FALLING

Reverend Phay Dhay was falling. He didn't know where he was or how he had
gotten there: all that he knew was that he was falling. Air whistled
passed his ears. All he could see was whiteness. As his body flailed and
twisted in the air, unable to find anything to hold onto, so his mind
flailed and twisted over the last things he remembered, digging in, pulling
out vivid flashes of memory:

It has been an abnormally hot Fourth of July; the ground seemed to shimmer
and sweat just like the people. Phay had stayed inside all day, relaxed on
his bed, with a cool glass of lemonade at his side and his collection of
Flaming Carrot comics close to hand. He sipped leisurely. He read slowly,
enjoying himself. He could have driven to the big Brushwood celebration,
but he had never been the most social of SubGenii. When the phone rang he
calmly took a small rubber hammer and smashed it into bits. It wasn't a
very big phone and didn't take more than a pop or two. It was probably his
work calling. He'd told them that he was leaving as of July 1st, but they
insisted on putting him on the schedule - as though that had some voodoo
power over him! As though seeing his name written on a Xerox of a calendar
page and thumbtacked over the water cooler would compel him to work!

After the sun set, Phay got up and took a fast, cold shower, put on his
clothes (and a jean jacket, against the mosquitoes) and went for a walk.
He liked to walk.

Phay wandered along the streets, up and down the low hills. He smelled the
flowers and enjoyed the sight of a cat leaping pell-mell after a squirrel
that handily outdistanced it, and taunted the frustrated carnivore from a
tree branch. Phay savored the cooling breeze, and the first twinkle of the
stars in the deepening blue sky. The fact that a large number of the stars
were moving made it only a more charming evening.

The sky was turning from evening blue to night and Phay found himself in
the parking lot overlooking the river. The fireworks were starting. Phay
wasn't particularly interested in the bright sparkles and muffled booms,
though: much more sensual was the sound of the ashes and sparks pattering
into the river, and the smell of the gunpowder, and the sight of the
milling, squirming, sweating human crowd. Look at them! Every sign, every
portent imaginable telling them that their world was on the brink of
collapse and destruction, and still they gathered - not to celebrate their
country, but to snipe at each other, deliberately step on each other's
toes, and trade insults and fists. Phay watched a little boy carefully
kick an even smaller girl in the shins; her fall nearly sent her face-first
into the remains of a broken beer bottle. As she cried over her scraped
arms, the little boy slunk back into the crowd, a leering miniature
gargoyle.

A few people drifted up to Phay, false smiles on their faces, ready to
start ribbing the "kook" about the "saucers" - but they backed off when
they looked Phay in the eye. When they looked, they seemed to see down,
deep down, down into the blackness at the pupil of the eye, then somehow
BEHIND the blackness and there to see a tiny, grinning face. The grinning
face with the pipe sticking out of it. Phay was smiling too, but his smile
wasn't the ravenous smile of Dobbs. It was a contented smile. The smile
of a man who wanted for nothing, because he had everything. It was hard to
talk to a man with that smile, especially when the stars behind the tiny,
bright fireworks were burning such unnatural colors, and occasionally
firing at each other with tiny needles of light.

The fireworks were over, with a spit and a sizzle rather than a grand
climax. Phay started to stroll around the edge of the crowd (he hadn't
gone into the center of it, why spend his last night on earth crushed in
the heat and smell of a herd of humans?) when a slim, tight figure in a
snappy white jumpsuit swayed forth to bar his way. It was Mora Willingham.
Mora had been the subject of a painful, even soul-shattering crush on the
part of Phay Dhay when he had been in the eighth grade. His every thought
had been focused on her hot body and doll-perfect face. He would have done
anything to win one chance to touch her. It was only the intoxication of
finding the Church of the SubGenius that had finally killed that crush,
years later - and when Phay had realized that, he had sent an extra tithe
to Dallas. "Thank "Bob" for freeing my heart of that Pink bitch," he had
thought over and over again. Now here she was, her jumpsuit trimmed in
fashionable fluorescent purple plastic, a drunken twinkle in her eye. Phay
came up to her - and stepped past, and walked on by without even breaking
stride.

