1. Losing Esmeralda
Derek was a satellite now. Space-resistant viruses and bacteria formed a living crust about a ball of oxygenated water. Decaying cells warmed the inside of his cocoon, all regulated by the back of his mind. This was safety, solitude. And no one else could jump into it -it wasn’t on any map or in anybody’s memory but his own. In fact, the ball of cells, dark, reflected no light, nor gave off appreciable heat. In the greenish yellow glow of the Glo-Forever orbs, he observed his half-human form. Merging his cloak with his cells, as an extrapolation of his fused-on underpants wasn’t the best of ideas but the extra power it bestowed him more than made up for it. And, it bypassed the Tailors’ limiting his sexuality. You see, Derek, the less of you we see left out of you, the better. He had agreed. There were government hunters, using powerful supers to fine comb his house, the flour mill, and his wife, for pieces of his skin, or mucus they could analyze. And little Derek-Lotus, she was their bet, not having assimilated a cloak, nor the equal of his other children, including himself. He disappeared any cells they found, but he knew one day he wouldn’t be as careful, and they would turn a key on him, destroy his sweet unconventional existence.
He thought about it a long time. So long, that time bent around his thoughts. And when he awoke, realized he had lost count of how long he’d been meditating, in stasis. *Derek, can you hear me?* Master Mark? No, Derek, it’s me -your God. Oh! I have sent Gabriel who will inform you of what has transpired since you left the earth. Be at your usual place -it will be safe.
Derek, since you went into conscientious exile, the world has changed. There are people here from long ago, and much of those you knew are no more on this earth. My wife! He remembered. She is asleep. She’s dead? For now, as are most of your friends. Will they be in Heaven? Derek, this is all that I have been told to say. And with that, Gabriel departed.
He thought about it a long time. Here he was, standing at the threshold of Tribulation. An abomination in the Lord’s eyes. Not by disobedience, but by simply wanting to live -wanting to go on. And now he was alone. He could sense the rotting flesh of his friends, in a mass grave for clueless Christians. Then a chatter came from the shadows below. It was Stacy. Somehow the blonde tailor had survived. She was cold, and hungry, ill and out of her mind. How is it you’re still here? Derek asked. But there was only sobbing. He grabbed her scrawny form up into the air. Parts of her were bruised and festering. Her face had lost its youthful vigor and her golden sparkle had all but died. They turned on us, she gibbered. Pete, Mark, the rest of them known to the government. Agents Hoag and Daphne, they gathered power through Little Lotus. Your super children, they ran for it. Derek, your powers make you dangerous to God’s purpose just as the Tribulation renders all our powers an affront to prophecy. I’m not sure anything wise and good in mortals as we are, will save us. If you heal me, they’ll sense you. Then what are we to do?
Hoag looked at Daphne. “Nak?” he asked, cackling. On his other arm hung Little Lotus, now a lusty teenager going on 18. While the former federal agent was still on the side of good, the lines between opposites were increasingly blurred. Have the final 7 years begun? Pete asked. Mark shrugged. Stacy was weak. Weak people ask too many questions. Supposedly Derek has died? He wasn’t on earth the past 5 years. Nor did I detect him. Then perhaps so. The Tailors were now just another division in the Federal Emergency Directive (FEED). Used to be we answered only to God. Now, to be told where Jesus is and what God wants by secular powers and their heathen executive. Beliefs are a lot like love. You can fall in and out of them in the space of a fart. What keeps a person coming back for more is his faith. Where he comes to get it are from people like us. Pete waited for the punchline. Master Mark looked at him solemnly. There is no logic in pursuing the matter any further.
Stacy and Derek were in his orbiting claustrum. FEED seers sensed a jump into space. Little Lotus visiting the Space Station. They laughed it off as a false positive. Inside, he healed her body easily and perfectly. I was hoping you’d appear, that’s why I hid in the islet. She pressed against him in zero-g. Her loving was like a rose bush, opposed to the dark, silky seductions of Esmeralda. He had to learn her pain and the grating sensations of her hair and skin. Raw as freshly hewn lumber. Where do we go from here? I don’t know, don’t really care either, he said.
