Jack Acid, Freelance Priest

By Miracle Jones

Sometimes I couldn’t stop giggling. Sometimes I just stared at him, convinced he was five cubes short of a Rubix. The four wrong notes in a perfect jazz solo. Three dollars down on a six-dollar whore, too many eggs in a flip-top soufflé, and one of the barmiest goddamn human beings ever to take ninety from ninety and call it zero.

In short, he was completely fucking nuts. Probably.

“Hey Jack, why don’t you get yourself a heavy bag? Or at least punch a tree or something?”

“Because…I don’t…HUH….believe…YAH…in violence. Even against bags. TAKE THAT, YA BASTARD! Or trees, for that matter.”

It had started the day after the execution of Ernie Raines Maffko. Jack had decided that his problem was a metaphysical one, and that his feelings of hopeless impotence in an unjust world could only be alleviated by the judicious application of a little deranged fury. Applied to what? To nothing. Every day at sundown he strapped on an old pair of busted boxing gloves, gave a primal scream, and started punching his guts out until he just couldn’t anymore. Punching the air. Punching motes and boggarts. Punching the splotchy afterimages of his own last punches. He would have been shadowboxing if we weren’t completely shaded by a huge canopy of cedars. As it was, he was just fluster boxing: boxing to box, to feel his arms swing wild, to work himself up and then to whirl himself out, flipping around like a bass with a hook in its brain. It was goddamn hilarious. It was goddamn pathetic.

“Come on now. Hit SOMETHING, for chrissakes. You can even give me a taste if it’ll make you feel better. This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous. Come on, I insist.”

“No…I can’t. HUH…this is only to…relieve…AGGRESSION! You don’t have to…YAH…watch…YAH…if…YAH…you don’t want to.”

“I can’t help it. It’s like a constant, slow-motion traffic accident. A cross between a lava lamp and a demolition derby. Bethlehem Hospital in London used to let people come in and watch their insane for a tidy fee. Maybe I’ll start charging people. Come on down to Salamander Technologies Corporate Park and watch Animal from the Muppets do tai chi. The Human Pinwheel, we’ll call you. Pity him! Fear him! You can touch him for free.”

With another giant swinging haymaker that almost caused him to fly off his feet and kiss the ground, Jack finally put his hands to his side and breathed in as deep as he could, arching his back and popping his neck.

“All done,” said Jack.

“Feel any better?’

“Not really. A bit.”

I went inside the dumpster and fixed him a glass of orange juice. He came in behind me and collapsed into a bean bag chair. Sweat sucked his T-shirt and slacks to his skin like sculpted plastic on an action-figure. Except Jack wasn’t built like an action-figure. He was built like a handful of spaghetti held together with paper clips. He gave a moan of exhaustion and then started peeling away the tape that kept his gloves on.

“Why do you even wear gloves, you maniac?” I asked, setting the juice on a table in front of him. He smacked his lips and peeled faster.

“Just in case. These meathooks are deadly.”

“I’ve seen you accidentally smack yourself out there. I don’t think the gloves matter one way or the other.”

He twirled his hand around in universal sign language for “yeah, yeah, yeah; leave me alone.”

I plonked myself in front of my typewriter and tried to remember where I had left off. Something about witches in nothing but sheer black knee socks animating their broomsticks. Ah, yes…and the Reverend Horner a’spying from the underbrush, his little morality hard and inflamed. Delicious. Jack started doing complex stretching exercises, and then crawled his way over to his black Sleazy Chair. He gave a deep sigh. I looked at him. He pretended to pick up a book and study it…something by Schopenhauer…and then he tossed it aside. It flew into a little house of dirty postcards I had been building, scattering them all over the library. He sighed again.

I typed one sentence. Only one. And then I cranked out the sheet of paper, curled it into a ball, and threw it at him.

His reflexes had at least grown faster since he had begun his regimental tantrums. He caught it without even looking.

“Ahem,” I said, “AHEM.”

He uncrinkled the paper and read my sentence. This is bullshit.

“I know,” he said, “I KNOW. But what the hell am I supposed to do? I NEED a fight. I’m craving unresolved, unreasonable conflict -- like an alleycat. But there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t create something to fight out of thin air. I’m just…so ANGRY. I’ve never been this angry before, not for such an extended period of time. It’s wasting me away, but there’s nothing else to DO. GAR.”

“You could go pick a fight…”

“No…”

“You could try to get laid…”

“Did that. Nearly tore the poor woman’s arms out. She didn’t call me back.”

