Bless Me

One day Fernando rests upon his throne and looks out his viewing portal at the great wide world surrounding the Dominion. Across the street, a backhoe which has sat half-buried in a hole for the last two weeks continues sitting. Traffic passes, trucks and semis and sedans. A young man walks along the sidewalk.

Wait, a man walking along the sidewalk? That doesn't happen in Saladolsa, not ever. Or in America, for that matter. And he....Fernando leans forward in his seat and squints to get a better view. The young man wears a checkered, button-up shirt. A navy blue satchel is slung over his shoulder. And his hair....

Fernando leans back in his chair, eyes wide, and looks around his office in shock. The Aryan!

He immediately changes the subject in a conversation he has with his e-companion, Lucretia. “The godmongers are in town! One of them's across the street. What should I do if it comes in? I need a character.”

The Aryan has by this point stopped before the insurance place across the street from the Dominion. He peers through the business's window, then turns the doorknob and lets himself in. Fernando hastily appends to his chat, “Oh yes, he's entering businesses. Just slithered into the insurance place across the street.”

Lucretia answers, “Oh boy. Break out the Russian mobster guy.”

Mobster guy...? Nicolai! There's a name and a face that Fernando does not consider too often. His memories of that man are still...quite fuzzy. Break him out, though? Of where, jail? Was he in some kind of legal trouble? Fernando much prefers not to engage in felonious conduct, if he can at all avoid it.

He also posits his question to others present in the internet world. Cortez responds with a vote for Vinny. Vinny is an asshole. He shit Lorenzo's bed and needs to get his ass kicked. Vinny's pad, though, is a sprawling and chaotic deathtrap. The last time Lorenzo and his posse visited, they would up trapped on another plane of existence entirely.

Vinny is a dick, and Nicolai had tallied more votes by the end of election season. There may have been some stuffing of the ballot box, but that's democracy for you.

As Fernando prepared the tools needed to break out this character from his long absence, the chimes over his door tinkle. A young lady enters, with mousy brown hair and slightly crooked front teeth. She wears a sensible blue cardigan over a white button shirt with a plaid skirt. She bears a satchel identical to The Aryan's, from which publications and papers and pamphlets protrude. “Hi!” she chirps.

“Hello,” Fernando says. His voice is a strange half-gargle, like he is trying to do a bad Slavic accent. This was not as it was meant to be! The Aryan was to have paid Fernando a visit for Round Two! Now he has to converse with a woman? Madness!

Fernando plays it cool and clears his throat. “How can I help you?” he asks, smiling.

“My name is Elizabeth, and I'm visiting everyone here in town to ask if they would like to donate any money to a missionary nurse program.” She rifles through her satchel and withdraws a stack of five books. She does not extend any of them Fernando's way, nor make an immediate sales play. “It's so strange that you own a video store here, in a town this small. How many people are there here again?”

Hmm. Either she was lucky in her guess, or she had been briefed at some juncture on Fernando's existence and credentials. Rather than being a contrary fucker as with The Aryan or Mad Cultist in earlier years, Fernando opted to treat this visitor like a customer. He's never done that with the godmongers.“Oh, around four hundred,” he says, tilting his gaze upwards and to the side. A sizable Guardian Spider lingers in a corner of the office. “Maybe a few dozen more if you count the suburbs.”

Elizabeth laughs. It sounds almost, but not quite, genuine. “So I have a question for you.”

“I may have an answer.”

Now she fishes out one of her tomes, a spiral-bound cheap piece of shit that purports to be a cookbook, the same title which The Aryan bore last year. It made claims of “hearty homecooked meals in minutes.” She places it in Fernando's hands. He opens it to the table of contents, as he had given up on his oxygenarian lifestyle shortly after taking it up last year. He has no willpower.

And, mmm, what a collection of culinary masterpieces. Macaroni and cheese. And meatloaf. Oh, blueberry pie and breaded pork chops. Truly Jacques Pépin would be hard-pressed to match this caliber of comestibles.

“Would you consider yourself to be more the cook or more the eater?” she asks Fernando as he browses the cookbook.

The Keeper arches an eyebrow. “I am of the belief that you can't be one without also being the other.”

Elizabeth laughs again. “Surely you must favor one over the other.”

Fernando shrugs. “I switch it up. Keeps things from getting too stale.” He places the book face-down upon his counter.

Elizabeth smiles and looks Fernando in the eyes. Fernando smiles back. After around five seconds, his visitor tells him, “You seem like you're really intelligent.”

“Well, that depends on how we define intelligence. It takes all sorts and styles of knowledge to truly be considered all-knowing.”