2. The usual suspects
Little Lotus had a fan page. Just like her mother, she knew all the tricks, all the moves. In some way, she regarded Hoag, her husband-guardian as a lesser mortal. But she trusted Pete. The super man who appreciated her mother. You see, Lotus was never really bad, just disenfranchised, ironically, from her sorcerous ideology and its enforced separacy. To say the woman never had a taste of good clean fun was to say you couldn’t store water in a sponge. She leaked all the time with no regrets. Hoag had practiced the arts in isolation for 3 months, the teachings of the pawang. He had learned to gather power from withholding the taste of a fruit, as his wives enjoyed it. Sweetness, sugar -therein lies power. Salt -Hoag ate bread without it, that tasted like egg cartons. He loved Daphne like they were dolphins. And Little Lotus dreamed of being the older woman. But she was kept from his love, and she knew why. Jealousy stored power. That night, her physical dichotomy of beauty and lovelessness scored 19 million hits on TikTok.
Deep in her heart, Daphne, up till now anonymous, an accessory to Hoag’s ambitions, wondered why she trusted him. But the controlled chaos the world was descending into -which her husband moderated selflessly, stoically -their ritual lovings, and the witchling child she was tasked with bringing up, banished her thoughts of fleeing. The scourging and subjugation of the powerful supernatural tailor’s guild, The idiot, super Derek’s apparent demise, Daphne smiled to herself. She was on the winning team. Middle aged, thus far unmarried, she wasn’t about to give up her cushy life for the sake of doing what was un-obviously right, at a time when it seemed that nothing much a woman could do, mattered. It was the end times. She looked in the mirror, and it felt like a thousand gazes looked back. Her new-found beauty, perfection of form recoiled from any appreciation except her husband’s. But wasn’t this all a woman was for -to accept she were inferior, needy of a man. And all her thoughts, her deeds fell into place. The last piece of a giant historical jigsaw puzzle.
Hoag himself was never formally introduced. He and Daphne were naturals. Obedient, intelligent, persuasive. Perhaps being the right kind of man for an important job, meant he had less of a heart than those who wallowed in mediocrity and the trappings of an unstructured existence. An early death -so long, Derek. But the former federal agent, turned pawang, had once been a little boy. Grow up, son -do right things, he heard his father’s urging. The world is a hard place -his mother. Protect yourself, your family. That’s what’s important, Hoag thought -compliance to those who wielded true power, as he did. As a gumshoe, his face blended in with the crowd. He had that agent demeanor. Someone who wasn’t looking to do or say anything, no worries, nothing to sell. When he and Daphne had flown to Borneo, were almost killed, he dusted off the fear and got down to learning magic. Fear, just as Derek had rallied his dying cells, was to Hoag, like wearing socks turned inside out. Being able to conquer any emotion, what he pushed to his spiritual body’s base chakra and subverted through a mechanistic twist -it was like camouflage to his soul. And what one doesn’t see, yet knows he has through feeling it, multiplied through his charismatic wife interactions, was real power. He could have been a dark lord or a good one, but in the shades of gray that he moved in, it didn’t matter at all.
3. Some place in his heart
So too did we miss telling of how Esmeralda lost her life. Derek had been missing a long time, and the surreal events of their wedding, the mish-mash of good and evil, all letting their hair down, as if by truce, on his special day -it foamed and lathered all around her heart, meaning that her emotions, her anxiety grew the more she needed his comforting, and just as soon as they’d appeared, her feelings vanished, the popping of hundreds of tiny soap bubbles. She ran her fingers through her treacle hair. The time she went bare breasted at the rock concert after she thought he was finished. But he recovered. Perhaps it had been a mistake to trust someone with such a low IQ to hold a relationship together. But she had made her decision. Waiting for him to come home -surely there was more she could do. She called Lotus -see if she’d heard anything.
Es, came the sugary voice of the witch, the whole world is beating down the doors of those with the power to change souls, destinies. If you’re here to ask the right question, the answer is ‘yes’. Yes to what? The Tribulation is ready to begin. I bore your husband’s child. What more can I do. Lotus looked fatigued, as if she had told it many times. Used to be, whenever we found a live cell Derek left behind, he’d crush it -from his secret hiding place none of us can scry out. It’s been months since he interceded that way. Es, use your head. They’ve killed your husband.
