Church was a few folding chairs in a basement with a drop ceiling I could palm. A bare bulb with a pull chain provided light, and the combined visuals and ambiance had a "clandestine everymen meet here to plot the overthrow of something" vibe. It was a room ready to be filled with a message; the green carpet bunched in places unglued, and only a chisel could have removed the internecine struggle between brown and light brown that occupied the formerly white walls. Supposedly, the most powerful entity ever--Maker, Unmade, Un-maker--talked to lowly humans here.
"Greg?"
Jeremy, the paragon of self-assurance, the pamphlet guy from the parking lot, saw me. He wore the same outfit as before, and didn’t seem to notice the swelling and bruises, the medley of purple fruits that a mule had stomped into my face.
"Yep."
"Splendid that you’re here. How did it go, your dinner?"
I thought back to the Friday at Joel’s, to the argument afterward. To Mateo, Cayley, and Cody--
"Well, I guess they can all feel the same after awhile," Jeremy said when instead of answering, I trembled.
Free from having to lie or speak truthfully on the matter, I recomposed then asked him about approaching strangers, if anyone got upset.
"Every so often. Just when I’ve heard the worst, somebody gets creative or oddly personal, and the scale needs revising again."
"What is the deepest cut you’ve received on the job?"
"Nothing I’ll repeat," Jeremy said, eyebrows high.
"Second worst?" I bargained.
"Let’s have you meet Pastor Lucas," Jeremy decided, patting my back to start me walking alongside him.
The pastor shook hands with a few parishioners as they left. Waiting until they’d all gone, Jeremy introduced me.
"Greg? That’s a nice name," Pastor Lucas remarked, dwarfing my hand with a grip that felt more like a submission hold than a greeting. "Why did you visit us tonight?"
The pastor smiled, shifting the mass of crosshatching on his face. The skin there was sectional, plated, able to take shrapnel in a bloodless impact. His silver hair shined with a scissor-breaking virility, and his eyes, dark blue, pierced with a metal cunning separate from his mind. He was probably in his fifties, and beneath his red, long-sleeved shirt and cream-colored slacks I supposed a wiry build (kept strong, undoubtedly, by belief).
"I came here...to find."
I glanced at Jeremy, who nodded, smiling. Pastor Lucas thoughtfully narrowed his eyes, with a gaze held at knifepoint my reservations.
"If I spare other people, I need that to be significant. If my parents, my boss, whoever...the guy pretending to rape...live their days unconfronted by me, it ideally would signify that I gave them quarter, just unimaginable charity. Otherwise...I don’t know. My expectations are reasonable, but nobody deigns to care, has the capacity to consider, that their vanity and disregard might actually deny closure for someone else. Deny closure for me. It’s me. I’m talking about--the enmity I possess will be discovered eons from now, like the Pillars of Creation or whatever plastic survives our planetary downfall. Pastor, I need an apology. From just one person. For a deliberate offense. So I can disconfirm the notion that my pheromones compel others to fucking devalue me. And if I can’t have an apology, I need the power of God to distract me from my own thoughts. That would be an amazing start, because afterward, it’s like, there’s the incidental stuff, circumstance, and you can’t daydream a revenge scenario against the conditions that happened to have happened, right?"
Jeremy appeared neutral, then uncertain, wanting to base his reaction on the Pastor’s, whose facial tangrams portended nothing.
"So, you are desperate. Humankind has been frustrating in all configurations. Life. Has not given. What you prefer. And so you have come here to reverse that trend. You will be doomed unless conditions change for the better, but you lack proper help, and church might be a good resource for that."
"Um, yes. I always hear about--"
"Listen," the pastor commanded, rebuking my soul with blue-eyed judgment. "I am tired of malcontents like you--yes, you are an archetype--coming to church only when other options have spoiled, only when their brains have failed to abandon the same wrong choices every day. I cannot help you. I have no personal investment in renovating your outlook. Try this, Greg. Find three people who know you best. Thorough knowledge. Can wound you, embarrass you--heal you--with the recitation of a shared memory. Ask each of them, ‘If my life is further from ideal than I deem acceptable, could you tell me why?’ Demand truthfulness, do not let them say the reasons defy accounting. They have thought about your problems, and they can probably articulate them."
His condescension beamed from Heaven. I pictured the scabs on my face bursting all over him, the corrosive content of my hateful blood melting his granite mask.
"Look at me. My face...is crap. Why would you talk to me like that? People, and I already knew this, are obviously not required to help me. Because if they were, I’d be fucking helped, right? And your question. No one exists in my life to ask. Plus, even if they did, getting a real answer would destroy--completely, all-the-way destroy--a friendship. At least for me. So that’s not feasible. Pastor. Lucas. I came here. I came here because I feel like...I’m at the end."
