Monsters

It wasn't long before they found Preacher Joe's motor car, a slim, convertible affair that had Clara salivating. "It's impractical, like that first one," he tried to warn her, but she was keen to slide her arm along its streamlined sides, her hip bumping against the polished, painted steel in a sultry caress. She sighed and dug into her handbag, pulling out her tin cigarette case.

"It's a beauty," she said, fishing out a match and lighting up. Within the darkness, she was a solitary red ember. There was a deep swell of breath held, then slowly released as her smoke gathered in the thick air around her. "Built for two. A cozy ride, all the way to Hollywood."

He had more important things on his mind than the road that never ended. Clara reached into the motor car, her fingers gently smoothing out a greasy fingerprint that lay in wait on the clutch. "We can't steal his car, it's inappropriate."

"How so?"

"He's no doubt on a mission. One similar to my own."

She scoffed at this, and braced her hands on the side door, her heel delicately kicked up at the romance the motor car was working on her. "He doesn't deserve a beauty like this, an unethical man like that."

It was his turn to be snide. "Ethics. That's a strange word on your tongue. Mind it doesn't burn your lips." He leaned against the trunk of the motor car, his black oiled wounds seeping onto its pristine white surface. Clara shooed him away, and tutted over the mark he'd smeared onto it. "He's the focal point of a group of human beings, their philosophy one I haven't yet been able to fathom. That has to count for some philanthropy, as you call it. I only impersonated a priest, he truly is a religious leader."

"Lunkhead, that's you." She took a handkerchief out of her small handbag, the one that she had wrapped her switchblade in. He knew it from the pale bloodstains still evident on the kerchief's surface. "He's no leader, he's a confidence man, as snaky as they come. Didn't you see the expensive cut of that suit he's wearing or that gold tooth? It glinted good and shiny, and that tells me that repair is new, even if his flesh and blood isn't. He's the worst kind of con, taking money from poor folks who can barely rub two crumbs together." Her eyes were bright and earnest as she met his gaze, not a shimmer of hesitation within their glass surface. "Remember how I told you some people deserve their fates? This is one hell of a good example."

"You can't kill him," he reminded her. He shrugged in impatience as she slid into the driver's seat, her hands testing the steering wheel in giddy glee. "He'll just slither off into the water and find another host."

"He'll be stuck in a coyote, then," she assured him.

"So be it, until he tears out the throat of another human being, creating a door to slip in. Coyotes are plentiful around here, and from what I've heard such attacks do happen on occasion."

She cast a glance at him over her shoulder, her skin opalescent in the moonlight. She looked made of stone and with just as much heart. She remained in the front driver's seat like a carefully polished, sanded work of marble, destined to remain in that haughty pose forever.

"I'm not giving this up," she promised.

"When I tell you that it's impossible to kill him, I hope you are not looking to me for a solution." He was feeling weak from the loss of tissue and sinew muscle in his host, and he collapsed next to the back wheel, his good arm draped over his stump, fruitlessly trying to stop the constant shifting of parts of himself into its gaping hole. "We don't just randomly murder our own kind, we're not like you."

"There is nothing random about what I do," she coldly informed him. She took a final drag of her cigarette and tossed the tiny lit stub that was left into the deeps of the thicket. A warm breeze pulled the branches towards them before tugging them back, a swaying gossip session in arbour. "I'm not like you. I have my reasons, and they aren't just blind orders."

"I follow what I am sent to do, and it is for serious reasons."

"You don't know what your target looks like. You don't know where he, or she, is. You don't know how long he's been here, or even if you should be trusting me to know where he is." Her marble pose remained stock still while the shadows of leaves passed over her in the near darkness. A flickering statue of marble. An image, set on glass, real enough to believe solid, but impossible to touch. He was wrong, she wasn't chiseled out of rock as he had first thought. She was a wispy trick of darkness seeping through light. "At least I have a word or two with the people I take out. You've never told me your target's crime."

He shrugged. "That detail isn't necessary."

"There's the difference between you and me. I'm a detail girl. I like knowing why people have to die and I have all kinds of good reasons." Her eyes narrowed as she peered into a deep, black part in the thicket, a rustling making her pause before continuing. "All you do is whine about it. 'My target, my target, my left watery nut for my target'. If you ask me, the reason you haven't found this person yet is because you don't really want to kill him. It's not a big moral dilemma to me. If you don't feel like killing your friend, then don't do it."

He was angered by this. "My feelings have nothing to do with the matter."

"My target, my target," she whined, mocking him. "Feelings are everything. It's why you keep going on about it. If you ask me, this constant whining of yours says you don't give a devil's damn about what your friend supposedly did that was so bad because you know in your oily, slimy heart that the crime doesn't fit the punishment."

"What of your punishments?" he snapped back. "What did Stella do that was so evil you had to play a game of x's and o's on her?"

