Objects of Worship (18 page)

Judith had hemmed and hawed, knowing that there was
no swaying her beloved Basil when he got going on one of
his rants. Really, there wasn’t a political maggot in his body.
He was just cheap and lazy, but he always justified it with
some highfalutin reason. But now he was blind, because
he hadn’t listened to her. Although she loved him dearly,
she couldn’t resist poking fun at him, letting him bang into
walls, moving furniture so he’d stumble into it.

“You think you’re so smart! Did you ever stop to think
that if I’d gone to the eye doctor last week, that maybe the
pigeon would have eaten my new left eye along with my old
right eye, and I would’ve paid for a new eye that lasted only
a week? And maybe then we wouldn’t have enough money
left for that intestine shawl you’ve been ogling at the mall.
Did you think of that?”

Judith had to admit that Basil had a point there. Sure, he
was cheap and lazy, but he wasn’t stupid. And she did want
that shawl. She hadn’t bought it for herself yet, because she
suspected that it was going to be Basil’s gift to her for their
wedding anniversary. That was in only three weeks, and
she still had so much planning to do for the party.

Judith didn’t like to drive, so she asked their neighbour
George if he’d take her and Basil to the optometrist. Strictly
speaking, Judith didn’t really need to go, but she knew that
choosing the right eyes required a woman’s touch. At least
in Basil’s case. George and Raymond next door certainly
did fine without a woman.

George agreed to take them, and the very next day he
drove the four of them to the mall, where the optometrist
kept his office. Raymond came along, too. “George and I
need to look for some new curtains. We’re tired of our
Caucasians. It’s such a bland colour, don’t you think?
Besides, it’s been ages since we bought new ones. The hides
are starting to show some wear. We were thinking some
shade of Negro. But not too dark. Some kind of creamy
chocolate mix. It’s a bit more expensive, but it’ll look nice.
And it won’t stain as easily.”

Judith enthusiastically agreed with Raymond, but
she was just being neighbourly. She was a traditionalist,
always had been. Caucasian curtains were right and proper.
Though Asians looked good in a kitchen. She herself had
Thai curtains in her kitchen. A hint of daring was still
acceptable.

At the mall, the two couples went their separate ways,
arranging to meet in one hour at the food court, next
to the Deep Fried Brain Nugget Hut. Judith liked their
neighbours, but she was glad they weren’t tagging along to
the optometrist. She didn’t want anyone else getting in the
way of her choosing exactly the right eyes for George.

Doctor Browning showed them (well, he showed her;
Basil still couldn’t see anything) dozens of eyes in their
clear-liquid preserving jars, but Judith wasn’t pleased by
any of them. Especially with their anniversary coming, she
wanted Basil to look really sharp.

And then she spotted a pair in a locked case behind
the counter. She’d never seen eyes like those before. The
irises were absolute black — or was that just a trick of the
shadows?

“Can I see those?” she asked Doctor Browning.
“Well, hmm, they’re very expensive. They’re one of a kind, really. They were taken from a particularly wily and
ferocious feral fleshie.” Browning giggled at his alliteration.
“Apparently he evaded capture for years.” Then the
optometrist quoted the price.

Judith gasped, and Basil finally chimed in. “Are you
out of your mind, Judith? See, it’s like I told you. Thieves.
Shameless profiteers.”

“I want to see them,” Judith said, shushing Basil.

They were exquisite. Flawlessly black irises. And not the
slightest hint of rot. Basil would look so dashing in these.
Then she thought about that intestine shawl. Oh well,
maybe next year.

“We’ll take them,” Judith said, covering Basil’s mouth
with her hand.

The deal had been that Yamesh-Lot would make Giovanni
immortal. In return, Giovanni would harvest the essence
of those on whom he inflicted the dark lord’s nightmares.
Thus, his lord Yamesh-Lot fed and Giovanni stayed in
the dark god’s good graces. Giovanni used his long life
to continually increase his knowledge of the mystic arts.
For centuries, it had been a perfect arrangement. Sure,
occasionally some do-gooders would try to get in Giovanni’s
way, but, even at their worst, they’d been nothing more
than petty annoyances.

