Something in Common – A Love Story – Fiction

Something in Common

A Love Story

by Greg Adams
illustration by James Corwin

The Adversary clicked on the turn signal and gently eased the car onto the strip. It was very late and there was little traffic. The Adversary was enjoying the evening. He took full advantage of the empty, rain-washed streets, and was soon completely lost in the sublime pleasure of driving. Now, if the truth be told, the Adversary enjoyed almost everything he did. He was immortal, of course, and yet, despite that great and wonderful gift, he possessed nothing that could be called memory. He passed through eternity with no sense of time and no concept of future. Every moment was everything for him, and since nothing could harm him, there never seemed to be any reason to be anything but happy.

Not all immortals shared this frame of mind, of course. In fact, of the four dozen or so eternal beings that roamed the earth at any given time, he was perhaps the only one who could truly be called happy. Take, for example, the woman beside him in the car. At first observation, she seemed to be an attractive (if stupendously bored), individual, sitting there slouched down into her seat, her makeup hopelessly smeared and applied far too heavily, a bottle of Night Train in one hand, and a Camel in the other. In actuality, she was Kali, the Black Earth Mother, and that was exactly why she was so bored. Kali knew everything. That is to say, she possessed complete awareness of the future, the past, and, of course, the present. Not a fetus strangled in its womb, nor a senior citizen smothered in bed that Kali did not know about. She was witness to every birth, every thought, and every death of every being in the whole of creation, and, as a result, she had seen it all before, so to speak. This rendered her perpetually bored, if not outright cranky.

She knew all about the other immortals, of course. She knew that the one driving the car right now had no business being part of either Judaic or Christian mythology, and had in fact stumbled into those religions quite by accident. She knew that he was in reality Druagga, the Assyrian god of Devils, and that he was hopelessly lost. Still, she knew better than to try to explain anything to him. He never remembered anything.

Kali took another drag of her cigarette, as she knew she would, and waited for the accident to happen, as she knew it would. She knew that it would be very boring, as well. At times, being around Druagga irritated her (more than usual), but she tolerated him, as he enjoyed driving, while she hated it, and she needed the car far more than he did. When he had wished to travel to America, he had simply arced, arced down through the crust and magma of the planet, to emerge upon the other side, somewhere near Salt Lake City, Utah. Kali, on the other hand, had been forced to walk.

The Adversary loved his car. But then, he loved everything, even the people he killed. Especially the people he killed. And kill he did. Throughout their unimaginably long existences, he and Kali had left a path of broken and shattered bodies across eternity, mostly on their own, but occasionally working with another like-minded eternal. He loved teamwork.

He was singing along with the song on the radio, tapping his blood-stained fingers against the steering wheel in time with the beat. “My life makes perfect sense: lust and food and violence.” He sang as he drove on through the night, slowing at intersections, and stopping for red lights. He couldn’t remember the name of the song he was singing, but he knew that he loved it. The car was massive and old. It was a Cadillac (a 1971 coupe, to be precise), a steel dinosaur that gulped fossil fuels and spit out all sorts of lovely carbon gasses. It was garish, expensive, inefficient, and powerful. Cars like the Cadillac were some of the things that first drew him here. He loved Ameri—

Suddenly, a small and swift import ran a red light, and, with locked tires screaming, impacted upon the Cadillac. The monolithic luxury sedan hardly seemed affected; its fender crumpled up against the tire, but otherwise, the car sustained no damage to speak of. The smaller car, a vision of plastic, fiberglass, and speed, collapsed fully back upon itself. The crash threw Kali (who never wore her seat belt) into the windshield, spilling the strong liquor all over her, and knocking the ember from her cigarette. Otherwise, it did nothing to her except to deepen her already blue mood. Beside her, the Adversary grinned even wider. He loved excitement.

The driver of the smaller car (whose name was Randy) was not so pleased. Rage that another car was on the road that he’d claimed as his own fueled his intoxication to spectacular heights. He was only a man, but as he stepped from the car, it was clear that he was looking to pass holy judgement upon whoever had crossed him.