“You could do some digging. Some good, hard digging.”

“Why?”

“To make a hole. And then to fill it back in. It’s just as absurd as going on a punching binge.”

“I punch really hard, though. REALLY hard. It’s a gift.”

“How would you know if you never connect?”

“I just know.”

BAM BAM BAM. The door. Zeke’s knock. High and mighty. It looked like I wouldn’t be getting any writing done today. Reverend Horner would just have to take care of himself. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I leaned over and undid the catch with an umbrella. Zeke slouched in and then bowed. He was wearing a grey T-shirt that said “World-Historical Individual.”

“Gentlemen, the night is ours. We are young, sober, and earnest. This must be rectified as soon as possible. Let the debauchery begin!”

“Huzzah,” I shouted thinly. Jack couldn’t even muster a whistle.

“What’s the matter with you people?”

“Too much suffering,” said Jack, “Too much insanity. The world is a gas guzzling lemon. I would leave it by the side of the road, leave a gunpowder trail, and light a match -- if it wasn’t where all my stuff was.” “

“Jack is sad, and bringing the whole world down with him,” I said, “Careful: it’s catching. I can’t even get excited about a coven of witches with lubricated, flexigel brooms.”

“Jack? What’s wrong?”

Jack just sighed and curled into the fetal position.

“He wants to punch something – anything – but his soul won’t let him. It’s the pacifism running up against all the manifest ills of the world. He’s got the sickness.”

“You know,” said Zeke, “Even creators must sometimes destroy. It’s called editing. It’s what draws perfection out of even the most flawed stone. Sometimes the bubbles in the marble aren’t your fault, but they’ve still got to go.”

“Blehk,” said Jack, “It’s just a perception thing. I’ll get over it.”

“In the meantime, something must be done,” said Zeke.

“He’s right,” I said, “Justice and the production of hard-core pornography demand it. There are entire platoons of nymphs in my brain who stop sodomizing each other and start contemplating careers in bank management every time I look at you.”

Jack sat up, hands locked at his side.

“There’s just so much WRONG! Tilted. I can’t help but see it. Why even talk about justice when it is obviously a cruel fiction? There’s just no place to flex, no direction to turn, no enemy I can’t both empathize with and also want to tear limb from limb with my own hands. So much horribleness. GAR. It’s like being stuffed inside a sack and taken away by a giant. You want to squirm and resist, but if you do, you know he will just smash you up against the nearest telephone pole. But if you don’t, he’ll take you home and stick you like a pig to run your blood and make your flesh tender and lean. Either way, you and some chicken bullion are going in his next bowl of Ramen.”

Zeke sat down next to me and frowned. I frowned back, harder. Jack frowned. Everything around us seemed to sag. The stereo clicked over and a Lou Reed record started to play. An old one. This was too much. Something was bound to snap.

“I have an idea,” said Zeke. “Maybe that giant is the real problem. We should do what always used to make me feel better when I was a kid.”

“They don’t make Nyquil with codeine in it anymore,” I said.

“No, not that.”

“I was a kid when you were a kid, and that’s what made you feel better. I was there.”

“This is something secret. Something I did when you weren’t around. This is what I did when I found myself at the dark gates of a tremulous abyss and felt the hands of despair at my back. What I did when I was alone, scared, and without even an ounce of human understanding to call my own.”

“What’s that?” said Jack, interested. “What did you do?”

“I prayed. I tried to sit down and tell that giant to go to hell in the politest words I could muster. Why don’t we pray about it?”

We both groaned. Zeke giggled.

“No, seriously,” he said.

“The main problem with that is that none of us here believes in God,” said Jack.

Zeke thought about this, and then nodded.

“That’s true. But that doesn’t mean we don’t believe in prayer.”

“It kind of does,” I said, “Look: you study philosophy, right?”

“Yes,” said Zeke.

“A humanistic passion for the noble work of man is your life’s fundament, is it not?”

“It is.”

“You know for a fact that God does not exist.”

“Yes, pretty much.”

“You tell me ALL the time how much better an amoral, hyperrational society of thoughtful skeptics would be.”

“I would be a liar if I said different.”

“And yet you are saying we need to pray to feel better? Come on. You know that’s nuts. Pray to whom?”

“I don’t believe in God,” said Zeke, “But I believe in prayer. I can’t explain the difference, but there is one. We could argue all night, or we could be good empiricists and try it, and then see what happens. What kind of prayer would you make if there was a God? What would David Hume do?”

