Faucets for baptismal

TL;DR Water is an important motif in Beau is Afraid, and it also carries symbolism in Freudian and Jungian psychology. I'm trying to give some interpretations of the water-motherhood theme in the movie. If you want to contribute or disagree with any of my interpretations, please comment because I would love to read more opinions.
Yesterday, I watched Ari Aster's new film, "Beau is Afraid." Regardless of whether I liked it, I would like to comment on a predominant symbolism that stood out to me throughout the film: water. In light of this, I want to open a discussion about whether for other people, water was not what stood out the most, but another motif or symbolism that I may have overlooked. That's what I find most interesting about cinema: we don't all see the same movie.
Well, the theme, I think we could all agree, is Beau's mommy issues.
Correct me if I'm wrong: water carries a lot of symbolism in psychology. For Freud, in dreams, water imagery is connected to birth and fantasies of intrauterine life, the existence in the womb. Furthermore, water in dreams is related to his theories of wish fulfillment, especially those concerning sexual deviations.
The same is true in Jungian psychology: water is rich in psychological meanings, as it represents the source of life, motherhood, femininity, wisdom, but also destruction. It encompasses both healing and destructive possibilities and potentials. The ocean represents the unconscious.
Even in Christianity, water represents birth: baptism is a way to "be born again."
Now, about the water in "Beau is Afraid":
I may be reading too much into it, but given the surreal nature of this movie, I think it's valid at least for fun.

• The clearest example of why water represents Mona in this movie is in the play: a huge wave sweeps through Beau's town and separates him from his family. He spends years and years searching for them. He finally finds them only to tell them that he is celibate and that there is no way they could be his children. The lie his mother told him about Beau's genetic illness is what prevented him from having what he so desires and seeks: a family, offspring, and a woman to have sex with (the narrator of the play is very specific in that regard).
• In his nightmares, he is inside the bathtub, soaked in water. In one of these scenes, Beau's POV dares to step out of the tub, only to face misfortunes: the camera looks down at Beau's soaked legs, he feels embarrassed and his mother shouts at him.
• The trial takes place on a vast expanse of water, in plain view of a lot of people. He always felt, until his dying breath, judged by his mother. Let's remember that Ari Aster could have made this final scene in a terrestrial stadium, but he decided to put Beau on a boat in the middle of the water for some reason.
• And adding to the trial scene: There's a very bizarre shot where the mom, intensely serious, breaks the post she's leaning on with her hands. The camera follows the post falling into the water. Does this represent the castration of the phallus? I don't think it's far-fetched given the themes of the movie.
• In Beau's building, sometimes there was water and sometimes there wasn't. When he turns on the faucet, there's no water, and he has to make the journey to the store to buy some (which leads to misfortunes and pain), and when he comes back, there's a sign that says "There's water in the building now." In Beau's mind, sometimes there's water and sometimes there isn't. This is a metaphor for a toxic ambivalent love-hate relationship with his mother. Sometimes she gave him love, other times she didn't.
• The first thing he does after the homeless people break into his house, weirdly, is to prepare a bath with water. This may be a psychological regression, going to mom when there are problems, a defense mechanism for adverse situations. Remember that his mom used to make him baths with water.
• When he finds out on the phone that his mom is dead, he stays still for we don't know how long, but long enough for the tub to overflow and the puddle reaches him. He gets in the tub. But what happens? Another adversity: a man falls on him. The water he seeks he hopes will be comforting, but he encounters misfortune. A clear metaphor for his relationship with his mom.
• The dead man in the cruise ship pool. A foreshadowing of his own death. But not only that: the cruise ship is in the middle of the sea. It's in the ocean where Beau has the guts to explore what his mother forbade him: to explore his sexuality. Even if it's just with an innocent kiss. And it's in the ocean where that promise stays, that flame goes out, and from there Beau never moves on. From the ocean, from the yoke of his mother.
• Taking pills with water. In the end, we know that Beau's therapist worked for his mom. I think it makes sense metaphorically if we think of the phrase "A hard pill to swallow" and connect it with Mona's sick desire to make her son love and need her always. "The hard truths of life, you can only face them with your mom, without water you die." That's why the mother's brand slogan is "Perfectly safe"

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I repeat it may seem like I'm reading too much between the lines. Ari Aster may have simply said, let it be a cruise, just because I feel like it. Without any meaning whatsoever.
However, I find it interesting and fun to discuss the themes and meanings that stand out to each of us as long as we argue them coherently. These were mine. What are yours?

When I was in grade school in the year 2007 CE, I was facing an emotional and spiritual apostasy wherein I was having doubts about what I was hearing about Jesus of Nazareth. I’d heard Jesus was both human and God, but my brain couldn’t do the math properly then, so I misinterpreted that “both” meant an average of the two. This must translate to that Jesus must have been a demigod. I’d heard about how he performed several miracles, giving a blind man his sight back, walking on water, turning water into wine, multiplying bread, and such. Still, I thought about the physics of that and determined that these stories, or at least most of them, must be like the rest of the Bible – allegorical. I conceded that he may have had the power to restore the sight of that blind man and even may have walked on water at some point; I mean, the guy may have been human, but if his father was indeed God, then that didn’t seem too far-fetched to me. Yet some things I’d learned about Jesus ate at me.
First and foremost, upon further examination, I didn’t find any historical evidence supporting a claim that he was indeed the Son of God. Then some presented well-founded arguments of contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible regarding him, calling into question the integrity of accounts of Jesus and his divinity. And the final thing that pushed me over the edge was the fact that I didn’t feel saved in the least, even though by that time, I had been anointed by a Pastor, and I felt that if there was any integrity in the story of Jesus that he would save me from the daily torture I was facing both at school and home. It didn’t happen.
I sat down with my grandmother to ask for her advice one bright, sunny day nearing the summer of 2007, and I had got out half a sentence telling her that I didn’t believe in Jesus Christ. She exploded on me, erupting with a half-hour tirade derogating or questioning my identity. My grandmother had been raised strictly Christian, and that’s how she raised her family. My brother and I were living under her roof because our father was in prison, so we were expected to conform – but not exactly “expect” as in a child is expected to follow the rules or else, but merely “expect” as in it’d be a massive shock if the contrary reared its head. And my grandmother, God bless and rest her soul, was a fierce warrior whose primary modus operandi was to beat your butt first and ask questions later; that is to say, during freeze-fight-or-flight, she would always fight; and she only wanted the best for us. She immediately knew I was in an apostasy the minute I opened my mouth and tried to shut it down without hesitation…or mercy.
If only I knew then what I know now. Because of the transient quantum nature of the gods, including ours, it’s possible that Jesus of Nazareth was Lord Yahweh incarnate on Earth. I now know that several Holy Laws and physical laws intersect to determine who our brother Ieshua was at any given time. For example, before he was baptized by John in the river Jordan, Holy Law remanded him strictly to his physical body. So while he had his Father entirely within his spirit, soul, and physical body, it was locked away until his baptism. After that, the Holy Law that remanded him unlocked, for lack of better words; this enabled him to, even in his physical body, harness, use, and be used by the spiritual energies around him, including the electromagnetics of his environment, enabling him to do many inhuman things. God began to flow from him like a broken faucet nobody wanted to fix. Well…almost nobody. When Jesus became Ieshua the Son of God in his baptism, the only thing that was different between himself and his Father was that he had a physical body that was infinitely younger than that of God Himself. Physical matter can be as pliable as spiritual matter; as Ieshua, He taught us this, showed us this.
Judaism, the religion under which Jesus grew up, is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the belief in one God and the adherence to the religious laws and traditions outlined in the Torah and other Jewish texts. On the other hand, Gnosticism is a diverse collection of religious and spiritual beliefs that emerged in the early Christian era. It emphasizes knowledge, or gnosis, as the key to salvation and often teaches that there is a duality between the material world and a higher spiritual realm.
Some similarities between the two include the emphasis on a personal relationship with a higher power, the importance of religious texts, and the belief in an afterlife. However, there are also significant differences, such as the monotheistic belief in Judaism versus the dualistic ideas in Gnosticism.
An interpretation that correlates both Judaism and Gnosticism would be that Gnosticism's emphasis on knowledge or inner understanding is seen as a complementary or additional path to the traditional religious practices in Judaism. It would also suggest that Gnosticism's dualism is not a contradiction to Judaism’s monotheism but rather a different understanding of the relationship between God and the material world. And this, my brothers and sisters, is the message I have been trying to teach you. The spiritual world is of a quantum nature; as it translates into our physical laws, it’s no different save for its temporal properties. All religions are correct when you combine them and excise what doesn’t make sense because the results have shown that what is nonsensical is usually untrue.
It is worth noting that there is not a widely accepted correlation between Judaism and Gnosticism, and these are often considered separate religions with different beliefs and practices.
Gnosticism is a diverse collection of religious and spiritual beliefs that emerged in the early Christian era. While there is no single set of ideas that all Gnostics share, some core tenets of Gnosticism include the following.
Gnostics believe attaining spiritual knowledge (known as “gnosis”) is necessary for salvation. This knowledge is often seen as a personal, direct revelation from God or the divine. Gnostics believe a fundamental duality exists between the material world and a higher spiritual realm. They see the material world as being created by an inferior, ignorant, or evil deity and the spiritual realm as the actual domain of God. Gnostics believe that each individual has a spark of the divine within them, which can be awakened through the pursuit of gnosis. Gnostics believe that salvation involves the transcendence of the self and the reuniting with the divine. They see the material world as a prison or a trap, and the ultimate goal is to escape it and return to the spiritual realm. Gnostics believe that their teachings are secret and hidden from the uninitiated and that they are privy to a deeper understanding of the world and the divine. Gnostics reject the physical body and the material world, viewing them as inferior or evil, and instead focus on the spiritual realm and the pursuit of gnosis.
