TRUTHTELLER

There was a thump.

Cassie looked up from her tablet.

After a long moment, the sound came again, from, apparently, out in the hallway.

She set the tablet and its article about the Yellowking scandal aside, uncurled herself from her sofa and went to the front door of her apartment, catching a slash of pale skin, blonde hair and green blouse as she passed the mirror hanging in the hall.

The landlord had never sprung for peepholes, so she cracked the door and peered out, resulting in the discovery that Odetta, her neighbor across the hall in 23F, was doing the same. They weren’t particularly close, but they chatted now and then while getting their mail or waiting for the building’s laundry machines to finish churning. They both pushed their doors open wider, and the black woman opposite Cassie raised an eyebrow.

“That you?”

“Nope.”

Thump.

They both looked down the hallway.

Someone was standing there, a man. It was a moment before Cassie identified him; Melvin.. no, Marvin Sinope, lived over in the eastern wing of the building. A polite nonentity with glasses and thinning brown hair. He was not looking at them, but staring at a section of the bland brown wallpaper. He had evidently produced the thumps with his fist, as it still hovered in midair. For a moment longer it lingered, but then it dropped back to his side.

After another long pause dribbled awkwardly past, Cassie tentatively cleared her throat. Marvin swiveled his head in her and Odetta’s direction, and she vaguely noticed hat his hair was more gray than brown.

“Oh. Miss Sayers..” The eyes behind the lenses shifted slightly. “Miss Strickland.” A pause. “I’m sorry, did I.. yes. I disturbed you. But..” Another long glance at the spot on the wall. “It was necessary.”

He’s drunk or high on something.

The thought went strobing through Cassie’s mind. She should just get back inside, close the damn door, lock it, and-

But at the same time..

He didn’t seem threatening at such...

“Marvin, what’s wrong?”

“Hm? Wrong..” He turned his attention back to her. “Well. I guess that would depend on your point of view. I’m not.. I haven’t been ingesting any.. substances, as you.. suspect. At least.. not in the usual sense.”

“But what..”

“I will try and explain.” He tilted his head and his glasses somehow caught and flashed what little there was of the overhead light.. “I was.. in my apartment. Minding my business, as I recall. I did not read any volumes of occult lore, or purchase any questionable artifacts from a mysterious little shop. But who knows what people’s business entail? Perhaps I deserved it, one way or another.”

“Deserved.. what?”

“All of a sudden..” He waved a long thin hand. “Only no. It wasn’t all of a sudden. I awoke with a mild headache this morning, and it persisted all day. In fact..” A pause. “I have been feeling odd all week.. I see now that this was a harbinger of.. whatever it was that was to come. Just now, a few minutes ago...” He blinked. “Oh. It’s been longer than I thought. Where does the time trickle away to?”

Again, Cassie considered retreating into her apartment and calling the police, but again she lingered. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Odetta also had not moved.

“But when it finally did happen.. I was pacing restlessly about, and.. there was a voice. Only.. no. That would imply sound, yes? The pain..” He tapped at his temple, let his hand dangle again.. “surged all of a sudden, and I.. fell to the floor. I believe. Yes. And then, just as suddenly it snapped, and it was.. a presence. Inside my head. What it was.. God? The Devil? Aliens beaming me a message from Altair IV? I do not know. It did not speak to me.. it revealed to me. It.. twitched aside a veil which I had not even been aware existed and it showed me..” He trailed off and studied them both. Behind those glasses, his eyes were..

Strange.

Different.

Wrong?

What was wrong?

What was right?

“Do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to tell you the Truth that was revealed to me?”

Odetta, her eyes very wide, slowly and silently backed into her apartment, closed her door, turned the deadbolt on her lock.

Cassie vaguely considered doing the same, but instead found herself taking a tottering step forward, her foot suddenly stretched far from her brain. Her throat made small noises, trying to protest, but if that was its intention, it was already too late.

Had it always been too late?

She bobbed her head.

“Yes. Please. Mr. Sinope. Tell me.”

And so he did.

It didn’t take long at all, as it was all..

Terribly simple.

And when he was done, she twitched a little, gasping, and then she nodded again.

Of course.

It was the Truth.

She touched at her blouse, and her jeans, and her sneakers and socks, her watch and necklace, and they fell away. She started to leave them where they landed, but no. It was important to be neat and tidy. She gathered them, folded them all into a pile, set them into what once, no so terribly long ago, had been her apartment. Now everything in it belong to Mr. Sinope. Belonged to the Truth.