His eyes, once an unremarkable brown, now reflected
the dark power of the lord of nightmares: they became deep
black pools. With those dark eyes, he preyed on humanity
for centuries, enjoying every ounce of the terror he sowed.

And then the meteors came.

For one whole week the meteors rained down on the
Earth, destroying cities, forests, everything. Normally,
Giovanni would have revelled in the ensuing chaos. But
there was a distressing feeling of otherness about the
meteors. For one thing, from day one of the meteor shower,
communication with Yamesh-Lot became increasingly
difficult. The meteors were generating some kind of
interference or static. By the end of the seventh day, when
the last meteors hit the Earth, Giovanni’s connection to
Yamesh-Lot had been completely severed.

He could still inflict nightmares and other curses on
pitiful mortal fools — Giovanni was, after all, a master of
black magic — but the dark lord was not there to accept the
sorcerer’s sacrifices.

And something else happened on the seventh day. The
dead rose.

At first Giovanni wondered why only human corpses were
zombified. And then he noticed the occasional reanimated
dog or cat. In time, he figured out that the meteors must
have emitted some kind of radiation that interacted with
embalming fluid, as unlikely as that sounded. He knew
that there must be more to it, but his spells failed to solve
the mystery.

Magic became increasingly taxing for Giovanni; before
the time of the zombies he could weave his spells with
almost as little effort as it took to breathe. But now . . . He
resented how weak he grew when practicing the dark arts.

For weeks the reanimated human corpses ravaged the
planet, popping open human skulls and feeding on the
brains inside. They never ate the brains of other animals.

After a while, though, the undead lost some of their
savage fury, and they began rounding up the surviving
humans. Then they farmed them. At first, just for food, but
eventually the zombies found other uses for the remains of
human bodies.

Giovanni’s earthbound magics were useless against the
undead. They possessed some kind of immunity that he
could not overcome. Besides, the centuries-old sorcerer felt
his powers waning. Something about the extraterrestrial
nature of the meteors and the zombies they created seemed
to disrupt the energy flux from which he drew his powers.
The undead were invaders, and they had conquered.

So he hid. His magics were still strong enough for that.
He hid for so many centuries — scavenging for food, always
careful to steer clear of the invaders’ hunting parties — that
he lost track of time entirely.

And he grew lonely. For so long he had preyed on
humanity in the name of his dark lord. In this new world
of zombies, not only was it unwise to bring attention to
himself, but it was very rare that he would come across a
human in the wild. Almost all humans were farm animals.
He had no-one to prey upon. And he yearned for the dark
embrace of his god. It was inconceivable to Giovanni that
the invaders had fully extinguished the eternal darkness of
Yamesh-Lot; but no spell and no ritual was ever successful
in re-establishing Giovanni’s link to the dark lord of
nightmares.

And so Giovanni grew insane, forgetting his name, his
identity, forgetting even Yamesh-Lot. The ageless sorcerer
was reduced to no more than a scavenger who cared only
about survival.

His
spells
of
protection
eventually
petered
out.
Inevitably, undead hunters found and captured him.

Giovanni’s brain was removed from his skull and mashed
into puree along with many other brains. His various body
parts were recycled into the zombie economy.

And his eyes, his perfectly black eyes, were harvested
and put on sale.

For the next few days, Basil complained about the
exorbitant price they’d paid for his new eyes, but Judith
could tell he was doing it out of habit. Her husband had
always been a complainer. After so many years of marriage,
though, she could distinguish between serious grievances
and mere blathering. There was also a bit of ego-saving in
there; Basil never liked being the one who was wrong. Not
that he ever got mad or anything; underneath all that gruff
complaining, Basil hid a tender mess of rotting flesh. He
was a such a sweetie, really.

She caught him admiring himself in the mirror; he really
did like his snazzy new eyes. But she didn’t tease him; it
would only take longer for him to get over his complaining
stage.

And so it took less than a week for him to say, “You know,
these eyes don’t look half bad. Plus, they feel robust, like
they’re gonna last longer.” Judith smiled, and Basil kissed
her on the cheek. He kept his mouth open just enough so
that his maggots tickled her cheek. He knew how she liked
that.

