Forgetting Ned

“Right this way, Ned.” The priest led the wealthy senator through the pews of the cathedral and back to the vestry where he had his desk.

“Thanks Simon,” Ned and Simon sat on opposite sides of the Priest’s desk. “I don’t have much time, so let’s just get down to it. I can make about a five thousand dollar donation this year, but don’t use it for any of that bullshit you usually spend it on. I want this place prettied up, it’s starting to look like a dump and my wealthy donors don’t want to come here anymore.”

“Very well, Ned. Do you have specific suggestions of what we could beautify?” Simon picked up a pen and began writing notes.

“Well for starters…” Ned sniffed the air. “What the fuck is that god awful smell?”

Simon sniffed the air, “Oh, that. We have a dedicated space downstairs for temporarily sheltering the homeless, especially for snowy nights like tonight. We have one man who is particularly pungent.”

“Well get him out of here.” Ned said.

“Sir, there’s essentially a blizzard outside. We can’t just throw him in the street. He’ll die.” Simon explained.

“What the fuck do I care?” Ned leaned back to speak to his driver/security man. “Go downstairs and kick that smelly fuck out of here. Just try not to touch him. I don’t want you stinking up my car on the way home.” Ned turned back to Simon as his driver left the room. “Now, where were we?”

Ned began to list off improvements that he’d like to see made done to the church. Simon was writing them diligently as he listened to the ruckus at the front door as the driver threw the homeless man from the building. Simon cringed as he heard the unmistakable smacking sounds of a human body being punched followed by soft moans.

“Are you getting all this?” Ned said, oblivious to the noise at the entryway.

“Yes…yes of course.” Simon said.

After Ned had finished his list of improvements, he stood up. “All right, I’m out of here. See you on Sunday, Simon. Oh, and do whatever you need to do to replace that homeless shelter bullshit. This is a church, not a fucking commune.” With that, Ned left.

Ned’s mansion was quite a ways away from the small town that the church stood in. The drive took his car through a deeply wooded area. As Ned drank whiskey and watched the trees fly by, the snow was falling faster. “Pick up the pace, would you?” He told his driver. “I’d like to get home before this snow gets too bad and you get us both killed.”

“Yes Si…” the driver began to say as the car slammed into an unseen something in the road. Ned, not buckled in the back seat, flew past the front seats, slammed through the windshield, and rolled limply on the snow covered road five times before finally coming to a stop with his face scraping through the gravel at the side of the road. He fell unconscious.

“Wake up, fool. My Master isn’t finished with you,” said a man walking casually out from where he had been wedged into the front of the car.

Ned woke with a start. “Who the hell are you?! What the hell are you?!”

“Oh right, you didn’t see me. I’m the man you had unceremoniously thrown from the church earlier. Your driver would have recognized me, but well…” he trailed off as he looked at the pool of blood welling up on the driver’s side of the car. “Like I said before. My Master isn’t done with you yet. Now get up we need to wa…”

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Ned shot the homeless man in the face three times with his carefully concealed handgun. “Take that you son of a bitch!” Ned yelled as he waited for the body to slump over on its own. Only it didn’t.

Despite being a misshapen lump of gristle, bone, and blood, the body remained standing, and after a moment, began walking toward Ned again.

He shot the corpse a few more times, this time in the chest, but it didn’t stop the walking lump of flesh.

The corpse pointed to the gun in Ned’s hand, and it began to glow red hot in an instant. Ned could feel his palms blister as the gun quickly burned through his skin and muscle. “AAAAAAGH!” He dropped the gun.

The corpse reached down and grabbed Ned by the wrist in an unbreakable grip. It pulled him to his feet and pushed him in the direction of the woods beyond the side of the road. Ned nearly vomited from hearing the rasping of the corpse’s “breathing.” It grew to a gurgling panting noise as they trudged through the knee deep snow in the forest. In the meantime, the sky had grown dark, and Ned struggled to see the trees before he nearly walked straight into them. Eventually, they made their way into an opening. Ned guessed that it was a clearing, at least there were no trees in front of him that he could feel or see.

The corpse pushed him forward into the open space. They climbed at a slight angle as though the entire area was a small hill. Eventually, they reached what seemed to be the top of the hill, and the corpse grabbed Ned by the back of his tattered suit coat. Ned stopped and felt the grip on his coat release. Instantly, Ned felt the snow around his feet freeze to solid ice. He attempted pulling his feet out from the ice, but it was no use. He was stuck there.

Ned heard the corpse tumble to the ground, and he looked behind himself to see that the body looked more than dead. Ned tried to pull his feet away from the ice again but he was stuck fast. “Fuck!” he screamed into the snow flurried void.

Ned heard a puckered sucking sound above him like the opposite of a balloon letting out air. Then, the snow above him parted as something opened up in the air above his head. Heat radiated from the round aperture, and Ned felt the strange sensation that accompanies the attack of internal organs. He felt oddly bombarded and could see little flashes of light that seemed to come from inside his eyeballs. “Fuck, radiation?” he asked breathlessly. He would have collapsed to his knees if it wasn’t for the ice holding his feet and ankles erect.

“Yes, unfortunately for you, I emit a significant amount of gamma radiation from my being,” a booming voice said above him from what he now realized was a portal.

“What the hell do you want from me?!” Ned yelled up into the blackness.

“Firstly, I am in need of a new host on this dimension and planet. You have rather mangled my current host. I was growing fond of him,” the beast said.

“Anything, just please don’t kill me!” Ned said.

“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple,” said the beast. “You see, I require, we’ll call it, a blank slate. Someone who hasn’t spent their entire life harming other creatures, and, oh, not doing the dirty work yourself doesn’t count. I know what you’re thinking. Closing an orphanage for a condo development, persecuting gay men simply to bury your own feelings for men, and a handful of people who will never be found because they stood in the way of the momentum of your slithering ego. I’m surprised your own soul can even stand inhabiting your body.” The beast paused as five pairs of red, glowing eyes opened within the portal above Ned. “Why, you know what would happen if I were to try to incorporate into you, as you are? I would be influenced by the toxic mold that has sprung up around your entire psyche. That would be the end of your civilization.”

“Please, I can change, I can repent. I’ll never harm another person for the rest of my life. I’ll be the clean slate you need. I’ll kiss the babies, I’ll give my fortune away to charities, I’ll even swear against guns and abortions if you’ll just let me live,” Ned pleaded.

“As though you even could,” the beast said, and a slew of black, shadowy tentacles unfurled from the portal and wrapped around Ned’s body. The beast ripped Ned’s body limb from limb so quickly there was hardly time for Ned to scream. Just as quickly, the tentacles reeled the body parts into the portal. There was a terrible crunch of bones and meat, a torrential outpouring of blood, and then the portal closed with a zip as though it had never opened.

The snow fell, once more, where the portal had covered the ground. In the silence of the woods, the snow slowly filled up the cavity of Ned’s shoes, now empty, which were still stuck fast in the ice. It covered the remains of the homeless host behind the shoes. In time, the search was called off for Ned’s body, and, eventually, everyone pushed his unpleasantness from their memories. His social gap was filled by less vitriolic people, and his legacy was replaced piece by piece. Within two years time, most people in his orbit pretended that Ned had simply never existed in the first place.

The pan-dimensional beings that Ned pissed off, are most certainly still around, and still watching.