I view the range of religions as individual pieces to the puzzle; however, I think they all need a little bit shaved off for each to fit with their neighbors nicely. Each religion and spirituality is similar to the next in terms of its core tenets. For example, Judaism emphasizes monotheism and the belief in one God, adherence to the religious laws and traditions outlined in the Torah and other Jewish texts, and the importance of the Jewish people and their unique relationship with God as individuals and on a societal level. Christianity focuses on monotheism, the belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God and his death and resurrection as the means of salvation for humanity, and the belief in the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Judaism and Christianity corroborate the existence of Heaven and a spiritual realm, although the spiritual realm is neither explicitly mentioned in Jewish texts nor emphasized in the religion; however, Judaism does not believe in hell as Christians do. And finally, Islam teaches monotheism, the belief in one God and the prophet-hood of Muhammad, adherence to the Five Pillars of Islam (profession of faith, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage), and the importance of the Qur’an as the final revelation of God. These religions and Gnosticism share a common goal: to transcend the self and return to the spiritual realm. The ultimate goal in Abrahamic religions is to achieve salvation, which is often seen as eternal life in Heaven with God.
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy that originated in ancient India. Some core tenets of Buddhism include the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Three Universal Truths, the law of Karma, and the goal of Nirvana.
The Buddha taught that the cause of suffering is craving and attachment and that the elimination of suffering is possible by understanding and overcoming these cravings and attachments. These teachings are encapsulated in the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path to the death of agony.
The Eightfold Path is the path to the cessation of suffering. It consists of the right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
The Three Universal Truths are the impermanence of all things, the non-self nature of all things, and the unsatisfactoriness of all things.
The law of Karma is the belief that actions have consequences and that one's actions in this life will affect one's future lives.
Buddhism's ultimate goal is attaining Nirvana, a state of perfect peace and enlightenment characterized by the end of suffering and the attainment of inner wisdom.
When compared to Gnosticism, Buddhism shares some similarities and some differences:
Buddhism and Gnosticism emphasize the importance of knowledge or understanding in achieving salvation. However, in Buddhism, this knowledge is about understanding the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, while in Gnosticism, it is about a direct personal revelation from God.
Buddhism and Gnosticism see the material world as unsatisfactory, and the ultimate goal is to transcend it. However, the ultimate goal in Buddhism is to achieve Nirvana, a state of perfect peace and enlightenment. In Gnosticism, the ultimate goal is to return to the spiritual realm.
Buddhism doesn't have the concept of a duality between the material and the spiritual realm; instead, it sees the material realm as impermanent, non-self, and unsatisfactory, while Gnosticism considers the material world as created by an inferior, ignorant or evil deity.
Buddhism doesn't have a concept of a personal God, and the ultimate goal is not to reunite with a deity but to reach a state of enlightenment and inner wisdom. However, when we compare Buddhism’s “enlightenment” and inner wisdom with those of Judaism and Christianity, we can see some obvious similarities.
It's worth noting that these are generalizations, with variations and nuances within each religion. Additionally, Buddhism is a complex religion and philosophy with different schools of thought which aren’t discussed here, and the core tenets of Buddhism can differ among them.
Despite their differences, there are some similarities between Gnosticism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. All of these religions share the belief in a higher power or a divine force that governs the universe, and all of them have a set of beliefs and practices that help individuals connect with this higher power. Additionally, all of these religions have a bunch of moral principles that they encourage their followers to abide by. They also share the idea of an afterlife and the belief that actions in this life have consequences in the afterlife. These religions also have holy texts or scriptures they consider a source of guidance and wisdom. Lastly, all of these religions have a history of religious leaders, scholars, and mystics who have played an essential role in shaping the understanding and practice of religion. Their similarities illustrate the plethora of the world and how each part of the plethora influences, is influenced by and is therefore related to one another across the spectrum of spirituality. They may seem like opposites, like how science and religion aren’t generally seen as interrelating. Still, looks can be deceiving, and an educated outlook on religions and spiritualities past and present is necessary for one to understand where it is truly they came from and where it is they’re going.

When I retold it to my wife, who had never heard this part of my mission, I was sobbing from anger.
In 1992 I was a new missionary and I was placed as mission secretary for 6 months after being injured. I was forced to get a Chilean driver's license. I was not a great driver and didn't get my AZ license till after I was 17. Additionally the vehicle I had to drive was a 12 passenger Mitsubishi van that was standard, ie stick shift, but in the steering column.
I drove that van back to the mission office within the hour of getting my license. While rounding up the ramp in a narrow parking garage, I hit a pillar on the van sliding door and did a lot of damage.
My Chilean mission president, when he returned to the office, walked straight up to my desk and said, in English three times, "I will kill you".
I come from a generationally poor LDS family. I was informed that I would have to pay for the damages as my family could not. In Chile we would eat all our meals with a family the mission gave money to feed us. But in the mission office we didn't live with a family. We lived in an apartment in a high rise with 7 missionaries (we had 3 APs). So a mamita, an elderly woman, came to our apartment and made us lunch. We had to make our own breakfast and dinner.
After the accident my allowance was kept from me for months. I ate only 1 meal a day. My tracting area was several miles from the office and we often walked because I couldn't afford a taxi or bus.
I lost 100lbs my first year of my mission. My clothes were falling of me. I made notches in my belt until I couldn't any more. I got smaller shirts from a missionary that got sent home. And finally I had to break down and ask my dad for money I knew he didn't have to get a new suit.
I was severely abused by the church for money, and for what???!!!!!!!!!!! At the time I thought I was depositing blessings in heaven. I am so fucking ANGRY!! .........
EDIT some spelling errors and UPDATE, adding my comment to the original post:
The beginning of that story I glossed over. I had broken my ankle on a p day. I had a walking cast on. I walked all those miles with a cast and a boot. The boot disintegrated and then I walked on the cast until the bottom wore out and I took a pocket knife and cut my cast off because I couldn't afford to go back to the doctor. That ankle still gets sprained all the time.
I was 315 lbs and very overweight but I was also a power lifter in HS. I could bench my weight. After that first year I was 215 for the rest of my mission.
We got $30 a month for all our needs and food
EDIT 2
I just remembered another story...
After I left the mission office I was assigned to Chuquicamata. It is the site of the world largest open pit copper mine. It is about 10,000 ft in elevation IIRC. I was there in the winter. The wind blew hard up there
In this town we were also living on our own in a small block building on the grounds of the church. The entire town was owned by Codelco, the nationalized mining company. So the church leased the land and we weren't allowed to live with members as they were employees of the mine on leased land.
Well the missionaries before us hadn't paid the gas bill for 3 months. We went the winter without heat and only cold water to shower and wash dishes. It hurt to the bone. The mission wouldn't pay, said we had to take care of it. We didn't have a phone. Our only communication was once a month interviews.
We resorted to stealing a portable heater from the church building. I would cook eggs in a pan on top of it. We also started taking showers under the faucet in the baptismal font because the water in our place was ice
EDIT 3
I have since thought of many other stories but I wanted to share one from my very first area.
My companion was Chilean and spoke no English. I barely understand Spanish. He was 27. We lived with 2 elderly women and their daughter and we go a few blocks away to eat and have our laundry done by a part member family.
Companion decides we need to move ASAP because we are in a house with just women. We move into an apartment across the street from where we eat and wash laundry. At that house the women are members but not the father or grandfather. There are 2 daughters that are older than me. One is 32, divorced with a 5 yr old boy.
The old land ladies are pissed and call the mission office and claim we are on the phone day and night talking to these daughters and we are sleeping with them.
Next morning at 6 am the APs are at our door. We were their second stop. They went across the street to the part member family to catch us in bed with the women. The father who is not a member is incensed to say the least.
That night the mission president, APs, the bishop, and the family meet on their living room while my companion and I waited in their kitchen. After a few hours we left and while walking with the mission president he told us to never speak of it again.
Fast forward and the same companion is caught writing letters to the 32yr old and was sent home early and later married her. The whole story is fucked up and I wish I knew what really happened

It was raining when Marty Sheppard woke up in the morning, tired from too little sleep. It was raining as Marty ate a breakfast of leftover spaghetti that he didn’t bother to reheat, the sauce like congealed blood in his mouth. It was raining as he sat around watching old cartoons dressed in a wife-beater and boxers, and it continued raining when he made lunch (a frozen turkey TV dinner that he heated up in the microwave because the oven took too long). It was raining when he realized that his car wouldn’t start, the damn hunk of junk that he should have replaced a year ago when his cousin offered him a used vehicle that could be paid off in installments. It was raining during the entirety of his walk to work, the leaden afternoon sky dumping an ocean of raindrops down on the town of Cedar Falls as if some judgment was at hand and the little town had been found guilty of all charges. If life had a sense of humor, the rain would have stopped just as Marty arrived at his place of business, which a sign above the door helpfully identified as Marty’s Place. In a comedy, Marty would have shuffled through the back door of the restaurant soaking wet, cursing under his breath and making an oath to finally buy an umbrella as he’d been meaning to do, and just then that great faucet in the sky would have shut off as if at some cruel jester’s command. Marty Sheppard would have thrown up his hands in a gesture of anger, confusion, and reluctant acceptance that the world was absurd and unreasoning. The audience laughs, the image freezes as the credits roll over the screen; the show is over. But life is not a sitcom, and so it just went on raining.