Judith loved how those new eyes made him look so
suave and sexy. She gasped, “Oh, Basil . . .”

And they fell into each other arms. He carried her into
the living room and gently laid her down on the plush
tongue rug he’d bought her for their last anniversary.

It had been decades — at least! — since Basil had made
love to her.

“Oh, Basil . . . Yes . . . Yes . . .”

Slowly, Giovanni regained consciousness. At first, he
numbly watched the parade of images that presented itself
before his eyes. A zombie woman wearing garish and filthy
rags; the suburban house decorated with human body
parts; the refrigerator filled with processed brain products;
brains being cooked on the barbecue in the backyard;
zombies driving automobiles or walking the streets in the
moonlight; and lots and lots of television: strange sports he
could not fathom, zombie/human pornography, teleplays
that defied comprehension.

But, gradually, his frustration at not being able to act
on those images gnawed at him, and Giovanni remembered
who he was. What he was.

A scourge upon the vermin of humanity. A fearsome
sorcerer. A high priest of Yamesh-Lot.

He prayed to his dark lord, but the god remained silent.
And yet . . . for the first time in centuries, Giovanni sensed
Yamesh-Lot just beyond his reach. His god was still alive!
How could the sorcerer-priest re-establish his connection
to the lord of nightmares?

One day, while his host body stood in front of a mirror
rubbing a brownish sludge onto the decaying flesh of its
face, Giovanni recognized his own black eyes — a legacy of
his devotion to his god — staring back at him.

For a second, Giovanni feared he’d become a zombie,
but then he realized this zombie’s body was entirely the
wrong shape — taller and narrower than he had been. This
monster was . . .
wearing
Giovanni’s eyes. The way the
creature admired them in the mirror, Giovanni suspected
he’d only recently acquired them.

But just as Giovanni began to curse at the ignominious
humiliation of being reduced to the state of eyewear for a
rotting monstrosity, the sorcerer felt a twinkle of energy.
Somehow, being inside this creature’s body enabled him to
once again tap into the dark forces that fuelled his sorcery.

Giovanni knew then that he could take control of this
ridiculous creature’s body. He would then perform the
rituals that would return Yamesh-Lot to the mortal world.
For his dark lord, he would rid the Earth of this unwanted
pestilence. Humanity was Yamesh-Lot’s to prey upon.
Giovanni had no doubts that the reign of these repulsive
usurpers was to finally come to an end and that he would
be the agent of their downfall.

Their anniversary party was only a week away, and Judith
was getting worried about Basil. Since getting those new
eyes, Basil had changed. At first, it was all for the better — he
was more cheerful and he paid better attention to her than
he had in centuries — but then he started acting strangely.

He spent hours staring at himself in the mirror,
gesticulating oddly, ignoring her when she asked him what
he was doing. He now rarely spoke to her, and, when he did,
he was abrupt with her and sounded confused.

She was pondering all of that while stirring the brain
stew. Her own secret recipe: she minced two teaspoons of
sun-dried testes and mixed it with half a cup of crumbled
skin flakes and half a cup of grated bone, with sprinkles of
liver powder and finely chopped earlobes, then gradually
stirred the blend into the soup. She topped it all off with a
tablespoon of fresh marrow juice. The trick was not to simply
dump all the spices in at once. Basil loved this dish so much.
Maybe having it for dinner would snap him out of his bizarre
mood.

This fool is so easy to control
, thought Giovanni. This Basil, as
he called himself, had no willpower to speak of. The hardest
thing was learning to control the pain. Every part of this
creature’s body sent continual streams of pain into their
shared brain. Moving was even worse agony. It threatened
to shatter his concentration, but Giovanni’s mystic training
helped him overcome this obstacle.

Giovanni was learning, also, to access the monster’s
memories. This upcoming wedding anniversary celebration
that the creature’s wife Judith was always going on about
would be a perfect occasion to perform the rituals that
would — he hoped — reconnect Yamesh-Lot to this world.

He would have to learn to be more patient with the
decaying, stupid hag. He could use her help. He would
have to fool her into helping him with the necessary
preparations.