Fiction
The God Problem Solver: Part 4
Payday
The story so far: Down-on-his-luck petty criminal Eddy came up with his retirement plan. He would pose as God online to fleece gullible Airtasker users of their possessions, hoping to make enough to buy a house on the coast and live out the rest of his days with his favourite poker machine. Despite early failures, he is convinced he has hit the jackpot when an old man begs for help to save his son, promising great financial reward. Eddy has arrived at the man's house and followed him down into his basement.
A chill kissed the skin of Eddy’s arms as his eyes took in the room. A projector lit up a sheet covering the far wall. Images flashed of a preacher yelling to an unseen audience, and a 1970s recreation of the eternal fires of hell. A wooden table sat in the middle of the room, with two chairs and a ceramic jug of water. Old workbenches were crammed against the walls from which hung rusted hacksaws and crowbars.
But the sight that took Eddy’s breath away was the half-finished bathroom in the corner. A cracked porcelain toilet emerged from the wall, and a thick wooden beam ran over the top. Attached to the beam was a metal link chain, and a shackle clamped around the wrist of a teenage boy.
The boy sat slumped with his back against the wall, peering out with the glazed eyes of a creature captive too long. Eddy had seen that look before.
‘This is my boy, Jack,’ the old man said, folding himself into one of the chairs at the table. He lifted the jug of water and drank from it greedily, water spilling over the sides of his mouth.
‘Jack, here, has a little problem. One day I come home, and I hear noises upstairs, from Jack’s room. I’m thinking, okay, maybe Jack has brought himself home a Jill, and they’re getting to know each other — I got no problem with that. I head upstairs to shower, and I see this young boy rush out of Jack’s room, damn near half naked.’
The old man’s lips curled back in a snarl, exposing a mouth full of shiny white teeth, square and broad.
‘That weren’t no Jill, that was a fucking Phil right there. I knew the devil had possessed my boy, cos he sure as shit didn’t learn that from me.’
The old man swung around and pointed at Eddy. ‘Now you need to save him.’
Eddy’s heart pounded against his chest, his sunken ribs giving little room for it to move. His legs screamed at him again, this time to haul arse straight up those stairs and away from this nutcase. He took a deep breath, and forced his feet to walk over towards the boy.
Eddy had watched a few YouTube videos on faith healing, in case anything like this arose. He shook his arms and turned his head side to side, like a sprinter limbering up.
As he approached, the boy tried to squirm further back against the wall. Eddy winked, aiming for reassurance, but by the look on the boy’s face he had missed the mark.
Eddy rolled his shoulders and started swinging his skinny arms around backwards in windmills. He crouched down to kiss the concrete floor, then reared upwards and arched his back. He let forth a scream, and pretended to throw objects at the boy while unintelligible sounds spewed out of his mouth.
Eddy couldn’t speak in tongues, but he had the unique ability to rap Eminem’s ‘Slim Shady’ at three times the normal speed, which he hoped would do the trick. He stomped on the floor, beat his hands against his chest and rapped with all the strength his smoke-clogged lungs could muster.
But the three-hour ride over had sapped his strength. His legs burned from the hills and the road rash, and his arms — conditioned only for button pushing — felt like tree trunks rather than the twigs they resembled. No matter how many times he winked, the boy stared back at him like he was a deranged escapee from the mental asylum.
‘What are you doing?’ the old man asked, as Eddy collapsed into the chair and leant over the table.
‘God… needs a… halftime break,’ Eddy said, panting.
‘The Lord’s strength knows no limits,’ the old man said, a hint of anger in his voice.
‘If JC smoked two-pack a day, he’d have limits. Trust me.’
The old man’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Eddy’s forearm. ‘What does that graffiti say?’
Shit. Eddy had forgotten to cover the tattoo. A reminder of a rebellious youth that never straightened itself out. The ink was a black and white skull, with two crosses poking through the eye sockets.
Underneath: Death before indoctrination.
He pulled his arm back, but the old man had already begun to rise.
‘You are no messenger from God, you are the sinful sire of Satan, come to destroy my efforts at Salvation.’
The veins running down the old man’s rangy arms pulsed, his knuckles white as he balled them into fists. Eddy could feel the situation slipping out of control. What would Zorro do? He would have a gun, or a whip, or his trusty rapier. Eddy had a Bic lighter and legs full of cement.
‘What seems to be problem here?’ A thickly accented voice boomed from the base of the stairs.
Eddy and the old man turned, and saw a diminutive figure dressed in the flowing white gown of a priest.
Andre. He held a gold sceptre in his hands as he shuffled towards them.
‘Father,’ the old man said, ‘This creature claims to be a messenger of God, but I believe him to be the devil. My son seeks salvation from the evil of homosexuality.’
Andre nodded. ‘I think you are right. Lucky I come now. This one,’ he said, pointing the sceptre at Eddy. ‘I know is little bit gay.’
Eddy cursed under his breath. He could already picture it, being locked up in the basement by this nutter, while Andre walked away with the reward. Eddy turned back to the boy as the old man continued his sermon.
