Pulphouse Fiction Magazine Issue #36, page 14
Desperate to get her and fornication off my mind, I start talking to Ralphie. Even if he isn’t here. I try it. Not out loud, of course. I learned my lesson about that. But in my head.
Ralphie, are you there?
I almost cry out when he responds. Yes.
Where are you?
Hiding. It doesn’t matter where.
But then he says words that send shivers down my spine and put goose bumps on my arms.
Something smells wrong.
What? I ask.
Something dangerous. I could be wrong. It could be nothing. But be careful.
What’s happening? I ask, my heart suddenly pounding.
I’m not sure.
Tell me! I all but scream, and for a moment, I’m afraid I’ve yelled the command out loud. Not in English or a Heavenly language, but in the special language between me and Ralphie that can’t be Heavenly.
But I haven’t yelled the words aloud, I realize. Only screamed them in my mind.
Tell me! I say again, but softer.
Don’t trust your Daddy, Ralphie says, then falls silent.
The hour nears midnight and for everyone else, excitement builds. Brother Johnson’s breathing, always loud because of his emphysema, gets louder. Sister Chamberlain, barely five feet tall but wide as a house, speaks loudly in tongues. Brother Andrews, skinny and bowlegged, dances in the spirit. But for me, I feel as much terror as I do excitement.
Don’t trust your Daddy.
The pounding of my heart echoes in my ears. I’m sure that even Brother Clayton in the back pew, the Sinners’ Pew, can hear it pounding. I’m afraid I might pee my pants.
I push Ralphie’s warning away. Jesus is going to fix me. Jesus is going to fix me. Jesus is going to fix me.
Finally, from behind the pulpit, Daddy beckons toward me and says, “Come on up here, Peter.”
I jump out of my pew, race to the steps on the side of the stage, and trip over the last one. I fall flat on my face. Of course. Always a dummy.
But soon I won’t be a dummy anymore. I pick myself up and move quickly to Daddy’s side.
I look out on the congregation. Of the forty adults, almost all of them are crying and lifting their arms to Jesus.
“You have been given a heavy cross to bear, my son, and as a result, so have I,” Daddy says. His voice grows louder. “But if you have faith tonight, Jesus will take that cross away and carry it for you. He will bear your burden!” Daddy roars, “For tonight, you shall be healed!”
Shouts of “Praise God!” and “Hallelujah!” ring out.
“The Bible tells us,” Daddy says, “that we shall take up serpents and they shall not hurt us! We shall drink deadly poisons and they shall not kill us. For whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. If God is for us, who shall be against us!”
Everyone cries out in unison with amens and praises to God. Sister Chamberlain shrieks and faints dead away, slain in the spirit.
Daddy strides to the middle of the five wicker baskets at the back of the stage. He takes off the cover and reaches inside.
An angry rattle erupts. Like a hundred baby rattles being shook as hard as possible. More than a hundred. A thousand. A million, maybe.
The angry rattle of a rattlesnake.
Daddy lifts the snake out of the box, holding it out, cradling it in his two hands. It’s a timber rattlesnake, five feet long with black and yellow-brown rings above a white underbelly. Its head curls around, looking at Daddy even as he keeps shifting it in his hands.
“We shall take up serpents,” Daddy shouts, “and they shall not hurt us!”
The snake’s rattle grows even more angry. I almost faint dead away like Sister Chamberlain.
Daddy lifts the rattler up over his head. As he dances in the spirit, bouncing on one foot and then the other, he drapes it over his shoulders.
“In the name of Jesus!” he chants. “Come close, my son, for you shall be healed! In the name of Jesus!”
My legs wobble. I think that it would be better to be slain in the spirit right now than slain for good by a rattlesnake. Daddy promised me that Jesus would heal me tonight, but he didn’t say anything about this.
“In the name of Jesus!” he chants.
I stare into the rattlesnake’s tiny black eyes. And it speaks to me.
Hello, Peter, it says.
I cry out.
“In the name of Jesus!” Daddy chants even louder.
But I don’t even look at him. I can’t take my eyes away from the snake’s.
Come close, Peter. Let me bite you. It won’t hurt. Not much.
I look wildly around. Can anyone else hear this? Or is it just me?
It’s just me. Everyone else is chanting. “In the name of Jesus! In the name of Jesus!”
I can’t speak, I can’t swallow, I can’t move.
Do what your Daddy says. He wants me to bite you. He wants me to hurt you.
I stare at Daddy. Is it true? He just keeps dancing and chanting.
He wants you gone. He hates you. Almost as much as he hated your mother.
I shriek. “What do you mean about my mother?”
A huge smile forms on Daddy’s face. “He’s speaking in tongues!” he yells to the congregation. “He’s speaking in tongues!”
“Tell me about my mother!” I scream at the snake, knowing that just like with Ralphie, I’m not speaking in English or any Heavenly tongue.
I killed your mother. Why don’t you join her, Peter? It flicks its forked tongue. Join her in Heaven.
From deep in my damaged brain—buried so very, very deep—come images of Momma lying on her bed back in Kentucky. Surrounded by Daddy and me. In great pain.