Jo and Chris were already at the restaurant when Marty arrived. They each gave him a look filled with pity as rainwater dripped from every inch of him, making a trail of puddles as he moved around. Chris was the cook (Marty thought calling him a “chef” would be a bit of an embellishment), and Jo was a server. In his job as owner, proprietor, and namesake of the joint, Marty would spend his day watching over the whole affair like the captain of a ship, while occasionally filling in where needed, sometimes as an auxiliary server, a dish-washer, a sweeper, or just about anything. Since he was reluctant to hire enough people to do all the jobs that needed doing, he was always needed somewhere. But it was early, and the place wasn’t yet open for the day’s business, and so Marty went back into his little office, closing the door behind himself before taking off his jacket and hanging it up on one of the hooks on the wall to drip-drip-drip on the floor. Next, he took off his pants and hung them from a second hook, and the pants also drip-drip-dripped. He took a seat at the tiny desk, setting out to do a little paperwork before the workday started in earnest. Wanting some background noise to half-listen to while he did the papework, Marty flipped on the little radio sitting on the corner of the desk.
A voice from the radio:
“…authorities caution the public to remain vigilant, and to be on the lookout for…”
Marty tuned away from the news broadcast and found a station playing golden oldies. The Shirelles were on, and Shirley Owens was asking if you would still love her tomorrow. The downpour kept pouring down outside, the rain sheeting down the office window. Before long, Marty heard the sound of the door chime chiming, a customer placing an order, and Chris firing up the grill. Then more chiming, more ordering, and more grilling. Marty put aside the paperwork, shut off the voice of Buddy Holly singing about the day he would die (when he’d recorded those words, did he know that day be so soon?), and put his pants back on. They were still wet, but they were the only pair on hand, and so he would have to put up with it. He went out and lent Chris a hand at the grill as Luis, another server, came walking in the back door. Marty checked the clock, noting that Luis had set a new personal record for promptness, having arrived only twenty minutes late.
The day went on in the usual way, the way it had gone one for just about every day that Marty had owned the place. Customers came and went; Jo, Chris, and Luis took staggered lunch breaks, with Marty filling in for them when needed; Shawn came into work to do some dish-washing, but only stuck around for half a day because that’s all Marty was paying him for. The day wore on, and the day turned from light gray to dark gray; through it all, the rain kept coming down.
Just before six o’clock, Stevie walked into the restaurant. He was a regular; he placed a different order each day of the week, but always the same thing on the same day the following week. Mondays were a tuna melt with a bag of chips and a glass of lemonade. Tuesdays were a chili cheese dog, a medium fry (with a side of barbecue sauce to dip them in), and a Sprite. Today was Wednesday; on Wednesdays, he always ordered a double cheeseburger with cheddar cheese fries, with a glass of flavored sparkling water. When Jo saw Stevie taking a seat, she put the order in without asking him what he’d have, knowing it by heart. When the order was ready, Marty took the food out himself, setting the meal down in front of Stevie before taking a seat facing the man.
“How’s it going, Stevie?”
“About as well as it can go,” Stevie said, the exchange a common one among the two men.
Stevie tucked a paper napkin into his shirt collar and commenced eating as Marty signaled to Jo, a gesture that those who worked for him knew to mean that he wanted a cup of coffee. Jo was preoccupied and didn’t notice the gesture, but Luis saw and acted on her behalf. Luis set the cup of hot brew on the table along with a packet of sugar, two creamer packets, and a red swizzle stick. Marty dumped the sugar and cream into the coffee and stirred it around, then waited for it to cool a bit.
“Awful what happened, ain’t it?” Stevie asked, shaking his head at the awfulness of it as he took a bit out of the greasy burger.
“Yep,” Marty replied before realizing he had no idea what the other man was referring to. “Wait, what was awful?” Stevie looked at Marty as if Marty were a complete idiot, which was strange coming from a man who probably couldn’t spell “cat”.
“Ain’t you heard?” Stevie asked.
Marty told the man that no, he ain’t heard.
“Been all over the news,” Stevie said.
Marty said that might be so, but he still ain’t heard.
“Three loons from the nuthouse up in Easton busted loose last night. Killed a coupla guards, too. Two of them have been caught already; the cops found them on Highway 53 trying to hitch a ride. The third one is still on the lam. The guy on the news said he was the most dangerous of the three. He was put in the nuthouse after killing his whole family with a hatchet on Thanksgiving.”
Marty knew that Stevie was referring to the Easton State Hospital. The place had been around since Marty was a boy. When he was young, he’d thought the place must be a bit like Arkham Asylum from the comic books. His family had driven by there one time while driving north on a trip to Wisconsin; as they’d passed the hospital, ten-year-old Marty couldn’t take his eyes off the place, his head filled with images of supervillains locked up in there while plotting their escape, after which they would go on a cartoonish crime spree until caught by a masked vigilante who would return them to the hospital; they would then start plotting their next escape. Turns out that there were no supervillains within those walls, just guys who’d hatcheted their families to death on Turkey Day.
“Crazy world,” Stevie said around a mouthful of dead cow.
“Yep,” Marty said in concurrence, shaking his head for emphasis.
Marty finished his coffee and left the other man to finish his meal alone. Stevie did just that, paid his bill, and left. Time moved on, as is its stubborn habit, and the day turned from dark gray to black. Marty’s Place didn’t close until 11:00 PM, but the hour between ten o’clock and closing time was typically a dead hour with few customers. Marty had been considering changing the closing time to ten o’clock; in fact, he’d been considering it for the last two years and was scarcely closer to a final decision that he’d been at the beginning of the period of consideration. Luis left at nine o’clock, leaving Marty, Jo, and Chris to finish out the day.
The place was empty at quarter past ten when a man with long, stringy hair walked in from the street. Even the rain (which was still falling, and you could bet your bottom dollar that the low areas around Sag Creek were going to be flooded come morning time) hadn’t been able to wash away the greasiness of that mane. The man carried a satchel with him, the bag of a faded green color. He held the bag close, as if it contained some priceless relic. The man took a seat, setting the bag between his feet underneath the table.
Over the years, Marty had come to recognize bad characters almost on sight. He could tell the ones who were planning to dine and dash; or the ones who’d had a little too much fun with the bottle and were sure to start a ruckus over some small point of contention (whether real or imagined); or the ones who just wanted to use the restaurant as a place to sit and nurse a cup of coffee while they waited for someone else to show up, at which point an exchange would be made, cash for who knows what, beneath the table. There was another class of trouble in human form, and in some ways, he considered this one the worst of all: the Question Mark. When a Question Mark walked into the place, they immediately gave off a bad vibe, a miasma of bad intentions. It radiated from them like a strange heat. They were Question Marks because, unlike those other malefactors, Marty could never quite guess precisely what bad news they would get up to, but only knew that they were bad news indeed. Sometimes they just ate their meal, paid their money, and left; Marty was grateful to be rid of them, his opinion that they were bad news not shaken one bit by their failure to display the exact nature of that news. Other times…well, he could still recall the night that a weird hombre walked up to the counter, said, “How’s it going?”, pulled out a revolver, pointed it his head (Marty’s head, that is), and pulled the trigger. It had all happened so fast that Marty hadn’t even registered that a firearm was being pointed at him. He saw the man reaching toward him and instinctively flinched away just as the barrel spat fire. The bullet grazed the top of his head, leaving a bloody groove. Jo had busted a metal napkin dispenser over the man’s head, and Gary (who was the cook before Chris) had hopped over the counter and brained the guy with a frying pan. There had been some talk of the courts sending the man up to Easton, but he’d been sent instead to the state prison downstate.
The guy who’d recently entered Marty’s Place, and who now sat in a chair with hair that was both greasy and wet, fidgeting like mad, with his bag down between his feet, was a Question Mark, and Marty, who didn’t like dealing with a Question Mark at any time of day but especially not in the dead hour, wished like hell that the man had picked some other eatery to eat at. He caught Jo’s eye and saw that she wasn’t crazy about the newcomer either, and he waved her off, deciding that he would attend to the man himself.
“What’ll it be, fella?” Marty said. “The grill’s been shut off for the night, so I hope it’s something cold.”
It was a lie, but something cold would be quicker to make and to serve. The man said nothing at first; he merely stared into space while fidgeting. Marty was about to repeat himself when the man spoke:
“Turkey sandwich. With Swiss cheese. White bread. Coca Cola, no ice.”
“Sure thing. I’ll bring it right out.”
Marty turned toward the counter. Chris, who’d been standing at the entrance to the kitchen watching the proceedings, turned back into the kitchen to fetch up the food. In no time flat, he brought out a plate and glass, setting them on the counter. Marty grabbed the plate and the glass and took them to the man. As he set them down, he could hear the man muttering something under his breath, too quiet to make out. Marty went back over by the counter, where Jo stood watching the greasy man. The guy was skinny as a rail, and looked like he hadn’t finished a meal in the past six months; he took little bites out of the sandwich, alternating with tiny sips of his beverage. Jo pulled out her phone, tapped the screen for a bit, and then held it out to Marty. He looked at what she had pulled up: it was the story about the escapee from Easton, the one who hadn’t had a lot of thanks to give and whose family had paid the price. He shook his head; no, he didn’t think the man eating a turkey sandwich just five yards away from them was that man. What were the odds? No, it couldn’t be.
Jo put the phone back in her pocket, but she kept an eye on the stranger, Marty’s head-shake not having entirely convinced her that this man wasn’t the same one who’d killed his family. The man was barely halfway finished with his sandwich when he set it down on the plate, reached down, lifted the satchel, and looked inside. Then he put the satchel back on the floor between his feet, picked up his sandwich, and resumed taking tiny, child-sized bites. He stopped again a few bites later, looked into his bag, and then set the bag down again to resume eating.
