Part 2

"In these troubled times the tortured mind of man is hanging in the balance, because he has forgotten his great enemy," Elinda shouts. There's a wildness in her eyes and a sensuousness in the way she moves her body that makes you move forward until you're sitting on the edge of your seat. Any stripper, you muse, would give her G-string to be able to imitate this woman's uninhibited way with her hips.

"Why are our asylums filled with millions of the mentally sick? And why are there tens of millions of the physically sick among us? WHY?" she demands at the top of her lungs. "Because the doctors and the psychologists absolutely fail to recognize or blindly refuse to recognize the demoniac origin of these illnesses. They have failed, my dear friends, because they are bound to the unreality of conventional science. They have failed because they did not look into their souls to see what God has written there for all to read.

"If we face the truth, we will learn to recognize the presence of demons and only then can we cure the inflicted!"

Demons, you think. What a lovely idea. Perhaps you have fallen through a rift in time and come out in the Middle Ages with only wonderful things like witches and demons to worry about. You turn to O'Malley to tell him this, only to find him sound asleep. You've often wondered where he did his sleeping, and now you know.

"The battle in the world today is not between nations but between Jesus Christ and the Devil!" She has gone into a kind of bump and grind routine now with her hands on those glorious hips and her body moving back and forth while her legs remain absolutely still. It looks real good from where you sit but you think it might look even better up closer so you leave Pat snoring gently and take a seat further toward the front.

"Come to me and the Lord will put out his hand and save you. He has said unto me: 'You shall have the power to cast out demons,' and I have replied that I will do so. If you feel it, say Amen!"

There is a lusty chorus of amen's from the winos and bums who fill the auditorium. You have an idea they were attracted here by the same thing that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

A man with the jerks of some sort comes down the aisle and the healing starts. Dr. Egers lays one hand on his head and the other at the back of his neck.

"Get out of him, you demons! Out! Out! In the name of the Lord, I charge thee--get out!"

The man jerks even more violently. "Heal him, Lord, heal him! They're coming out ... the demons are coming out. Can't you feel them leaving you, brother?"

The fellow jerks once more and almost falls as an attendant leads him away. "He's cured," Elinda shouts. "Praise God! He'll never have another convulsion."

"Praise God! Praise God!" the congregation shouts. Only the still-jerking man seems to have any doubts as to his cure.

"The Power of God will save you," she says to the little boy now kneeling before her. "From the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, I charge you, Satan, come out!" She hugs the child against those astonishing breasts of hers. "This can be your cure if you believe, Jimmy. All things are possible if you only believe. Little Jimmy, do you have faith?"

The boy nods his head eagerly and his face is so full of faith and belief that you find yourself nodding with him.

"Restore him tonight in the name of Jesus Christ!" she shouts, placing her hands on his thin little legs. "This little leg, Lord ... send the Power to restore this little leg. Drive the demon of evil from it!" Her voice grows even louder. "The Power is coming! The Power is coming! The Power is within me now and it will flow from me to you. Do you feel it, Jimmy? Do you feel it? Do you feel it flowing in your legs?"

She has lifted him from the floor and is cradling him in her arms. "Do you feel it, Jimmy?"

Christ, you can almost feel it yourself.

"Don't your legs feel different, Jimmy?"

"I think they're tingling a little," he says.

"Do you hear that?" she shouts again. "His legs are tingling! The God Power is making them tingle!" She lowers the child to the floor. "You can do it, Lord! Send the Power in the name of Jesus! Send it into this little foot, into this little leg. Try, Jimmy, try it for me, try it now!"

Jimmy tries to stand up but wavers and falls. With renewed effort he manages to pull himself erect and stand swaying.

"YOU'VE SEEN IT! YOU'VE SEEN IT WITH YOUR OWN EYES!" Elinda screams at them joyously.

Sure they've seen it but they don't seem much impressed. In fact, most of them get up and leave after this round. You ease yourself out of your seat and head toward the door, because you need a drink, but you turn before going out to look back at her. She looks tired and disappointment shows in her full sensuous face.

You know that she's the most wonderful thing you have ever seen. You've found your religion. You've found something to worship--Elinda Egers, the only real goddess in the world. You'll come here every night and the bomb won't worry you because you have a religion now. Elinda Egers will save you. You head for the nearest bar, singing "Rock of Ages" at the top of your lungs.