Esmeralda called at Derek’s parents’ house. Gail and Jerry let her in. Gail, visibly holding back tears when she saw Esmeralda had come alone. He’s not with you either? Asked Jerry. No. I thought you’d know where he was. Seems no one does. I used to feel him, said Gail, as a mother, now I can’t. Shall we call Pete?
The Tailors are no more, came the voice down the line. Pete, we need you over. No. Are you in trouble? There was a long pause. Then, a ‘yes’. You can’t help us. Has Derek visited? We are privy to whatever he does. What we know will be unhelpful. You see, he won’t be around until after God takes over the world. The Tribulation is real and what you should focus on. Save yourselves before the purge. Purge? But the line had gone dead.
The streets of their small town had gone silent. Esmeralda scoped the house at the end of the cull-de-sac. It was obviously empty from the pile of letters and newspapers spilling from the mail slot. She called at the Hawaiian’s dealership, but it was closed. Things looked scattered, as if someone was in a rush to shut the shop. She pulled at the lock and it came apart. Hello? Kyoko? Boss are you in there? She flipped through the invoices on the display counter. Had her husband bought anything? He loved watches.
4. A failed arrest
Derek and Stacy were hiding in the deep shadows of the craggy slope, where it ran down into plain, into the city. You told us to meet here, said Derek. I did, came the voice of the Master tailor. Kid, we’re taking you in on orders of the Prelature. He sensed the tensing of Derek’s mind. The presence of Stacy as well. It would be two against one, male and female. Master Mark sighed. You’ve seen Gabriel. What did he say? He told me things had changed, basically. Derek, we’re being moved by God Himself, all that is good and all who are evil, uncovered by divine power. Soon we will clash over His plans for the earth versus our own designs. You can decide where your chips fall. I have, already.
Esmeralda emerged from the used-goods dealership smiling. Derek had ordered a watch, paid but had not collected. It was a rectangular automatic on a lemon yellow lizard strap. She knew it was a gift for her. She put in around her wrist. Perhaps he was at the beach cricket bowling pitch. But dry leaves littered the orange brown compacted clay. There was a notice on a lamp post with Derek’s face on it, front and in profile. ‘Wanted Alive’ it read.
Derek, we killed your wife, came the voice of the master Tailor. She was wearing this. The squarish timepiece, strap encrusted with dried blood, trickled down through the air from above him. He looked up and immediately was floored by the strike of the staff to his cranium. Help! He heard Stacy’s voice. But the blow to his head had disrupted his balance. Master Mark had been floating above them all along. It sent quivers down his spine, like finding leeches in his underwear. Slowly, he raised himself off the boulders, the spongy mass that was his head had absorbed much of the sharp attack. But as he ran a cell-check, Mark came sweeping down with a pair of scissors. If you will not die by the Lord’s measure, then He shall appoint this, cut you to pieces. They wrestled amidst the boulders. Derek found it amusing to be attacked by haberdashery. His superior strength forcing Mark to the ground. The scissors blades began to glow red-hot. It was the Master’s final deception. He smirked. But Derek twisted the glowing metal against his cheek where it burnt a V-shaped welt in his skin. Derek, stop! It was Stacy. Distracted, Mark’s cloak bellowed chalk dust at him. The Master tailor peeled the scissors off his face as Derek gasped, choking. He put one hand on Derek’s head and prepared to raise the blades, but in their struggle his other arm had lost its strength. Whimpering, Mark disappeared. Stacy wafted the dust away with her cloak, pulsing Derek’s chest with shallow Heimlichs. She didn’t tell him right away what it was he had breathed in.
Esmeralda turned, Derek! Is it you? Those were her final words.
5. Big C
The whole of his life had been a spiritual walk in the park. What was spirituality anyway, but a key to unlock a door deeper into yourself where you find an empty, undecorated room, you proceed to fill with archetypes of your functional members, of values you form from primal flight or fight interactions with the lower classes, and the original shame stoked by sneers and rebukes of the upper classes? Sometimes, such keys are better left for better people in better times. Stacy, am I a good person? No. What about yourself? See, Derek -it’s starting again. Splinters of her golden-haired goddess-ness were still stuck in his affections. And he could not decide if they needed removing. The best computer for a voyage into the blue was the human mind, to paraphrase Werner Von. Stacy, tell me if I deserve it? Derek, Mark was very cruel to you -a cell sensitive. Who knew, except him, what would happen to your body? If I were a good person, it wouldn’t have happened. He turned from her. Derek, you can’t heal your body from deconstructing Tailor chalk. It is the very Word of God -the bounds of creation. Thus you have cancer in every cell. It won’t be the end of you, but you will not be who you are much longer.
