ZA 22: Someone finally gives Virgil a hand

Rubbing Meg's feet in the cookie bunker had its perks. First--and perhaps most importantly--it allowed Virgil to soak the bottom part of Meg in a highly flammable oil that would make her coming encounter with The Cleaning Lady rather...eventful. Second, it gave Virgil a chance to think about Jesus. Jesus, after all, was a foot washer, which--in Virgil's unfortunately less than humble opinion--was perhaps the most powerful lived metaphor in the Bible.

Of course, maybe Jesus just dug on feet, which is all the more unpleasant when you think about how funky feet must have been in the age of homemade leather sandals. But no, Virgil had too much respect for Jesus (the man, not the deified sacrificial cow) to believe that. Instead, Virgil truly believed that Jesus had figured it out--solved the mysteries of existence that, to this day, eluded Virgil. One of the mysteries Jesus had solved was the mystery of purity. Or rather--he realized that all the purity rituals ensconced and entwined in the religion of his day were bullshit (or sacrificial cowshit, if you'd prefer).

When Jesus "changed" the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, he probably did nothing more than fill jugs meant for water with wine--something that would have been perceived as phenomenally blasphemous given the purity laws of the day. When he consorted with lepers, tax collectors and women (of all repute--not just low), he broke generations of ingrained custom. When he washed the feet of beggars, he washed away the sins of centuries of religious discrimination. In The Time Before, the conservative Christians had become the Scribes and Pharisees of old, painting homosexuals, counterculturals, and foreigners with much the same brushes as used by their philosophical forebears centuries earlier. These fools obsessed with purity demonstrated the clear end of institutionalized religion--the zombification of a horde of followers who would eat at themselves and each other through a series of aggressively discriminatory and life defeating purity rituals in the mistaken belief they were saving their souls. J-dog wasn't down with that.

"Lick it," Meg said, cocking her big toe at Virgil's chin.

"Excuse me?" Virgil asked, startled from his reverie.

"What do you mean, 'excuse me?'" Meg snapped. "You are my servant, you do as I command without question. Are the cookies wearing off so soon?"

"No ma'am," Virgil replied, cursing himself for not obeying faster. He bent his head, hoping against hope Cam would choose that moment to appear--the moment before he ran his tongue over the well oiled toe of his foe. But no. His bro was so, so...not there. He licked.

"Now suck it a little," Meg commanded.

Virgil sucked--which, if you haven't guessed--sucked.

"Slurp it..."

Virgil slurped.

"Good, now eat another cookie."

Virgil gulped. If he did as Meg ordered, he would be back under her spell and poor Cyrus (or was it Billy Ray? Virgil never could tell the difference) would have died in vain. Come on, Cam. Pull out of whatever hussy you're inside of and get your zombie-scorching ass down here. A bang at the door startled Virgil, leading him to drop the cookie he'd just grabbed and dive for cover behind the kitchen island. Cam had come!

"What odd behavior, child," Meg said, not the least bit perturbed by the knocking. "Tsk. Tsk. Very odd indeed." She then went to open the door.

"Nowhere near as odd as what's about to happen to you, cookie witch!" Virgil shouted from behind the island as Meg turned the handle.

The door opened.

Virgil peeked out. No Cam. Instead, the blubbulous mass of Selig Retsuc slithered into the room, bearing with him his trademark stink of fermented diapers. Strangely, he walked with one arm behind his back, a pompous pseudo-Napoleonic pose the likes of which Virgil would not have pictured on the putrid villain.

Selig raised an eyebrow at Virgil who now wanted desperately to rewind the clock to the part where he was sucking on Meg's big toe (or preferably just after, or maybe well before, or really any time in the 32 years of Virgil's life not including this moment).

Meg clucked her tongue. "I had him bound, Master. Most assuredly. But somehow he got free. I suspect Glinda Goodwitch or perhaps the cursed monkey he killed had something to do with it."

"You allowed him to perform a killing?" Selig asked, voice dripping with disdainy slime.

"Of course. How better to prove my ownership of his soul? The boy recoils at flyswatting and even has moral qualms about bug spray."