Jeremy stepped away from me.
Pastor Lucas did not hesitate. "Well, Greg. Maybe you feel that way because you are."
"Fuck you."
I spat on Pastor’s face.
Jeremy, channeling the strength and majesty of an elk that’s been chosen by God to protect a holy stream, tackled me. His shoulder cracked my sternum, became an impromptu exorcist by casting out the ability to breathe.
"Fuck...you...too," I grunted.
I clawed the skin on the backs of his hands. I raked and ripped, felt the sensation of muddling a lasagna’s top layer. I threw one headbutt--all for a chance to flee the stately brute pinning me to the wall. When he let go, I launched myself forward, running for a split second before colliding with a headlock.
"Pastor, I got him."
My skull bones creaked. The pain from previous attacks roared while breaking out of stasis. Jeremy was the strongest man in the world.
"What should we do with him?" he asked, no hint of struggle in his voice.
Do with him? How many options could there be? If these church-loving pieces of shit operate a slave camp or a gladiator pit--
"Release him," Pastor said. "His own ignorance will terminate his affairs."
I pried my head from the crook of Jeremy’s arm, leaving blood and blood serum on his white button-up God shirt. Which counted as a minor victory.
Trying to find a staircase, I walked farther into the basement by mistake, distracted by the replay of that day’s lunchtime.
#
Chicken Bacon Alfredo. That day it was restorative, like eating root vegetable stew during a blizzard, when the broth in one’s belly and the pelt on one’s back are the only means to rebuff Earth’s cruel tilt. Those bales of penne and cream sauce--laden with treasure both cubed and crumbled--bestowed a healing effect. Cracks had formed in the mandala, and I intended to fill them in with noodles and meat and melted parmesan. Three different species had given their lives for my comfort, so it was not a trivial exchange, the sacrifice to cover my plate. The larger sacrifice involved me sitting in a food court. A panoramic paradise of international cuisine--Mexican, Chinese, Italian--ruined by packs of teenager hyenas and free-roaming tiny-shoe cry-bombs. But it’s where Lucy wanted to go.
Lucy, the girl from Egyptian Mike’s, my diversion conscript. Eye shadow and lipstick. Hair so shiny black it was bright. Aftermarket lashes that could, in a blink, slash a hapless bug into a hundred slices. Her red t-shirt, though nominal in size, was absurdly dominant, striking its wearer from singularity and creating a separate version. "Red T-Shirt Lucy, complete with all you see here..."
"You really got fucked up," she said.
I talked while chewing, careful not to self-cannibalize the pinkflesh tatters behind my lower lip. "Honestly, it hurts only when other people mention it."
A softness emanated from her cheeks and arms, traveling through the light between us to caress my swollen eyes. Lucy ate her bread bowl in pinches, neglecting the molten mound of cheddar and broccoli therein. I fixated on the hope that she would let me finish it.
Until the Belly Man materialized in the background, standing there with his gelled hair and golf shirt, and the non-denim, non-athletic shorts of dining area nobility. He applied mustard on a corn dog, using his finger in long, sensual strokes, displaying more attentiveness and care in that moment than most folks are capable across a lifetime. Mr. Mad Iron should hack open that bulbous gut.
"You can talk to me more often when you see me, Prophet. I don’t mind. Or if you ever just wanna come over and chill..."
Lucy looked at me then gave a purposeful blink, a snip with her lashes, and in that instant a sensation of lifting, of extraction, convinced me that the moment had splintered away from linearity, formed a capsule of eternal present. It was perfection preserved in amber; somebody likes you. Before they get to know you. Before all the questions and wondering about things. I reached out, placed my hand over hers. How great, I thought.
Lucy pointed somewhere behind me. "Do you know them?"
My jaw froze, mid chew. My heart tried, failed to mash itself into pulp during an extra long contraction. A threefold harbinger promising loss, incarnated fucking humiliation, had spotted me. It was platinum cutting like a fabled edge. Fecal matter brown choking like a poison cloud. And auburn exploding like a daisy cutter.
Fran, Joel, and Ruth. A triumvirate of damage had been dealt. They glided without obstacle toward me, phasing through the hoi polloi, drawn by the whimper, the quiver, of my waning urge to eat.
Ruth stared, eyes flashing radioactive green. I could see the wish in her mind; Crush him with the Elephant’s Foot, boil him into graveless goo beneath Reactor No. 4.
Lucy’s hand. I squeezed it.
Three lunch-observers surrounded the table like a mobile, take-anywhere tribunal. A fashionable, trim, socially serious tribunal.
I pushed my food away; I was ready for them.
"So, my vagina has the texture and smell of durian?"
For some reason, I got kind of embarrassed when she said this. Lucy, I’m pretty sure, drowned a laugh with a sip of iced tea.
"What?"
