The Hiss Quarterly || Volume II, Edition 2

The Godless World Tommy woke to the godless world, looked out his window, realized it was godless, and jumped up with a start. Something was missing. In every neighborhood in which young boys run untethered by the yokes of parochial guidance or parental supervision, a crude mythology is erected. That mythology is always different, yet always the same: There are good guys and bad guys. No one knows why. They serve in the armies of light and dark. Forts are constructed, lines are drawn, and hands are spit-upon and shaken in allegiance. Rocks are hurled at the enemies of light. Rocks are hurled at the enemies of darkness. They share their share of casualties. None of them ever suspects he might be on the wrong side. The bad guys are all misguided good guys. In less advanced neighborhoods the factions of warring boys give themselves names: Crips, Bloods, Tenth Street Toughs, Wharf Rats, or the Atlanta Falcons. Some boys are more creative than others. But that has little to do with Tommy, and Tommy has even less to do with Matt, Mark, Drew and Frank, who were the White Trash Boys--so called by their neighbor--who lived in the White Cone of Pleasure, which was neither a cone nor pleasurable, but which was white. In fact, the White Cone of Pleasure was and still is several miles away from Tommy’s neighborhood. The house will never even be seen by Tommy, unless he lives to be old enough to drive and goes looking for a quiet road on which to park with his girlfriend, and happens to park in front of it in the throes of his amorous pursuits. Even then, he still will not know how events in the White Cone of Pleasure shaped his childhood universe for better or worse. Tommy's was an advanced neighborhood. The rival boys had no names for their gangs, but they sensed allegiance or contention all the same. For some time, the boys had battled hand-to-hand or in fierce rock-throwing (called rock-chunking in the Deep South) over the proprietorship of an inflated green gorilla that stood atop the B. Dalton's Bookstore at the edge of the neighborhood. It had one day appeared there, as if by magic, while the boys were in school. When they saw it, both armies claimed it as their mascot in the way that cultures must own their gods in order to be owned by them. Because more than one culture cannot own the same god and vice-versa, the rock-chunking commenced. Two weeks later, Tommy woke, looked out his window and found a hole in the sky where once there was a god. It depressed him, the sight of the empty universe. He would have to call a special meeting among his generals. What if the bad guys had stolen it? With sleep still encrusted at the edges of his eyes, he trudged into the kitchen, where his mom dangled a half-smoked Marlboro Red from her lips. She had burned the raisin toast. "Whatsamatter hunny?" "Nuttin." "Nuthin?" Tommy took a bite of the crunchy bread. He masticated (though such things were frowned upon in the Bible Belt) and asked, "Mom is God dead?" He had seen the question posed in one of his older sister's books, though never before had it seemed important. "No, hunny. God idn dead. He’s jes sleepin'." Tommy finished his toast, oblivious to the fact that he would never be mentioned again. Several hours earlier, under cover of night and an uncustomary fog, Matt Tyson had seen the window of opportunity open wide, not unlike a waitress’s thighs. He'd eyed the gorilla for two weeks as he performed his commutes. The uncommon fog was a sign. He parked his truck a few blocks away and climbed to the roof. He admired the bulbous creature before him and began the slow process of taking it down. The world woke to witness his craftsmanship: a hole in the sky where once lumbered a tacky, green gorilla. His was not a decision of aesthetics, so much as a compulsion he could neither explain nor contain. So Matt sat in the Waffle House and sipped his coffee, as the deflated green gorilla lay shrouded in garbage bags in the bed of his truck and guilt bounced around the empty corridors of his head. He prayed without irony and felt much better. It was so reassuring that he decided to pray for forgiveness for the other things he had done for which he had already been forgiven. He prayed that neither of the waitresses he had banged that week were pregnant. He prayed that the stolen stop signs at the corner of Falling Water and Ridge Crest had not caused any wrecks. He prayed and prayed until he came to the inkiest blot of all on his permanent record. He told himself that it too was gone and tried to believe it. He tried to focus on the more immediate problem of the gorilla. He figured he could keep it back at the house, but there was a new roommate moving in, and it might be kinda like a turd in the cheese grits. He didn’t know if the new guy had moved in yet. He’d had obligations to the new waitresses at the steakhouse and hadn't been home in a couple of days. He prayed the new roommate would not mind the gorilla. He added that he shouldn’t be gay or liberal. God didn’t like homos or democrats either, so he felt better. He wanted to make sure God knew he wasn’t a faggit or a socialist, so he prayed again. The rest of the novel will be serialized in Hiss Quarterly starting with the "Perilous Journeys" issue. Now Available in PrintOrder Todd Heldt's first novel, Before You Were a Prophet , published by HQBooks through Lulu, inc. It's a humorous tale about death, guilt, god, rednecks, kleptomania, and William Carlos Williams scholars.