"Virgil has moral qualms about everything. For chrissake, the guy's a walking qualm. All you had to do was make him lick your big toe or something. But letting him kill the monkey? No doubt Lady M made a proper Sacrifice of the whole affair and liberated the boy's soul in the process. Indeed, she might have even attached a rider spell. A short while ago, this fool," at which point Selig gestured to his zombie minions out of which rabble emerged a zombie Cam, drooling and clawing at a bacon-sized patch of bubbling flesh on his shoulder, "came popping out of a bar in town like a prairie dog on high alert. No doubt he was in the midst of being summoned."

During this speech, Virgil watched Meg's face go from looking fucked to shamed to triumphant. Virgil, on the other hand, mostly just stuck with fucked.

"Well, isn't that a lovely turn of events," Meg smarmed. "Would anyone like a cookie?"

"Put your shoes on, woman," Selig snapped and blobbed over to stand before Virgil, naught but a frail kitchen island between them.

"This is actually perfect," Selig said, beginning to sound unattractively perky--which is not to say Selig ever sounded attractively anything, just that "perky" and "Selig" were about as proper a match as ice cream and diarrhea flavor. "It's perfect because we can leave Virgil with his free will while I tell him of my master plan. Then we can force feed him a plateful of Slavecaroons and make him act out the very vilest of my instructions." Selig cocked his head back to laugh maniacally when one of the zombie minions cleared his throat.

"Umm, sir, pardon a moment," the zombie said. Selig, Meg and Virgil all swiveled to stare gape-mouthed at the zombie. It had bits of flesh dangling from its neck like a turkey gizzard. One of its ears had long ago been chewed most of the way off, and a couple of its ribs were poking out of its tattered rag clothing. This was not the kind of being that should be expected to use the word "pardon," let alone use it in a sentence. All zombies were supposed to say was "rrrggh" and "ggggahhh" and "republican."

The room hushed as the zombie cleared his half-eaten throat. "So sorry to interrupt, sir, but this just smacks of cliche--you know, with the whole speech and the cocked head and the laughter and whatnot."

"H...h...how did you speak...?" Selig stuttered (an unusual thing for the normally eloquent zombie overpope).

"Not sure, just suddenly felt compelled to, sir. Perhaps a gust of animating wind has been blown through my windpipes by some Divine Author displeased with the progress of events."

"But... but..." Selig said. "But I was being ironic. You know, I was like consciously milking the whole trope of the bad guy master speech for effect. Sort of a postmodern commentary on bad guy speeches. I meant for there to be some humor to the whole situation."

"Sure, but isn't that just playing on another trope? I mean, begging your pardon again Mr. Overpope, but the postmodernists have been deconstructing classical motifs for some years now, such that it's now become a cliche again to use such a cliche in conscious ironic mockery-slash-celebration of said cliche. I mean the whole bad guy speech was new once, but then it got old, and then it got new again with the irony thing, but now we're back to old, arent we? Unless of course you were expressing yourself more out of true sincerity, in which case--although this is dicey--we'd be back to the really, really old, which at one time was so original and sincere it had no choice but to become a cliche, and in so doing maybe the old-new-old cycle can be renewed once more."

"Let me just be clear," Selig clarified. "If I say the words while trying to be edgy about trying to be sincere about trying to be diabolical, it's a no go because what was once old that became new has become old again, but if I say the same exact words whilst trying to be sincere about not trying to be edgy about trying to be diabolical, then that's okay because I'll be restoring that which is lost thus making that which was new and then old and then new again and then old again, new again? And, for the record, how are you not an already worn out postmodern cliche yourself--with your unexpected talking and your confusing old-new business and your neck gizzard? Sorry, that wasn't fair. Your neck gizzard was just impossible not to stare at and I just had to mention it. I mean, Jesus, the way it kind of dangles there. Kind of flabby but also bloody. A little fleshy, a little meaty. What is that anyway? Neck? Chin? Is it like a muscle that's popped out. Whatever that shit is it's very unappealing. I think you should probably have something done with it. I'm just saying, is all."