Just as she did.

Heart and mind.

Body and soul.

And that was the Truth.

She closed his door, turned back to him.

She could see the Truth flowing from him now, like a glowing waterfall.

She managed a quick glance at the wall, saw what he had been thumping, and shuddered. Then her gaze was pulled relentlessly back to him, only him, only the Truth.

She again took a wobbling step, the carpet scratchy under her bare foot, and then another, and then she crumpled into a boneless heap.

It was not proper that she should walk, not in his presence, even it had been physically possible.

She sorted our her limbs, ran inventory, all seemed accounted for. She levered herself to her hands and knees. And she crawled to him across that endless expanse, crawled to the oasis of Truth amidst that eternal desert, under the all the enormous stars that now burned overhead, high and cold and forever, a million unblinking eyes rimmed with silvery fire..

She could name all of them, and started to do so in the back of her mind.

Deneb Betelgeuse Canopus Pleiades Altair Camazotz Yuggoth

Under their lights, his shoe was waiting for her, looming black and massive.

Waiting for her tongue.

It would take hours of dedicated work, back in his main apartment, to even begin to render it properly clean.

There was no way that she would ever be able to clean both of them, and for a moment she despaired, but then she actually touched him (only her tongue was remotely worthy enough to touch him.)

And along with shoe leather she tasted further Truth and she almost wept.

Of course.

This was only the beginning.

She licked at her Master’s shoe, and it was bliss and torment, the Truth passing through her, like electricity through a great powerline strung high above the earth. There was more of it, there would always be more of that veil to tear away. Her Master, as powerful and wise as he was, had only told her what he could with bits of shaped air; it had not been directly Revealed to her.

What came now was..

She was only the beginning.

Her tongue stowed itself back inside her mouth and her eyes rolled themselves up inside her head, locked firmly into place.

She could see any important things without them.

After a moment, his shoes turned.

She fell into her place at his heel, crawling.

She suspected she would never walk upright again.

For, yes, this would be her place, from now until.. the far-distant end, wherever that proved to be. A place of honor and glory.

But.. right now.. nevertheless unbalanced. Not just when it came to cleaning shoes.

She felt the unbalance growing as they progressed, the stars overhead twisting in vast cold displeasure, the desert taking on a sickening tilt.

Down past two, three doors, one side, then the other. As has just been shown with Odetta Angelica Strickland (Cassandra had never known her middle name before, but it was part of the Truth..) not all women were worthy of hearing the Truth.

But some..

The proper door at last, a slanting shadow.

His mighty fist rose, and once again thumped, the impact rattling against her bones, clattering her teeth together.

The door opened at once, of course it did, the woman on the other side had been waiting her whole life for this, even if she hadn’t realized it.

Verity Frances Benitz. Cassandra has vague memory of not liking the brown-not-black skinned woman with her cloud of inky fizzy hair, but she brushed that irrelevancy away.

The Master asked if Verity wanted to hear the Truth, already knowing the answer, but this was the way the thing had to be done, and that was part of the Truth.

Parts of Verity’s mind tried to resist, even as her mouth gave its consent.

The Truth.

Hearing it again, another layer peeled off of Cassandra’s mind, another twitch of the veil.

Cassandra would be hearing it again and again, so many times, and she spasmed along the length of her body as she realized this.

Verity touched at her clothes, and they fell away.

She stepped from the Master’s second new sub-apartment.

She joined her sister-slave Cassandra, taking her rightful place at his other heel.

The desert rebalanced itself, and they proceeded in light and power.

Of course, even as they walked, it slowly began to tilt out of alignment again, off in a new direction. They were both wearing underwear, silly little scraps of the cloth, that must be, would be, replaced with proper attire, iron collars around their necks and leather straps around the rest, wrapped tight, black and white, matching the balance.

And they were back at his dwelling place. He took a seat in his throne, which would be a throne externally, someday, oh yes, matching its internal truth, gold and shining clustered jewels and they arranged themselves before him, fell to their work.

He picked up his waiting laptop, opened his browser, found the Times website, found the same article Cassandra had been reading, typed a reply into the comments sections. Each keystroke flashed blinding in Cassandra and Verity’s brain, for he included in among them more bits of the Truth, enough that when the right women read them.. they would know. They would come to him when the time was right, bringing their offerings. Iron and leather and gold and burnt offerings heaped high. The Truth would be told. Far and wide, forever.