Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 6:05 A. M. CET} How I Came to Be Cast out of Already Being Cast out of God’s Good Graces

Gentle Tweeter,

I would not be stuck here on the stony Galápagos that is Earth, drinking the warm tortoise urine that is human companionship, were it not for the Halloween caper cutting of a certain three Miss Slutty O’Slutnicks. On the Halloween in question I’d been strangled to death with my blood flushed out for only eight months, tops. I’d been damned, yes, for committing a horrible murder that will be revealed here soon enough. One of the chief torments of Hell is that we all know, secretly, why we deserve to be there. How I came to escape is, as per custom, on All Hallow’s Eve the entire population of Hades returns to Earth to forage for salted nut clusters and Raisinettes from dusk until midnight. I was thus gainfully occupied, scavenging suburban neighborhoods for Twixes and Almond Joys to enrich the treasury of Hell, when a breeze carried my name out of the nighttime distance. A chorus of girlish voices, these wheedling, piping tweenaged voices were chanting my name: “… Madison Spencer… Maddy Spencer, come to us. We command you to come do our bidding.”

To you predead people, like it or not, postalive people are not your bitches. The dead have better things to do than respond to your dumb-ass Ouija board queries concerning lottery numbers and who’s going to marry you. You and your séance games, your table-tipping, ghost-baiting shenanigans. I had, at best, four hours of darkness to gather Kit Kat bars, and here I was getting summoned by a giggling cadre of Miss Coozey Coozenheimers. They sat on my former bed, in the room of my former boarding school in Locarno, Switzerland, and bade in unison, “Appear to us, Madison Spencer. Let’s see if your big ass looks any skinnier dead.” And they laughed into their slender hands.

Shushing each other, the crew of Whorey Vander-whores chanted, “Show us your secret ghost diet.” This playground taunt reduced them to giggles, toppling them sideways, their shoulders bumping one another. They were sitting cross-legged, soiling my bed linens with their shoes, an occasional foot kicking my former headboard, eating popcorn around some candles burning on a plate. “We’ve got potato chips,” they taunted, and shook a bag of the same. Barbecue flavored. “We’ve got onion dip.” One voice intoned, “Here, Madison… Here, piggy, piggy, piggy…” All the voices combined to sing, “Soooooeeeee…!” Loudly were they hog calling into the frigid Halloween night. “Here, piggy, pig, pig, pig, pig…”

They snorted. They grunted. They called out, “Oink, oink, oink.” Chewing noisily, their mouths crammed with high-calorie snacks, they shrieked with laughter.

No, Gentle Tweeter, I did not slaughter them in my rage. At this writing, they continue to be very much alive, albeit humbled. Suffice to say I arrived in a black Lincoln Town Car and answered their hillbilly yodeling. On the Halloween in question I prompted the infamous enemy trio of Miss Skeezy Skeezenheimers to void the meager contents of their anorexic bowels. So shame, shame on me. In my favor, I was a mite anxious and distracted by my impending curfew.

To linger even one clock tick past midnight meant my banishment to tedious Earth, so I remained hypervigilant as the big hand of my wristwatch ascended minute by minute toward the twelve. Once the three Miss Sleazy O’Sleazenicks were well laminated in pelts of their own fragrant upchuck and gummy doo-doo, I hightailed it for my waiting Town Car.

My trusty getaway vehicle remained where I had left it: parked at the frosty curb beside the snowy lawns of the school residence hall. The keys dangled from the ignition. The dashboard clock read eleven thirty-five, a reasonable allowance of time for my return trip to Hell. I climbed behind the steering wheel and fastened my seat belt. Ah, Earth, I thought somewhat indulgently, even nostalgically as I glanced at the old edifice where once I’d crept, nibbling on Fig Newtons and reading The Parasites. Tonight, every window blazed with light, and many were thrown wide-open to the wintery Swiss clime, their drapes flapping in the frigid wind which blew down from the glacial slopes of the tedious Alps. Of those wide-flung windows all now framed the heads of wealthy schoolgirls who leaned out and puked long banners of foody yuck down the building’s redbrick facade. The sight was vastly too pleasing to abandon, but now the dashboard clock gave the time as eleven forty-five.

