Imaginary Apostles

The 2:01 bus, as usual. Seventh row from the back, right side, window seat, as usual. Three stops, four. The bus fills but no one sits next to me. Fifth stop, people are standing in the aisle, still no one sits next to me. Maybe I smell or maybe nobody can see the empty seat or maybe I just have a look, unknown at least to me, that screams ‘don’t sit next to this guy.’ Sixth stop though, somebody approaches. Small and roundish, dark skin covered by a faded teal sweatshirt, curls of wire-y grey hair stuffed under a tattered canvas bucket hat. Various bags of various sizes clutched in one gnarled hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Steam whispers upward from the thick papered walls of the cup.
“Mind if I sit down here?”
“Not at all.”
“Thanks.” He slides into the seat, carefully marshaling his bags and coffee. His eyes are old and watery. Pale corneas that have somehow lost most of their opacity, pupils that long to be vivid with youth. Nestled into his seat, he thanks me again. I convey my response with a shrug of my shoulders and return attention to the book in my hands.
A minute passes. Another. Again he strikes up conversation.
“I tell ya, there’s nothing like a plain cup of joe. None of this decaf business. Sugar-free. No, straight joe is my beverage of choice.”
I nod, mumble mock interest.
“Some guys, they go to a bar after work. Not me. I’m a busy man, but I’d rather go to a coffee shop and sit down with a good newspaper. Yep. But it’s all about moderation. That’s my motto. I had a coffee in the morning, this one in the afternoon, and I’ll probably have another this evening. No more though.”
“Yeah,” I say, my head half-cocked towards him. I notice he is looking directly at me and not off into the distance as he chatters on.
“I can understand why women would avoid the caffeine, but us guys, no problem. I mean, a young guy like you, and I can tell you’re young and active, can drink a Coke or Pepsi every now and then, cause you’re going to work it off. It just gets dangerous when you’re having as ix-pack a day. Same goes for beer.”
Slightly troubled and mostly annoyed I look at him, say “yeah, you really gotta be careful about that stuff,” turn back to my book.
“Now, do you go to school up here?”
“Yes,” and I’m being as curt as possible in hopes of squelching his curiosity. Instead he doubles his efforts, engaging me in an intense series of questions that ends with a detailed explanation of the decline of a mall in the suburb where I live. Then it’s back to my status as a student.
“What do you study?”
I surprise myself by telling the truth. English, creative writing, and not architecture, the usual response to bus-borne queries.
“Oh, yeah? I’m a minister now, but I minored in English Lit back in college.”
“Weird coincidence, huh?” There isn’t a shred of sincerity in my response. He continues on about his days in college and how they led him to a successful career in scriptwriting and I’m just waiting for the religious sales pitch but he never gets to it. More talk of college and how he majored in English Theatre and how he moved to L.A. to write for film and television before he was called away to be a minister.
“Well, I majored in English Lit and English Theatre and went to L.A. about a year after college, to work on film and television scripts. I bet you’d be surprised to know that writing for television and writing for the screen, which is film, are very different.”
I’m about to say that I’m not surprised and that I actually have quite a bit of experience writing ‘for the screen’ before I’m distracted by what he just said. Earlier he had mentioned a minor in English Lit and now, not forty-five seconds later, it’s reversed. Probably just misspoke. Then it gets worse.
“Yeah, I had a major in English Lit, European History, and Philosophy, and a minor in English Theatre. Yeah, I had a double major and a double minor.”
I let him run with it, egg him on. “Wow, that sounds like a lot of work.”
“Oh, it sure was. And I had grades too. 3.7 for my minors. 3.5 for my majors. No, 3.6 for my majors. But you know, I also worked. I put myself through college. I had two part time jobs and one full time job. While my friends were on summer vacation I was working.” He finishes his coffee and I notice the tattered pages of an atlas in his other hand, the kind you’d find in a high school geography textbook.
“That’s cool though, that you did all that yourself.”
“Sure is. Oh, and I had another minor. You’re not going to believe it. Can you guess?”
“Uhhh, architecture?”
“I also minored in Pre- Law.”
“Wow, you sure were busy,” I say, though it’s almost “you’re right, I don’t believe it,” except at the last second I decide not to call him out but to encourage him. I want to know how far this will go.
He rambles for a few minutes, recalls his decision to move to Los Angeles some more, tells me all about his successful, rich industry friends, and again mentions how he was called away from film to be a minster. Except, he doesn’t say minister. He says apostle. A record scratches, the needle bumped out of the groove in my head. Static hiss, confusion. Before I can recover, put the needle back in the groove, he’s moved on, deep into an explanation of why so-and-so is the most accomplished cross-over novelist slash screenwriter and why his name will be the one we’ll be talking about in the universities years from now. Too startled by the apostle comment, I fail to catch the author’s name, though I can’t imagine it belongs to any actual human being, alive or dead.
