The Benevolent Cult Leader

The teen gazed into the fire for a moment, then reached down and picked up an orange, gum ball-sized ember in his fingers and popped it into his mouth. The members of the cult looked on stunned as the teen swallowed it. 

“Holy shit!” said the girl in the fishnet shirt. 

The teen stood up and said, “Your so-called leader is a bozo. Feeding y’all a bunch of bull honkey about sacrifice. Look at him. Go on!” He waited as everyone turned to Smuts

*

Albin Smuts hadn’t been a cult leader for long. Before getting caught up in the dark arts, Smuts was a humble pet store employee. He liked animals, probably more than people, and he enjoyed his job. But he had visions of greatness which caused him a great deal of anxiety--sometimes it felt like a wave crashing right on top of him. Smuts was desperate to change his luck, but he just didn’t know what to do next. 

One day, while cleaning out the lizard cages, he claimed to have been bitten by a skink wearing a silk top hat. His manager chuckled, the way you do when you know someone is pulling your leg. Smuts snapped: “I saw a lizard in a silk top hat! Okay? I felt its teeth gnawing my bone! Alright?” 

The manager told his wife about it that night at dinner. 

“I don’t know what’s gotten into that boy,” he said.

“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” his wife said. 

“I mean, a plastic top hat, maybe. But silk? Get outta here!”

Soon, Smuts started behaving more strangely: showing up to work with his outfit inside out, speaking to animals in pig latin, as opposed to normal latin, and cursing unnecessarily. “We have some fantastic fucking rodents,” he told a 10-year old girl and her father. The father paused for a moment, but he overlooked the expletive and ultimately bought his daughter a fine Syrian hamster. 

The manager was incensed. “Talk however you want out there—but at Palmetto Pets, you keep it clean. Understand?” Eventually, Smuts was fired for referring to a Pomeranian as a “Fluffy-assed bitch,” even though the lady ended up buying it.

Smuts’ luck continued to spiral. His car was repossessed, and a week later the landlord threw him out of his apartment. With nowhere to go, Smuts walked into the Emerald Forest and pitched a tent. 

One cloudy day, Smuts was walking along the beach, contemplating suicide, when a voice spoke to him. The voice called itself Noir. It offered Smuts some career advice. 

“Start a cult. All you need are some followers and a robe.” 

“Followers? I don’t even have any friends!”

“Leave that to me.”

Noir’s tips on recruiting worked. Under his guidance, Smuts picked up a broke girl loitering by the arcade; a hitchhiker with one flip flop on; a drunk breaking bottles behind Surf Burger. Smuts came to rely on Noir. When asked about removing a sloppy joe stain from his robe, Noir said: “Hang it in the fork of a tree at midnight and throw mush at it until the stain is gone.” 

Smuts tried it. It worked.

Life was beginning to look up for Smuts. He was gaining followers. A little money was coming in. Sure, he and his followers were still camping in the Emerald Forest, but it was summertime, and they were close to nature. The only advice Smuts couldn’t take was on ritual sacrifice. 

“I can’t kill anything,” said Smuts. 

“Why not?” said Noir.

“Blood makes me queazy. Besides, I like animals.”

“I get that,” said Noir. “But you see, it’s a pretty important part of being a cult leader.”

“Why?”

“Well, gods need a sacrifice the way you need food.”

“Can’t I just, uh, give you some food?”

Noir sighed. “How can I put this? If you don’t sacrifice a living creature, it might be you.”

One night, a teen walking through the woods happened upon the cult. Smuts didn’t notice the interloper. He was standing on a stump, trying to screw up the courage to sacrifice the hermit crab in his hand, and suppress the indignation of his followers.

“Quiet, everyone! Quiet! I know it’s small,” Smuts said. “But Lord Noir has a plan! We must bide our time, and work our way up.” 

“I’m bored,” someone mumbled. 

A drunk with curly brown hair said, “I heard Wizard Shiro’s cult sacrificed a dolphin.”

“That’s right,” said a young lady in a fishnet shirt. 

“Surely you mean a dolphin fish,” said Smuts. 

“No,” the young lady said. “It was a dolphin dolphin. Like Flipper. Regina was there. She’s wearing one of its teeth around her neck.”

Smuts dry-heaved. “It’s a lie. Where would they get a dolphin, anyway?” 

“Uh, the ocean?” said the young lady, then to the others, “But that’s not all. Regina said, like, right after the sacrifice, an unmarked package filled with cash arrived for Wizard Shiro. Now, the whole cult’s moving into the old Shackelford place on Sandspur Lane. They’re having a housewarming orgy Friday night.”

“That Wizard Shiro is one far out dude,” someone said.

“Shiro is a fraud,” said Smuts. “His father is loaded. I bet he sent the money.” 

“I don’t see any packages arriving here,” someone mumbled.

You’re losing them, Noir said to Smuts. Get on with the sacrifice. 