Bidding it all a fond adieu, I twisted the key in the car’s ignition.

I twisted the key again.

I stepped my sensible Bass Weejun on the gas pedal, giving it a little stomp. The dashboard clock said eleven fifty. I double-checked that the tranny shift lever was set firmly in Park, and tried the key a third time.

Ye gods! And nothing happened. No car-ish sounds reverberated from beneath the vehicle’s hood. To those of you blogosphere busybodies who think you know everything—especially concerning cars—no, I had not neglected to turn out the headlights and thus exhausted the battery. And, double no, the car was not short on dinosaur juice. Desperate, I tried the ignition repeatedly while watching the clock creep steadily to eleven fifty-five. At eleven fifty-six the car phone began to ring—issuing one old-school bah-ring after bah-ring—which I ignored in my frantic efforts to open the glove box, locate the driver’s manual, and troubleshoot my mechanical crisis. The phone was still ringing four minutes later when, almost in tears, I grabbed the receiver from its cradle and answered it with a curt “Alors!”

Through the line a voice said, “‘…Madison was almost weeping in frustration.’” A wheedling male voice said, “‘Her sweet triumph over her bullying schoolmates had turned to bitter panic as she found her getaway vehicle would not start….’”

It was Satan, the Prince of Darkness, no doubt reading from his dreck manuscript, The Madison Spencer Story—a supposed story of my life which he claims he’d penned even before my conception. In those pages, every moment of my past and future is allegedly dictated by him.

“‘…little Madison,’” Satan continued reading, “‘recoiled in shock at the sound of her supreme master’s voice over the Town Car’s telephone—’”

Interrupting, I asked, “Did you monkey with this car?”

“‘…she knew,’” the telephone voice said, “‘that her Great Evil Destiny awaited her on Earth….’”

I shouted, “No fair!”

“‘…Maddy soon would have no choice but to venture forth and trigger the end of days….’”

I shouted, “I’m not triggering anything!” I shouted, “I’m not your Jane Eyre!”

The dashboard clock now read midnight. A bell in the steeple of eine far-off alpine kirche commenced to toll. Before even the sixth knell, the receiver in my hands began to evaporate. The entire Town Car was disappearing around me, but the voice of Satan continued to drone. “‘…Madison Spencer heard the distant church bell, and she realized that she didn’t exist. She’d never existed save as a puppet created to serve the supremely sexy, insanely handsome Devil….’”

As the driver’s seat dissolved, my tubby, chubby-girl bottom was slowly settling to the pavement. The last stroke of midnight echoed into the canyons and ravines of tedious Switzerland. The windows of the school residence hall were closing. The lights winking out. Their curtains drawn. The safety belt, which only a moment earlier had squished my generous tummy, now became as insubstantial as a shred of mist. Nearby, as if dropped in the street, sat the fake Coach purse that a friend, Babette, had left in the car’s backseat.

With the stroke of midnight the Lincoln had dwindled to nothing more than a nebulous fog bank, a small gray cloud in the shape of a Town Car. I was abandoned, sitting in the gutter with Babette’s soiled, faux-leather handbag, alone in the blustery Swiss night.

In place of church bells, the wind carried only a tinny synthesized dance tune. It was the song “Barbie Girl” by the Europop band Aqua. A ring tone. It was a PDA I found buried among the condoms and candy bars in the purse. Listed on the screen was a Missoula, Montana, area code. A text message said, “URGENT: Stow away aboard Darwin Airlines flight #2903 from Lugano to Zurich; then catch Swissair flight #6792 to Heathrow and American Airlines flight #139 to JFK. Get your butt to the Rhinelander hotel. Go now!” The text, it was from a certain postalive, blue-haired punk rocker currently serving hard time in Hell, my friend and mentor Archer.