Burning Desires
Part V
by Kerry Joyce
illustration by Jim Corwin
Baby Jesus looked down hopelessly at the diamond-studded dial of his Rolex presidential watch. Time was running out, he knew. The signs were everywhere. “Five minutes, B.J.,” the production manager informed him. “Five minutes,” Baby Jesus (Pronounced Hay-Zeus) thought emptily as a make-up man pounded his care-worm features with a powder puff.
It was five years since his TV show, Gawd Tawk, first began broadcasting the truth on Sangre Diablo’s local cable access station. From there, Baby Jesus hit stardom on local access stations in over 50 countries from Sri Lanka to Ceylon. “We’re more popular than Baby Jesus,” bragged Eddie Vedder at the MTV Awards the previous year.
A virtual Atlas, the burdens of Baby Jesus truly spanned the globe. He had found it untrue that a prophet is without honor in his own land. Just one day after Sangre Diablo experienced its worst catastrophe since the great sunblock spill of 1987, it was he, Baby Jesus, that the busty widows of Sangre Diablo now looked to for comfort and guidance.
If only Troop 12, B Battery of the Young Hippie Scientists (Y.H.S.), had waited just one day to conduct their field studies on the effects of hallucinatory drugs on migratory sperm whales, matters might have gone differently for Sangre Diablo, and for Baby Jesus.
“One day and the whole disaster could have been avoided. One stinking day,” the make up man rambled on and on agnostically as he tried in vain to restore the aging cherub that was Baby Jesus.
The soul-saver of Sangre Diablo laughed grimly to himself. Baby Jesus had been an eye witness to the previous day’s disaster and from that, concluded the tripping sperm whales, which had gone air borne for a time, were, in point of fact, giant locusts. Not just any giant locusts, but THE giant locusts prophesied by Saint John in the Book of Revelation, an event which signalled the second coming. Time was running out. Armageddon was at hand.
“We’re living in the end times,” he proclaimed, “the final days, hours, minutes have arrived. The kingdom of God is at hand!”
The governor general and his staff were skeptical of the predictions of Baby Jesus. “Further investigation is definitely warranted,” stated a hastily-written press release from the officialdom, which was busy bracing itself for an amphibious assault by the mutinous crew of the S.S. Indensible, a blood thirsty band of wild-eyed Greenpeace volunteers, who thought the whole experiment was cruel and unusual.
What caused several dozen sperm whales to madly flail in and out of the usually tranquil waters of Sangre Diablo’s Bay of Fungi en masse for almost an hour? True, the whales had ingested a highly intoxicating level of LSD 25. But it was NOT a drug-induced animus toward humans, boats, or even poorly aimed harpoons that caused the whales to indiscriminately overturn 17 small boats, rafts and innertubes, the Y.H.S hypothesized. Rather, it was a desire on the part of the spaced-out sea giants to eyewitness one of Sangre Diablo’s “really cool sunsets.”
Twenty eight men, engaged in Sangre Diablo’s traditional running of the whales, perished in their fateful encounter with those crazy-eyed bucking broncos of the deep. It was a half hour of horror and carnage right out of a Peter Benchley wet dream. Four others, including American anthropologist Heimlich Crittendon, were missing and presumed drowned.
Even some of the people on land during the entire disaster were profoundly effected. Baby Jesus himself, for instance, prepared himself for the end. “The wages of sin is death,” he informed his production manager. “We’re fucked!” he screamed.
“You never complained about that final paycheck before,” his production manager reminded him with a smile.
“It was just on last week’s show that I attacked the garlic eaters for being nothing more than an indigestion-afflicted band of disgruntled, little anti-christs,” Baby Jesus bitched plaintively to his production manager, Vinny Vidivicci. “Then those Solarflex assholes turn out to be the very people who rescued most of the survivors. This is truly a sign from God. We’re doomed. How can you be so relaxed?” Baby Jesus demanded of Vinny, his closest friend and confident.
“Because I have faith, B.J.” Vinny said soothingly. “It’s the source of all our strength.”
Truly, Vinny had been not so sure of himself until an hour earlier when he resolved in his own mind what was to be done. It was obvious that the whaling disaster had pushed Baby Jesus over an edge he had been dancing close to for several months. Now the star of Gawd Tawk had achieved a complete oneness with his loyal audience. In other words, Baby Jesus was as deluded as his viewers. The electronic instrument of God’s will had crossed that invisible line; he believed his own bullshit.
But all was made right by Vinny, with a little help from the C.F.O. of Baby Jesus International. As Vinny consoled Baby Jesus, the liquid assets of their joint enterprise hummed across telephone lines and bounced off satellites, eventually dumping themselves obediently into secret bank accounts in Switzerland, Lichenstein, and the Grand Cayman Islands.
“Ugh, this coffee tastes like bitter almonds. Where did you get this stuff?” Baby Jesus asked.
“It’s hazelnut. Drink up. You need something to pick you up before the show,” Vinny replied as he lit the gas on one of the TV shows more elaborate props.
“Why are you lighting up the lake of fire? We’re not using that fire and brimstone stuff for this seg…”
Suddenly, Baby Jesus fell to the table like a limp dick. Another one of life’s little victims of arsenic poisoning. Soon after, Vinny and the make up man heaved the remains of Baby Jesus into the licking flames.
But first they took his watch.