Mora waited, frozen in her high-heeled sandals, for him to turn back, to
look over his shoulder, to give her again one of those yearning, starving
glances that had so fed her soul when they were both in Junior Physics
together. He just kept walking.

Mora waited another few moments before trotting after him - a gesture that
would later leave her parents screaming "You followed him! In front of
everyone! What the hell are we going to say to the cops now!" and caught
up with him. As she reached for his shoulder, his hand shot back and
grabbed her wrist. He turned, and she was face-to-face with little Mark
Meisler, who wasn't nearly so little anymore, and not quite so much of a
Mark.

"Hey, saucer man, your aliens send you a flight plan yet?" she teased,
drops of beer gleaming in her hair. They were both on the bridge over the
river, clearly visible to the dispersing crowd. "You going to pogo up to
Heaven's Gate on the pipe of "Bob" or what?" She went to tap the "Bob"
button that was fastened to his jacket, but her hand was still caught in
his. Phay held her hand palm-out towards him, and planted his other thumb
in the hollow of her hand. And turned it. Slowly.

Mora was suddenly alive, twitching, her every nerve focusing on the thumb
pressing into her palm. It rotated one way, then ever so slowly the other
way. Then it pressed into her flesh, deeply, in unmistakable suggestion.
"My house. My parents are away for the night!" Mora gasped, the sweat
springing to her brow. As she turned and towed the Reverend towards her
car - or was it that he let her have just enough slack to carry him along
behind her? - she couldn't see that his smile now owed more than a bit to
the leering, omnivorous grin of the Church figurehead.

***

Phay Dhay was still falling. Still remembering:

There was a piece of furniture in Mora's bedroom that Phay wasn't quite
sure of the name of. Was it a hassock or a footstool? It was low, and had
four legs, and an elaborately embroidered, cushioned top. Phay had never
seen it before, but then again, he'd never seen Mora's bedroom before, or
her house, or even most of her neighborhood. It was quiet, expensive,
exclusive.

Phay had certainly never seen Mora in the position she was in now. Naked,
she was bent over the hassock, or whatever it was, with it supporting most
of her weight just below her shoulder blades. Her head was thrown back.
Her hands gripped her ankles, forcing her smooth body into an arch with her
knees and head just touching the ground. And she was straining every
muscle up, and up, and up, to follow the touch of the Reverend's hand.
He had not laid so much as a palm upon her: just one finger, or at most
two. A single fingertip tracing along her body, up under the curve of her
ear, along the tight flesh of her forearms, in the hollow of her throat.
Her skin gleamed with sweat as she twisted and throbbed with sexual
excitement, and her musk was heavy in the room, heavy enough to taste when
you breathed. When Phay's finger got too dry, he would sink it slowly,
deeply into her panting mouth, feeling the slight roughness of her tongue,
the velvet of her cheek, the too-smooth edges of her perfectly capped
teeth. Then, his finger damp, he would continue tracing anew. She was
whining, whimpering for him to touch her, to lick her, to fuck her, but he
paid no attention to her voice. To him, it was of no more importance than
the barking of a dog.

As Phay looked over the body of Mora Willingham, the body he had dreamed
about for so many years, he was struck by how artificial it seemed, more a
product than a person. The tan was the product of long hours in a SuperSun
booth, the taut flesh a tribute to Nautilus. He half-expected to see a
brand name tattooed on her flank - probably Mattel. As he worked his
finger down along the underside of her breast, making her gasp and shudder,
he felt a hard line under it. It was under the other breast too. He
remembered how Mora had just seemed to bust out all over one summer, after
her family had come back from vacation ...

Breast implants, he thought with a shudder of his own. She couldn't have
been more than fourteen!

He looked at the willing, moist flesh that was almost visibly straining
wider, begging for his touch. Phay felt that he could SEE not just into
Mora's body but into Mora's mind, see the complete, empty Pinkness that
danced mindlessly at the center of her soul. If there had even been a Yeti
spark in this girl's heart, it was dead. Dead and buried, beyond any hope
of redemption.

BOOM, came the sound of the clock downstairs tolling midnight.

BOOM, as Phay's fingers traced a line down Mora's ribs, slicking each one
in passing.

