The 13th Disciple
by Mike Philbin
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“…take this, all of you, and eat of it.�
That’s The Messiah, as we called him, that’s what he said. It was in a tatty café at the far end of
Hollywood Boulevard. Midday. We were in a booth at the back – yes, this place still had booths at the back in
this day and age. Amazing, no? Had a great 1950’s styling, too. But we’re not here to discuss décor. Weâ
€™re here to relive the past and revise the future, or so he promised us, his Disciples.
He said he was from the future, The Messiah. He had this idea that something wonderful happened in 2010. â
€˜Something wonderful,’ that’s how he said it, that’s the exact words he used. Talked about the future
like it had already happened; mushroom cities of red dust; sex was the gaping barrel of a gun expelling its hot load;
industry, all industry had been eradicated; mankind was lost in a fugue of bloody mind rape. Nobody knew who or
why he was. He was a mystery man from the future was all we knew. But we loved him like our flesh and blood. He
was our brother. He was our friend. And we all need friends, that much is true.
We were planning the great 2010 event – even though we didn’t know what it was. Only he knew the future.
Only The Messiah had already lived that day. Fact is, it was hard to work out why he needed us. But he obviously
did, right, or he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t have turned back time like that to come gather his flock. His
Disciples first of course, then his Flock. The hierarchy of the Gods, always The Hierarchy.
Back to Hollywood Boulevard and our cozy little communal booth. When we came in, she was watching us, Stayer
as I call her, I’ve seen her once or twice in this and other cafés, that girl there, forever nursing her cup of cold
coffee, watching, waiting, her skin alive with inquisitive twitches and tics. She never moves. She’s always
immobile when I’ve seen her but alert, ever vigilant, and as we were directed to our booth her eyes fix on us. I
sense that at any moment this trembling, almost crocodile-like woman would pounce on us, her distensible jaw
snapping around us, our heads in her mouth like laughing teeth. Cut to credits and cheesy theme tune.
Today’s heroic sun carves a brave yellow wound across the faux-marble table upon which The Messiah’s
hunting knife lies. A gunshot is such a dull sound when you hear it through safety glass. An alarm goes off. Someone
screams, soon sirens will arrive. But that doesn’t bother The Messiah or his Disciples. We are enthralled by him
and his unspoken sermon. We can sense that the fabric of the universe unravels from his automated asshole. Canâ
€™t explain it, but we know it, his Disciples; he has made us aware of his rightness. It’s like watching spacetime
actually procreate; self-create, you know like the way worms do it, the way worms breed. All life flows from him, is
the most appropriate way to put it.
He picks up the hunting knife from the table. A group of four teenagers bustle into the café. Stayer watches them
order fries and cokes. What a diet; fries and coke. They sit nearby, we can’t see them but we can hear them –
a constant evil giggle like they’re the most demonic things to ever walk the earth. If I were at all traditionally
religious, I’d say they were messengers from Beelzebub himself, black messengers, snoops of the underlord. But
I don’t believe in that shit any more than I believe in Big Bangs or atoms or photons. It’s all scientific mind-
control – what do they call it, mumbo-jumbo? There’s conjecture and there’s conjecture and atoms and
photons is the purest conjecture there is, better to believe in UFO’s I’d say.
The sharpened blade of the hunting knife presses into the flesh of The Messiah’s forearm, just there, near the
elbow, where a thick chunk of meat lives. There are only five of us present around the coffee table in this café. The
other Disciples, well, they didn’t make it, is all; didn’t get this far.
“This is my blood.� The Messiah pulls the hunting knife across the meaty lump of his forearm and the blood
starts to flow across the table, making a large red pool that congeals before pouring off the edges of the table. Itâ
€™s like a living presence, the way it just puts on the brakes. The blood settles into a perfect circle of red around the
white of his sliced opened forearm.
“Come on mother-fuckers…� The Messiah hisses with the pain through clenched white teeth, “Take it all
of you and drink of it…. Quickly!�
Fingers dip devotedly into the pool of rippling blood like supplicant fingertips into Holy Water at the door to the
Catholic Church. But maybe I’m the only one who really understands what’s going on. I’ll tell you this
for free, though he may go under the moniker The Messiah, there’s no way in Hell this freak of nature is
connected with the Catholic Church, or any denomination – there’s nothing secular or sacred about his credo.
It’s an alien thing, from an alien time. I know he’s not shimmering in scales like a fish out of water, nor is he
moving in the obscenely unnatural ways of Strieber’s aliens. But there’s something more than culture shock
about every living fibre of his being. More than just an enigmatic shard of future shrapnel spiralling backward up his
own nostalgia path.
The hunting knife pares the chunk of meat from his forearm in five thin clean slices. You all know what’s coming
next, right?
“Take this,� The Messiah grunts through his mask of pain, “All of you. Come on. Take a slice. Eat it. For
God’s sake. Time is of the essence here, people.�
We all take a slice of meat and pop it into our mouths. Chewing is such sweet sorrow. A waiter arrives with a coffee
pot. Asks if we’re all okay for more coffee? He stands there, looking down at the monochrome scene spiked
with a ruby filter. He sees a man. He sees four other men. He sees me. In that order. His eyes move with slow
deliberation. Disbelief in his eyes.