The chimes chimed as someone entered the restaurant. Marty and Jo (and Chris, too, who was peeking out from the kitchen) turned to see a cop walking in out of the rain. The cop doffed his hat, shook it off, and then placed it back on his head. He smiled with good cheer.
“Whooh! It’s like Noah’s Flood out there.”
The cop walked over to the counter and took a seat at one of the high stools. Jo moved to take his order, but Marty waved her off again.
“Go ahead and head home,” Marty said. “I’ll take care of this.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
Jo didn’t ask twice; she spared one last look at the thin man eating his sandwich before gathering her things and heading out the back door. In the meantime, Marty talked with the cop.
“What can I get for you, Officer?”
“I could use a juicy bacon burger right about now.”
Marty thought for a moment. He’d told the Question Mark that the grill had been shut off; to serve the cop a bacon burger would be an admission that he’d been lying. Not wanting to give trouble any excuse to start, he stuck with the fiction.
“Grill’s been turned off,” Marty said. “It’ll have to be something cold.”
The cop turned in his seat, saw the other man eating his sandwich.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” the cop said.
“Turkey and Swiss on white, and a Coke with no ice?”
“Is that what he’s having?”
“It is.”
“Then that’s what I want.”
Chris disappeared into the kitchen, and Marty followed after him.
“I’ll get the man his food,” Marty said. “Go ahead and head out.”
Chris didn’t even ask once; he just put on a green raincoat and went out the back way. Marty shut off the grill, made the sandwich, poured the soda, and took the food out to the cop.
“Thanks; I’m starving.”
The cop took his hat off again, setting it on the counter, and started eating. The other man had finally finished his own sandwich, and now sat with his bag cradled in his arms. Marty made out a check and took it over to the table, setting it down. The man didn’t even seem to realize that he wasn’t alone; he stared at nothing, cradling his bag and fidgeting. Marty went back to the counter.
“How’s your day been?” the cop asked.
Marty shrugged.
“It’s just been a day. Nothing special.”
The cop took a big bite.
“Say,” Marty said, “do you know Officer Lyons?”
The cop looked at him.
“Mm-hmm,” the cop said. “How do you know him?”
“He comes in here from time to time.”
The cop nodded and took another bite.
Marty looked over at the skinny guy, who hadn’t looked at the check yet. He still clutched the bag to his chest, his knees knocking together under the table. The man glanced around at the cop, and then went back to staring at the empty space in front of him. Was the idea that the man who escaped from the state hospital passing through Cedar Falls so outlandish? No, it really wasn’t. And if you accepted that it wasn’t so outlandish, you also had to accept that he might get hungry, that he might stop off at the first restaurant he saw that was still open. If you accepted all of that, then you had to accept that the skinny man with the green bag might be the family destroyer who’d taken early leave from the state hospital in Easton.
As Marty was thinking this, the man got up from the table and hurried into the men’s room, taking the bag with him. Marty got up close to the cop, speaking low:
“Listen, Officer; I know this might sound crazy, and it’s probably nothing, but…”
“But what?”
“That other guy who was just sitting at that table there…well, he’s been giving me the heebie-jeebies ever since he got here. There’s something off about him. It’s just…”
“Spit it out, man; I ain’t got all night.”
“Well, I’ve been hearing about that escapee from Easton, and I just thought…”
The cop swallowed the bite of turkey sandwich in his mouth and set the remainder of the sandwich down on the plate. His face was like stone now. He looked over at the empty table.
“Where’d he go?” the cop asked.
“It’s probably nothing.”
“Where’d he go?” the cop repeated with a sharp edge to his voice, making it a question and a command all at once.
“He went into the men’s room. He took a green satchel in there with him.”
The cop got up off the stool and walked slowly towards the men’s room door, one hand on the butt of his pistol. He pushed the door slowly open and disappeared inside. There was silence for a few moments, and Marty wondered if he should go in there and check the situation out. Then the door opened again and the cop came out, dragging the man out with one hand as he held the green bag in his other hand. The cop sat the man down into the seat he’d recently vacated (the check was knocked off the table, and fell gently through the air to the ground).
“Sit there, and don’t move.”
The man obeyed as the cop stepped up to the counter, setting the bag down on the countertop. He opened the bag and searched through it. He reached in and grabbed something out. It was some kind of framed certificate.
“What is it?” Marty asked as he kept one eye on the man, who was still sitting where he’d been told to sit.
“A certificate of baptism,” the cop said.
Marty looked at him.
“What else is in there?” he asked.
The cop looked into the bag again, and then shook his head.
“That’s it; that’s all there is.”
The cop replaced the certificate of baptism and turned back to the man.
“Do you have any ID on you?”
The man said nothing until the cop took a meaningful step towards him, and then:
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s see it.”
The man reached into his pocket and withdrew a wallet that looked just as skinny as he did. He took a card out from it and handed it over to the cop. The cop studied the card before handing it back.
“Maybe it’s time that you headed off to wherever it is you’re going, buddy,” the cop said.
The man slipped the ID back into his wallet and slipped the wallet back into his pocket. He stood up, grabbed his bag from the counter, and disappeared into the rain. It wasn’t until the man had left that Marty noticed the check on the floor and realized the bill hadn’t been settled. He sighed.
“He wasn’t the guy,” the cop said. “The guy who escaped from Easton was named Kemp. That guy’s ID gave his name as Laurence Fallon.”
The cop smiled before taking his seat and finishing his sandwich in two more bites, washing it down with the last of his soda. Marty bent to pick up the fallen check, then took it behind the counter and dropped it into the trash back there.
“What do I owe you?” the cop asked.
“Nothing,” Marty said. “It’s on the house.”
The cop smiled.
“That’s mighty nice of you.”
“Think nothing of it.”
Marty’s eyes drifted down to the cop’s name tag, and he froze. The tag had the name Lyons on it, and there was something smeared on it…something red.
It happened quickly, so quickly that he didn’t even have time to flinch like the last time a gun had been pointed at him. The gun went off, and Marty fell to the ground, leaving a fine mist of pink vapor in the air where his head had just been.
“Mighty nice,” Frank Kemp repeated.
He grabbed the hat off the counter and set it on his head; it wasn’t his hat, but it fit well. It was almost as if it were meant for him.
“I got a lot of work to do tonight,” he spoke to no one. “The job of a lawman is never done.”
Kemp, dressed in a dead man’s uniform, left Marty’s Place then, getting soaked as soon as he stepped outside. It was raining as he got into the police cruiser and drove away. It was raining when he pulled over a car on the nearby highway and shot the couple in the front seat (the child asleep in the backseat was unharmed, but only because Kemp hadn’t noticed him there). It was raining later, when the sun rose unseen behind the clouds, and was raining still when Luis came into work early for the first time since he’d been working there. Even as he shouted out in surprise and fear when he found his boss, the man who’d given Marty’s Place its name, lying dead behind the counter, it was raining.

CHAPTER ONE Sawyer Green
When I was a boy, I’d always wanted to wrestle a gorilla. Not kill it, mind you, but I’d always just wanted to pit the strength of man against the raw power of one of the most powerful land creatures on Earth. I’d daydream about things like this at school, as I’m sure many boys are bound to do, whether they be swashbuckling pirates on the Atlantic Ocean, or suddenly gaining a black belt in karate and convincingly defeating the shitkicker that would steal their lunch money.
I’d stay up at night thinking about it - not necessarily always a gorilla; sometimes, it was a tiger, or a wolf or a bear, or any other number of creatures. I never wanted to hurt them in any way. I loved my dogs, and I loved animals in general. It was just some childish fascination that I’d had, possibly borne from that youthful curiosity to discover my own limits.
I’ll spare you the long version of everything in my life leading up to our present day and just leave you with the knowledge that before last week, I was a happily married man of two years, who had just purchased his first home with his wife in the middle of Suburbia, USA. I had a business degree with a minor in biology, and I’d worked in commerce for about seven years. I was confident enough in our combined income to purchase a home and start our lives. Things were looking up; until last week, anyways.
Now, I’m a walking corpse. I don’t know where my wife, Alison is. I imagine she’s in the same boat, but when I changed, she wasn’t home. I was alone, in bed. Now, I know what you’re thinking. I must’ve been struck with the old “sickness” that you see in movies. You’re imagining that I fell into a fever, had chills, sweating, the whole nine yards before I eventually succumbed to the “virus”, huh?
If only it were that dramatic. It wasn’t that simple. I was only in bed because of the normal human need for sleep. My wife wasn’t home because she’s a registered nurse who works the night shift. I’d noticed that I was getting a little bit hungrier lately. I’d taken up weight-lifting recently, so I chalked that one up to an increased metabolism. Just my body trying to get nutrients in after a workout, you know? This change just kind of happened. I noticed little things like my skin growing paler and bags forming under my eyes, but I didn’t feel sick, so I didn’t really worry about it. Seasonal things happen, and allergies kick down your door at the worst possible time. How about living in a new environment? Spend half a decade in a city apartment where smog is practically a squatting citizen - and a thousand little ecosystems exist in a thousand little offices and homes. Then change it up to a suburban two-story, where you’re surrounded by a whole new realm of germs, bugs, and bacteria. That'll do things to you, right?
