How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,42
signs. And here she is. Someone who prays to a neon Virgin Mary and lives her whole life in all-caps and thinks God and my happiness go together just fine. I don’t think she was sent. Not in a literal Biblical-prophet way. But the fact that hey_mamacita a.) exists and b.) found me? It just seems like some power somewhere in the universe is maybe on my side.
I click the fic tab. Right up top I see the little green “NEW CHAPTER!” burst and my heart jogs faster. Most of the other Abandon girls write us into the Castaway Planet universe—I’m an android, Abel’s a studly ensign—or concoct these high-school melodramas where I get a beatdown from some closeted quarterback and end up in the ER and then Abel brings me a giant teddy bear and we do it in my hospital bed. hey_mamacita is the only one writing her vision of this trip we’re on, a crazy, sprawling fourteen-chapter epic called “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”
I grab a can of BBQ chips from the food bin, pop the top, and read.
Just as their lips were about to finally touch with a lovely trembling sweetness, a pair of headlights sliced across the parking lot and locked on the two boys like a tractor beam. They saw the black Cadillac creep toward them in the dark with sinister sharklike intensity, the blood-red rosary swinging from the rearview and the license plate blaring the grim heavy sledgehammer words Brandon could never forget: I-JUDGE.
The car shuddered to a stop.
“Get in the RV, Brandon,” Abel murmured.
Brandon shook his head. “I won’t,” he replied, raking up all his courage. “This is my fight, too. I know that now.”
Out of the shadows clacked the heavy black boots of Father X, his craggy face glowering with malevolence and his silver crucifix clutched in a fist that was ancient and bony but could still crack a sinner’s arm in half. His grease-slick hair swung like blades across his face. He crushed his cigarette out on the inside of his palm and his mouth cracked open in a twisted smile that showed his gray and rotting feral teeth and prickled the hairs on Brandon’s neck. He LIKED THE PAIN. That much was clear. Brandon thought, God, that must be why he wants us all to hurt.
“So this is where you go to practice your DEPRAVED FORNICATIONS,” Father X snarled, pointing the cross at them. His red eyes glowed in the blackness and the cross spat hot electric bolts of silver light. “In the NAME OF HEAVEN, I command you, Brandon Page, to cease this charade of sin and misery! Return at once to the blessed desolation of the chaste and celibate life God created you to lead!”
Brandon, in reply, brandished a dagger. It was a letter opener from the CastieCon souvenir stand, but Father X didn’t have to know that. He strode up to Father X like a cowboy at high noon and—
I crack up laughing. I always do when I read her fic, but I mean it as a compliment. The more awesomely campy it is, the better I feel. I grab a sharp-tipped pencil from the Cape May mug on the desk; practice brandishing and pointing it.
“It ends here,” Brandon rasped. “All my life I’ve been your robot. Wind me up and my heart has done your will. Believe this, sacrifice that. Accept that God created you to be alone. Tick tick tick, yes master, I believe. Well, guess what? I’m done. I met someone who fixed my heart. And you can’t do anything about it.”
He slipped his warm hand into Abel’s. The next thing he heard was—
Sirens.
Sirens outside, off to the west, straight in the direction of the Double T. I run to the window, scissor open the blinds with two fingers. I picture Abel on a stretcher. Blood on a white sheet. A crumpled fender, some girl sobbing God, I never even saw him while someone’s cell shrills over and over, sad and steady and unanswered.
It’s mine. My phone. It vibrates across the desk and I catch it just before it goes over. Father Mike? The weird thought clutches me. Just for a second. Then I pick up and hear: “OMG MY VAG IS ON FIRE!”
I giggle. “What?”
“Sweet merciful baby Moses, San Antonio is the city of magical love witchcraft!” A big knot loosens inside me. I drop back down in the desk chair. I picture Abel reading off his phone in a corner