Spanner 13.1: Wake-Up Call

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Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 13: The Battle of Evergreen Park
Part 1: Wake-Up Call (Revision 2)

Definition of puritanism:
The haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.
H. L. Mencken

30 september 2014.
Shira’s bed. Leila sleeps peacefully next to Shira in her bed. Shira holds her from behind in “spoon” position, one hand cupping her breast and the other between her legs. You fascinate me, she thinks. The more I know about you, the more you surprise me. And I love you for it.

Every night, Shira spends an hour or so thinking about tomorrow’s plans before she falls asleep. Reality can be as deliciously unpredictable as Leila, so she makes sure every Plan A always has a Plan B, and sometimes a Plan C. Plan Z means winging it. She usually ends up resorting to Plan Z.

Just as she’s about to fall asleep, the fire-alarm notification sounds on her Droid Mega. J.T. “Oh, great,” she mumbles. She rolls over and reaches out to take the phone off her nightstand, then sits up.

Bad news: King’s popping by on the 5th. Doesn’t like this election thing. Wants to put a stop to it. He’ll meet w/Fleer to try & get Wally to end it. Expect full-city lockdown.

Spread the word, but keep it secret.

--J.T.

Shira feels her entire body go cold, and then numb. She texts a quick reply.

:O Thx! Keep me posted, cya soon <3 S!

She forwards J.T.’s email to her sisters Charlie and Desiree, and then to Alex, who will tell the Krewe. She no longer feels the need to sleep. Tomorrow stretches into an entire week. Things will get steadily worse as the the king’s advent approaches. She plans to warn the rest of the household at breakfast, then Team Bremelo the next time they assemble. But tonight she thinks about only one thing: what kind of Plan Z she can prepare for the arrival of the king of the world...

church. The West Sound Church of America looks like a grotesquely decorated sports dome in the heart of Bangor, south of its namesake nuclear submarine base and northwest of Bremerton, a lonely spot of life surrounded by a square mile of dead office parks and strip malls whose former occupants left the civilian world for the Navy and Marine bases after the coup. The surrounding seaport towns of Bremerton, Silverdale, and Seabeck struggle to thrive; landlocked downtown Bangor is the black hole sucking them down into the bottomless pit.

Drusilla Becket, the church’s much-worshipped Shepherd, princess and Prophet, does not live here; she still lives on her sprawling and infamous Bainbridge Island estate. But the First Assistant Shepherd she’s promoting as the hottest Prophet in the American Religion, does reside here, in opulent splendor befitting the Church’s ideals. Byron Herbert Scofield wears his power business suit and his gold chains the way the ancient pagan priests of Egypt and Babylon wore their bejewelled vestments as he holds an audience with Stan Green, assistant youth shepherd in charge of discipline, who prostrates before him to make a request.

“Lord Prophet! I beg to speak. This is urgent!”

“You may rise, Stanley,” says Scofield in his sonorous Carolina twang. Stan rises to one knee. “I know exactly what you are about to say. It is about one particular monkey who has become more of a thorn in our side than her traitorous mother. I saw what she did to you last night. Everyone did. But none of them saw her truly, the way we did.”

Stan shakes his fist. “That Shira Thomas is a menace! We can’t let her even grow up, or she’ll destroy everything we’ve worked for all these years, since long before we were even born!”

“She is not Shira Thomas.”

“Wha—”

“Her name is Rebel Styles.”

“What” Her” No! That can’t be?”

“Yes, it is. Furthermore, she is not of origin human or divine. That traitor is not her mother, but her familiar. Her true mother is Lilith, and her father is Satan himself. She is a demonic entity materialized. I have seen this with my very own eyes. I have watched every single one of that sick little whore’s repulsive videos, over and over, both as Rebel Styles and as Aya Shibata. It was she who murdered the man who laid his hands upon me to gift me with prophetic powers, Prophet Tremayne, by that very means. So when I heard the name Aya Shibata, I knew that it was she. What you saw at the fighting arena was her true demonic form.”

“You mean I was fighting a demon?”

“Indeed. That was spiritual warfare. It is a truth that spiritual evil cannot be defeated through the methods of the flesh. If anyone knows this, it is Rebel Styles.”

“Then what can we do?”

“We take the spiritual war to the spiritual enemy. Tomorrow, she will attend a gathering in her usual disguise as a human woman named Shira Thomas. We will find the demon whore, bind her, and cast her down living to the Hell whence she came. Thus shall we save those suffering souls who are now in her thrall, in the name of Jesus America.”

Byron Scofield’s voice remains calm. But nothing can disguise the madness in his eyes.

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Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.