“Alright! Enough gossip!” Smuts straightened his robe, raised the hand with the hermit crab, chanted some incantations, and plunged an ice pick toward his palm. The hermit crab died with a tiny squeak. Smuts threw up in his mouth a little. After composing himself, he concluded the ceremony with a final thought: “It wasn’t the dolphin. I bet his dad cosigned the lease.” 

Drop it, said Noir. There’s a stranger afoot. 

Smuts spotted the teen behind a bush. Their eyes locked briefly, then the teen ran away down the path. That night, the teen dreamed he was a marshmallow dangling over a campfire, his skin bubbling and turning brown, then black before exploding in flames. When the teen awoke, there was a message on his arm that read, “Don’t be a bore, come have a s’more.”

The following night, the teen entered the woods and approached the campsite. The cult was sitting around the fire, and when the teen neared some members scooted over to make room for him on the log. Someone handed the teen a s’more.

“The skink is our spirit animal,” Smuts said. “Skinks may bite for reasons that seem unprovoked.”

“Unprovoked!” shouted the drunk.

“But the skink knows,” Smuts said. “It knows.”

“What the hell does a skink know?” said the teen.

“He who has made a lamp, has also made a match,” said Smuts.

“The most inauspicious sign is a lizard falling onto an oil lamp,” said a crusty-looking guy. 

“Who still uses oil lamps?” said the teen.

“You’re a cocky bastard, aren’t ‘cha?” said the crusty one.

“It cannot be helped,” said Smuts. “He learned to behave from those who cannot.”

“Y’all always talk like this?” the teen said. “Christ, no wonder y’all are homeless.”

“You sure got a lot of opinions, kid,” said the girl in the fishnet shirt. 

“Hey, you invited me here,” said the teen.

“What do you wanna do, kid?” said the girl. “Kill your parents? Burn down a church?”

“I don’t wanna do any of those things,” said the teen.

A girl in a brown bikini stood up. “Then what do you want to do?”

“Eat some acid. Talk to aliens.” The teen shrugged. “You know—cult stuff.”

Smuts laughed. “Kid, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but you’ve been grossly misinformed. This is a real cult.”

“And that means, what?” said the teen.

“We worship nature.” 

“Boring,” said the teen.

“Boring?” said Smuts. “Well, perhaps I should summon Lord Noir, the serpent spirit, and let Him teach you about cults while devouring your liver.” 

The teen gazed into the fire for a moment, then reached down and picked up an orange, gum ball-sized ember in his fingers and popped it into his mouth. The members of the cult looked on stunned as the teen swallowed it. 

“Holy shit!” said the girl in the fishnet shirt. 

The teen stood up and said, “Your so-called leader is a bozo. Feeding y’all a bunch of bull honkey about sacrifice. Look at him. Go on!” He waited as everyone turned to Smuts. “What does he sacrifice? His precious lizards? No. A tiny hermit crab—the pocket change of nature!”

“It was small because you have to sacrifice a virgin, you little asshole,” Smuts said in a trembling voice. “Or didn’t you know that?”

Sacrifice him, now! said Noir. But Smuts was frozen with fear.

“Your little side show ends tonight,” said the teen. “From here on out, we’re culting hard core. Trances! Orgies! Money! I’m talking beach houses, wine coolers, driving up to the video arcade in a Rolls Royce, handing five dollar bills to the kids. We’re going to recruit members harder than the fuckin’ army!”

“I’m tired of camping!” said the girl in the brown bikini.

“Yeah!” said another. “I want a friggin’ beach house!”

“I’ll puke if I eat another s’more!” 

“This kid has the right idea!”

“Lead us!”

“Yeah! Show us the way!”

The followers surrounded the teen. 

“Alright, alright!” said the teen. “Chill out. Damn. But first…”

For his first duty as leader, the teen ordered Smuts to be stripped of his clothing and tied to a tree. When that was done, the teen removed a knife from its sheath. The blade was inscribed with magical characters that seemed to glow when the teen began to chant.

“Hey, hey, stop!” Smuts said. “You have to sacrifice a virgin! Remember?” 

“Don’t worry,” the girl in bikini told the teen. “He is.”

“You bitch!” shouted Smuts. “I should have left you in the ditch where I found you!” 

“But you didn’t,” said the teen, and plunged the blade into his chest. Smuts grunted and squirmed beneath the ropes, and died with a tiny squeak. Having provided his followers with a proper sacrifice, the teen removed a package from his pocket. “A sacrament,” he said to the people gathered around him. Inside the packet were small, iridescent squares that shimmered in the firelight. “Take two of these if you’re ready to follow me.” 

To mark the end of Smuts’ shameful reign, the teen urged his new followers to burn everything they owned. Then they danced, puked, chanted and screwed like never before. When their bodies collapsed from exhaustion, the teen spoke to his followers, leading them on a mind-bending journey through time and space…

And he would continue to lead his followers to higher realms still, providing them with shelter and spiritual pleasures, all the while wrapping them around his finger, just like a benevolent cult leader should.