“Get drunk. Play pool. Put on a wig and nance around a bit. Curse us all in a plummy Scottish brogue. Toss a caber. But he definitely wouldn’t pray,” I said.

“Let’s just try it,” said Jack, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

This was an easy one.

“The Deity could transform himself into a golden rainstorm, impregnate us with his urine, and then -- when His wife finds out -- She could blow us into a billion pieces with a stolen lightning bolt for being a homewrecking slut. Then, Titans could digest those pieces for eternity. An eternity of everlasting, monolithic pain. Monoloithic because one day somebody would make a monolith and it would say: don’t be a jackass and let God know you believe in Him. That’s where He gets His evil powers.”

“He’d have to exist first,” said Jack, “And we’ve already established that to be perfunctorily false. Now. How do we begin?”

We both looked at Zeke, blinking sweetly. I knew his family had gone to church, but I was fairly certain nothing had rubbed off. I don’t think he expected us to call his bluff.
He stood up, clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder, and grinned.

“Your problem; your prayer. I am merely an interested observer. I do know that you are supposed to put your hands together and look at your feet. So start with that.”

“Look at your feet? That’s got to be wrong,” said Jack, “Heaven is up and hell is down. Even I know that one. Maybe that’s why the world is in such a shit state. Too many people praying in the wrong direction.”

He lifted his head to the ceiling and held his hands high in the air, like Moses. I copied him. Zeke shrugged, and did the same.

Jack looked at me. I couldn’t blame him. I had been growing out my beard lately. If I knew anything about God, I knew that he liked bearded men. This was some sort of fetish. If you are trying to catch a dragon, you send out your most nubile virgin. If you are trying to catch Yahweh, you send out your most unbalanced beardo.

“Heavenly Father!” I shouted, “We bid you the most holy Hosannah we have. It’s not the holiest Hosannah in town, but I remember reading somewhere that you like sinners better than other people. I take this to mean that you party. Um, that you Party, rather. That YOU PARTY. Right. What’s the order, now? Invocation, then offering, and then shameless begging? Give him an offering, Zeke.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know you are holding. Burn one down for Jesus.”

Jack leaned over and got down a glass pipe from a shelf. Zeke reached in his pocket and pulled a little baggie. He wet his pinkie and scooped out a tiny plug of KB. Jack handed him the pipe. He loaded and lit it.

“Blow out,” I said, “Slowly, so you don’t spray weed everywhere. Make sure God gets fresh smoke.”

Zeke complied.

“Now that we’ve got your attention,” I continued, “Please fill us with the divine light of your presence, so that we may know you, and take comfort in your omnipotent, omnipresent beneficence. Truly, thou art a righteous God. Truly. Man, THIS is bullshit.”

“Keep going,” said Jack, “Does anyone else feel lightheaded?”

I laughed out loud. It was strange. Now that I thought about it, I did feel uncharacteristically giddy. Maybe it was bending my neck back and yelling at the top of my lungs, but the room wasn’t sagging anymore and I couldn’t sustain my frown. There was also something different about the air. It smelled stronger and more robust. The place usually smelled like incense and BO; now it smelled like sweet potato pie. Surely it was a lack of oxygen. My brain felt like somebody had squirted hand sanitizer all over it and wiped it down with a chamois cloth. Were we in the Presence?

”The Presence of what?” I asked out loud without realizing it.

As if in direct answer to my blasphemous query, the Lou Reed record skipped and started to play Crimson and Clover. Over and over.

Jack stood up and walked over to the kitchen. His head and hands were still pointed at the ceiling. I think he was muttering to himself. Suddenly my mouth filled up with the sweet taste of wine. I swallowed, and it was delicious.

“This is great!” I shouted, “Let me hear a hallelujah!”

“Fucking intense, right? It’s never been this strong before. Watch this,” said Zeke, “God? Are you there? Do one miracle for yes, two miracles for no.”

There was a popping noise. Suddenly, in the seat next to me, sat Ringo Starr, circa 1968.

“Paul! John! Do you see what I see? I think we took too much, mates.”

He reached out to touch my face, like I was a statue or a dream. There was another popping noise. In his lap sat Joan of Arc. At least that’s what her nametag said.

“Groovy!” said Ringo.

“Oh, Father…you have blessed me with another vision of…someone’s apartment. And the lap of a man completely dressed in satin,” said Joan, “I will learn what I can from this holy and joyous experience.”