* * * * *

You're running ... running, terror riding you like a jockey using the whip. You're running while a boiling sea of flame rolls over the city. Behind you and close on your heels come breakers of radioactive hell, smashing buildings and lifting cars and people into the air. People are running on all sides of you. A girl in a spangled evening dress, a puffing little man in Bermuda shorts, a woman carrying two children, a man with a golf bag over his shoulder and two men in gray flannel suits followed by a woman in a sack dress that keeps blowing up over her face as she runs.

The harder you run, the closer the fire seems to get. You can feel it singeing your back and the fat little man screams as a lashing tongue catches up with him and turns him into a cinder. The woman in the sack dress tramples across the bodies of the two men in gray flannel but the man with the golf club fights her off with his mashie. Then the four of them are eaten up by the hungry flames. You moan and your legs pump harder. There's an underground shelter ahead and you run toward it only to find the entrance jammed with people. You try to fight your way in. You grab hold of a man but his boiled flesh comes away in your hands. Then you see they are all dead, packed together so tightly they can't fall. You're running again and you see the woman with the two children only there's nothing left of them but a charred arm and a hand which she still clutches. The girl in the evening dress falls in front of you and you stumble over her. You see her dress and then her hair burst into flames. She throws her arms around you and you feel the suffocating flames.

"Oh Lord--Lord," you moan, and wake up. The bottle of wine on the nightstand is only half empty and you drink from it gratefully and think of going out for more. But you remember your goddess and you know that you have to go to see her.

She's in good form tonight as she talks about the Kinsey Report.

"If you're listening, say Amen!" She raises both arms as she yells this and you're amazed at the way her big breasts rise with them.

"In the Old Testament, God demanded death for the adulteress but Dr. Kinsey in his day tried to make her sins sound normal. But I tell you that this sin is the road to Hell, for the person and for the nation. God has destroyed other cities for this sin and His wrath will fall upon yours as well.

"If you're listening, say Amen!"

"AMEN!"

"Are you really listening? Do you honestly want to hear? Or do you prefer the way Los Angeles and the rest of the nation is going? Do you prefer the way of sex, the way of fornication and adultery? Do you prefer to read about sixteen-year old girls found in love nests with older men? Do you prefer to think of boys and girls in the back seats of cars? Do you prefer to think of some man's hand running over your daughter's body, touching her...." Elinda Egers is swaying back and forth, her body rigid, her breath coming faster and faster.

Someone else is breathing heavily and you're not surprised to find it's you.

"If this is what you want, say Amen!"

"Amen!" you shout before you realize you're not supposed to this time. No one seems to notice. Beads of perspiration are forming on the back of your neck and trickling down your spine. The tabernacle is jammed and there isn't much ventilation. You're dizzy with the wine, lack of food and desire.

"Go ahead! Let your kids go to Hell! Let them read comic books and smoke and drink and fornicate in the back seats of jalopies! Let them go to filthy movies, let them listen to dirty jokes on television, let them look at the brazen women with their breasts hanging half out of their dresses."

"Oooooh ..." a woman in front of you moans, and you feel like moaning with her.

"But if you don't want these things," Elinda shouts, her voice on the verge of breaking, "sing--sing, sing with me!

"_Come home, come home, Ye who are weary, Come home._"

You are sitting in a metal room with telescreens on the wall and a big red button in front of you. Sweat is standing out on your forehead and trickling down the back of your neck because you know the time is coming, the time when you have to decide whether to push that button and send a dozen ICBM's with hydrogen warheads arcing over the Pole. In the telescreens you see cities ... peaceful scenes of people going about their business. Then the people are running, leaping out of their cars and leaving them on the street, vanishing into buildings and underground shelters. Your hand is poised over the big red button and your muscles are tightened as if your whole hand and arm were turned to wood, and you know that even if you have to, you can't push that button and destroy half the world.

Then in one of the telescreens there is a sudden white glare, and the screen goes blank--burned out--and then in another telescreen you see destruction fountaining like dirty white dust boiling out of the streets ... and you see the buildings breaking and falling in rubble, and now you hear the people's screams, a sound that tears through your guts and drives you crazy, and the rubble is falling and sending up more fountains of gray dust--and you know that this is happening to your own country, your own people, and you have to strike back, you have to push the button and avenge them, stop the slaughter by killing the enemy's people and destroying their cities too, but you can't make yourself push the button, your arm won't move and your fingers are paralyzed, and then all the telescreens are glaring white or blowing up in clouds of destruction, and you scream, scream in the metal room until you can't hear anything but your own screaming, and then somehow you force your hand down and push the button. And just as you feel it go down, the walls of the room burst inward in a volcano of noise and terror and the gray dust comes swirling in over you, blotting out your screams....

