Cult of Salt

Chapter 4 of The Triple World

Judd Slater has always been thankful to his historically paranoid, doomsday-obsessed ancestors. Thousands of years ago, people used to laugh at preppers, but now, they’re Subterrean deities.

Maddie Mackenzie, on the other hand, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about her ancestors. She could probably name them, if asked, but why bother? She is lying in a salt bath with her rather distracted husband, enjoying the hallucinogenic properties of dehydration and sensory deprivation.

At this very moment, Maddie Mackenzie is watching Judd’s bruise-black hair snake up into the steam, detach from his head and dance to her tune — she feels herself grow two new arms, especially for composing. Each strand of his hair hisses a new head to the beat she is conjuring up out of thin air.

Judd however, is not enjoying himself. He sees some cannibalistic surface-dweller lifting up a carpet of dirt and winding their way down a Subterrean spiral staircase searching for salt. He watches manifestations of pollutants beating their way through the walls of the Holy Salt Baths. He tells himself that they are not real, but he secretly wishes that they are. He knows they are. How else could the salt give them these kinds of hallucinations?

He worries that he should be more dedicated. More devoted. Maddie is a model devotee: naked and submerged, red-raw hair sweat-stuck to her forehead — Judd watches her arms splash about as though she is conducting some sort of orchestra…