Pop. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Naked. Floating in mid-air with legs daintily crossed. Eating pretzels from a bag. Foam boogie board in hand.

“Boring,” he said. He sneezed. All three of them disappeared.

“What the crap?” I said. “Is that one miracle or two?”

“You’re the expert,” said Jack.

“Maybe there is some sort of divine law. The conservation of the miraculous.”

“Obviously, He’s baked,” said Zeke. “So now that we’ve trapped Him here and got Him high, what do you want to ask Him, Jack?”

“There are a number of things I would know,” said Jack, bending down as if to tie a shoe. “Heed me, Unlimited One! You don’t have to answer me, of course. That’s your prerogative as deity. But I definitely have a list of questions and concerns. Number one…”

I saw what he was going to do before he did it, but I had no time to stop him. It was as if time had slowed to an unreliable trickle – a leaky patch squeezed from the side of a pocket monad -- and was only beading up and dropping at Jack’s command. I knew exactly what was going to happen – could almost SEE it reflected in time’s surface tension – but I could do nothing. He had hunched into a crouch, and then with a force that seemed volcanic, he let himself loose. The crank had turned, and here was Jack, right out of his box. His fist went wild, and at its full extension, there was an explosion in the sky like a jumbo jet crashing into a floating munitions factory.

FUL-KLABACKOOM! Everything went dark.

Jack had finally found somebody worth punching. A sucker. The first and mightiest sucker. And He went down hard.

That was when things got kind of weird. I don’t know if you remember it, but it’s okay if you don’t. Human beings are made to forget. It’s an old story. You and your family are sitting around the kitchen table, bantering about the electoral college, when all of a sudden a rain of bloody, spectral fetuses starts pouring out of the AC duct, falling into the ceiling fan and spraying sticky crimson ectoplasm all over the clean tile floor, like flour through a sifter. Silently, you each file into your bathrooms and take thirty minute showers, emptying your shampoo bottles. Your clothes are burned. Mom gets out the Comet and spends three hours on her knees cleaning baby spines out of grout. Dad rents a steam vacuum and teaches Sis an important lesson about haggling. After an evening of focused denial, you each take your places and the discussion resumes. No one mentions fetuses. Maybe Dad develops a nervous twitch for a week or two. It’s how our brains work. I don’t fault you for it, no sirree Bob. The only reason I remember that night so clearly is because I was smack dab at the epicenter. Otherwise, I would have been right alongside you, picking umbilical cord out of the silverware drawer and whistling Supertramp.

At any rate, you don’t have to believe me. Maybe you remember it as a dream. Maybe it’s better if you don’t.

The first thing I remember is when we lost causality. When we lose causality. When we will lose causality? Whatever.


THE END


…is what happened first. So I knew it was all going to work out. Jack, Zeke, and I pull ourselves up from the floor. I have vomit all over the front of my shirt, and I can still hear the lonely strains of a Bach toccata.

“I feel so much better,” says Jack. “No more punching, and I can get back to business. Thank you both.”

“Now you see why I don’t believe in God,” says Zeke. “What I don’t understand is why other people don’t.”

“Man,” I say. “This Universe has a lot of toes in it.”


…I’m floating inside a seemingly infinite void, gently twirling on my horizontal axis and trying to see everything I can. There are worlds like confetti stretched out above and underneath me. They twinkle and spin like Christmas ornaments. If I squint, I can see what each represents. Here’s a world dedicated to mammaries, here’s one to jokes, another to crossword puzzles. I realize that something is wrong with them. There is supposed to be a harmony. A grand perceiver. But God is unconscious…I saw him splayed out on the floor next to that amazing pipe organ. So these worlds are beginning to drift. Someone must save them!

I psyche myself up like a 2nd string 4th quarter quarterback. I roll up my sleeves and clear my mind. Before I can do anything, I am assaulted. A green world shaped like a crescent moon slaps me in the forehead. I feel it wrapping itself around my brain and blanking me out. Not a crescent moon…a toenail clipping.


…Zeke has God up by the lapels and is shouting at him. While playing, Jack has broken off one of the glass tubes from God’s Garden of Polyphonic Bewilderment and has it to his lips. He is lighting it. He is smoking it?

“Hey,” says Zeke, “Wake up, dammit.”

He starts shaking him. He sets him on the bench next to Jack in front of the magnificent organ and puts his hands on the keys. Nothing.