One morning, I looked in the mirror and saw a different man. That sense of wrongness hit me when I tried to lift my hand up to touch my face, pull the skin back a bit to get a closer look at the varicose veins that gave greetings from my pallid jawline, and examine the hue of blue that my pallor took while I’d been sleeping. Try as I might, I could barely muster the strength to do it. It wasn’t that my limbs were inoperable, they just seemed to have a mind of their own. My hands would rather reach towards the mirror and tap on it, paw at it – animalistic instincts you might observe from the family dog.
Confused, I pulled and tugged, typical brain waves, afferent signals going from my brain and through the nervous system. Routine things performed every day, and yet no matter the strain, I couldn’t bring myself to bring back my noticeably white hands, with even more noticeably darkened fingernails.
I then realized that it wasn’t me in the reflection. It was some other me. A new me. He was gazing at me in the mirror, peeking out beneath the speckles of toothpaste that dotted the bathroom vanity like stars, all because I'd waited too long to give it the old Windex one-two. His dull, brown eyes stared dumbly at themselves, pun intended. I could somewhat see inside his half-open mouth and noted that all his teeth were mine, even the fillings in the molars that were the all too often result of an adolescent candy addiction.
Once more, I tried to snap my body around. This was all just some weird loss of reality I was having. I was overworked and overtired, I must’ve been. I’d overslept, I’d undereaten, I’d somehow woken up in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. How in the hell did I wind up in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror? Either way, it was a no-go and I began to panic. I felt trapped in a flesh box, beating against its walls, unable to do anything but be subjected to this closed cable program of my own eyesight.
It took hours before I could will my body out of its vacant standing position. I tried to call for help, but only a low, gurgling moan came out. I’d only managed to leave because my cell phone started ringing in the bedroom. Who it was, I’ll never know, but it provided enough of a cry for my “other” to exit the toilet and shamble into the hallway.
At 10 o’clock, my television turned on – as it was programmed to do – and while my physical form didn’t care for the information, it turned to the noise and we stood, one of us horrified, the other indifferent, to the words that flashed on the screen.
STATE OF EMERGENCY
A wide shot of a newsroom opened after the flashy red letters and a clean-shaven, yet visibly panicked man with your typical newscaster haircut and baby blue eyes as wide as saucers appeared on screen, next to his co-host, a thin woman with just enough meat on her to be acceptable by media standards, sporting the all too familiar shoulder-length, straight, blonde hair. She appeared a little more collected than her slice-of-America male counterpart.
“Good evening, I’m Brian Williamson.” The voice was deep. Alive.
“And I’m Jeanette Bartholomew.” Higher. Vulnerable.
“The President of the United States”, Brian stammered, “has declared a state of emergency, in response to the growing epidemic of an unknown disease that has begun to ravage parts of the West Coast and Southern states. Those afflicted with the disease have been observed to show no visible signs of infection until it has fully formed within the individual. This results in their vital signs becoming absent before returning to a state, which experts describe as “zombie-like”. Once reaching this state, they exhibit dangerous and violent qualities, attacking anyone in their vicinity who isn’t carrying the disease. Looks like we’ve got a regular George Romero situation on our hands like in the movies, eh, Jeannette?” He forced a smile to his cohost in a show of network-directed humor. His own terror was barely hidden beneath the laugh lines.
Fear in Jeannette’s eyes. She stared at the camera as though it had her full attention, a look on her face that betrayed her to the quivering mess she could break into at any moment. She fidgeted some notecards in her hands, tapping their edges on the desk.
“The...those-”, she stuttered. “Those who have not been infected are asked to…to…t-t-”
Tears welling. A beautiful face, once tanned, now flushed with anxiety. Brian looked at her in deep concern before taking over. He gave off a look of fortitude, but his natural body functions betrayed him as well. The shaky breaths, the quivering lip.
“Those who have not been infected are asked to stay inside and lock your doors. Please pay attention to your body, and if you suspect infection, separate yourself entirely from those around you and call the Center for Disease Control immediately. It’s unknown if the disease originated from a host, from the air, or water. It is strongly advised that all carriers remain locked in their basements. Symptom-free citizens, please eat and drink only from sealed containers, such as cans or glass containers. Do not use your faucets or showerheads. Our reporter, Barry Lyles is on the sce-”
“Maddy, baby”, interrupted Jeannette. “If you’re watching this, Mommy’s coming home.” She stood up and broke free from the camera. It ewas her and the viewers, now. “Mommy’s coming home right now and we’re going to get the fuck out of here, before it’s too late!”
There was a sound out front. Footsteps, two pairs, one big, one small, heading this way from the north end of the suburbs. The Other let out a soft moan and turned from the television. All I could do was scream in my own head like some elephant rider trying to make his mount obey his commands.
‘No, you stupid son of a bitch! Go back to the television! They’re not done talking!’
He wouldn’t listen. I tried to focus a bit of our shared hearing on the flat screen, but it was as though now that some new, organic sound had roused the Other’s attention, that was all that mattered. Everything around me sounded muffled, but the quietness of the street beyond the front door sounded just like that; quiet. Like some black hole of sound ripped through in front of me and the Other was so focused on the noise that came and went that now, that area of the world was the only important part of the universe.
He walked curiously through the hallway and down the steps before arriving at the front door, directly ahead. He grazed his fingertips on it, disappointed by the barrier that stood between him and the now nonexistent sound. He slid his fingers up and down it for minutes, like a broken record. At this point, I knew what he was. It was good that he couldn’t escape. Beneficial to my own sanity, and for the safety of those who hadn’t caught what I had. I mentally breathed a sigh of relief.
‘We’re stuck in here together, forever, partner. Why don’t you pull up a chair and table? I’ll finagle you over to the junk drawer and we’ll get the deck of cards; play a couple rounds of something! Might as well get comfortable, numbnuts!”
Then I heard those goddamned footsteps again, this time headed straight to my door. The Other let out another soft moan. This one sounded a little more impatient. I could hear the lungs of my former body expanding, although I had a feeling that they were more for the sake of air powering my vocal cords now, rather than an actual aerobic need. The footsteps drew closer, louder, ever closer, until they halted at the other side of my door, and I realized something that would’ve sent chills up my spine, had I been capable of feeling at all.
Everything had gone quiet. The Other didn’t make a sound. He didn’t moan, he didn’t paw at the door, not a muscle twitched in the frame that used to be mine. He was like a statue, and for a moment, I stood with him, in amazement. How can I describe this…have you ever tried to stand perfectly still, not move a micrometer, yet you realize that involuntary muscle movements prohibit this? Try it. You’ll see that you can’t. No matter how still you try to be, you’re never completely still. Your heart is still pumping, making that naughty little thump on your chest if you look hard enough. Your eyes are still twitching, and your hands are still shaking, ever so slightly. This wasn’t the case with the Other. He was completely, irrefutably, perfectly still, and I came to the realization that my newfound doppelganger wasn’t as dumb as he’d initially shown.
He was preying on those two people on the other side, and oh, how I knew there were two of them. I could smell them. Their individual collections of blood, their deep, red tissues, both with a slightly different milky aroma, due to what I can only assume were their unique levels of lactic acid buildup. I could hear their heartbeats, both quick, but one more so than the other. Likely the owner of the smaller set of footsteps. “Is there anyone in there?” A male. Baritone.
The Other had exhibited an eagerness to investigate every noise he’d come across, but he remained motionless in the shadow of the entryway; an undead centipede, waiting for his mice to wander into his area of effect. I screamed obscenity after obscenity at him for polluting the floor I’d set my wife down after carrying her across the threshold of our new home. We shared “hello” and “goodbye” kisses here. We’d carried our first Christmas tree through the same door he now stood behind, ravenous and eager. We’d even made love in there against one of the walls, knocking down our wedding picture before laughing at each other because of the fright that the sudden BANG elicited in us. He would try to pervert them all. Every single memory there. But he couldn’t have his way. The door was locked, and so he was trapped, and his would-be victims were stuck outside.
“I don’t think anyone’s home, Johnny”, whispered a female voice, but through the Other’s senses, it sounded like she was screaming into a megaphone.
“We gotta get in, we don’t have time. I’m going to check for open windows. You stay here, because if a pack of those things is inside, I don’t want us both dying. It’s not just the two of us, anymore.”
“Let’s just go! There’s probably another house unlocked down the street!”
“We don’t have time, Linda! This house is as good as any.
If there’s no open windows, we’ll keep going. We ain’t gonna force our way in and ruin the only thing keeping them out.”
Whimpering. Crying. More fear. I could smell it this time. Is this what it smelled like? Is this what it tasted like on the tongue? Sour? Maybe there was some science behind meat from stressed animals, after all.
“I love you, Johnny.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t act like it might be goodbye.”
There was a long pause. They were staring into each other’s souls, the two of them wondering if this would be the last time. I could feel it.
“I love you too. I’ll see you in a minute.”
I felt my figurative sphincter tighten up as I remembered when it was. We were in the middle of July. We were in July, and in summer months like July, Alison always liked to leave the kitchen window above the sink open, just in case the trash started to smell in the middle of the night. If Johnny checked the windows first, he’d see me standing in wait, and would either decide to move on or get the drop on me and end my misery.
I couldn’t smell Johnny anymore, but I could hear him. I heard his footsteps sneaking around the perimeter of my quaint little house. My own little dream home, with a nightmare waiting just inside. He might as well be a rhinoceros stomping around, because the Other’s senses were so attuned to him, that that was all I could hear. The uneasy, unsteady war drum of his feet. I felt pity for him because I had no doubt that he was trying to be as silent as possible, but that was a completely useless endeavor. Despite my ability to hear Johnny, I found that because of the focus on him, Linda's organic functions were completely out of sight, out of mind, out of range. It was just like upstairs. All attention was focused on one specific thing, and that was all that mattered. With all my might, I tried to focus on Linda, but to no avail.
