Core Rulebook.pdf

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emon

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allen

rologue

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right

Why am I here?

I’m standing in an alleyway staring at this door with “Backstage” stenciled across the top, and I ask myself that same

question again. Here I am, Melbogathra, newly emerged into the world and eager to undo Creation, yet the first thing

I felt when I got here was love… unrequited, fucking love.

Becky.

I can’t shake it loose, no matter how many times I stir myself to try. I try spreading my wings, like my primordial

self who once dwarfed mountains, but my proverbial wings slam into my ribs. I’m lodged here good, and it makes my

head hurt. I grab for the door handle and enter backstage, still wondering.

She finishes applying makeup to someone else in our troupe with a flourish of the brush before waving me into

the chair, and I find myself staring at her frail imperfections. I sit wondering what Max saw in her, all the while being

enamored by her every inch. So mortal. I love the wild strands of blond hair escaping her red bandana. I love the fatigue

creases at the corners of her eyes, and I love her pale strawberry lips. I know her because Max knows her. I love her

because Max loves her. Max and I are that close.

Actually Max loved her enough to thread a rope through the ceiling timbers to hang himself when he couldn’t win

her. Max loved Becky and now, by default, so do I. That’s what hits me the hardest.

She catches me staring and dabs my makeup even harder to make me blink and look away. Thanks to my costume’s

high collar, she can’t see the burns on my neck from the rope that all but strangled Max to death, but I still make her

uncomfortable. A small frown makes a furrow between her eyebrows.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she says. I can hear the exasperation in her voice, but I’m too captivated by the bead

of sweat racing down her lily-white neck, down past the lip of her loose tank top. I’m too enthralled by the force of

her stroke across my cheeks. I marvel at being touched.

Nobody’s ever touched me physically before. Not even God.

I reach out to touch her face, and I touch beauty. I don’t remember anything so sublime as the warmth of flesh.

Compared to being trapped in a hellish Abyss where your skin is jagged rage, this moment is… heaven.

Her frown deepens, and she looks away.

“Jesus, Max,” she says, “I don’t have time for this.” She shoots me one last withering look before she grabs her makeup

kit and moves on to the next actor. She never makes eye contact. Part of me wishes she had, so she could see the new

intensity burning in my eyes.

But, no, I just would have frightened her away. I know that. My eyes are still too intense. I don’t have the mortal

skill of subtle duplicity in nuance. I’ve never had a body before.

I follow Becky with my eyes, ignorant of everybody else’s stares. There’s a hush in the dressing room. In theater, we

call that a pregnant pause.

rologue

I catch myself thinking, Just turn around, Becky. Look at me. Believe in me.

Charles, the stage manager, pops his head in the door, distracting everyone from the tense moment.

“Curtain in fifteen.”

There’s a quiet scramble to adjust costumes and apply that last dab of makeup. Becky vanishes behind a pair of

actors getting their costumes fixed.

“Hey, Max,” Charles says, breaking the moment, “Feeling better?”

I say I am. I leave out the bit where I — Max… whatever — gave up all hope, tied a rope around his neck and

made himself a host to a demon.

Yeah, I leave that part out.

“Todd did a great job covering for you,” Charles says.

I smile at Todd who’s sitting with a book in his lap, all dressed up with nowhere to go.

He gives me an alligator’s smile. He wanted my role — a mediocre dream for a mediocre man.

I figure he can probably have my part after tonight.

✥

Everyone’s quiet, from actors to the audience. All the actors are staring at me with wide eyes. The audience seems

to be holding its breath. No one moves.

I’ve just improvised a scene before our typically small house, screwing up everybody’s lifeless flow of blocking and

dialogue. Even the audience can tell this wasn’t in the script, and that’s got them excited. They’re more interested in this

unexpected development than in what I was just saying a minute ago.

Don’t get me wrong, Caryl Churchill is a fine playwright and dramatist. She’s Max’s favorite, in fact, so that makes her

mine as well. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire is also among the finest plays she’s penned, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.

It deals, after a fashion, with Christ’s impending return. I play the wealthy corn merchant, Star, recruiting young men for Christ’s

army, and my line reads, “If you join in the army now, you will be one of the saints. You will rule with Jesus a thousand years.”

Only I didn’t say that line because it’s bullshit. I know it is. I fell for a lie just like that once. So instead I ask, “But what

if we’re all Christ?”