The cloak and underpants he had assimilated into his body slowed the onset of the cancer. But gradually, his flesh was turning sensitive, raw, his every function, now supported by Tailor thread woven into his being -into his very soul. This would be a test unlike any other. He would take what was still good -every cell remembered that, and grow it into the thread, the cloak. He would thus be flesh no more. Stacy watched, as Derek grew progressively thinner. His flesh melted, his muscle, and even his bones till he hung in the gloom of the sinkhole, a tattered phantom of the human form. Derek? Are you still alive? There was no reply. It wasn’t that he was sad or muted, but that the thread was weaker than he had anticipated. Slow moans escaped his hollow form. Stacy knelt in prayer as the whale songs he made washed over her.
Hoag inspected Mark’s cheek. I can barely move my jaw. The bastard. A waste of thread. The fire and brimstone scissors had taken off most of the lower right of the tailor’s face. Witches are all the same -powerless except to stoke hearts against unpopularity in the crudest of reprisals. At least Derek had a heart. I would put a rose on his grave. Pete, let’s go. Hoag looked to Little Lotus. Follow, ‘naak!’ he commanded.
6. Shadow of an angel
It was evening when Derek mustered his thread cells into proper organs of speech, but he sounded garbled, like an old transistor radio tuned a little off band. What is God waiting for? When is the Kingdom come? Derek, be patient and hide. We have to eat. I have to go buy food, hopefully not steal some. If you tell Pete where I am… Stacy nodded. They both knew. The experienced tailor with a soft spot for her lover might be of help. But to reconstruct a body, fully thread was another matter altogether. Where two or three are gathered in my name, the phrase resounded through his floating phantom form.
An hour or so passed, when he heard, Derek… Derek, a voice from Heaven calling, what ever has happened to you? Derek didn’t answer. His every word was now strained, and he felt increasingly belittled before God. Why was God so close yet so far? But the voice was that of an angel, and he was beautiful, descending into the sinkhole in robes of white and gold. He carried a scepter and in it, incense that smoked sweet and peppery. He took Derek’s limp thread body and cradled it in his arms, speaking to it and at once, he began to regrow. Powers you once had, you have no more. Wisdom shall be your strength as God now rules your thoughts. He didn’t notice Stacy standing behind him. When the angel departed, she ran and kissed him, and they ate the food she had found. It was a relief to be whole again -to be fully human.
7. Repentance
Something got Lotus out of bed late that night. The same that sent her walking down the beach, over the secret submerged coral ridge and into the islet dwelling where she had shared good love with Pete, blankly witnessed her man-in-question marry the other woman -but that she was dead now, Ha-ha. She didn’t expect to find him waiting, much less, being as he was before the troubles, before he became a super-powered freak. You came, he called to her. Yeah, is there more of this sorry story we should both act out? What she didn’t expect was his apology. When I had powers, I did things the way I wanted, whenever I felt like. I thought I would only grow more powerful. But then, and I thought of Pete, maybe he would have rescued me -from when I was a bag of thread, forced into that corner by those who knew more. I realized that it had to stop somewhere. There is a God, Lotus and I want Him on my side.
Lotus hid her smile. She and Quen were operating happily under FEED i.e. Hoag’s direction, already on path towards salvation, a carefully plotted one, made with logic and structured to account for every contingency. We’ve been absorbed into organized religion, she said. Her voice sounded care-free, genuinely well-meaning. But Derek persisted, Heaven isn’t an organizational goal -what it makes God out to be. He is the sum of our experiences which show we belong with Him. Derek, I was raped by my own horny brother thanks to you. I remember both of you every time I have a period. Derek stared at his feet. Forgive me. Huh, she turned to leave. He called after her, Lotus, get Hoag to call his dogs off. And tell Little Lotus I’ll be her father. In the gray moon-lit night, he thought he saw her shoulders slump, her steps a little more stompy. The witch was upset, but softened. Maybe he would matter to her, on some level, given time. He wondered about Master Mark. He must know God stripped me of my powers, a sitting duck for reprisals. Tears ran down Derek’s cheeks. He was truly sorry for the mad run he’d gone on.