"Chad, your buddy who comes to the mail room. That's Joel's brother. Do you recall a certain conversation with him?"
I felt so proud, having just read about durians. A new guy had started pick-ups in the mail room, so I tried out the comparison on him. He had no knowledge of such a fruit, then tattled, apparently.
"You’re an easily attainable, cock-receiving cheater," I said in place of an answer.
"Then say that to your coworkers. Stop lying about me."
"You came here to defend your vagina’s good name? Alright, I vow. I vow solemnly. To never again lie about the catchpenny loss leader between your legs. But may I remind you that fucking other people is a form of lie, too?"
"And what about pretending you don’t recognize your own parents?"
I imagined myself reaching into my pocket. Greg, anticipating his enemy’s tactic, reaches into his pocket to grab a small pouch. From the pouch, he retrieves a tiny object: a replica fireplace bellows suitable only for dollhouse inhabitants. Grasping the bellows between a pair of thumb and forefinger pincers, he aims it at Fran, Joel, and Ruth, each of whom smirks to flagrantly deny his dignity. Forcing the handles together, he expels the mystery contents--obliterating those blackguard bastards with a disembodied banshee scream. Their clothes fly off. Their skins fly off. Their muscles fly off. Their bones collapse in a bloody, bits-of-flesh entanglement. And now Greg will finish his bacon alfredo and breadsticks, because bread is still good even if it doesn’t have air cells in the middle or a bunch of corn meal on the fucking bottom!
"I met your mom at the Farmer’s Market. She mentioned that time we saw her and your dad. You remember. Walking here at the mall, two people waving, trying to get your attention. They called you by name, and you swore they weren’t talking to us, but they were. I’ll never understand. You ignored your parents then lied about it to me. Fucking abnormal. And your mom said you’ve been acting this way forever. She told me a story--"
The skeletons have regrouped, reassembled. And they’ve acquired pickaxes! Greg points at the advancing enemy, directing his personal guard to attack. Mr. Mad Iron, a scrapyard golem with more loyalty than fear, leaps at the risen dead. A bone-swarm latches onto him, slashing at his body in a pickaxe frenzy, dodging his counters--mainly hammerfists and backhands--like prescient flies. Sparks and metallic debris shower the food court floor. The skeleton gang, propelled by unabashed glee, laugh as they chop at their victim’s legs. Laugh when those legs buckle and snap. Laugh when they climb on a crippled foe and laugh when they stab their picks into his skull. The mechanical warrior soon thrashes without aim as the terror of non-existence pushes him to rally. Each skeleton makes a deliberate, telegraphed swing, ripping out hunks of Mr. Mad Iron on the ends of their weapons. Oil and coolant and hydraulic fluid pour from his torn-up entirety. He finally falls apart, sundered by a thousand cuts. And Greg has to run.
"...burned out the garbage disposal trying to kill his imaginary friend. Which makes sense, because if no villains naturally exist, Greg will invent one," Ruth said, switching her audience from me to Fran and Joel.
My deadpan could not shield me from their skin-peeling contempt. They judged my childhood actions, mocked a little boy in their thoughts.
"He hurts himself. Like in junior high. He has the angst of a thirteen-year-old. Show her, Greg. That disgusting alien Braille you carved all over yourself."
If dressed for the occasion, I would have hit the plunger. Yanked the pins. Fractured the facade of civil inattention erected by adjacent tables...
"What are you trying to accomplish?" I asked.
Ruth laughed. "Nothing. With you involved, nothing can ever be accomplished."
Lucy’s hand. I let it go.
Head down, hands busy. Eating cold food. Mucus flowed out of my nostrils, onto the bread. But I had ingested mucus before, on its own, so who the fuck was going to bar me from enjoying sustenance I had worked for--
"Cough."
Joel (minus the girls, hair tall and triumphant like it had just overseen a good, thorough besting) remained. I scraped together a sideways look.
"And stop driving past Ruthie’s, okay? That shaking sound your car makes is pretty obvious," he said, turning to float away on the sureness of his principles.
"Goodbye forever," I mouthed, swallowing the last of my meal.
Lucy had gotten up. When I found her, she was sliding her food into a garbage bin.
"Prophet," she said, seeing me approach. "You handled that like a bitch."
#
A thud blasted through my brain and eyes and teeth. The back of my head felt wet. I stumbled forward, maintaining equilibrium via hard steps and instinctive arm circles. Another blow--a metal pipe to the crown--changed that, knocking the coordination from my body. I crashed on the floor, belly-down, a graceless heap bleeding from two different head wounds. Inches from my face were boots from the past."The Empyrean Purge," Pastor said.
"The Angelic Spear," Jeremy said.
"Fuck you, Mateo from fourth grade, you dumb, psychotic bag of excrement," I said.