That’s the bitch of it. We “demons” were the first messiahs, the first saviors. We were three-million-plus martyrs trying

to save humanity, but we still failed. Yet one man thought he had a hope of swinging God’s mercy. Why? Did he think

he had a better chance because he was God’s son? We’re all His sons and daughters. If God did listen to Christ’s pleas

over anyone else’s, you know what that makes mortals? Christ’s pets. I don’t buy it. So I ask what if Christ was like every

other mortal, crying on their personal Mount of Olives, trying desperately to attract God to their plight… and what if

Christ’s death on the cross was all just a sham to keep people from discovering that God didn’t care?

So everybody’s looking at me, actors and audience alike, shocked. Half the actors ignore what I said while the other

half tries incorporating my diatribe into the scene. Some of them even start to argue about it in character. For a moment,

they’re all reacting like real people instead of like fictional characters, and it’s all because of me.

That’s when I feel it. A kernel of faith ignited by my statement. Someone wants to believe. Someone out there wants to

cross that threshold between passive spectator and active participant. Someone wants to be involved and believe again.

✥

They kicked me out — big surprise.

I ranted on stage for an hour like DeNiro playing a preacher on smack and salvation, and I don’t think anyone

even blinked. For that one hour, I was God in the round. No exit stage left for me.

That’s the problem. Our director was more a prima donna than the actors, and he couldn’t tolerate another God

in the company. Queen bee syndrome. I’ll have to get used to that.

Well, my exile from stage didn’t last the week. More people heard about my performance and more flocked to see a

mediocre rendition of the Churchill classic, hoping I’d be there. My company wanted me back, but then, others wanted me more.

“We do improvised mummer plays” Jesse of Holy Works told me. Mummer plays were throwbacks to the Middle

Ages when a traveling troupe with no props, costuming and sets, stood around in horseshoe formation. They enacted

morality plays by stepping into the center and performing their lines and actions.

“This way, you can ad-lib to your heart’s content,” Jesse said with a smile.

He knew what I wanted.

Becky followed me home after that last show. She was the spark of faith I’d felt. Hard to believe that behind that

hard exterior was a desperate soul in need of direction. She and I weren’t so different after all.

emon

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allen

I said yes to Holy Works. If Becky could see her way to believe in me, there must be others I can reach.

✥

That guy in the third row. The one wearing a weather-beaten tan trench coat and looking like he can’t remember

the last time he’d eaten or slept. He’s stalking me.

He shows up to all my performances, and I’ve even seen him around my block a couple of times.

There’s a malevolent air about this guy, like perpetual anger. There’s also faith, but he keeps that bottled deep inside.

It’s his dirty secret. His alone, or so he thinks.

So he’s showed up to every performance, no matter where we played, for the last month. He’s about as devoted as Becky

and the five souls who’ve found me since. They shower me with their faith, and I offer them hope in return. It’s that simple.

Oh, I could have bargained with them and forced them into pacts for wealth or power, but I’m not that kind of

demon. At least, not often. I give them what they need, not want they think they want. That’s not my style, thanks to

Max. His thoughts and memories changed everything.

But I’m sure this guy isn’t like the others — he’s stalking me. What really bothers me is he also recognizes some of my

new friends. He watches them almost as intently as he watches me. He’s probably even seen a couple of them float in

and out of my apartment. I’m not so much worried about myself as I am for Becky.

I resolve to confront the guy and have a few choice words. In the end, though, he comes to me.

We’re performing at a community center that evening. It’s a packed house, but then that’s been the case this past

month wherever we go. People want to see the gifted actor who improvises holy people with a controversial flair. I do

them all: Christ, Moses, the Archangel Michael, Saint Peter, Lazarus…

Actually, it’s not the acting they’re here to watch, though they may not know it. They want to believe these saints and prophets

actually existed. For that moment I’m in the mummers’ circle in my black jumpsuit, I reinvigorate their faith. They believe, if only

a little, that Jesus was sweating blood on the Mount of Olives because he knew the truth, and that Michael betrayed Lucifer.

So when we finish the performance, a large crowd of admirers and groupies besets me. I can’t say I mind, except

this time, my stalker shoulders through the crowd and stands right in my face.

He’s a week late in shaving and changing clothes. The smell of old cigarettes and hooch hangs off his trench coat.

The sunglasses hide his bloodshot eyes, but I’m ready for whatever he’s about to do.

Core Rulebook.pdf

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