milk, I grin and say, “No pun, right?” “Funny.” I pour the milk, return it to the fridge and pluck a spoon from the dish drainer. I sit at the table and begin to eat. Jeff rants before me as I shove spoonfuls of cereal into my mouth. “I told the Master you wouldn’t take me seriously. No one believes the little guy. Oh no, he couldn’t ask Mr. High and Mighty Azazel to crawl up here and brave a morning commute to convince your puny ass-” “Okay, look,” I say, crunching down my cereal, “convince me. Don’t just tell me, but show me. Prove to me the human race needs to be obliterated.” He considers this for a moment. His eyes glow brighter, and he smiles. “All right,” he says. “I will.” He snaps two of his claws, and when I blink I realize I’m no longer in my kitchen. My table is gone, my cereal is gone, all four walls are gone. All that remains of my kitchen is the spoon in my hand and the cereal in my mouth. Where we are is some desert. It’s dark, there’s a constant pop-pop-pop echoing from somewhere in the distance, and I’m cold. Not quite what I expected from the desert, but then I realize it’s night. Jeff climbs up to my shoulder. His touch burns me, but not so much that I can’t bear it. He sits on my shoulder and says, “Welcome to Iraq.” “Iraq?” It doesn’t sink in until a squadron of transport trucks roll past us, their headlights shooting out into the arid night. I start to turn and run. Surely our presence here won’t go unnoticed. Jeff pulls on my earlobe. “Where are ya going? They can’t see us. No need to run.” I stop. The sand is gritty between my toes. I wiggle them to no avail.
“Why are we here?” Jeff doesn’t speak. Instead he lets the pop of gunfire in the distance speak for him. When I turn I see flashes from the reports, followed by an explosion that lights up the night. The transport trucks swerve and head off in the direction of the blast. “Convinced yet?” I say nothing. “How about this, then?” He snaps his claws, and the night sky disappears. We’re in a well-furnished bedroom. A four-post canopy bed is at one end, and a large plasma television hangs on an opposite wall. A CNN news broadcast plays, but the volume is muted. The scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen displays the rise and fall of today’s stocks, the latest about Brad and Angelina, the ratings of American Idol. The President walks through the room and jumps on to the bed. He’s wearing a pair of navy blue pajamas. Then he reaches for the remote and changes the channel on the TV. Now, instead of CNN, there is the Cartoon Network. “Just in time for Looney Tunes,” he says. Jeff sighs. “We had such high hopes for him.
Bad example. Ignore it.” Another snap, and we’re in the center aisle of an airplane. By the time I get my bearings, I see two men rise from their seats with box cutters in hand. Two more appear from behind. Men, women and children all scream in panic as they shout in broken English. I close my eyes and try to block out the shouts, but I can’t. “How about now?” Jeff whispers. “No.” He snaps, and now we’re standing on the wing of the plane. How we are, I have no idea, but we are, and that’s not what concerns me. The plane banks over a city and repositions itself in the path of a large tower. “That’s enough,” I tell him. He chuckles. “This is the best part,” he says. I pull him off my shoulder and squeeze him. His eyes of fire bulge and crackle from their sockets. “Okay,” he grunts, “okay, okay, fine.” Just as the plane is about to collide with the building, there is a flash, and suddenly we’re standing on a sidewalk underneath a bridge. Directly across
photo — taniwhaiti / flickr
“I know,” Jeff says. “You were born for this.” I watch as charred, eviscerated bodies surface in the muck. I see people killing people; I see countless lies channeled over the airwaves-gross misleading statements designed to keep the meek confined to their pens while tyrants wage war for the sake of power and money under the guise of a false prophet. In the flames, atop a decimated capitol building, is a version of myself, aged twenty years, ruling with an unflinching fist. I close my eyes and blink away tears. “You will rid this planet of God’s plague.” “No,” I tell him. He looks up at me with a look in his fiery eyes that reminds me of a sad puppy. “Whaddya mean, ‘no?’” “No.” More smoke begins to rise from his ears. “You… you can’t say no! Embrace your destiny! Carpe diem!” I walk out of the bathroom and downstairs to the kitchen to make myself breakfast. He follows after me. His footsteps melt the carpet and leave black pitter-patter marks as he goes. “I’m not going to destroy the human race,” I say, and begin to pour myself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Jeff climbs up one leg of the table and glares at me. “But you have to!” he exclaims, and stamps his feet. The wooden surface begins to sizzle. “Do you mind?” He grunts. “Yeah I do,” he says. “I came all the way up here to deliver the news. The Master himself charged me with this task, and I’ll be goddamned-” Reaching into the fridge for the
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