‘Come on, you moron. Something has to work with you. You can’t just take me over like this.’
I tried to listen for Linda again, but this time as I was focusing on the other side of the door, I imagined what Linda must look like. How meaty she was. Hair color, eyes, nose. Then, a hit of elation tickled at me. For just a flicker of time, I felt the Other get diverted back to the door. It was for a second, but just long enough for me to register that somehow, someway, there was a link between us. He wrested the control away from me, and although he made no outward indication, it became apparent he was frustrated at my intrusion.
As the Other resumed full control, poor Johnny’s outdoor footsteps suddenly appeared to the left of the entryway, behind one of the living room windows, and the focus was unequivocally back on him. My body couldn’t be seen from here, as the Other was quite inside of the entryway, away from prying eyes. I’d only wished I’d ponied up the money and bought a door with a big glass window, so there was nowhere to hide. Hopefully, the window hadn’t been found.
“Linda, there’s an open window back there that leads into the kitchen. I’m gonna crawl through it and let you in, okay?”
“Did you check if there were any creeps?”
“I didn’t see any, but I ain’t checked the upstairs yet. I’d rather there be two of us in there since it’s probably all bedrooms and hallways. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
What were the odds of him seeing me and ending this nightmare? Very good, I’d hoped. The Other was standing like a buffoon in the entryway. If Johnny crawled in through the kitchen window, he’d most likely walk through the kitchen and into the dining room, which was to the right of the entryway. I’d be in plain view, and assuming he had a gun, he could blow my brains out and give the photos of Alison and me a red and grey baptism. I wondered if I would see him beforehand. My first and last view of the assassin I never knew I wanted.
There was a twitch somewhere within the Other. A quick breath of air entered his (my) lungs, and without any stimulation, he started to move. It was a slow shamble, but he moved quietly from the front door. I could hear the strain of Johnny climbing though the kitchen window. The heavy breathing, the sidling back and forth as he wormed his way through the high opening. The Other continued into the living room before crossing the wide arch of the door-less threshold and turning to his right.
‘My God…don’t do this.’
What I’m about to tell you horrified me to no end, and even now, still sends me into small fits of mental unrest thinking about it. Forgive me if at times I sound like I’m at my wits end. As I said, the Other turned from the front door, and as I heard poor Johnny grab the edge of the countertop and give himself the final pull, stumbling over the sink and on to the aquamarine, tiled, linoleum floor, the Other stood as motionless as before, behind the other side of the living room archway, unseen.
Somehow, the thing that occupied my body must’ve registered my thoughts to the layout of mine and Alison’s abode, and reacted accordingly, for its own self-preservation. My mind was blown open. If I was a creep, or as old Bruce from the news would say a “zombie”, my counterpart wasn’t the brainless twit that Hollywood had always made him out to be. He had thoughts, a sense of preservation, and to some degree, logic. He had these, and somehow, he could pluck solutions from my mind and utilize them as needed. This led me to another horrifying conclusion:
The Other knew I was here!
He must’ve. He had to have known I was here! He’d somehow heard my advice, and reacted accordingly, moving to the area which I believed that the Other’s unfortunate prey wouldn’t go. I heard Poor Johnny climb to his feet and pass the buzzing refrigerator, go under the archway of the kitchen, of which above him hung a small cross. I heard him two rooms away, sneaking past the dining room chairs one by one, and I felt the vibrations of the floorboards beneath him as they creaked. Alison and I hadn’t even known there were creaky floorboards, and we’d sat in that room hundreds of times. Finally, I heard him reach the entryway.
‘Don’t.’
I could’ve screamed endlessly for poor Johnny. He had no idea what was lurking, waiting, just behind the wall in that entry to death’s door. He turned the handle, opening it wide for Linda, and before either of them had time to react, the Other had whipped around and sunk his teeth deep into the flesh of Johnny’s neck. We both tasted blood and felt muscle tear as a chunk the size of an apple was ripped from our victim. Linda screamed bloody murder and all I could think as her counterpart dropped helplessly from my arms was ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Please forgive me.’
I heard Johnny gagging on his own blood, suffocating in a pool of red as the Other looked directly ahead at Linda, who brandished a Louisville Slugger, a mix of hate and fright in her eyes. She was about five foot three. A Latino woman, with thick, curly brown hair that reached to the middle of her back. She wore a burgundy shirt, although I didn’t have time to make out the design. I only had time to think.
‘Swing for the fences, Linda. Godspeed, I hope to hell you make it out of here.’
She swung so hard that it knocked the Other off his feet, and he fell to a heap on the floor. I prepared myself for the inevitable end as Linda cried and screamed Johnny’s name. Her partner slowly faded away, his gurgling ceasing, dying…just like me, finally. I waited for the fade to black that all dying men must feel. Maybe it was a shining of white, which would make more sense if my neurons started going haywire.
But none of it happened.
Instead, the Other sat up and saw he was behind Linda, who was crouching over Johnny. I saw him (myself?) reach out and grab her shoulders before biting into her in the exact same spot as Johnny. She howled louder than I thought possible and weakly wrenched herself away from the Other’s grasp. I felt a crimson river of warmth drip down my chin and tasted the pound of meat in my mouth as the Other chewed it and stared at his latest victim. Linda stumbled drunkenly down my front walkway, staggering to the left and right, gripping her neck tightly. She wanted to reach the street so badly. She only made it halfway before falling on her side and into the grass, spasming and gasping for breath. The Other did nothing but chew on and on at Johnny’s body, watching her spit, cough, choke, convulse, and ultimately go limp.
‘Are you happy, you son of a bitch? You murderer? You cannibal? You’ve ruined everything! You’ve ruined my home! My memories!’
I was incensed. I rose to my feet, and punched the wall with all my might. A brand new hole looked back at me. I spat, I seethed, I…I punched a hole in the wall.
I stood up. I did it. Not the Other. It was me.
It was me! I was back! I’d regained control! But for how long? I rushed into Johnny’s belt, searching for a holster and found a small gun. I laughed hysterically, but all that came out were short, rapid moans. It appeared that while I had my independence back, my voice hadn’t returned. I checked to see it was loaded, and it was. Without hesitation, I put the gun to my head and pulled on the trigger. Nothing happened. I pulled again. Still nothing. I looked at my hand, and I understood.
I couldn’t pull the trigger. The Other-that goddamned Other- wouldn’t let me pull the trigger. He was still somewhere inside me, waiting to get out. Maybe this was a temporary reprieve.
Maybe he’d come back.
‘No matter. You wanna play this game, we’ll go right back to square one. I’ll pull Johnny Boy here in, lock the door, and you can feed on him for a few days until you’re trapped in here again!’
I went to pull Johnny, but I either lacked the strength, or the Other wouldn’t let me do that either. I wish I could say I cried at that point, but that would be a lie. A dramatization for the sake of keeping you listening. There were no tears. I couldn't. I just sat there in sadness, a body that was somehow alive, sharing it with something else.
The pictures lining the entryway walls glimmered in the sunlight. Alison looked beautiful. She wore a traditional veil. Her bright, blonde hair had been in a bun, and her white wedding gown had a train that stretched for six feet. I, on the other hand, looked like a dweeb in my tuxedo, with my white rose, and my dress shirt which was too big, so I had to walk around with pins holding my sleeves tight.
Short, rapid moans at that one.
On the other side was a picture of us in front of the house. It was me, her, and she was holding a sign by her stomach that said something beautiful: Coming soon. She had been pregnant, hadn’t she? I noticed my memories getting a bit foggier, but it came back to me. She was pregnant. Maybe she still was, still alive.
A moan on the floor. Light scratches on the hardwood. I looked down to see Johnny’s head lulling back and forth. His eyes were wide open and very much the color of pale death. I must've been reminiscing for hours. At least Hollywood got that part of the infection right. That meant Linda would be stirring pretty soon.
I couldn’t show Alison what I looked like. And besides, I couldn’t focus on her. To do so might kill her. No. I needed to focus on something I couldn’t kill. It was obvious that for now, I only had as much control as the Other would let me have.
Eventually, he would come back to feed again. I was starting to feel his inevitable return already. I had to focus on something that he could head towards. Something he’d want, but something that would most likely end him. I racked my brain thinking, before I finally stepped back into my childhood and understood what I had to do.
‘We’re going to go to the zoo, and we’re going to wrestle a gorilla.’
​
If you liked that story and want more, please upvote, share, follow, and support! My Twitter is iamsawyergreen My WordPress is sawyergreenblog.wordpress.com I want to write more, and for a wider audience, but I need your help and support to do that :)

CHAPTER ONE Sawyer Green
When I was a boy, I’d always wanted to wrestle a gorilla. Not kill it, mind you, but I’d always just wanted to pit the strength of man against the raw power of one of the most powerful land creatures on Earth. I’d daydream about things like this at school, as I’m sure many boys are bound to do, whether they be swashbuckling pirates on the Atlantic Ocean, or suddenly gaining a black belt in karate and convincingly defeating the shitkicker that would steal their lunch money.
I’d stay up at night thinking about it - not necessarily always a gorilla; sometimes, it was a tiger, or a wolf or a bear, or any other number of creatures. I never wanted to hurt them in any way. I loved my dogs, and I loved animals in general. It was just some childish fascination that I’d had, possibly borne from that youthful curiosity to discover my own limits.
I’ll spare you the long version of everything in my life leading up to our present day and just leave you with the knowledge that before last week, I was a happily married man of two years, who had just purchased his first home with his wife in the middle of Suburbia, USA. I had a business degree with a minor in biology, and I’d worked in commerce for about seven years. I was confident enough in our combined income to purchase a home and start our lives. Things were looking up; until last week, anyways.