Clara was quiet a long moment, her attention still riveted on the dark hollow in the thicket. Leaves whispered harsh inside of it. "I never killed her."

"I don't believe you."

She was quiet a long moment, lost inside of her own reflection. Mention of Stella had created an inward question that he was surprised existed. When she turned her attention back on him, her face was as grey and polished as sanded stone, and the illusion of her solidity was set again. "Moral platitudes only work when you're on the other side of the universe. This is my dimension, and you have to trust me to know what's what. Don't judge me again. You won't like the outcome."

He wanted to shout at her, to tell her how wrong she was in her assumption that he trusted her. Clara, like the preacher, was so covered in lies they slid off of her marble surface to evaporate in the air around her in a thick, impenetrable mist. Nothing she said was true. Not one observation, not one philosophical reasoning that slid from her ruby red lips had merit. She had only one concern: herself. The person to whom she lied to most of all.

He couldn't quite understand the reason why he followed her, other than that there was nothing to lose in talking to a person who cares nothing for you.

"I'm forgetting who I am," he said.

He was embedded in the crook of the injured arm, holding on with what he had left of himself.

"Aren't you the lucky one," Clara bitterly replied.

There was a pronounced rustling in the thicket, a sound that made them both tense. Coyotes. He had read about these scavenging creatures, four-legged beasts that tore into human flesh. Or so the legends had it, for lies were common enough to be half-truths and exaggerations and who was he to deny a meal to a hungry animal? To be free of this current decrepit human shack would be a comfort. The coyote in its benevolence would latch onto his throat and rip him apart and devour him, the animal not realizing it was giving him a new home.

He closed his eyes, and waited for the teeth to sink in. He wondered what it would be like, walking on four legs instead of two. At least he wouldn't have to follow Clara any longer, he could forge his own path. A coyote's sense of smell was strong, and he could suss out his target with that sensitive organ alone.

Disappointment came in the human shape that emerged from the thicket, the clean cut vision of Preacher Joe who walked towards them out of the darkness, his arms outstretched in greeting. "I never hoped to find another one of us again, not on this terrible, lonely place full to bursting with suffering." He smiled sweetly at Clara, his hip against the hood of his motor car. "How charming that he has found you as a companion. I've never much liked your kind, myself."

* * * * *

"That's right, my brother, just a few feet more."

"I can feel it, Preacher Joe! I can feel your healing power coming over my soul!"

"I'm sure you do." The bullet went clean through the side of the parishioner's skull, where it ricocheted inside the silky grey matter, killing him instantly. He collapsed to the ground, at the feet of the trembling figure that lay forcibly animated at the wheel of the motor car. With a relieved sigh he slid out of the gaping wound in the missing arm and slipped into the new offering, a bubbling acid bath laying thick on the sand behind him. He coughed out a chunk of skull from the back of his throat and shakily stood up, his jelly body molding to his new house. He turned to Preacher Joe, unsure of whether he was supposed to be grateful or horrified.

"It's comfortable," was all he could say.

"It's quite a treat, Frankie, you stumbling to see me like this."

Frankie. That name again.

He frowned, not sure how to respond. "That's not who I am."

"Of course it is," his alien friend replied. "I'd know you anywhere. There's a certain shadow to your features no matter what cloak you're wearing, and you are Frankie, through and through."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Clara warned him, her words averted from Preacher Joe who was sitting across from them on a log, a long stick playing in the sand. X's and o's. Preacher Joe drew a line down the middle and giggled over its secret significance.

"He's obviously mad," Clara harshly whispered.

"And here I thought you were in California," he said, shaking his head. "Making your dream come true, whatever silly reality it was you wanted to create. I'm content to be here, pretending on paradise, but not you. You're more ambitious than I am, I suppose." He gave them both a toothy grin, his gold tooth glinting in the moonlight. "I wish I could be like you, Frankie. Just giving up those pieces of myself I didn't want to deal with. How much easier that would be, to just discard part of myself."

"I don't understand. Why are you here?"

Preacher Joe spread his arms wide, encompassing them both in his spiritual embrace. "Why not be here as anywhere? What other heaven can there be than this linear world, where the present is obvious and the past can't crawl back up on you, and the future is always open, like a vast horizon waiting for you to head towards it. I preach Hell and Damnation to these small-minded souls because they can't appreciate the beauty of what they already have. A moment to moment life. Every second an exclamation of something new. Small-minded and trapped in here, that's what these people are." He tapped the side of his head, the slight indentation revealing the bullet that had ended his host's life.

Preacher Joe had a great fondness for his pistol.

"They sent me here for exploration, and got bored when I turned native. Haven't had orders in decades. Every now and then I get myself a clean house of skin and move on to another part of the country. A flock might go hungry, but a preacher never does."

