by Zack Kopp
The Leader
HARVEY BELONGED TO a cult that lived in an abandoned mall out by the river at the edge of town. He kept a beat-up van nearby, and his mission as an acolyte was to go out and get things from the outside world. Whatever the Leader wanted, cokes, snacks, magazines. He’d drive out, bring them back from the 7-11, then they’d go into another strange ritual involving these objects at the Leader’s behest.
That was all the Leader ever wanted. More strange rituals. Because it proved the cult was real and not just something he wanted, and being its Leader was more than just self-proclaimed power. Ha ha, yes. His maniacal laughter.
Harvey saw through his game. It seemed like a pretty good deal, driving out and picking up the bags of groceries in exchange for all the benefits of living in that big abandoned spaceship of a mall rent-free just for acting as the Leader’s right-hand acolyte of sorts. Helping him make up his speeches, the content, the power.
Besides him and the Leader, there was Old Bejeezus, who just sat there scratching and spitting, and Angel Berniece, pregnant with the Leader’s spawn, first in a team of Fighting Acolytes he planned. About once a month, a troupe of teenage urban explorers might tramp through roughly with flashlights, filming something for YouTube, and one of them joined up, this scrawny English kid named Marty who liked to sniff markers.
One day the leader tried instructing Harvey in his ever-changing philosophy. It all had to do with the identity of God, who was, in fact, a Super-Person. “It cannot be something different for everyone, as you propose.”
“I think everything is an expression of God. It would have to be like that, I think.”
“You think this drum is God? Is this red drum your little God?”
God
That Leader! Everything he said was so linear and stupid and sometimes Harvey became infuriated at the stupid-ness of the whole scene. I should be doing more with my life, he thought or felt. “I guess I’m a bad disciple,” he said to the Leader, who was footing the bill for all this.
“No, my son, you’re perfectly polite.”
Harvey met one lady at a bar on the way back from one of his missions. He thought he’d seen her name written down somewhere, or maybe he’d heard of her father, who’d written a book he might have read somewhere. They were connected somehow, ordered more drinks, started talking. Harvey told a few tales, flirting with her, and the woman said she saw him as a man of the world. “I like the way you always seem to roll right into things, just going with the flow the way you do, always so devil-may-care and what have you.”
What a clever con man Harvey was. The woman overlooked his shyness and his stuttered laugh. She even seemed likely to overlook his belonging to the cult. “Don’t get me wrong,” he told her. “I’m grateful for the endless diversion available here in this giant jukebox at the press of a button, but every now and then I get this nagging feeling.”
He told her things were going well, but he was looking for a change. “I’d really like to shake things up is what I mean. You know.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
“I heard about someone that happened to once.”
“Well, I’ve been following the Leader the last few months, living in an abandoned mall out by the river, but I’m still in charge of my mind. Oh yeah, i still know what’s up.” Again he waggled.
The woman’s shoulders stiffened. “What.”
“I recognize it may sound hard to believe,” Harvey said. “It was hard for me too when I first heard about it. An actual cult living in that abandoned mall. We just sit around worshiping trash is all. I don’t really believe any of it, though, no. I’m just sticking around for the drugs and the free rent.”
Harvey
AT THE NEXT evening’s service, the Leader was sitting on comfortable cushions. Everyone else had to sit on the hard floor, which could only be made comfortable by practicing exercises the Leader designed. This was all meant to symbolize the hierarchical nature of spiritual enlightenment. “Everything must have a beginning somewhere, but we worship the fruits. Instead, worship the beginning. Nothing comes out of nowhere!”
After the service, Harvey kept trying to get the Leader to acknowledge him. At one point, he even said, “Hey, man. How you been?” but their eyes didn’t really connect. He was playing a game with his acolytes by deliberately teasing then ignoring them, which is probably what made him the Leader.
Harvey kept reaching into one of the bags of chips he’d brought back, must have swallowed as many as seven or eight handfuls sitting there, crunching them up with his teeth into salty orange pulp and swallowing that, trying not to make too much noise as Marty Markers, the speaker that night, led the guided meditation in his English accent. Sniffing those markers had given him visions. He had a new philosophy to share about something he called Universe Tech.
“Breathe in, breathe out,” said Marty. “Use your instincts!” He was going way too fast, saying crazy things like, “Don’t even listen to me. My voice is just part of the distraction. You’ve got to push through the distraction!” Sitars playing in the background while he rambled in his English accent, like something starring Peter Sellers written by Terry Southern. “Now inhale . . . “
Harvey couldn’t help but laugh. “Go ahead, laugh!” said Marty when he did. “but if you do, I guarantee you aren’t meditating! This part of the room is your subconscious mind!” He pointed at one part of the room, then turned and pointed at another. “This part is the life space, where activity happens, and THIS part,” Marty ran across the room, “is the creative space! Go back in and change it. It’s the same as defragmenting a disc! Use Dreamer!” That was the name of a virtual software system Marty was trying to sell.
Throughout Marty’s appeal, the Leader sat hunched over the controls of his Lightshow, causing wonders and signs and sliding shapes and colors to appear all over the walls and ceiling of the big room they were in with his computer while Marty held forth as that evening’s star acolyte. “Maybe this is all bollocks,” he excused himself near the end of his presentation. “I’m not a magic maker, I’m just Marty! Maybe some of you are having a healing experience, who knows!”
Marty
Marty Markers was making an interesting point about how you could immerse yourself in trauma and rewrite your emotional experience. At least that’s what he seemed to be saying, and from now on, Harvey would think of this room whenever he tried to do anything like that. He was having a better than hopeless experience reliving getting kicked out by that woman and realizing what he’d lacked on that occasion was a combination of poise and confidence and forethought.
“Why do I dress like a rock star?” asked Marty rhetorically. “Because I can. That’s why I’m wearing this whole costume.”
You call that a costume? thought Harvey. Just a blue button-up shirt and some jeans, and some brown leather boots. Magic markers gave you a big head it seemed like. It was question time by then, but he didn’t ask anything, already having laughed out loud at Marty and not wanting to make things any worse. “Enjoyed your speech,” he said, when he ran into him downstairs. At the snack table someone started to talk to him about mushrooms, how the Ayahuasca spirit had directed him to take mushrooms, then the mushrooms had directed him to only smoke pot from now on.
“Well, I used to take a lot of mushrooms,” said Harvey.
The dark eyes glittered at him. “Will you tell me about it?”
“Oh no, it’s been too long. Can’t remember the details.”
“When I took mushrooms,” said the man, who Harvey suddenly realized might have been an undercover inspector of some kind, “It was like witnessing the organic structure of thoughts. Seeing how beliefs form and remembering how I did that as a little kid. Something everyone does!” He started putting on his coat, getting ready to go somewhere.
“Yes, it might be time to get back there,” said Harvey, agreeing with something without quite admitting to anything. “Well, you have a good night.”
“You too, man.”
The stranger said he was going to get his bedroll and would be right back, but never came back that night, unless he came in through a different entrance. Living inside that abandoned mall was like living in a giant spaceship honeycombed with unexplored chambers and vaults. The cult kept growing. Soon there were numerous members who just came and went, and more groceries were needed to sustain the Leader’s mission. Harvey became cautious, making his runs before dawn, always returning down the same curved, unlit road before dawn broke, oblivious families asleep on all sides, embraced by their comforter warmers.
The walk home.