Now, I’m a walking corpse. I don’t know where my wife, Alison is. I imagine she’s in the same boat, but when I changed, she wasn’t home. I was alone, in bed. Now, I know what you’re thinking. I must’ve been struck with the old “sickness” that you see in movies. You’re imagining that I fell into a fever, had chills, sweating, the whole nine yards before I eventually succumbed to the “virus”, huh?
If only it were that dramatic. It wasn’t that simple. I was only in bed because of the normal human need for sleep. My wife wasn’t home because she’s a registered nurse who works the night shift. I’d noticed that I was getting a little bit hungrier lately. I’d taken up weight-lifting recently, so I chalked that one up to an increased metabolism. Just my body trying to get nutrients in after a workout, you know? This change just kind of happened. I noticed little things like my skin growing paler and bags forming under my eyes, but I didn’t feel sick, so I didn’t really worry about it. Seasonal things happen, and allergies kick down your door at the worst possible time. How about living in a new environment? Spend half a decade in a city apartment where smog is practically a squatting citizen - and a thousand little ecosystems exist in a thousand little offices and homes. Then change it up to a suburban two-story, where you’re surrounded by a whole new realm of germs, bugs, and bacteria. That'll do things to you, right?
One morning, I looked in the mirror and saw a different man. That sense of wrongness hit me when I tried to lift my hand up to touch my face, pull the skin back a bit to get a closer look at the varicose veins that gave greetings from my pallid jawline, and examine the hue of blue that my pallor took while I’d been sleeping. Try as I might, I could barely muster the strength to do it. It wasn’t that my limbs were inoperable, they just seemed to have a mind of their own. My hands would rather reach towards the mirror and tap on it, paw at it – animalistic instincts you might observe from the family dog.
Confused, I pulled and tugged, typical brain waves, afferent signals going from my brain and through the nervous system. Routine things performed every day, and yet no matter the strain, I couldn’t bring myself to bring back my noticeably white hands, with even more noticeably darkened fingernails.
I then realized that it wasn’t me in the reflection. It was some other me. A new me. He was gazing at me in the mirror, peeking out beneath the speckles of toothpaste that dotted the bathroom vanity like stars, all because I'd waited too long to give it the old Windex one-two. His dull, brown eyes stared dumbly at themselves, pun intended. I could somewhat see inside his half-open mouth and noted that all his teeth were mine, even the fillings in the molars that were the all too often result of an adolescent candy addiction.
Once more, I tried to snap my body around. This was all just some weird loss of reality I was having. I was overworked and overtired, I must’ve been. I’d overslept, I’d undereaten, I’d somehow woken up in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. How in the hell did I wind up in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror? Either way, it was a no-go and I began to panic. I felt trapped in a flesh box, beating against its walls, unable to do anything but be subjected to this closed cable program of my own eyesight.
It took hours before I could will my body out of its vacant standing position. I tried to call for help, but only a low, gurgling moan came out. I’d only managed to leave because my cell phone started ringing in the bedroom. Who it was, I’ll never know, but it provided enough of a cry for my “other” to exit the toilet and shamble into the hallway.
At 10 o’clock, my television turned on – as it was programmed to do – and while my physical form didn’t care for the information, it turned to the noise and we stood, one of us horrified, the other indifferent, to the words that flashed on the screen.
STATE OF EMERGENCY
A wide shot of a newsroom opened after the flashy red letters and a clean-shaven, yet visibly panicked man with your typical newscaster haircut and baby blue eyes as wide as saucers appeared on screen, next to his co-host, a thin woman with just enough meat on her to be acceptable by media standards, sporting the all too familiar shoulder-length, straight, blonde hair. She appeared a little more collected than her slice-of-America male counterpart.
“Good evening, I’m Brian Williamson.” The voice was deep. Alive.
“And I’m Jeanette Bartholomew.” Higher. Vulnerable.
“The President of the United States”, Brian stammered, “has declared a state of emergency, in response to the growing epidemic of an unknown disease that has begun to ravage parts of the West Coast and Southern states. Those afflicted with the disease have been observed to show no visible signs of infection until it has fully formed within the individual. This results in their vital signs becoming absent before returning to a state, which experts describe as “zombie-like”. Once reaching this state, they exhibit dangerous and violent qualities, attacking anyone in their vicinity who isn’t carrying the disease. Looks like we’ve got a regular George Romero situation on our hands like in the movies, eh, Jeannette?” He forced a smile to his cohost in a show of network-directed humor. His own terror was barely hidden beneath the laugh lines.
Fear in Jeannette’s eyes. She stared at the camera as though it had her full attention, a look on her face that betrayed her to the quivering mess she could break into at any moment. She fidgeted some notecards in her hands, tapping their edges on the desk.
“The...those-”, she stuttered. “Those who have not been infected are asked to…to…t-t-”
Tears welling. A beautiful face, once tanned, now flushed with anxiety. Brian looked at her in deep concern before taking over. He gave off a look of fortitude, but his natural body functions betrayed him as well. The shaky breaths, the quivering lip.
“Those who have not been infected are asked to stay inside and lock your doors. Please pay attention to your body, and if you suspect infection, separate yourself entirely from those around you and call the Center for Disease Control immediately. It’s unknown if the disease originated from a host, from the air, or water. It is strongly advised that all carriers remain locked in their basements. Symptom-free citizens, please eat and drink only from sealed containers, such as cans or glass containers. Do not use your faucets or showerheads. Our reporter, Barry Lyles is on the sce-”
“Maddy, baby”, interrupted Jeannette. “If you’re watching this, Mommy’s coming home.” She stood up and broke free from the camera. It ewas her and the viewers, now. “Mommy’s coming home right now and we’re going to get the fuck out of here, before it’s too late!”
There was a sound out front. Footsteps, two pairs, one big, one small, heading this way from the north end of the suburbs. The Other let out a soft moan and turned from the television. All I could do was scream in my own head like some elephant rider trying to make his mount obey his commands.
‘No, you stupid son of a bitch! Go back to the television! They’re not done talking!’
He wouldn’t listen. I tried to focus a bit of our shared hearing on the flat screen, but it was as though now that some new, organic sound had roused the Other’s attention, that was all that mattered. Everything around me sounded muffled, but the quietness of the street beyond the front door sounded just like that; quiet. Like some black hole of sound ripped through in front of me and the Other was so focused on the noise that came and went that now, that area of the world was the only important part of the universe.
He walked curiously through the hallway and down the steps before arriving at the front door, directly ahead. He grazed his fingertips on it, disappointed by the barrier that stood between him and the now nonexistent sound. He slid his fingers up and down it for minutes, like a broken record. At this point, I knew what he was. It was good that he couldn’t escape. Beneficial to my own sanity, and for the safety of those who hadn’t caught what I had. I mentally breathed a sigh of relief.
‘We’re stuck in here together, forever, partner. Why don’t you pull up a chair and table? I’ll finagle you over to the junk drawer and we’ll get the deck of cards; play a couple rounds of something! Might as well get comfortable, numbnuts!”
Then I heard those goddamned footsteps again, this time headed straight to my door. The Other let out another soft moan. This one sounded a little more impatient. I could hear the lungs of my former body expanding, although I had a feeling that they were more for the sake of air powering my vocal cords now, rather than an actual aerobic need. The footsteps drew closer, louder, ever closer, until they halted at the other side of my door, and I realized something that would’ve sent chills up my spine, had I been capable of feeling at all.
Everything had gone quiet. The Other didn’t make a sound. He didn’t moan, he didn’t paw at the door, not a muscle twitched in the frame that used to be mine. He was like a statue, and for a moment, I stood with him, in amazement. How can I describe this…have you ever tried to stand perfectly still, not move a micrometer, yet you realize that involuntary muscle movements prohibit this? Try it. You’ll see that you can’t. No matter how still you try to be, you’re never completely still. Your heart is still pumping, making that naughty little thump on your chest if you look hard enough. Your eyes are still twitching, and your hands are still shaking, ever so slightly. This wasn’t the case with the Other. He was completely, irrefutably, perfectly still, and I came to the realization that my newfound doppelganger wasn’t as dumb as he’d initially shown.
He was preying on those two people on the other side, and oh, how I knew there were two of them. I could smell them. Their individual collections of blood, their deep, red tissues, both with a slightly different milky aroma, due to what I can only assume were their unique levels of lactic acid buildup. I could hear their heartbeats, both quick, but one more so than the other. Likely the owner of the smaller set of footsteps. “Is there anyone in there?” A male. Baritone.
The Other had exhibited an eagerness to investigate every noise he’d come across, but he remained motionless in the shadow of the entryway; an undead centipede, waiting for his mice to wander into his area of effect. I screamed obscenity after obscenity at him for polluting the floor I’d set my wife down after carrying her across the threshold of our new home. We shared “hello” and “goodbye” kisses here. We’d carried our first Christmas tree through the same door he now stood behind, ravenous and eager. We’d even made love in there against one of the walls, knocking down our wedding picture before laughing at each other because of the fright that the sudden BANG elicited in us. He would try to pervert them all. Every single memory there. But he couldn’t have his way. The door was locked, and so he was trapped, and his would-be victims were stuck outside.
“I don’t think anyone’s home, Johnny”, whispered a female voice, but through the Other’s senses, it sounded like she was screaming into a megaphone.
“We gotta get in, we don’t have time. I’m going to check for open windows. You stay here, because if a pack of those things is inside, I don’t want us both dying. It’s not just the two of us, anymore.”