“That is why you shall perish.� The Messiah pulls out a black handgun (I can’t make out the model, guns
are my true abhorrence) and points it at the waiter. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The Messiah pulls back
the firing pin. A smile breaks through the pain. His index finger curls around the trigger. I see quite clearly the way the
trigger compresses the flesh of his index finger, second phalange. The firing pin dislodges suddenly and an enormous
explosion erupts in the tight confines. Everybody screams instinctively, just once, a very short sharp sound of horror.
The waiter drops to the floor -- nobody flies back when they’re shot with a gun, there’s not enough
momentum in a bullet to throw someone back like they do in the movies. We’ve all seen the execution of that
interrogated Vietnamese prisoner on the street, right? The guy was begging for his life, professing his innocence, as
they all do – no mere Name Rank Number charade. The bullet tears through the waiter’s sternum and he falls
to the floor. Dark blood pours from the heavy black hole in his back. His blood vomits out onto the floor in shocked
spurts and the four kids who’d bounced into the place like so many monkeys a few minutes ago start to flutter
around the cooling corpse like flies round shit. Their feral grimaces turn towards us. Lightning seems to illuminate their
catlike eyes.
The Stayer moves.
I’ve never seen anything move the way she does.
She rushes the gorging pack, scrabbling across the floor on her hands and knees, her hips swaying in a sorta alligator-
like waddle. It’s not the same. It’s too strange to describe. Put it this way, I know human spines aren’t
supposed to move like that. There is something of the Nile about her. Could she really have been waiting since the
time of the Pharoahs to see this day? She comes in like a living bowling ball – pure vector. Nonsense, I know. But
look at her. Look at the evidence of her. The hard and fast of her. Watch how she moves. The pack of mad-dog
youths scattering dribbling blood and bile, yelping like hyenas; their tails between their legs. The Messiah and myself
and the other remaining disciples watch on.
The Messiah smiles.
Stayer is guarding some exit route now. Straddling the dead body of the waiter, her hands and knees in the pool of
blood. She is panting, looking around and I can see (maybe they all can see) the way the embossed surface of her
skin dances to some extraterrestrial beat. What are these creatures we have allowed among us? These beasts?
Which is good? Which is Evil? Is good? Is evil?
The Messiah ignites right there, right then, taking his seating partner disciple (a short red-haired man) with him. The
man screams (none of us like to be doused in flames) but not the Messiah, it’s like the bathing in flame is merely
an introduction to some other sick twisted evil, or good. A cleansing flame maybe? The heat is ferocious in these
authentic booths, soon to be razed to cosmic dust. Stayer won’t allow him exit, but she watches me skid about
in the waiter’s guts and race for the door, the little door bell tinkling its jolly tune as the sound of sirens erupts
from the very fabric of time and space. Like the policemen of time are catching up with The Messiah and his
nefarious activity. What horror have we (his disciples) unleashed upon the Earth?
I stagger past everything. Pushing out into the hot penetration of Hollywood Boulevard. I’ve never felt this way
before about my hometown. Never felt this claustrophobic. I stagger up towards Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Theyâ
€™re putting women and children to the stake… all the way up Hollywood Boulevard’s parade of stars, one
golden stake for each gold star. Each golden stake has a five-pointed-star cross section, as if the stakes have grown
from the sidewalk there, on Hollywood Boulevard. The flagstones of Hollywood Boulevard lift from the sidewalk
causing a dust storm to stir, accentuating the pain of the sun. The image is not of the now, it is of the future, and the
future is unstable, as we all know, right? The vision of women and children being put to the stake, here on Hollywood
Boulevard, that’s a slice of time from another cake entirely. How real this vision is, no-one can tell. It’s the
future after all.
But it’s mankind’s future.
That is why he came, The Messiah. That’s why he chose to unleash his fury upon this time… it must have been
the optimum locus. The 4-dimensional optimum. The smoothest path between his world and ours. The
multidimensional moment between two parallel dimensions. I can sense the pressure in the air today. And it’s not
the weather. I’m habituated to that. The weather is where I’m always at. I exemplify the weather. I am Los
Angeles’ 72 degree standard.
“Look at me!� I find myself screaming in the centre of Hollywood Boulevard as taxis honk their horns despite
the Pedestrian Right Of Way law here in L.A.. I want the world to watch how I remain intact even as their eyeballs
disintegrate; I want the history books to record the intimate details of my musical voice as the universe trembles
around me, the thirteenth disciple. I have no idea how many songs I’ve sung to the shaking fists and the snarling
faces. It’s all falling into climax, now, time and space collapsing to this 4-dimensional pin prick. Hollywood
Boulevard is vaporising as if by means of nuclear holocaust. The buildings, the sex parlours, the book and curio
shops, the clothes shops and cafés, Mann’s Chinese theatre, explode into evaporating remnants of their
former selves - in their place a view from the crumbling edge of insanity, the opening up of the bowels of the
apocalypse.
The future, as only The Messiah truly understands it, crashes into our existence like a meteor hitting the planet at one
million miles a second. The surface of mankind’s consciousness rips like a damp tissue as the new order inhales
its first sickly breath. The Messiah has achieved his second reincarnation. Truth be told, mankind has no idea whatâ
€™s going on. Never has. Never will.
THE END.