“But you see, the Lord called me away from all that. He made me an apostle and what I do as an apostle, see, is I have authority over nations and countries and people.”
“Really?” trying to sound as authentic as possible.
“Yep. I work with prime ministers and congress and presidents. And I go to these countries and nations and I work with their leaders and provide protection, if they acknowledge my authority.”
“Protection? From what?”
“Pestilence, plague, famine, drought. Those things. But only if the leaders choose to accept my authority over their nation.”
“I see. How do you communicate with these leaders?” Now I’m trying to stump him, probing him to see how though out his delusions are. His response is pure verbal lightening, fast and precise.
“Correspondence. And telephone. I work directly with the prime ministers, so I use the telephone with them.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, sir. You can read my license here.” He hands my the atlas. Across the bottom of the pages, scrawled in an impenetrable cursive, are words and sentences that I could never hope to understand. The map itself is a world political map and I notice many of the countries are highlighted. Maybe he notices my eyebrow twitch and anticipates my question or maybe he reads my mind, but either way he offers an answer before I can ask.
“These are the countries I have authority over.”
“I see.” The United States, Canada, Greenland, Australia, New Zealand, North Korea, many others too small to see. One stands out. “Antarctica?”
“Yep. And up here, too,” he indicates the top of the map, where the entire Arctic Ocean is a mess of blue map ink and yellow highlighter. “That’s the Arctic. I’m recognized there.”
“By the polar bears?” I try to sound genuine but I know some sarcasm must have bled through. He’s unfazed.
“You know it,” he says, and I want to ask if he communicates with them via correspondence too, but decide to ask him if any countries have denied his authority. Again, I hope to catch him or throw him off guard, but his reply asserts the kind of confidence one can only have if they believe they are telling the truth.
“Well, the U.S., of course,” he laughs. “And New Zealand. Australia too, at first, but then they saw what I did for all these other countries and changed their minds. And the U.S., that’s just a racial thing, because I’m Afro-American. That’s all Congress there. And that George Bush Jr.”
When I ask him how he provides protection from pestilence and the like, the bus comes to a stop The driver announces the stop and my mystery apostle tucks his atlas away, stands up.
“Well, good talking to you. Good luck with school. Remember, you just have to put yourself out there.” And he’s gone, down the aisle and out the door and into the anonymous sea of people boarding and de-boarding. I spin around to the two kids sitting behind me, my eyes wide.
“Did you guys hear any of that? What that guy was saying?” They just star back, their faces blank mirrors reflecting the same look I must have had when the apostle initially spoke to me. “Okay, I guess not.” I turn to a girl across the aisle, but she’s engaged in a cellular conversation and isn’t paying attention. Nobody is in front of me. “Anybody hear that guy? He was crazy!” I say as loud as I dare. Almost a yell, but not quite. No one even looks at me.
Two stops later I get off the bus and walk to my car. I open the door. I get in. I drive home.

Killing Jerry Seinfeld

The vampires outside the window were very bothersome. All red eyes glowing and peering through the window. I wanted to close the shade, but was too scared to go near the window. Which is ridiculous, as the glass is both thick and vampire-resistant. It’s not coated in garlic or anything, but there is a manufacturer’s guarantee sticker in the lower left corner. So, really, my fear was completely irrational. Though, when dealing with vampires near one’s dwelling, it can be beneficial to handle the situation with caution, regardless of any anti-vampire systems that may be deployed. This is all my fault I suppose, the vampires. I spent too much time in graveyards over the years to expect that I wouldn’t have some sort of run-in with them. But now there were twenty of the fuckers outside on my front lawn, and I was fresh out of crucifixes. Wooden stakes though, yeah, I had those. I had plenty of those.
I spend time in graveyards digging up recently deceased bodies. For, research purposes. And by research I mean experiments. Necromancy. I’ve been experimenting with necromancy, which is the practice of bringing the dead to life. Like some sort of zombie conjurer. Anyway, so I used to rent backhoes and dig up coffins and take them home. I’d take the bodies to my garage and try to bring them back to life, but the coffins, those I chopped into various sizes for firewood. Yes, I have a fireplace, and I use it often. Also, burning is a good way of removing evidence, and coffins. Turns out a lot of times firewood and anti-vampire stakes are the same thing, which, though I didn’t know at the time, would become immensely helpful in the future.