Dying.
I don’t understand what has happened, but Daddy does.
“I’m not that strong,” she tells him. “I want to live. For Peter. For you. I’ll take the antivenom.”
I didn’t understand that last word back then. I’d never heard it before. I didn’t know about the snakes. So I didn’t know what Momma was talking about.
But I know now.
Antebellum.
Antivenom.
Momma tries to get up, but Daddy pins her down, pushing all his weight down on her shoulders. Leans so close that their faces almost touch.
“You must be strong,” he commands. “Close your eyes and pray. If you have faith, He will deliver you.”
“I want to live! I’ll take the antivenom!”
“Let God decide. Close your eyes and pray.”
Momma gives in and she closes eyes that will never again open.
“Trust in the Lord!” Daddy says.
And lets her die.
It all makes sense to me now. So that was why we left Kentucky so fast. And came all the way up here, almost into Canada. With little more than our most important belongings.
Five wicker baskets filled with rattlesnakes.
“You killed Momma!” I yell. Not in snake language. In plain English. Loudly.
At first, Daddy doesn’t hear me. He just keeps chanting. So does most of the congregation.
So I shout it louder. “You killed Momma!”
Praises rising up from the congregation stop in the middle of their words. The people stare at us. Stare at me.
Daddy hears me the third time.
“You killed Momma! You wanted it to happen!”
He stops in the middle of his dance. He stares at me. Eyes wide.
The rattlesnake strikes.
It bites Daddy in the throat. Then the temple. Then the face. It falls to the floor. Then bites him in the ankle and the calf, over and over.
Thank you for distracting him, I hear it tell me. I’d have never gotten his neck without you. I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this.
Daddy stares at me. His neck is already swelling. He holds a hand to it and coughs.
It takes him fifteen minutes to die.
The police take statements from everyone, then cart away the snakes and of course, Daddy’s body. Members of the congregation leave in shock. We’ll forever be called Holy Rollers now. The last to leave, Brother Andrews, asks me to lock up, then walks bowlegged out the door.
Only then does Ralphie appear. We sit in the last pew, close to the aisle. The smells of sweat, manure, and snakes hang in the air. But maybe the last two are only in my head. I’m not even sure what snakes smell like.
“Where were you?” I ask.
I was hiding. Does it matter where? Ralphie says.
I guess not.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
I don’t know, Ralphie says. I’m just a cat.
I think for a bit.
“We’ll need to find a new place to live,” I say. “The church will get a new preacher, so I’ll need to move out of the parsonage as soon as he gets here. I’ll need to move somewhere. Will you come with me?”
Probably, Ralphie says. Where?
“Daddy says big cities are bad for Jesus, so it should be somewhere like here, out in the middle of nowhere.”
Ralphie says nothing.
“But maybe that was just because of the snakes,” I say. “I’m not sure what to believe of what Daddy used to say.”
Are you sad your Daddy died? Ralphie asks.
I don’t answer right away.
“Kind of yes and kind of no,” I say. “It’s scary thinking about him not being around anymore. I don’t know how to pay the bills. But he killed Momma. The rattlesnake bit her, sure, but Daddy kept her from getting the antivenom. So he killed her as much as if he bit her himself. And that’s what he wanted for me, too. I may be a dummy, but I just know it.”
You’re not a dummy, Peter, you’re special, Ralphie says. Very special. And I may just be a cat, but I think you’re right about your Daddy.
“You’re a special cat,” I say.
It looks like Ralphie smiles, then licks his chops.
“I’ll be able to get you plenty of food now that Daddy isn’t around,” I say. “You won’t be just skin and bones anymore. Fur and bones anymore, I mean. I’ll get you nice and fat.”
That would be nice.
“Maybe I can find out where the police took the snakes,” I say. “Or at least the one that talked to me. We can all live together. Be friends. All of us.”
You want me to be friends with a snake? Ralphie asks. I’m a cat. Cats don’t make friends with snakes. Big snakes eat cats. Rattlesnakes bite cats, then we die. So it’s me or the snakes. You can only have one.
I guess I am still a dummy.
“You’re right,” I say. “It’ll just be the two of us.”
The two of us, Ralphie says, then purrs with happiness.
Neither one of us says anything for a very long while. I stroke his fur, feeling his bony body beneath my fingers with each stroke.
Let’s go, Ralphie finally says. I’m ready to get fat.
And together, we walk out of Daddy’s church for the last time.
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer and the most award-winning and prolific writer working today. She has won more awards in science fiction and mystery than just about anyone alive and she is the only person to win the Hugo Award for her writing as well as her editing.
This original holiday story Kris wrote to send out to the Holiday Spectacular backers and such in November, but the moment I read it, I knew I wanted this courtroom story to wrap up the special holiday issue of Pulphouse.
What can be more holiday than ugly sweaters?
You can find out a lot more about Kris’s work at her publisher, WMG Publishing Inc www.wmgbooks.com or her website www.kriswrites.com.