You wake up and hurry through the streets with this last dream hanging over you more heavily than any of the others. You've got to run--you've got to get out. But look at all the other people. None of them are running. They're going home from work--going into cafes, walking the dog ... oh God, walking the dog at a time like this....

You're scared. The bloody world is coming to a bloody end. You know it just as sure as you're sitting here in the warm sun in MacArthur park with the fifth you've bought and are drinking from in a paper bag.

It's close now. You're not sure how close but it's close. The world is coming to an end and you know you can't convince anyone that it is. You feel the way Henny Penny--or was it Chicken Little?--must have felt. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Hell--you're just one more caterwauling messiah in a city of messiahs. Los Angeles, where every man is his own messiah.

Then you know what the trouble is. You've been looking for someone to help you, when what you should have been doing was helping them. Now you realize that you are the _one_, you are the messiah you've been seeking. It's up to you to lead them out to the city into the wilderness. You drink more and you drink it fast and the more you drink the more a feeling of infinite compassion comes over you for your fellow men.

You can save them. You can do it. You drain about two-thirds of the bottle and then get up and walk toward a man in that uniform of success, a gray flannel suit.

"Wait a minute, friend," you say, shifting the bottle to your left hand so you can take his arm with your right.

"What is it? What do you want?" he says, looking at you as though you're drunk.

"Have you seen the papers today, friend?" you ask.

"Let go of me," he says, pulling away.

"If you have seen them, what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going home and eat my dinner." He hurries off.

You approach a plump, pretty little blonde pushing a baby carriage. "Miss, can I have a few minutes of your time in which to save your life?"

She looks frightened and tries to wheel the buggy around you.

"Have you thought about the future of this dear little child of yours?"

She breaks into a half trot and soon disappears with the baby carriage bouncing along ahead of her.

You sit down for a few minutes and have a few more swallows of the bourbon. When you get up you're surprised to find that you stagger a little. But you've got to tell the people, you've got to make them listen. Your eye lights on a garbage can a short way off and you know you've found the way to do it. You take a stand beside the can and with the bottle tucked safely in your pocket you begin to pound on the can with both hands.

"Hey, listen, everybody! I've got to tell you about the Last Days of Los Angeles. Listen to me! I can save you if you'll just listen! You're doomed. The city is doomed!"

You pound like mad on the can, but this being L.A. where such things happen every day, only a very few passersby stop. "Come over here and let me tell you about it!" you yell. "Do you know what the power of the H-Bomb can do? Have you heard of the C-Bomb? Do you know what nerve gas is? Have you seen the Sputniks overhead? Do you know how far an ICBM will travel and how fast? Do you know that there is no defense?"

You grab a man by the arm, but he shakes you off, so you reach for a gray-haired old lady and get an umbrella in your middle from the dear little thing.

"Boy, is he ever soused." Two teen-aged girls are standing in front of you, giggling. "Did you ever see a guy so drunk?"

You want to save them and you start toward them with outstretched arms, but they move back into the crowd. This makes you furious and you start to yell again.

You grab the nearest person. It's a woman but you shake her anyway. Someone has got to listen.

"Let go of me, you masher," the woman screams. "Help, somebody, help!"

The crowd closes in on you. A sailor grabs you from behind and a man in working clothes hits you with a lunch bucket. You let go of the woman and hit back at him.

"Help! Help!" the woman is still yelping.

"Call the cops--a man's trying to rape a girl!"

Someone hits you with an umbrella, and you know it's the same dear little old lady. A guy grabs you by the neck and tries to throw you to the ground but you kick him in the groin and trade punches with two others. Then they're all over you. The old lady trips you and you go down. She starts beating you with the umbrella as a man's foot smashes against your head. You see a woman's nylon-clad leg as she raises her spiked heel and brings it ripping down across your cheek. Other feet crash into you.

"Let me help you," you're still yelling, but they keep on kicking. Some of the shoes have blood on them, you notice through the haze, but they still keep on kicking.

Then it's getting dark and you lie there and think how Henny Penny--or was it Chicken Little?--must have felt. You want to tell someone about it but you don't. You just lie there and wait for the screaming sirens to come and take you away.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Last Days of L.A., by George H. Smith