Go to my room and bring me my scarf, I told my girlfriend. She’s great, but she won’t be any help tonight. She doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of work. When she returned, I wrapped the scarf around my neck, pulled on my coat and picked up the sharpest of the firewood. I kissed her quick and headed out into my very vampire-dense front lawn. The battle was anticlimactic. Really, twenty blind vampires aren’t that hard to defeat. Turns out they don’t even possess bat’s echo-locative abilities. The worst that happened was one of them got his pale hand wrapped in my scarf and I had to slither out of it, to avoid tearing it. Other than that, though, piece of cake. The bodies I dragged to the back yard, piled them up next to the garage, being especially careful no to disturb the carefully placed stakes. Come sun-up I’ll have a nice pile of ash behind the garage.
It’s amazing, the ramifications of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This morning, for instance: everything was set for me to leave the house at the appropriate time, to catch the appropriate bus, until I tried to make my lunch. I got two pieces of fifteen-grain bread out of the bag in the cupboard, as usual. I got a knife out of the silverware drawer, as usual. I got the raspberry jelly out of the refrigerator, also as usual. However, instead of getting the vat of peanut butter out of the same cupboard as the bread, which I would have done way back when the bread was extracted from said cupboard, I got a small jar of all-natural peanut butter out of the same refrigerator containing the jelly. To be perfectly clear, I do not condone using all-natural peanut butter, under any circumstances. The oil has a nasty habit of separating from the food-paste, and unless you stir it constantly or refrigerate it, it is completely worthless in it’s binary state. But my girlfriend, she insisted that I make the switch from delicious, non-separating Skippy to this new, purportedly healthier demon. She’s pretty cool, but she knows nothing of proper PB&J manufacturing.
Anyway, so I have to refrigerate my peanut butter, which keeps it in a terrible, un-spreadable condition, and when I attempt to spread, it pulverizes the bread, rips wide gashes through the fifteen-grain matrix. I try to spread another dollop of the thick paste on the other piece of bread, with similar results. I glance at the stove clock, notice I’m four minutes behind schedule and curse out loud. Furious, I slap the two pieces of ravaged bread together, squeeze them into a ball in my fist, until the thick, un-spreadable peanut butter oozes between my fingers, and hurl the useless mass into the sink.
So now I’m on a bus, not the one I should be on, but a later, less timely bus. My hand smells like all-natural peanut butter. In five hours, I know that I will be sitting in the break room at work, angry and hungry. Worse than that, though, are the vampires. I expect them at any time, their pale noses hot on the trail of my peanut buttery flesh.
Strangely, it wasn’t my peanut butter fist that drew the vampires to the front lawn. It was my necromancing. Turns out one night I managed to return a corpse to the realm of the living. Except this particular corpse was less of a corpse and more of an undead vampire who was just resting in his coffin, and who, by being returned to the living world, ceased to be a vampire. Also turns out that this particular vampire was well liked in the vampire community. Something of a comedian, I guess. But the rest of the vampires, they weren’t too happy with me for stealing away their funny-man. At least that’s what I was told by one of the blind nighstalkers on my lawn, moments before I staked him. He might have also said something about unrelenting attacks on myself and loved ones, until I returned this undead Seinfeld, but I was too busy plunging firewood deep into his heart to ask questions.
Twenty blind vampires were only the first wave. The next night, there were thirty. And they had all the vision necessary for serious combat. As luck would have it, I still had plenty of firewood, and my good friend Meriwether Duval. Meriwether though, he’s no vampire slayer, but who is, really? Buffy, sure, but she’s not so much of a vampire slayer as she is Sarah Michelle Gellar pretending to be a vampire slayer. What I could use is a bona-fide, steak slinging, crucifix wielding bad ass. I’d settle for Sarah Michelle Gellar, though probably for different, less vampire-related reasons. None of that mattered though. It was just me and Meri and thirty goddamn vampires on my front lawn. Oh, and my girlfriend.
I called for her to bring me my scarf. Why don’t you just stay inside, she said, we spent all that money on the vampire-proof windows, we might as well use them. Vampire resistant, not vampire proof, I said. Now please be a dear and bring me my damn scarf. She’s all right, though I often wonder if Sarah Michelle Gellar would be of more use in these situations. When she returned with my scarf she asked me when I became so devoted to vampire staking and wasn’t I too scared even to close the blinds the night before. I told her Ripley was scared shitless in Alien but the didn’t stop her from kicking xenomorph ass.
Meriwether and I, on the front steps, stakes in hand. I instruct him to take the eastmost fifteen while I attend to the westerly fifteen. He stared at me blankly and I said just go wild, we’re Lethal Weapon 4 now.
It was bloodless, the battle, which isn’t to say that wounds weren’t inflicted nor vampires slain. It’s just that, though they consume blood, vampires don’t necessarily bleed it. That is to say, vampires are undead, so bloodflow isn’t required and therefore, when staked through the heart, they don’t bleed. I could never understand how heart penetration is supposed to kill something that is both already dead and independent of their cardiovascular system. I guess that’s just the way it is. But the battle, victory. Thirty dead vampires and not a scratch on my body. Meriwether, he didn’t fare so well. I can still say the battle was bloodless because the fifteen vampires he was responsible for teamed up and drained every ounce of his blood through their hollow pale fangs in no time flat. Sucked him completely dry. At least I was able to stake most of them while they were hunched over his body.
