Page 28 - Tales Apocalyptic and Dystopian

Comet Klenzer

“And I challenge you to appear on Signs and Portents—which has
a real studio audience, by the way; not a claque of stooges like your
show—and explain the rather lengthy rap sheet the local police
undoubtedly have on file, and presumably cross-referenced against
half-dozen aliases.”
Blood screamed, “Persecution! All my life, crucified at every turn
by the powers of darkness and evil! You are just the latest stone in
my path, Brother Daniel. I’ll kick you out of the way, same as the
others.”
Daniel raised his palms in pacification.
“Please, Reverend. I have a roomful of telephone pledge workers
next door, and these walls are not as thick as they look. Let us
attempt to resolve our differences calmly and rationally.”
Blood abruptly remembered where he was, looked around the
corners of the room as if for hidden microphones, and flopped into a
chair.
“Fine with me. You’re not going to provoke me into a fit of
apoplexy, not if I can help it. Let me spell it out for you. I have a nice
fat dossier on you, buddy. I know your grammar school teachers’
middle names. I know the address of every bed you’ve slept in for the
past eighteen months—and who was in them with you. I’ve got bank
statements, tax returns, expense reports—amazing what people
throw in their trash, isn’t it?—and the fact that you are not much of a
Christian. No, not much at all.”
“Never claimed I was. The end of the world was prophesied long
before Christ showed up to distract people with salvation.”
“Blasphemy!” Drew Blood’s professionally sheepish smile
suddenly contracted into a wolfish grin. “I am going to expose you
for what you are: a New York intellectual; a Jew; a former assistant
professor of astrophysics who couldn’t get tenure and was ridiculed
by his peers in three different academic journals. You are Daniel
Klenzer, and you are poaching in my preserve, fishing in my stream,
stealing the bread out of my children’s mouths. I will not stand for
it.”
Brother Daniel rotated his wrists, transforming his gesture of non-
aggression into one of offering, a bit of dramaturgy he often used to
great effect before the camera.

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