‘This is it. True salvation has arrived. We shall cast the demons from your body, releasing your spirit to — ’
A dull thud interrupted the old man, and Eddy saw the boy’s eyes widen. He spun around to see the old man lying face down on the basement floor. Andre stood above him, grasping the sceptre like a baseball bat.
‘Jesus! What have you done?’ Eddy yelled.
‘I remove problem.’ Andre shrugged his shoulders. ‘We need to find safe. All rich fruitcake have safe.’
A thousand questions rushed through Eddy’s mind.
‘How did you find me?’
‘Only time you go quiet is when you sniff something big. I see message you receive reflected on Zorro’s face. I look up fruitcake profile on Airtasker and search address. Is not hard.’
‘Well, where’d you pull all this shit from?’ Eddy asked, indicating Andre’s ridiculous outfit.
‘Renae has strange bedroom fantasies. I have many costume.’
‘Hey,’ a small voice called out from across the room.
Eddy turned to see the boy, now standing.
‘I go search rest of house. I meet you back here,’ Andre said.
‘What about the boy?’ Eddy asked.
‘Hmm. Good point. We not want witness. We deal with him after.’
Andre turned and sprung up the stairs, the white gown flaring out behind him. Eddy’s blood ran cold; he had to force himself to breathe slowly. His legs screamed at him again. Run.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ the boy called.
The boy stood flat against the wall, arms extended and palms up.
‘Listen, I’m sorry about your Dad. I never meant for that to happen. I swear,’ Eddy said, lifting his own arms.
‘He wasn’t my Dad. My parents died in a car accident, and I came to live with my Grandfather. I didn’t know he was insane at first. Then he started calling me by my Dad’s name and going on about all these crazy theories. I think he drugged my food, and I woke up here.’
‘Jesus,’ said Eddy, ‘We need to cut that off,’ pointing at the shackle on the boy’s arm.
‘He has a key. It should be in his back pocket.’
Eddy crept over to the old man. A pool of blood surrounded his head, the white hair now red and matted. His skull had a dent the size of a party pie. Eddy crouched down, fighting the urge to vomit.
The old man wore suit pants, an odd match with the flannelette pajama top, but his fashion choices were the least of his crimes. Eddy reached inside the back pocket of the pants and found the key. As he pulled the key back out, an explosion of gas burst from the body. Eddy stumbled backwards, tripping over his feet and ending up on the ground next to the boy.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Don’t worry, it’s normal for bodies to excrete gas, I saw it on a Netflix documentary,’ the boy said.
Still shaken, Eddy clambered to his feet. He pulled his shirt over his nose as he unlocked the wrist shackle. Kill a brown dog, that would.
The boy shook his arm free and exhaled. ‘Thanks. What happens now?’
‘What happens now is I’m getting as far as fuck away from here as quick as I can.’
‘But you didn’t do anything wrong.’
Eddy laughed. ‘I been wrong my whole bloody life. How do you reckon I ended up here?’
They both looked up as a crash echoed through the ceiling.
‘What about him? He said he was going to deal with me.’
Fuck.
The boy was right. Eddy couldn’t leave him here.
‘You got somewhere safe to go?’
‘No. I don’t have any other family. I don’t wanna go to foster care. Please.’
Eddy’s mind spun back to the day they took his Mum away. She had been cooking breakfast in their department of housing flat that smelled of mould and cat piss. They did not own a cat.
Baked bean and chocolate pudding — her specialty, and Eddy’s favourite. Eddy waited until afternoon for her to wake; she had been up all night painting. It was the painting that did her in. Their neighbours did not appreciate street art like hers. Turns out the demonic symbols she reproduced with alarming consistency were the final straw needed to break her back. The quacks with handcuffs stormed Eddy’s home and dragged her away, howling like a banshee. Eddy felt only relief. He hadn’t yet known what lay ahead.
Another bang from above jolted Eddy back to the present.
‘I know a place. It’s far. You got a bike?’
‘Don’t you have a car?’
‘No.’
‘What kind of burgler doesn’t have a getaway car?’
‘I’m not a burgler. Well, not a successful one.’
‘Okay,’ the boy said, pulling aside the sheet — now showing the slaughter of the Canaanites — to reveal a wooden door. ‘There’s one in the garage.’
The boy’s eyes flickered as they entered the gloom. ‘He keeps the jewellry here too.’
Eddy and the boy flew down the hill, past the dried smear of Eddy’s blood on the footpath, past people whose dreams of wealth and mansions and European sports cars had left them empty as the cicada shells their gardeners removed from the sycamore trees.
He looked across at the boy, laughing at the wind rushing through his hair and the moon’s glow on his face, and wished his mother was here to see it.
It would be a long journey, with no guarantees the police wouldn’t catch them, or that Andre wouldn’t hunt them down, or that they would find enough food to power their legs for the 847km before they reached Golden Beach. And the relocation process for Zorro would be a bitch.
Eddy raised the skipping rope he had found in the garage, ignoring the pain in his hands, and whipped it against the side of his purple Breezer, just like Zorro would. Ride on, Tornado.
Thank you for reading. I know longer fiction pieces can be a hard sell on here, but I couldn’t see a way to split this last section up. I appreciate your time. So does Eddy. Every cent helps. 😁