UGLY SWEATERS AND THE YEAR-END CIRCUS
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
One
At the end of September, Judge Judith Saico decided to destroy the court calendar. She called a scheduling conference with all of the lawyers who had cases pending in her courtroom and announced that she was going to do her best to wrap up every case before her by December 31st.
“I’d prefer to have it all wrapped by December 23,” she said. “But if we can’t do that, we have a week’s leeway.”
“Not quite a week,” a man toward the back grumbled. Everyone understood what he meant. During that period, the court would be closed for the weekend, plus a half day for both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, as well as a full day for Christmas itself.
Judge Saico looked up as if she wanted to hunt down the heckler and punish him. She was a tiny blond woman who looked like she was maybe sixteen. She had used her youthful looks to her advantage as a lawyer, sometimes pretending to be younger and much more naïve than she had ever been.
But her looks had caused her issues as a judge—until word got around the courthouse that Judge Judith Saico wasn’t a pushover or young or dumb. She was a ballbuster of the first order who had no qualms about sanctioning lawyers for the slightest error.
And the entire courtroom was going to see the ballbuster, right now. She gave the room a glare and said, “Weekends and half-day holidays are based on the court’s discretion.”
Pippa de Leon’s shoulders slumped. She gripped the sides of her laptop so that it wouldn’t slide off her best pair of black pants. She prayed that no one would make Judge Saico mad in the next hour or so, because, Pippa knew, it would be the attorneys at the end of the line who would get punished for any problems.
Judge Saico had been elected on a platform—an actual platform—when most judges decorously had none. The platform Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied was one that no sane person could really argue with. Everyone had thought the platform had been a tactic, until this morning, two years into the judge’s term, when she put her plan into action.
The scheduling meeting was being held at 7 a.m., because no one had anything on the docket that early. The judge had sent out the “invitations,” a month in advance, so that anyone who had something scheduled for 7 a.m. on a Thursday (and really, who did that?) could cancel. The “invitation” made it clear that anyone who missed the meeting for any reason would not be able to reschedule… anything. Ever.
Much as lawyers liked to talk tough, none of them wanted to risk the wrath of a judge, particularly one who was apparently thinking about her reelection…four years away.
Pippa de Leon sat in the very center of the courtroom, her day planner open on her left side, her briefcase open at her feet, and her laptop screen showing her work calendar. Her phone was in her pocket—the pocket with a zipper on the side of her best suit jacket—because throughout the meeting so far, she had been tempted to continually text WTF? to all of her colleagues in the courtroom.
She had a lot of colleagues here. It seemed like half the lawyers in town had cases pending with Judge Saico, although, Pippa knew, that feeling was coming from the size of the courtroom.
It was one of the smaller ones. It was in a corner of the second floor that hung over the atrium on the first floor, so the courtroom had no windows. The permanent judicial bench was placed at an angle, so the judge’s area was a large triangle, which had the flags of the state and the country behind it, with no room for a clock or for a photograph of one of the judge’s personal legal heroes.
The courtroom extended outward from that triangle, with more room in the gallery than Pippa liked. It always seemed to her that this courtroom was designed for an audience rather than a serious trial.
It looked less like a courtroom now than a mock trial room for misbehaving law students. Everyone had their laptops out, their briefcases before them, and files on the bench seat beside them.
To make matters worse, Judge Saico had maintained the no-phone policy for this meeting, so everyone who used their phone for scheduling had to transport the calendar to their laptops, which were allowed. Since there was no wireless in the courtroom, that meant (in theory) there was no internet access, which, at this early hour, was making the lawyers nervous.
Promptly at 7, Judge Saico had given her fatuous speech about justice denied and delayed while citing court statistics about the amount of time it took defendants to get their day in court, statistics every lawyer was familiar with, statistics every lawyer wanted to amend with a comment about lack of resources, time, and the vagaries of judicial calendars.
No one else spoke, though. Every lawyer nodded sagely, as if they agreed with Judge Saico’s newly announced policy, as if it didn’t strike fear into the heart of everyone in the gallery.
Now, the lawyers were traipsing up to the bench as their names were called. They had been instructed to have their day planners in hand, even though most of them did not have day planners.
Some had bought day planners special for the occasion. Fortunately, Judge Saico had given them all enough time to special-order day planners, since no local retail stores carried them at all anymore.
Pippa knew that long before the “invitation.” She had been paranoid about computerized calendars ever since that day in moot court when someone on the opposing team had hacked her computer calendar and changed the court’s start time from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Pippa had caught it—or rather, a friend had by asking, Shouldn’t you be in court right now?, putting Pippa into a panic she could still access if she tried. Pippa had only been ten minutes late, but the reaming out she had received from the judges that day still haunted her dreams.
Paper couldn’t be hacked. Paper was always her friend, even if everyone in the prosecutor’s office mocked her fat day planner as a relic from another era.
Right now, there was no mocking. Right now, the air smelled of nervous lawyers, waiting to be summoned to the bench to hear the redesigned calendar.
Judge Saico had been clear: she would take the easy cases first. The ones, she said, that should have been settled or could be dealt with in conference or should have been pleaded out long ago.
