Separation

We’re in the middle of bloody Colombia looking for some plants while a war, sorry, anti-drug action, is going on over our heads, and we find this guy huddled in a shack. He’s got a crazy look in his eyes, and a weird set of scars down his arms. I grab at the Elder Sign around my throat and try not to look to closely at the patterns. I look over to the Doc for her cue, but she just shrugs and looks right back at me.

So I turn to the guy and say, “Listen, you just said you weren’t from around here about five zillion times already. Where are you from?”

“I&” He gives me a desperate look, and then he fumbles around in his pockets. I pass him a smoke and a light, but he waves them off. He pulls out a scrap of paper, ripped out of a book. It looks like a line drawing of an old bearded guy with a bolt of lightning in one hand. Suddenly, he blurts, “I came through the TV!”

I glance at the Doc, but she’s busy looking through her kit. I figure she’s on the verge of tranqing the guy. “Look,” I say to him, “Let’s start over again. You came through a TV? A television set? How did you manage that?”

“It’s a long story,” he says.

I glance up at the sky. It looks like it’s going to rain. “I got time. And that means you got time.”

“It’s all his fault,” he says, waving the scrap in my face.

“Whose fault?”

“Ion. The last angel. The angel of electricity.”

“You got to be kidding.” I give him the ‘what the fuck’ look. “You sure some other cult just isn’t messing with your head? There’s all kinds of weird shit just looking for suckers to play with.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve only managed to put a few pieces together.”

I sit down on the woodpile in the corner. “Me and the Doc, we’ve heard and seen a lot. Maybe we can shed a little light on it.”

He smiles in this spooky way. “Why not? What do I have to lose? I’m must be here for a reason.” He looks at each of us. “Do you believe in God?”

I grin at him, and the Doc grins too. “Which one?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I start to say something, but the Doc gives me the look, so I lean back and listen. “My name is Alex Easton. One day, my boss asks me if I want to join this organization. He’s got a gorgeous wife, and, wink-wink nudge-nudge, there’s a hint she’s one of the perks of membership. I mean, my boss is no prize catch. He’s like a bald Richard Simmons. He’s also richer than your average guy who owns a copy place. So, being an idiot, I say yes and they invite me to dinner. I swear, after this dinner, all hell broke loose. I have no idea what they fed me, but I think it was in the soup. It looked like tomato soup, but it had these seeds that looked like little clots of blood. I thought it tasted like puke -- it was that sour. The boss’s wife didn’t touch it, but I had about half just to be polite.”

I look over to the Doc. “What does that sound like to you?”

She shrugs. “Sounds like the hallucinatory fruits used in the initiatory rituals of certain left-hand branches of Tibetan Buddhism. They claim it’s the fruit of the Bodhi tree, under which the Buddha gained enlightenment.” She smirks at our interviewee. “Feel enlightened yet?”

He gives us this stunned look. Like we just blurted out the punchline to his joke. “You call this bullshit enlightenment?” He shakes his head like he can’t believe it. “No. You’re wrong. This is hell. This is the lake of fire.”

I grin. “Figures. You get to hell through a TV. So how does the TV fit in all this?” The Doc gives me the ‘he’s crazy’ look.

“It was Ion, the angel of electricity. He came to my house, dressed like the cable guy. He asked me, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do’. He said, ‘I can fix your TV, but you have to use it wisely. Do you want that?’ Stupidly, without asking any more questions, I said yes. I thought he was giving me a pirate hookup. I started watching some porn, suddenly, everything looked like it was under a red light. I looked at the floor, and there was all this broken glass. I started to sweep it up, but there was just more and more of it&”

He looks like he’s getting into his story. I took the scrap of paper and turned it over. Figures. D&D stats. Must have been from Legends and Lore. I let him continue.

“&so I started thinking to myself, ‘I don’t want to be here!’ All of a sudden, there was a flash. I ran outside to look, and the sky was this electric blue. It flashed again, and I had an urge to hide. I felt ashamed. Then, I ran into the shed.” He stared at his feet. “Then, I did something I shouldn’t. I should have called out to Him, but instead, I thought about that poem: Satan prend pitier ma longue misere.

“And then, everything began to smell of sulfur. The broken glass was all around me again. I got scared, so I closed my eyes. The next thing I know, you were here, shaking me awake. You said we were in Colombia?”

I look at the Doc again. She just shrugs. “Dante,” she says, “This is your department. He’s a man after all.” She walks out of the shack, leaving me with the case.

“No, we’re in Columbia.” I say as I give him my hand, “Congratulations. You’re a member of a mystery. Welcome to the New Inquisition.”