Triple A Does Branson

By Christopher Krull

 

“Rob, we’re on again, get in here.”

 

Rob stepped out from the bathroom, a clear plastic pitcher filled with liquefied spaghetti in his right hand. Devin sat on the carpet in front of the television, his pale 5 and-a-half-foot frame illuminated by the incandescent glow of a news report. Rob sat down next to him.

 

A young blonde woman, clad in silk hot-pink pajamas sniffled on the screen while speaking.

 

“Two men came into the house, it was so late. Pat and I were sleeping. They dragged him out of bed. One of them kept telling Pat he was guilty of crimes against humanity. He said he was with Triple A.”

 

The newscaster intervened, “that was Gloria Branson, wife of internet religious phenomena, Pat Branson who was abducted today from his Beverly Hills mansion.”

 

Rob sat back up to re-enter the bathroom. The news report did not inspire him, as it did Devin.

 

Rob felt anxious, not only due to the physical situation currently taking place in Devin’s mom’s basement’s bathroom, but also because of his conversation with the internet evangelist currently being held in the bathroom of said basement. Rob had participated in the kidnapping to find the truth. Rob had to know if the feelings Branson gave him were indeed real.

 

Rob shut the bathroom door as he entered. He held the straw for the prisoner to inhale liquefied Italian.

 

“I forgive you for all of this, son,” the online sensation, Pat Branson said, looking into Rob’s eyes in-between sips. “This is all part of his plan.”

 

Rob felt an aura from the man wearing expensive-looking magenta pajamas with the initials “P. B.” stitched over his swollen pectorals in lavender Sans Serif lettering.

 

“How can you stay so positive?” Whispered Rob, to the preacher, “it’s a show? It’s not real?”

 

Devin entered the bathroom. “We’re famous! I’m sending word to the Alliance to call Channel 2 and claim responsibility for the kidnapping. If he doesn’t renounce his religion to the world on Twitter, we do him!”

 

Rob pushed the straw further in Branson’s mouth.

 

“Why are you feeding this lying piece of trash?” Asked Devin.

 

Rob looked at the translucent straw in the preacher’s mouth. No liquefied spaghetti flowed through it.

 

“I forgive you as well son.” Said Branson, looking now at Devin. The straw came out of his mouth as he spoke.

 

Devin ripped the pitcher from Rob’s hand causing red marinara sauce to spill onto Rob and Branson.

 

“You forgive me? That’s rich,” said Devin.

 

Devin reached into his crotch and removed the .38 Rob knew he had brought along but had not let himself know that he knew. Branson’s eyes lit up at the sight of the weapon. He didn’t seem afraid but almost excited or turned-on, maybe he thought the end was finally going to come and he would be in paradise soon.

 

“Your Twitter has one hundred million followers,” Devin pointed the gun at Branson’s mouth.

 

“How does it feel to lie to one hundred million people without speaking a word?” Rob sat up from his crouching position next to the preacher. He looked at the matte-black revolver and the expression on Branson’s face. The man looked divine. His skin was surely blessed. It had the texture one might associate with that of a silent film era actress.

 

“Rob, that’s your name isn’t it?” Asked Branson, eyes still on the gun. “You were asking the right questions son. Everyone has doubts. Everyone’s afraid, just like you.”

 

Devin shoved the pistol into the preacher’s mouth, enticing him to be silent. “What questions were you asking?” Said Devin, his eyes scowling at Rob, his arm elongated with the extension of the weapon buried inside the preacher’s mouth cavity.

 

Rob looked down at his shirt, covered in thinned spaghetti sauce. The red liquid soaked through his shirt and felt cold against Rob’s stomach. He wiped at the large red stain and licked his fingers. The taste of the rich tomato paste made him feel sick.

 

“You think he knows something the rest of us don’t?” Said Devin.

 

Rob and Branson saw nothing but the gun, transfixed on its implication.

 

“All he knows,” said Devin, jamming the gun further into Branson’s mouth. “Is how to coin the word ePreaching, marry a lesbian porn star and have a net worth of 100 million dollars – all from spreading lies to people who have no one else to turn to.”

 

Devin chuckled, shaking his head at both the men in the small bathroom. He exited the room to set in motion his announcement to the world of the recent abduction by the Alliance of Atheist Activists.

 

Rob pinched his shirt covered in blood-red sauce, pulling it away from his skin. He thought about what Branson had told him earlier, how blood had been shed on his behalf and that he was saved, and that he and the preacher were equals because no sin was worse than another – “that’s right,” the preacher had said, “lying is just as bad as murder in his eyes.” Rob wanted to believe it badly.

 

“I’m not like Devin – I just wanted to get close to you,” said Rob. “I wanted to see if what I felt when I watched you preach on your YouTube channel, I would feel when I was close to you. Physically.”

 

Rob removed his stained white shirt. He felt instantly warmer as the cold sauce peeled from his hairless chest.

 

“Come close to me then, son. See what you feel. See if all your confusions are answered as you hope.”

 

Rob kneeled on the cold white tile next to the preacher who was still handcuffed from behind but seemed to have control over Rob, or maybe it was that Rob was on autopilot, maybe he was on a course he had set for himself, or maybe one which had been set for him before he was born.

 

“Now give me a kiss.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIO: Christopher Krull labors as a graduate assistant in the Communication Department of Saint Louis University and slowly accumulates credits toward a Master of Arts degree, for what purpose, he is unsure. God willing, he has fiction forthcoming in the Eunoia Review.