The zombie looked puzzled. Selig had a way of clarifying things all the way back to their primal muck stage.

With a sigh, Selig reached over and yanked the animated zombie's head off and tossed it to the others for a snack. He then turned back to Virgil.

"Let's just make this quick. Here's the deal. I've just left Lucy Tisdale, the only hope for humanity, buried in a cage under a rising mountain of zombies. Basically, they've been surrounding and climbing on top of each other since I left, trapping her with the weight and stink of their thousands of bodies, sort of a living pyramid thing, such that if she does manage to shriek or kill the zombies or set them on fire or whatever her Ancients allow, they'll just go from barely-alive and wriggling weight above her to pure dead weight all around her. Mostly, I suspect, she'll be able to fashion a crude chamber at the very base of the pile. This will be no good to her, however, because she will be all alone in the bottom of a zombie pyramid, which--if you hadn't guessed--is not particularly conducive to sanity. Now-- assuming she does survive her initial burial and finds a way to begin digging out without going completely bonkers, new zombies from all around are on their way to continue adding to the pile. By morning, we should have something to rival the Pyramids of Giza. By the following evening, the smoking skyscrapers of Denver will be dwarved and then--assuming I can get a good group deal bringing in zombies from Canada and Mexico--not even the finest Malaysian or Dubaian skyscrapers will compare."

"Ahem," came a noise from the midst of the snacking zombies. It was the head, mostly debrained at this point. "Sir, honestly, wasn't there an easier way to just kill Lucy Tisdale and get it over with. I mean, are you being ironic again, leaving the hero alive but imperiled? I mean there's only so far irony or even sincerity can carry you before it just seems sloppy or perhaps overly convenient. After all, unlike her mother, Lucy's not immortal or anything, and given that you got close enough to her to block the voices of the ancients, you could have just killed her."

Selig's flabby upper lip began to quiver and he blinked a couple of times, but to his credit he didn't address the head.

"I'm just saying, is all," the head continued as Zombie Cam slurped its left eyeball out of the socket.

Selig took a calming breath and then continued.

"Lady M, meanwhile, is being seduced by a rather unique minion of mine. He's a trained chiropractor, acupressurist, and bodyworker with your Keanu-good looks, Virgil, as well as your perfect ass. This gentleman also has seven tattoos, eight piercings and one or two body modifications you can't see when he's wearing all his clothes. He's also into monkeys and bondage and doesn't have a nasal voice or mantis arms. In other words, Lady M should be rather tied up for the foreseeable future."

The head let out one last groan before the rest of its jaw was crunched to bone meal by Zombie Cam.

"Now for my plan. And while you may not believe it, by the end of this telling, Virgil, you may in fact not need any Slavecaroons to join my cause. You might just choose to do so willingly. You see, I did not set out to fill the world with zombies. They're merely a byproduct, or rather--a chrysallis stage. The virus I've infected humanity with is designed not to end evolution, but rather to kick-start it. Over the next few weeks, the zombieism will begin to fade as the poor, wretched creatures either die off--a fate that awaits most of them--or transform into superior beings--which, in point of fact will probably happen to your old friend Cam. Some will be shape shifters, freely transmogrifying from human to beast and back again. Others will be wizards--like Lady M--open at last to the powerful currents of magic that have so long been dormant in the world. Others will be epic heroes possessed of extraodinary strength and courage. Still others will be, well, functional morons, but you always need a proletariat, right? And finally, there will be some who will take forms you and I could barely imagine--so strange and different as to be entirely inhuman. This, my dear amoral Virgil, as you can surely begin to see, shall be a profound accomplishment of aesthetics. I will have purified humanity and made them beautiful once more (while also dramatically reducing crowding and lessening the burden on overstressed ecosystems, I might add). So, old friend...will you join me?"

With that, Selig finally revealed the arm that he had been holding behind his back the entire time, only instead of a slimy, sausage fingered, puffy pink skinned hand, he extended a glossy, green-and-gold-scaled dragon's claw.