Mixcoatl’s sisters were the stars in the sky and he brought one to Earth to be his wife. Their children were the human race.
As much as Mixcoatl’s wife loved him, she missed her sisters and longed to visit them in the sky. Mixcoatl went to Apsu, the lord of the birds, to ask him to fly his wife back to heaven. When Mixcoatl arrived, however, Apsu wasn’t there. His wife, Tiamut, told Mixcoatl that Apsu had been murdered by his Shadow Brother, Marduk. Apsu was a friend and Mixcoatl grew very angry at this news. He climbed to the top of the tallest mountain in the world and cut out Marduk’s heart with an obsidian knife, throwing the Shadow Brother’s body into a deep gorge that led to the center of the world.
When Mixcoatl went home, he told his wife what he had done. She was afraid. “Our mother, Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, is dead. Your Shadow Brother, Huitzilopochtli, burst from her breast in battle armor and a bone sword.”
Mixcoatl told his wife, “I have no brother, shadow or otherwise.”
His wife said, “Before she died, our mother warned that at some moment in our life, all men and women create their shadow form, born from their desire and rage. These shadow forms do not manifest themselves in flesh unless called into being by an act of violence or madness, a blow at creation itself. When you rashly killed Marduk, you bought forth your Shadow Brother and released pure chaos into the world. Huitzilopochtli is you reborn as a soulless void. If you do not destroy him, he will kill you and take your place.”
Mixcoatl put on his armor, called his sons to his side and took them to war. For years they roamed the earth looking for Huitzilopochtli, but they didn’t find him. At night Mixcoatl had terrible dreams and awoke in the morning pale and weak. Finally, Mixcoatl grew sick and his army rested by the banks of the frozen sea at the bottom of the world.
One night, Mixcoatl awoke from fevered dreams to find Huitzilopochtli sitting on his chest. Mixcoatl was too weak to resist and Huitzilopochtli cut out his heart saying, “I’ve eaten you piece by piece in your dreams, brother, but don’t hate me. I’m not your enemy. I have no choice in killing you and if I smile as I do it, remember it’s only the joy a humble servant feels when he restores order to a disordered house, because, of course, there can’t be two of us walking the Earth.”
Huitzilopochtli took his brother’s place on the throne of the world. His flightiness and endless cruelties inspired many beings to unwittingly turn their shadows into flesh through acts of treachery or revenge. The different Shadow Brothers—kings and farmers, birds, fish and horses—ruled the Earth. This was the era of blood and massacres that caused the world to be divided into Spheres, because no matter how the Shadow Brothers tried to reason together, they couldn’t. They were soulless voids, and even the most cordial exchanges usually ended in murder.
Thousands of years passed before the living things of the Earth rose up and killed all the Shadow Brothers in power. To make sure that shadow forms never ruled again, each realm of life appointed auditors to keep the world in balance. These celestial officers had the power of life and death and could roam all the Spheres at will. They had different names among the different animal tribes—such as Soul Weavers, Holy Clerks, Black Scribes, and others. These beings didn’t destroy the Shadow Brothers, but they kept their influence in check, even when they sometimes had to collaborate with individual Shadow Brothers to set the world right. The loyalties of these auditors weren’t to animal, plant or man, but to the universe. And like the gods themselves, their plans were their own, subtle and unknowable.
They were thought to be beyond the influence of any god or beast in the universe, and this was true. What no one considered were things outside the universe.
EIGHT
Slow Children
“Did you ever feel like you were a million miles from where you’d thought you’d be when you grew up? Like you thought you were heading for a weekend in Vegas, but ended up in Mongolia instead?”
Lulu was lying across the three wooden garage sale chairs they kept up front for customers. Her arm hung down and a lit American Spirit between her fingers pointed at the floor illuminating the scars on her arm with a faint red light.
“Sometimes,” said Spyder. “But then I remember the scariest truth about being a grown up: that no one really knows anything. Maybe where most people want to be is as wrong as where they end up.”
“We’ve been taking our happy pills, I see,” said Lulu. “Know what we never, ever talked about: What did you really want to be when we was kids?”
Spyder stood up and stretched, saying, “That’s easy. A private detective. You know, a Sam Spade thing. The whole world’d be in black and white and the streets would be slick with rain and lit like a film noir set.”
“Sam Spade was always lonely and miserable, least in the movies.”
“But at least he knew something. That makes him the exception.”
“When I was a girl, I wanted to be Mary Magdalene,” said Lulu. “The most hated woman in the world, but Jesus saw her true heart and loved her for it. I wanted that so much. To be hated by the riff-raff, but loved by that one perfect, bright-eyed soul who knew me from the inside out. I used to jerk off to the picture of Jesus over my bed. He looked just like Jim Morrison before the alcohol bloat.” Lulu took a drag off her cigarette. Spyder still wasn’t sure how she was able to smoke with no lips. “When I realized I liked girls more, I jerked off imagining Jesus fucking Mary Magdalene. I was Jesus, of course. I wonder, does that make me narcissistic?”
“No, you’re more like Mother Teresa.”
“I’d have fucked Mother Teresa.”
“You’d have fucked Nancy Reagan if she’d of held still.”
“If she was in that pink Jackie O outfit she wore to Ronnie’s second inauguration, hell yes. I’d’ve bent her over the big desk in the Oval Office and slipped her the high hard one next to the Bible Ronnie had Oliver North give the Iranians. Hell, I’d have bent Ollie over, too. Gotta love a man in a uniform.”
“You’re a damned pervert, Lulu.”
“What’s Dennis Hopper say in Blue Velvet? ‘Don’t toast to my health, toast to my fuck.’”
“I wouldn’t be Dennis Hopper,” said Spyder. “I’d be Orson Welles. He can act, write, direct, he married Rita Hayworth and you know, deep in his heart, he’s a stone killer.”
“That arty fuck never has happy endings. He’s always dead or betrayed.”
“Yeah, but we all end up there if we live long enough. I love the guy’s certainty. He was willing to ruin himself for whatever he was doing. That’s the definition of balls.” Spyder checked the door again to make sure it was locked, then turned on the light in the studio. Lulu shielded her paper eyes and softly said, “Shit.”
“So, what happens now?” asked Spyder. “Do we open up tomorrow like nothing’s different?”
“Things are only different if you act like they’re dif-ferent.”
“Bullshit. Everything’s different.”
“I’ve been exactly what I am for years and it didn’t affect things. Why should that change now?”
“That was before,” Spyder said, groping for words. “I was going to say the world has changed, but it hasn’t. I’m changed. And I fucking hate it. I take back what I said about Sam Spade and knowing things. I enjoyed my ignorance. Give me three wishes and that’s what I’d ask for first.”