“Let him sleep,” says Jack. “He’ll be okay. Besides: this is kind of fun.”

I bend down close and look at him. He’s so cute. All that curly red hair and that goofy grin. I wonder what he is dreaming about.


…at first everything is just dark. Dark and empty, like the whole world just exploded. But I can still hear things in the room. Breathing.

“Holy shit,” says Zeke, “Did you just punch God?”

“I didn’t just punch him,” says Jack, “I knocked his ass out.”

Then my feet start to leave the ground. First causality goes, and now gravity? I like gravity. I hold on as best I can, trying to make myself as heavy as possible, like a toddler throwing a fit inside a toy store, not wanting to leave. There is a light and a tunnel.

“We probably shouldn’t get anywhere close to that light,” says Zeke.

“Grab on to my shoe,” says Jack. “We’ll swim in the opposite direction.”


…I have become the man in charge of toes. The world of toes is at my disposal, and the responsibility for its maintenance has fallen onto my unlikely shoulders. I am bathed in green light, feeling the separate tug of each toe in the universe as it calls for attention. There are billions of them, each pulling in a unique podiatric direction, wanting to wiggle and explore like fresh maggots in milk.

I do my best to satisfy. But I was not made for this. The toes of orangutans, caterpillars, horses, people, and sheep…all needing precise calibration...overload my dopy, linear mind. Messages pour in from every dark corner of a world hostile to these nubbly ineffectual piggies. They deserve a more attentive caretaker. My eyes fill with water as I probe more deeply and accidentally find a pocket that evidently contains the cumulative toe stubbing for the city of Dover, Delaware in one day.

I begin to shriek. My brain burns, desperate with gangrene, Athelete’s Foot, and impacted cuticles – corns, calluses, bunions, and boils. A floating sea of toes -- like painted, hairy kelp -- pushes me along and threatens to suck me down inside it.

I close my eyes and retreat.


…God’s eyes snap open. His grin disappears. Before I can do anything, he punches me right in the stomach. The pain is unbearable. I puke all over myself.

SORRY, I THOUGHT YOU WERE SOMEONE ELSE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

“Minding the shop, guv,” says Zeke.

“You know,” I say, pointing at Jack, “I didn’t do anything. It was that guy. That’s the guy you need to smite.”

HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN OUT? WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?

“Hard to say really,” says Jack.

THIS IS MIGHTY EMBARASSING. YOU PEOPLE NEED TO LEAVE. NOW.

God turns to the organ and begins to play. It sounds like something by Bach. The sound would be deafening, if we weren’t already gone…


…It is possible we have merely been exposed to some amazing hallucinogens, but I find this incredibly unlikely. I hold on to Jack’s boot as long as I can, but I eventually slip free. I see him fall (or maybe rise?) into what appears to be a garden growing on the ceiling (floor?).

Nested hollow tubes clamber for purchase, reaching out and straining against their mooring. The colors shift, and they do not sway. From the mouth of each comes a single quiet tone: the scales and notes of infinite universes playing a soft holding pattern. I realize that ordinarily the polyphonic component in this garden of musical tubes would be bewildering in immensity. But something is wrong. I gaze deeper as I drift past.

In the garden’s center is a pipe organ. Simple and elegant; the kind you would find in the back of a Lutheran church. There sleeping beside it is a little elfin red-headed creature with his feet straight up in the air. He is snoring. He has a black eye. It is conceivable that I was once created in his image.

“Oh crap…” I say.

Jack hits the ground and gives me a thumbs up. Where the hell is Zeke?

I float onward.


…the world of toes flips me around like a burger on a grill. I have given up trying to control them, and am treating it like being in a mosh-pit. Eventually these toes will want to buy a bootleg t-shirt and will toss me into a security guard.

And then, from every pore, I hear music. Someone is playing the pipe organ. Chopsticks.

The toes stop their torment. I feel a hand at the scruff of my neck, and feel myself lifted through several layers of consciousness and then set back down on my feet. We are back in the garden.

“Zeke! Where have you been?”

“Traveling through time solving mysteries with a wise old beagle and the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. I think it was an abandoned universe. I never want to go back. It was shut away for a reason. Where’s that punk-ass pretender? This is getting out of hand.”

Zeke hauls God to his feet.

It is Jack at the organ, tentatively pecking out chopsticks with two fingers.

“It’s not beautiful. But it is order,” he says, “And I think I can dig it.”