“Oh, so you want in, do
ya? Well, get on in here, boy, we got a little bit of thisthatandeverything
just a-waitin’ on ya.” The Roustabout’s smile was equal parts unapologetic sleaze
and bottomless promise.
What is this?
“This,” The
Roustabout tapped his black and yellow barber pole cane gingerly against a
flaking and rusty iron gate. “This is God’s Blind Spot.”
One yellow, buzzing sodium bulb in a bare fixture mumbled
light down in a tight circle. On either side of the gate a wall stretched out,
fading away into dark distance. It was all uneven sheets of plywood, patched
here and there with corrugated tin, plastered with what looked to be sideshow
posters. Under bare feet was the cracked mud of a desertdry lake bed, crumbling
to dust with every shuffle of foot.
Where are we?
“Where we’ve
always been, my friend. You there, me here. Me the barker, you the mark.” His shattered
headlight eyes had a dim blue glow in the shadow cast by the brim of his red velvet
top hat, the kind of blue that lives in the base of a butane flame. He dusted
the shoulders and smoothed the sharp lapels of his long-tail coat, black with
red pinstripes. Straightened his blood red bow tie, cleared his throat.
“Step right up, step right up!” He called. “Anything you
want, we got it. The reality of every dream, the fulfillment of every fantasy.
You can do anything, be anyone, we got it all. For just one low price you can
be the master of your own fate. Step right up. God’s Blind Spot is the place
for you.” He made a grand, arms wide gesture, bumblebee colored cane pointing
at the rickety gate. Glowing eyes stared through me expectantly. “Well, that
pitch doesn’t always work.”
What are you
pitching?
His smile
widened, razor edged teeth flashing pearly and silver in the disabled light.
“Life. Everything. The freak sideshow of existence. Love, hate, joy, sadness,
pleasure, hurt. Truth and lies. Being. You may not believe it,” without warning
he whacked what I would have thought was my arm with his cane. “But you don’t
exist.”
My not-hand rubbed where my not-arm had been hit. The
pain wasn’t painful, if there really even was any.
I feel like I
exist.
“And I feel like
I could shit gold and piss champagne. Feeling don’t mean fuck-all. You wouldn’t
be here if you existed.”
What happens if I
go through the gate?
“You get to be.
You get to live. You get born.”
And what if I
don’t?
“You’ll stay
right here. Just like it’s always been.”
I haven’t always
been here. I can’t remember anything before a couple of minute ago, but it’s
impossible to think that I’ve always been here.
“You think this
conversation of ours has only taken a couple of minutes?” His fluorescent
all-blue eyes sparkled, a sardonic grin creeping up his ruddy, stubbly cheeks.
“You have no idea how wrong you are. We have been standing here having this
conversation, literally, forever. Stars and galaxies have lived and died, and
lived and died again. The Universe has expanded and contracted and bounced back
again countless times. All that has happened while we’ve stood here ratchet
jawing. Pretty amazing, no?”
You said there was
a price. What is it?
“You have to
die.” He said succinctly.
What’s that?
“Well, if
standing here in this empty nothing for all eternity is nonexistence, then
dying is absolute oblivion. Zip, nada, nothing. Forever. So, you can stay here
looking at my beautiful face until the very last proton in the Universe
degrades, and that wouldn’t make me no nevermind. Or, you could shoot the dice
and get a life. I’ll warn you, some are good and some are bad. Some are
incredible, some are unbearable. You might land one that will last a century,
or you might crap out right when your mama squeezes you from betwixt her
thighs.”
Those odds don’t
sound good.
“Maybe not, but
it’s a chance. You stay here and you will, quite literally, never get to leave
that spot, and I will be your only company. You go in for a life and, at the
very least, you stand the chance of getting some freedom for a while. Absolute
freedom to do whatever you may please. Other humans will try to stifle that
freedom, sometimes quite rightly, sometimes in a cruelly arbitrary way, but
there will be no physical laws keeping you from doing as you damn well please.
If you want to write the most beautiful music the world has ever known, you’ll
be free to attempt it. If you want to make life worth living to everyone around
you, you’ll be free to. If you want to torture the helpless or rape children,
you’ll be free to try that, too. But I’ll warn you, the others don’t take too
kindly to stuff like that. Uplift, create, destroy, blight… It’s all up to
you.”
How can there be a
place where one is just as free to rape children as to make beautiful music?
“Makes you
wonder about the faculties of the Old Codger who threw this whole mess
together, don’t it.” Saying this, The Roustabout momentarily looked down at his
mirror shine shoes. Subtle avatars of guilt, anger, and fear all wrestled for a
position on his face.
All of that
freedom, and all I have to do is die at the end?
He looked back
from his feet, almost startled. “That’s all.” The Roustabout raised a white
gloved hand and, with a small flashandflourish, pulled a pair of dice from thin
air. “Roll them bones, boy, and win yourself some bones to roll.” He dropped
the black-with-red-dots dice in my not-hand, razor teeth glinting in his curled
lip smile. I tossed the dice on the top of his barker’s podium. They bounced to
a stop, but The Roustabout scooped them up before I could see the numbers.
What life do I get?
“You’ll find
out.”
I want to know
before I go.
He laughed, the
high tones of a jackal bark mingling with the rumbles of earthquake and
thunder. “It’ don’t work that way, boy-o. That wouldn’t be much of a gamble
now, would it? No, by throwing them stones you agreed to take whatever life you
won. Now get on through.”
With that, the gate gave a horrible rusty squeal, shaking
dust off its sharp points and wrought curlicues as it shuddered open. On the
far side the dusty ground dropped away. Nothing was visible but an endless
expanse of nothing. Nothing but nothing, and all so dark red it was almost
black.
I don’t wa-
The bumblebee
cane made violent contact with the backs of my not-knees, sending me lurching
forward. I tumbled over the edge, free fall sicktwisting my not-guts. I fell.
And I fell. I fell into…