“Are you a Christian, by chance?”

“Afraid not.”

“Catholic?” Weird. Fernando had always assumed the latter to be a subset of the former.

“Sorry, no.”

Elizabeth's smile grows wider, and her voice pitches up a quarter-octave and takes on a guttural undertone, as though her throat did not want to allow the following word to pass her chords unobstructed. “Atheist?”

“Atheism is too strong a position for me to take.”

Her body relaxes a little. “Agnostic?”

“No, I believe that there exists some all-encompassing purpose behind things.”

Her lip quirks. “Skeptic?”

That's a new one. “About most things, yes. Proof ought to be had before conclusions are made, on any topic.”

Elizabeth gives a little sigh and shakes her head from side to side. “I give up. What are you then? Buddhist?”

“All of the above. I live by my own set strictures and rules and don't believe it is ethical for me to use them to unduly impact the lives of others.”

“Oh, it seems like you're a very moral person who seems to put a lot of stock into logic and thought,” she murmurs, withdrawing another book. “This is a book of philosophy and aphorisms, and the history of all kinds of moral and religious movements. It will change the way you look at the world, I promise.”

No doubt, since the book's subtitle makes note of freedom having been under attack through the ages.

Fernando takes the book from her, then immediately sets it down. “Ah, there's the rub. I also believe in quid pro quo in my moral dealings with others.”

Elizabeth smiles at Fernando. “'There's the rub,' that's from Hamlet. Did you quote Shakespeare on purpose to me?”

“I hadn't planned on it, but great minds sometimes do think alike.”

Here Elizabeth begins to quote that particular soliloquy at Fernando. Sling, arrows, misfortune, dying and sleep, the rub, all of it up until the shuffling off from the mortal coil. It's certainly more Hamlet than Fernando had ever bothered to memorize. “Well done!” he says, and genuinely.

“Do you do a lot of reading?” she asks after giving a small curtsy.

Fernando has fielded this question previously and has a canned response on hand: “Indeed so. Roughly equal parts fantasy and nonfiction.”

She withdraws a third book. This one has a placid scene of some tropical paradise emblazoned on the cover, a stereotyped palm tree-at-sunset, waves-washing-on-the-beach image. “Here is another book. It has a number of stories, both real ones and fiction. They're great for relieving all the stress in your life. Surely you must have a lot of it, running your own business.” She flips it over and puts it in Fernando's hands, then slides her finger across the cover to the barcode and price on the back. “As you can see, it is normally priced at nearly thirty dollars, but really anything you can give would be appreciated so very much. Most people give somewhere between twenty and twenty-five dollars for this.”

“Well, truth be told, I'm feeling pretty good about my life right now,” Fernando says, adding this third book to the growing pyramid. And this is true, for later that selfsame week Fernando would embark on an excursion to magical, faraway lands, one which had been planned into his life-schedule since February.

“Everyone runs through rough patches.”

“This is true. But, I feel adequately equipped to parse them through on my own should they arise, or perhaps with the help of my friends.”

Elizabeth's smile falters now, and Fernando sees the merest hint of desperation in her eyes. She hands over one of the two remaining pamphlets in her hands. “Would you like a prayer book? Really, any donation at all is appreciated.”

“I'm sorry. I don't have my wallet on hand here, and I can't take anything from the till. You understand.” Fernando makes an internal promise to provide a burnt sacrifice of amendment to Gord the Lawgiver as penance for his lie. Though, in Fernando's defense, his wallet was not immediately on hand; it rested in his back room, upon his comfy futon.

Now she hands over the last item in her grasp, a feeble postcard with a generic Christian blessing/greeting writ upon its front. The postage is not even paid. “A postcard, then? Even a dollar in loose change could help me with my program.”

“No, I'm sorry.” Fernando uses the postcard as the capstone of the architectural masterpiece of glossy, pulped wood.

Elizabeth shovels the stack back into her arms, holding it against her chest. “In that case, thank you for your time. May God bless you.” She makes the sign of the cross in midair with her free hand, then sweeps that arm wide. “Jesus will return soon, in His Second Coming! I don't know exactly when it will be, but all of the signs are here!” Her rapture swells, as does the volume of her voice, as she passes her edict down upon Fernando. “I will pray for you, that you will find the path to salvation before it is too late.” Then she turns and leaves.

Fernando stands behind his counter for a moment or two after she departs, then returns to his seat. That went much better than expected. Nicolai didn't even need to make an appearance.

One thing, though: isn't Find the Path a druidic spell? Methinks somebody is flirting a little too closely with paganism!