BOOM, as they crossed her waistline and moved towards her belly, feeling
her tremble.

BOOM, as they circled her navel, slipping in and out of the tender dent in
her flesh.

BOOM, as three fingers were touching her now, sliding past her immaculately
shaved lower belly, slick with her own sweat.

BOOM, as she arched her hips, gripping her ankles with all her might,
waiting to feel the pleasure coursing through her veins finally come to the
ultimate peak.

BOOM, as the fingers touched the edge of her bleached-blonde muff. She
could hear them rasping in her hair, every sense was razor sharp.

BOOM, as the fingers settled themselves, circling in place, poised,
waiting, vibrating in and out just a fraction. Her belly fluttered to her
panting.

DOOM, as the fingers sank in, one on each side of her pubic bone and one
right at the top.

DOOM, as Mora writhed, feeling every nerve in her body fire outward from
her throbbing, wet wantonness.

DOOM, as Mora felt the fire in her nerves going cold.

DOOM, as Mora shuddered not with ecstasy but with supreme, ultimate frustration.

Reverend Phay Dhay stood up. He wiped his fingers nonchalantly in Mora's
hair. And he walked to the door, and left. As he walked down the stairs,
he could hear Mora, panting, moaning, caressing herself, scratching at her
flesh, slapping at herself, plunging fingers in and out of her suddenly
cold flesh, squeezing herself until bruises fluttered under her skin like
butterflies. No matter what she did, she was unable to bring the slightest
spark of arousal to her body. She sounded like she could keep it up all
night - and would, until her parents came home. Their first thoughts would
be not to care for their daughter, but to charge "whoever DID this" with
rape. They would leave Mora sobbing in a puddle of her own saliva and
fluids, so they could call their lawyer and shout at him.

Phay Dhay walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside. As he
closed the door behind him, the grandfather clock by the door chimed one
last time - DOOM.

***

It was the duck that finally told Phay where he was. He remembered walking
home, carefully washing his hands, reading a few of his favorite passages
from "The Book Of The SubGenius", and then lying down in bed and composing
himself, his Membership card clenched tightly in one fist. There was a
hot, vibrating tension just behind his heart, thrumming like the memories
of Christmas Eves spent waiting for Santa to come; this tension was a
thousand times stronger.

But the duck had just gone flying past Phay's head. It was flying, not
falling. And it was flying upside-down, its belly in the air.

Phay realized that he wasn't falling, he was flying. Well actually he was
falling, but he was falling UP. He tossed his head, and saw that the
limitless white surface an infinite distance away from him was actually a
white metal surface less than half a mile away - a surface that curved at
the edges. Curved to cover a round section of early-morning sky.

Reverend Phay Dhay was falling into the saucer hovering over his hometown
and slowly moving west. The shock of the tension coming undone was enough
to shake him off his feet - if he'd been standing. His mouth was closed
but his eyes were alight, and the sudden burst of tears was not of pain or
fear, but of joy. "Bob" had come through!

He twisted in midair and turned so that he could see the ground receding
below him. He could see all of the town at once, and seemed to be able to
distinguish tiny details, like the hole punched in the roof of his
apartment where he had been lifted up, the face of his astonished next-door
neighbor peering at him from his kitchen window, the rampaging
death-machines making a hash of Boston on the horizon, even the face of
Mora, staring madly at him from the back of an ambulance.

He saw streams of flame tumbling past his face, and realized it was him
alight. It wasn't fire though but brightness, burning away his old body,
illuminating him, surrounding him with light, taking him apart, bringing
his weirdest dreams to RAMPAGING LIFE!

"HaaaaaAAAAAAAAA!!!" he screamed, a scream of triumph and release and revenge.

Reverend Phay Dhay's body blew apart in a gout of flame far prettier than
any Fourth of July fireworks. And as he stood reincarnated before the
endless rows of seats, each seat with its own attendant Sex Goddess,
Pleasure Amplifier and MWOWM access, and every seat that wasn't empty
occupied by a radiantly happy SubGenius, he raised his hands in victory as
the shouts of greetings rang forth.

Reverend Phay Dhay had reached THE PAY-OFF.

THE END

--
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