8. A veiled message
*Derek, get up, be quick* Healing Stacy was the last lucky good deed he had done before his powers were revoked. Now she repaid the favor as the thought-sniffing doggie drones of FEED swarmed towards his islet home. Clouds in the sky, low, growing pink. There was one that looked like God -His bearded self, pronating after tossing the sun over the horizon. Derek you HAVE to wake up! But the dream he was in, was mesmerizing. In it, Esmeralda related what had happened in the first wave of the purges that deflated the power of witches, worldwide. Secret power groups like the Tailors were broken apart, assimilated. The single-minded, raw pawang truth-emotion, looped over and over eventually unnerved the fine spiritual balance of those who used other minds, who practiced the power of God through a restrictive discipline. Even gypsies weren’t spared -those who together, had the sight. Derek, I love you and I will be waiting for you. I left you a message down by the beach. It’s where you normally look -no one has found it. He woke up. Stacy, take us to the cricket pitch. She nodded.
There was a stiff wind blowing. Derek stood on the bed of clay. He wondered for a moment: ‘where I normally look’. He knelt to inspect the wicket, and it overlaid with something black and billowing, swinging off a tree further down the sand. They walked over. Stacy held his hand. And it was there they found the decapitated and shrunken head of his ex-wife. He put his fingers through her hair, it still had that lush, silky feel. He pulled on it and her scalp came off with a slight rip. On it, there was a message written in fade away ink. It disappeared before he could finish. But Stacy read all of it. It’s your friends, the Hawaiian and Kyoko -they made it out of America and are in ‘Johore’. It’s a place of villages and small towns, over sea, in the tropics. Is it far? She nodded. ‘Come be with us, the message ended’.
Esmeralda had laid down her life for her friends. And so had Gail and Jerry, tortured to death for refusing to connect with their son (while he was in orbit, in deep cellular meditation). To leave America, would that help anything? *Grow in wisdom, Derek, not in cowardice* Stacy, what is it like being wise?
Little Lotus danced for her fans. She wore a diffusing net bodysuit as cameras on stage captured her every move from a myriad of angles. Her face looked different turned left from right, and her beauty was sliced jaggedly, into choice cuts of meat, such as to obey the Fibonacci golden ratio. Vanity served only as glue did, as rivets, they held together a truth we could not bear because of the corruption in our souls. Just as pride served those whose value lagged behind their reward, so she had dispensed with both and was free. Hoag and Daphne applauded the performance. ‘Ha! ‘nak sya -bini yah!’
In the upper rooms of the North America Jerusalem complex, Master Mark lounged on a plush couch. Pete stood by the window, his face masked by the reflection of light upon it, as he looked upon his teacher’s wound. Was it right to destroy Derek that way? Why not? We killed his wife. Mark pulled his cloak hood down. He melted into its blackness. Some things are worth their sacrifice. Pete nodded. Shall we stitch up your jaw? No. The spread of bread, cheeses and herb dips laid before the master Tailor were barely touched.
Johore was indeed a land of forest and beach. As they flew overhead, small villages appeared: of houses on stilts, roofs made of tarnished zinc, pump wells, outhouses over drainage ditches. It did look like somewhere they could hide and be safe. *Here, you shall grow in spirit*. Derek smiled. Perhaps he would. Yet sleepy Johore harbored also a foreboding. They landed by a place that smelled of boiling crab. Stacy looked at him. She loved seafood. And that night, she would love him as well, for the first time -in his man-form. Soon, dusk swept over the trees and the villages like the thickening brush strokes of an angry artist, tearing away at his magnificent painting. What emotions did God feel every time His creation fled from Him into night, when men plotted with rule, with their seed, and their dreams -well, they were brazen as intentions only mattered held up to light. Dim lamps swung from the trees and the eaves of the village restaurant as Derek and Stacy snapped and hammered shell, swimming in a thick gravy of crab roe and ground chili.
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