The Adversary emerged from his car as well. Perhaps the appearance of the Adversary should be noted here: naturally, he could appear in any form he wished. In truth, it would be terribly inconvenient for immortals to remain in their native forms (for example, Kali was twenty feet tall and had six arms). So they assumed different shapes as their moods dictated. At this moment, the Adversary appeared as a youngish, say, twenty-seven-year-old, white male from a middle-class background. He had a fair understanding of what people expected in a serial killer, and he did not wish to disappoint. Another thing the Adversary was capable of (when he remembered) was setting in motion the process of decay and decline in matter. This was something he greatly enjoyed, and did to most everyone he encountered. So, when he first set eyes upon the gentleman approaching him, the Adversary reached out and set some stones forming in his kidneys.

Randy strode right up to the Adversary. Randy was not an exceptionally large man, but he was quite strong, and at this moment, in a bad temper. And with each step, too subtly to be noticeable, the Adversary set Randy to eroding. He infected his appendix and tonsils, darkened his lungs, and turned his drinking habit to true alcoholism. Randy was reaching out to grab the Adversary by the shirtfront, to lift him, smack him around, perhaps hospitalize him, when a voice from the dark interior of the Cadillac called out: “Just kill him.”

Randy stopped in his tracks. The man before him just stood there, grinning an idiot grin. Randy (who was now beginning to feel a touch ill) grimaced at his opponent and said, “Tell your bitch to shut up, or I’ll kick her ass too.”

The Adversary only grinned wider still, and began blocking Randy’s arteries with fat deposits. “‘Kay,” he replied. “My name’s Morris. What’s yours?”

Even through his temper and intoxication, Randy had to laugh at that. He paused for a moment, and considered the smaller man. He was in grave danger of having serious harm done to him, yet he just stood there grinning, offering no resistance of any sort that Randy could see. Randy assumed that the smaller man was on something, some sort of narcotic, and began himself to feel a bit nauseous, and a bit paranoid as well (both due to the spontaneous eruption of stomach ulcers).

“Just kill him!” called the voice from the car again, louder this time, and Randy, unnerved and feeling worse by the moment, reached into his jacket and drew the .38 that he kept tucked in his belt. He had had enough of this situation, and was looking to put it to a quick end. Randy grabbed the Adversary (even as he did so, a mild immune-suppressing virus he had picked up advanced to a full-blown case of leukemia), threw him against the hood of the Cadillac, and stuck the gun into his face.

The Adversary could not remember when he had had more fun! He loved guns! Randy held him down on the hood of the car, waved the gun about, and yelled some threats. The Adversary grinned up at him, and said, softly, “I love you.”

Randy coughed blood into the Adversary’s face, and, with panic just beginning to creep into his rapidly cataracting eyes, asked, “What did you say?”

“I LOVE YOU,” repeated the Adversary, and cupped Randy’s face in his hands. Then, with force enough to snap Randy’s spine and dislocate both of his shoulders, the Adversary pulled Randy forward, and kissed him, deeply. Randy’s body responded dramatically to such intimate contact. Tumors formed spontaneously in both his brain and testicles; his lungs collapsed; his bladder ruptured; his addictions sped into withdrawal; and his heart swelled, burst, then atrophied, the valves shutting down one by one. The Adversary reached in with his teeth, bit Randy’s tongue, and tore it out by the root. Then, like a snake devouring its brother, he gulped it down. He dropped Randy, and his remains struck the asphalt with the sound of rotted twigs. The Adversary looked down at the rapidly decaying corpse, and said, “You’re not going crazy, you’re just a bit sad,” in perfect time with the song on the radio. He reached out, and lightly stroked the hood of Randy’s car with the palm of his hand. Deep within the engine, the lubricants and fuels began to oxidize. He turned, and walked back to the Cadillac. By the time he had buckled on his seat belt, the smaller car was burning merrily. “Get us going, please,” said a voice from beside him. The Adversary turned to grin at Kali. He kept forgetting she was in the car at all.