The Crooked God Machine by Autumn Christian Read Free Book Online Page B

have you been?”
    “You’re a sinner,” Ezekiel said. He smiled and held out his arm for her to take, “come with me, baby.”
    I followed Ezekiel and the girl past the liquor store, into an alley, and out into the woods underneath the big faced creeper trees. Ezekiel took the girl’s hand and they ducked behind a tree. I listened to them undress each other with clumsy and frantic motions as I sat down on the other side of the tree and curled my legs tight against my chest. I waited for a long time there as they whispered and laughed. I cooked in the heat of their sex. Then I ruptured in their climax, the moment when that smell like a lightning strike sunk into my bones.
    "Do you want a turn?" Ezekiel asked.
    "No," I said, “aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?”
    “We’ve got time,” Ezekiel said, “And why not? What are you afraid of?”
    A moment’s pause. “Oh, right. It’s because of her. Jeanine. That girl with the butterfly wings made out of meat.”
    He laughed.
    “One day you’re going to wake up in a bathtub full of ice and watch her escape with all your organs underneath her arms. She’ll make pets out of them. Give them new names.”
    The girl laughed with him. Even her laugh was silver.
    "Her dad was a serial killer, you know," Ezekiel said.
    "Isn't her brother a prophet?" the girl asked, "Jonah, or something. Wasn't that his name?"
    "I don't remember," I said.
    “Hey, Charles, you know I'm only kidding you. Jeanine's a good girl. She's good for you. Come on over here to our side of the tree. Come have a smoke with us."
    I sighed.
    “Charles, don’t feel bad. I’m sorry. Come on over here.”
    I went to join them. Ezekiel and the girl were still naked. The girl pulled her silvery hair behind her shoulders while Ezekiel fished in his pants in the branches above for a pack of cigarettes.
    “What’s your name?” I asked the girl, trying to distract myself from the raw space between her legs.
    “Chicory,” she said.
    “She’s twelve years old,” Ezekiel said, “her parents just died.”
    “Light my cigarette for me,” Chicory said.
    He lit a cigarette and slipped it between her lips. She sucked on the end but didn’t inhale, crossed and uncrossed her legs. The monsters in the woods nearby screech hollered and shook the trees.
    “What was that?” she said.
    “Don't worry, baby, those monsters aren't going to come after us. I'm the chosen of God.”
    He tilted her chin back and took a kiss and promised another miracle.
    "Get dressed," he told Chicory, "I'll show you something special. Charles. You come too."
    Ezekiel led us out of the woods past Edgewater. He and Chicory walked arm in arm, almost skipping as they walked, laughing and telling jokes. As usual, I walked a few paces behind them with my hands thrust into the pockets of my jacket.
    When Chicory figured out where we were going she stopped laughing. She tugged sharp on Ezekiel’s elbow and dug her heels into the grass.
    "Let's go back, come on, Ezekiel. Let’s go back," She said.
    “What did I tell you before?” he said, “don’t worry about a thing.”
    We stopped at the edge of town, at the sloping, knuckled hills that looked out beyond the fields of the machines.
    I couldn't see the machines in the dark because of the gray miasma surrounding their faces and limbs. Yet I smelled the clean plated metal of their inner workings. I heard the thud of their shredded organs bearing down on us.
    “What are we doing here?” Chicory asked.
    "Watch this," Ezekiel said, and then he fell down into the grass in an epileptic fit.
    Chicory fell to her knees beside his writhing body.
    “Don’t touch him,” I said to her, “he does this all the time.”
    She shook his shoulders.
    “Chicory,” I said, “stop.”
    “I don’t want him to choke on his tongue,” she said.
    Ezekiel entangled her arms in his fit of epilepsy and they rolled together on the ground. He crushed her body beneath him. She grasped clumps of grass