He leaned back, resting his head on the tree behind him, a long stick drawing lines through his solitary game of x's and o's. His suit was freshly pressed, not a wrinkle from his earlier dervish visible. The pistol he sported was well hidden beneath his vest, with only the shadow of its handle visible in the moonlight. There was something eerily familiar about him, the imprint of a person they had met once before creeping along his features. He smiled and the mirage immediately faded, leaving nothing but an alien blur behind.

He narrowed his gaze at Clara, who stubbornly remained in the driver's seat of his car. "You, now, you're a puzzle. Why would you hang around Frankie, knowing what he is and how he has to survive? There's not a human I've met yet who wouldn't find the whole taking over a stranger's corpse thing a little unsettling. You didn't so much as blink an eye when Frankie slid into our Billy Jameson's flesh." Preacher Joe let out a low whistle at her apathy. "Billy was a mighty good carver, too. Shame we won't be getting that service anymore."

"He keeps calling me Frankie," he said to her, and she waved his concern away, agitated by Preacher Joe's judgement of her.

"We got more similarities of purpose than even he realizes," she explained. "We're going to California. I'm going to meet up with a contact there, a fella who's going to get me into the moving pictures. There's talk he's worked with Lillian Gish, and anyone worth their salt knows that kind of prestige isn't something you can ignore." She checked her nails, and clucked over their dirt. "I got talent in spades," she bragged as she rummaged in her handbag and took out a nail file. "I once won a beautiful baby contest, not a month after I was born. 'Chicago's Bonniest Baby', that was me. I was born to be in the moving pictures, I was. Front page and all."

"Frankie," Preacher Joe said to him, his voice in earnest. "Tell me you won't go back to California. You should stay here, with me, we can travel the rest of the country together, bringing our dance on the road, our Dervish Obscuria." He was intent as he leaned closer, the stick he had used to draw in the sand piercing the earth's flesh. "We can get into the souls of these stupid people. We'll take their money and go to Europe. Or not, Germany can be a superstitious place these days. It might be better to go somewhere farther, like India, where there are constant riots and thus plenty of new hosts to go around."

He bristled at the very idea, Preacher Joe's gold tooth sitting ill in his gut. "I'm going to California to take out a target that has been assigned me by my superiors," he insisted. He drew his heel across the game of x's and o's Preacher Joe had drawn in the dirt, obscuring its entirety. "I'm not here to play games with human beliefs in order to run from my responsibilities."

"A shame. You really are a fool." Preacher Joe dusted off his trousers and stood up, his hand held out in cheery friendships. "We can shake on it. That's how they seal the truth on this planet. By shaking."

He clasped his cold hand in his own and was roughly pulled to standing, his nose nearly touching Preacher Joe's. Joe's eyes were black with motor oil, his breath metallic as his slimy words slid out. "You think you're the moral high ground, but you're not. Responsibilities. Targets. They don't exist. But then, how can I expect you to know that? You're only a fragment of yourself, Frankie. The only thing you are is a forgotten task that was meant to be completed."

He released him, pushing him against the passenger door of the motor car. Preacher Joe cast a long, dark glare at Clara before shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging inward. He rolled back and forth on his heels before turning his back on both of them.

"Take the motor car. I've no use for it anymore."

He descended into the thicket, its darkness obscuring him until he was completely absorbed by it. They listened, himself and Clara, for the breaking branches and footsteps to fade into an untraceable distance. On its periphery, hands were clapping in joy, humans dancing over the promises of death.

He turned to Clara, who remained staring at the black hollow of the thicket. "We should go."

"You two… you're just…." She bit her bottom lip, the pearls at her throat rolled between forefinger and thumb. "I'm always stuck with the monsters. Rotten luck, I guess."

He stepped gingerly over the steaming remains of his former injured host, his hands braced on the passenger door. "Like attracts like," he explained.

"Like hell it does." She narrowed her eyes at the thicket, her lips pursed in thought. "What if I did it? What if I just left you here to spend the rest of your days with him, to be some leftover monster spreading poison all over the world?"

"You won't."

She turned on the ignition, the engine coming to life with the smoothest hum they had ever heard. He remained balanced against the passenger door, his hands clutching its side, waiting with perverse expectation for her to make good on her word and escape from him. Perhaps she would drive forward a few feet and then careen back, eager to run him down. Perhaps she would turn the engine off, and get out and walk.

Every one of those scenarios filled him with a strange joy.

She reached over and opened the passenger door, and beckoned him to get in. His liquid heart fell into the bottom of his foot, settling deep in the heel. He slid into the passenger seat and its luxurious comfort with ill ease, the road a long, tortuous stretch before them. It was rife with dangers now. Hurdles that could rip them both apart.

She reached under the driver's seat and pulled out a shining piece of metal. As she turned onto the road and began following it to their destination, she tossed it into his lap.

"I'm guessing that's a souvenir that Preacher Joe decided to keep. He'll be sorry he lost it."

He turned it over and over in his palm, the implications curious.

A sheriff's badge. Sheriff Borden's.

Preacher Joe's gold tooth was as sound a confession a lawman could get.