course you want to go, that’s why you’re here. We’ll go. I just feel out of it tonight.”

“People make me claustrophobic,” Sharpe says.

“Me too.” There’s hope in her eyes. He never intended on going to the group anyway, but he lets her dangle a few seconds longer. He once learned some points of manipulation and seduction from a guy in a chatroom that had actually come in handy. The only difference is that once he’s close enough he kills the girls like a normal predator.

“We don’t have to go. We can talk ourselves if you like. Get a Coke or something.”

Amy smiles and starts the car. “I’m starving. I didn’t eat because we usually meet at this little bakery. Are you hungry?”

They go to a drive-thru and then take their bag of burgers to an empty Little League field behind Amy’s neighborhood. Sharpe’s never been out this way before. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to find his way home after. Might have to take her car and tool around until he recognizes something.

Perched at the top of the bleachers, she chews daintily on a cheeseburger. “What do you write, Emil?” He’s told her his name isn’t really Blacula.

“Regular slice-of-life stuff I guess,” he says. “I don’t have much of an imagination for places and things. I think a lot about people.”

“See, I’m just the opposite. I mean, I get what you mean, but I like it when a place tells a story.”

He gestures at the field. “How about here, then?”

She stares hard at the tiny diamond, its unsettled lines and faded foot tracks. When she doesn’t say anything, he says, “I see a guy sitting up here watching the game. He’s not a dad or anything, or a weirdo, he’s just got nothing else to do.”

“I was thinking about what this field was before it was this,” she murmurs. “Where these kids play now, what used to be here?”

“Grass?” he suggests.

“Tall, wild grass,” she says. “And kids, different kids, still throwing a ball though. Maybe a hundred years ago.”

“Huh.” There’s a weird knotty thing in Sharpe’s patty that gets stuck between his back teeth. He shoves his finger into his mouth.

“Have you ever written any homoerotic stuff?” she asks. He nearly swallows the digit.

Deciding not to complicate things by addressing her misconception of himself and the old man, he simply says, “I wouldn’t be real comfortable writing about intimate things.”

“Me neither.” She rummages through the burger bag and fishes out a rogue fry. “I’m trying to work on it. Not that I want to write erotica, I’m just trying to get outside my comfort zone. It’s one of our exercises. I’ll have to read it out loud, too. God.”

“That’s scary.”

“I’m not a prude,” she says. “So why do I have a hang-up about it? I’ve written a few scenes now and they’re all like, dissociative—know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“It’s like I can’t even let my
characters
be that vulnerable without feeling weird about it. I’d almost rather write about sex that’s totally foreign, like literally aliens—” She glances at Sharpe. “Am I saying too much?”

“No, not at all.”

“We love sex but it’s a hang-up. It’s why kids in slasher movies get killed after they screw. That’s where I am emotionally.”

“And because they smoke pot,” Sharpe adds. He likes those
Friday the 13
th
flicks. Sometimes when he’s stalking, he wonders if Jason Voorhees ever stood in a tool shed outside some party house at two in the morning and debated the merits of the hacksaw versus the sickle. He wonders if Jason ever had to piss. Sharpe took his first leak about a month ago and has barely been able to turn the thing off since.

“Do you smoke?” Amy asks.

“You mean tobacco, or don’t ya?”

“Don’t I.” She goes into her little purse.

He’s tried it before, but not like this stuff. It hits his lungs and suddenly he can feel his brain, like
feel
the actual thing sitting wet and heavy behind his face. He turns his neck and hands and feels the life within them too. Sharpe laughs at something somebody said once, and Amy seems to get the joke, and his Coke tastes like fucking ambrosia.

“That was…any more burgers in there?” he asks.

“You already asked that. They’re gone. Wanna get another one?”

“Nah.” Sharpe runs his fingers over the pineapples on his chest. They seem to turn slowly, like clock hands. “Ought we to be doing this right out here?”

“I don’t think anyone cares,” Amy says. “I smoke outside all the time. My boyfriend doesn’t want me doing it at his place. Doesn’t care if I get caught I guess. Doesn’t tell me to stop. I wouldn’t stop.”

“…Boyfriend.”

“Yeah, Alec. You know what he doesn’t like? When I eat fast food. He forbids it.” She grabs the burger bag and shakes it. “This. This is contraband.”

“…Alec.”

Sharpe stares at his feet. He doesn’t know why those syllables make him queasy.
A-Lic. A-Lic.
Amy seems far away from him now. He doesn’t like being up this high on the bleachers. He slowly maneuvers his way down the rows.

“Where are you going?” she calls.

“I’m just down here. I didn’t go anywhere.” He turns and squints at her, but the sun’s at his back. She’s hard to look at. She’s too goddamn pretty.

A-Lic.

This is all because of that dead baby rat in his pants. Goddamned thing.

“He’s a critic,” she says, scooting down. “A few papers carry him. He refuses to read my stuff though because he’s ‘too close to it.’”

“Critic? A word critic?” Sharpe slaps his forehead like he’s trying to knock the static out. “I mean a writing critic?”

“Yep. And he’s a good writer, too. The lit journal carries him. You ought to read his stuff.”

“You mean his reviews?”

“Well, he hasn’t published any of his fiction yet. But it’s amazing.”

Sharpe gives a throaty laugh. He can feel half-melted ice chips jostling in his gullet. His mouth tastes like a couch. That was bad pot, he thinks. He says, “Unpublished. So he’s not even a failed writer yet.”

Amy purses her lips. “I’ve heard this before. He’s a
reader
, that’s what counts. And he has a literary degree.”

“Tramp stamp.” Sharpe pulls the straw from his cup with a
skriiiitch
and levels it at her eyes. “He’s the Devil.”

“You’re baked.”

Of course I’m baked, I’m made of clay. Clay pot. You don’t know. Yet you, almost still a child. I’m probably younger than you are. God made me and put me here to break pretty little things. You don’t know. You’re making me want things that confuse me and I’ve killed men for far, far less.

But there’s a novelty in it, in the way the sight and smell of her are turning him inside out. After all, who else could hurt Emil Sharpe?

A pillbug pauses in its progress over his big toe and looks up at him.
You’re making too much of her,
God says.

“You made too little of me.” He presses his thumb down on the insect. An inaudible crunch and a tiny white bead are its end. It’s more satisfying than a razor through a windpipe.

“What did you say?” Amy asks.

“Would you read one of my stories?” he asks. “I’ll read yours of course, if you want.”

BOOK: Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1
3.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Terminal Rage by Khalifa, A.M.
Snowbound by Scarlet Blackwell
Finding Nouf by Zoë Ferraris
Slaves of the Billionaire by Raven, Winter
A Story to Kill by Lynn Cahoon
The Complications of T by Bey Deckard
Mason: #6 (Allen Securities) by Madison Stevens
Damascus Road by Charlie Cole