After a few days and many failed incantations, I was finally able to revive Meri. Within a week or so he was back at full strength and, aside from the many fang-marks, he was as he was before the battle, except now he demanded to be called Hrothgar. Of course, during that time I had to fend off countless vampiric hordes by my self. She was there, my girlfriend, and she’s okay, but she didn’t even help be haul bodies to the ash pile behind the garage.
That night, no less than one hundred vampires outside, I decided enough was enough and that I would give in to their demand. I opened the vampire-resistant window and called out to them. I told them I was sorry and that I’d do whatever it is they wanted me to if it meant and end to the nightly slayings. The leader of the vampires came to the front of the pack. So be it, he menaced, and proceeded to explain in excruciating detail everything they expected me to do.
Turns out the guy I accidentally brought back to life, yeah, Jerry Seinfeld. Been a vampire the whole time, since the beginning. So when I said earlier that he was some sort of vampire Seinfeld, I couldn’t have been more right. Anyway, tracking him down was no problem. Hrothgar and I rented a car using the credentials of one of the vampires and drove to New York. We had used the internet to discern the rough location of Seinfeld’s mansion, and drove lazy but strategic loops around the vicinity, until, one night, we spotted the infamous comedian speeding along in one of his many Porsches. We ran him off the road, pulled his living body from the wreckage and tossed him in the trunk of our rental. We escaped home without incident.
Pulling into the garage, Jerry Seinfeld bound and gagged in the trunk. I tell Hrothgar to be alert. He might try to distract us with his trademark observational comedy when we open the trunk and carry him into the back yard. I pop the trunk, get out of the car and walk to the back. Hrothgar asks how are we going to turn him back into a vampire. That’s for the vampires to worry about, I reassure him. Now help me with the legs.
I was a little disappointed that our cargo had passed out during the nine hour car ride and was still unconscious even as we haphazardly hauled him out back. Secretly, I was hoping that he really would try to distract us with some good did-you-ever-notice mojo. I used to watch his show all the time. Hrothgar brought me back to reality. He asked me if this wouldn’t be easier with some more help. Who, I ask. Oh, yeah, her. My girlfriend. She’s, uh, nice, but do you think she has the braun for this operation. No, best to just bite down and do it ourselves.
When the body was firmly lashed to the posts we had driven into the lawn, we went inside. I called for my girlfriend, to let her know we had returned, lest she didn’t hear us struggle from garage to yard, laden with comedian weight. There was no reply. I walked from the back door up a small flight of stairs into the kitchen. To my surprise, there was my girlfriend, splayed out on the kitchen table, a thick pool of blood covering the floor beneath her. In the corner, looming in the shadows like he was in a detective novel, a vampire. He waited for a moment, then skulked out of the shadows towards me. Where is our funnyman, he hissed. The funnyman’s in the back, I said. He hissed some more. If you don’t bring us our funnyman by tomorrow night, another loved one will suffer the same fate as your precious girlfriend here. But I said he’s in the back. Like, we already have him for you. The vampire hesitated, then menaced, in the same cautionary tone as before. Oh, I see. Sorry for the mess. He walked past me, down the stairs and out the back door. A few seconds later Hrothgar entered the kitchen. Hey, did you know there was a vampire in the house? I just saw him walk out the back do--holy shit! What happened here? They killed her, I said, as incentive to complete our mission in a timely fashion. Hrothgar came closer, put his hand on my shoulder. I’m so sorry, is there anything we can do? Don’t worry about it, I said. But, isn’t she going to turn into a vampire? No, they didn’t bite her. From the looks of it they drained her blood the toothless way. Hrothgar turned to face me. You’re necromancy! You can bring her back, just like you did to me! I said don’t worry about it, and walked to the kitchen window.
Outside, in the back yard, a cluster of vampires had gathered around their former kin. The body we recently secured to the poles in the ground rose from the grass, hovered a few inches off the ground. No shit, I said out loud, and made my way outside. Hrothgar, he stayed in the kitchen. Not much of a Seinfeld fan, that one. I sidled up to the vampires, ensconced myself in their midst. Vampire Seinfeld still hovered there, a pair of leathery wings caped out behind him. And what’s the deal with Dracula, he said. What’s he a Count of anyway?




This is the complete, unedited first draft. For this outing I tried not to get caught up in the editing process while writing, instead trying to get the story on the page as quickly as possible. Thus, the many plot/grammar/logic problems. Further drafts will be posted as they are drafted. I'm curious to see where this story goes.