“Let’s just go! There’s probably another house unlocked down the street!”
“We don’t have time, Linda! This house is as good as any.
If there’s no open windows, we’ll keep going. We ain’t gonna force our way in and ruin the only thing keeping them out.”
Whimpering. Crying. More fear. I could smell it this time. Is this what it smelled like? Is this what it tasted like on the tongue? Sour? Maybe there was some science behind meat from stressed animals, after all.
“I love you, Johnny.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t act like it might be goodbye.”
There was a long pause. They were staring into each other’s souls, the two of them wondering if this would be the last time. I could feel it.
“I love you too. I’ll see you in a minute.”
I felt my figurative sphincter tighten up as I remembered when it was. We were in the middle of July. We were in July, and in summer months like July, Alison always liked to leave the kitchen window above the sink open, just in case the trash started to smell in the middle of the night. If Johnny checked the windows first, he’d see me standing in wait, and would either decide to move on or get the drop on me and end my misery.
I couldn’t smell Johnny anymore, but I could hear him. I heard his footsteps sneaking around the perimeter of my quaint little house. My own little dream home, with a nightmare waiting just inside. He might as well be a rhinoceros stomping around, because the Other’s senses were so attuned to him, that that was all I could hear. The uneasy, unsteady war drum of his feet. I felt pity for him because I had no doubt that he was trying to be as silent as possible, but that was a completely useless endeavor. Despite my ability to hear Johnny, I found that because of the focus on him, Linda's organic functions were completely out of sight, out of mind, out of range. It was just like upstairs. All attention was focused on one specific thing, and that was all that mattered. With all my might, I tried to focus on Linda, but to no avail.
‘Come on, you moron. Something has to work with you. You can’t just take me over like this.’
I tried to listen for Linda again, but this time as I was focusing on the other side of the door, I imagined what Linda must look like. How meaty she was. Hair color, eyes, nose. Then, a hit of elation tickled at me. For just a flicker of time, I felt the Other get diverted back to the door. It was for a second, but just long enough for me to register that somehow, someway, there was a link between us. He wrested the control away from me, and although he made no outward indication, it became apparent he was frustrated at my intrusion.
As the Other resumed full control, poor Johnny’s outdoor footsteps suddenly appeared to the left of the entryway, behind one of the living room windows, and the focus was unequivocally back on him. My body couldn’t be seen from here, as the Other was quite inside of the entryway, away from prying eyes. I’d only wished I’d ponied up the money and bought a door with a big glass window, so there was nowhere to hide. Hopefully, the window hadn’t been found.
“Linda, there’s an open window back there that leads into the kitchen. I’m gonna crawl through it and let you in, okay?”
“Did you check if there were any creeps?”
“I didn’t see any, but I ain’t checked the upstairs yet. I’d rather there be two of us in there since it’s probably all bedrooms and hallways. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
What were the odds of him seeing me and ending this nightmare? Very good, I’d hoped. The Other was standing like a buffoon in the entryway. If Johnny crawled in through the kitchen window, he’d most likely walk through the kitchen and into the dining room, which was to the right of the entryway. I’d be in plain view, and assuming he had a gun, he could blow my brains out and give the photos of Alison and me a red and grey baptism. I wondered if I would see him beforehand. My first and last view of the assassin I never knew I wanted.
There was a twitch somewhere within the Other. A quick breath of air entered his (my) lungs, and without any stimulation, he started to move. It was a slow shamble, but he moved quietly from the front door. I could hear the strain of Johnny climbing though the kitchen window. The heavy breathing, the sidling back and forth as he wormed his way through the high opening. The Other continued into the living room before crossing the wide arch of the door-less threshold and turning to his right.
‘My God…don’t do this.’
What I’m about to tell you horrified me to no end, and even now, still sends me into small fits of mental unrest thinking about it. Forgive me if at times I sound like I’m at my wits end. As I said, the Other turned from the front door, and as I heard poor Johnny grab the edge of the countertop and give himself the final pull, stumbling over the sink and on to the aquamarine, tiled, linoleum floor, the Other stood as motionless as before, behind the other side of the living room archway, unseen.
Somehow, the thing that occupied my body must’ve registered my thoughts to the layout of mine and Alison’s abode, and reacted accordingly, for its own self-preservation. My mind was blown open. If I was a creep, or as old Bruce from the news would say a “zombie”, my counterpart wasn’t the brainless twit that Hollywood had always made him out to be. He had thoughts, a sense of preservation, and to some degree, logic. He had these, and somehow, he could pluck solutions from my mind and utilize them as needed. This led me to another horrifying conclusion:
The Other knew I was here!
He must’ve. He had to have known I was here! He’d somehow heard my advice, and reacted accordingly, moving to the area which I believed that the Other’s unfortunate prey wouldn’t go. I heard Poor Johnny climb to his feet and pass the buzzing refrigerator, go under the archway of the kitchen, of which above him hung a small cross. I heard him two rooms away, sneaking past the dining room chairs one by one, and I felt the vibrations of the floorboards beneath him as they creaked. Alison and I hadn’t even known there were creaky floorboards, and we’d sat in that room hundreds of times. Finally, I heard him reach the entryway.
‘Don’t.’
I could’ve screamed endlessly for poor Johnny. He had no idea what was lurking, waiting, just behind the wall in that entry to death’s door. He turned the handle, opening it wide for Linda, and before either of them had time to react, the Other had whipped around and sunk his teeth deep into the flesh of Johnny’s neck. We both tasted blood and felt muscle tear as a chunk the size of an apple was ripped from our victim. Linda screamed bloody murder and all I could think as her counterpart dropped helplessly from my arms was ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Please forgive me.’
I heard Johnny gagging on his own blood, suffocating in a pool of red as the Other looked directly ahead at Linda, who brandished a Louisville Slugger, a mix of hate and fright in her eyes. She was about five foot three. A Latino woman, with thick, curly brown hair that reached to the middle of her back. She wore a burgundy shirt, although I didn’t have time to make out the design. I only had time to think.
‘Swing for the fences, Linda. Godspeed, I hope to hell you make it out of here.’
She swung so hard that it knocked the Other off his feet, and he fell to a heap on the floor. I prepared myself for the inevitable end as Linda cried and screamed Johnny’s name. Her partner slowly faded away, his gurgling ceasing, dying…just like me, finally. I waited for the fade to black that all dying men must feel. Maybe it was a shining of white, which would make more sense if my neurons started going haywire.
But none of it happened.
Instead, the Other sat up and saw he was behind Linda, who was crouching over Johnny. I saw him (myself?) reach out and grab her shoulders before biting into her in the exact same spot as Johnny. She howled louder than I thought possible and weakly wrenched herself away from the Other’s grasp. I felt a crimson river of warmth drip down my chin and tasted the pound of meat in my mouth as the Other chewed it and stared at his latest victim. Linda stumbled drunkenly down my front walkway, staggering to the left and right, gripping her neck tightly. She wanted to reach the street so badly. She only made it halfway before falling on her side and into the grass, spasming and gasping for breath. The Other did nothing but chew on and on at Johnny’s body, watching her spit, cough, choke, convulse, and ultimately go limp.
‘Are you happy, you son of a bitch? You murderer? You cannibal? You’ve ruined everything! You’ve ruined my home! My memories!’
I was incensed. I rose to my feet, and punched the wall with all my might. A brand new hole looked back at me. I spat, I seethed, I…I punched a hole in the wall.
I stood up. I did it. Not the Other. It was me.
It was me! I was back! I’d regained control! But for how long? I rushed into Johnny’s belt, searching for a holster and found a small gun. I laughed hysterically, but all that came out were short, rapid moans. It appeared that while I had my independence back, my voice hadn’t returned. I checked to see it was loaded, and it was. Without hesitation, I put the gun to my head and pulled on the trigger. Nothing happened. I pulled again. Still nothing. I looked at my hand, and I understood.
I couldn’t pull the trigger. The Other-that goddamned Other- wouldn’t let me pull the trigger. He was still somewhere inside me, waiting to get out. Maybe this was a temporary reprieve.
Maybe he’d come back.
‘No matter. You wanna play this game, we’ll go right back to square one. I’ll pull Johnny Boy here in, lock the door, and you can feed on him for a few days until you’re trapped in here again!’
I went to pull Johnny, but I either lacked the strength, or the Other wouldn’t let me do that either. I wish I could say I cried at that point, but that would be a lie. A dramatization for the sake of keeping you listening. There were no tears. I couldn't. I just sat there in sadness, a body that was somehow alive, sharing it with something else.
The pictures lining the entryway walls glimmered in the sunlight. Alison looked beautiful. She wore a traditional veil. Her bright, blonde hair had been in a bun, and her white wedding gown had a train that stretched for six feet. I, on the other hand, looked like a dweeb in my tuxedo, with my white rose, and my dress shirt which was too big, so I had to walk around with pins holding my sleeves tight.
Short, rapid moans at that one.
On the other side was a picture of us in front of the house. It was me, her, and she was holding a sign by her stomach that said something beautiful: Coming soon. She had been pregnant, hadn’t she? I noticed my memories getting a bit foggier, but it came back to me. She was pregnant. Maybe she still was, still alive.
A moan on the floor. Light scratches on the hardwood. I looked down to see Johnny’s head lulling back and forth. His eyes were wide open and very much the color of pale death. I must've been reminiscing for hours. At least Hollywood got that part of the infection right. That meant Linda would be stirring pretty soon.
I couldn’t show Alison what I looked like. And besides, I couldn’t focus on her. To do so might kill her. No. I needed to focus on something I couldn’t kill. It was obvious that for now, I only had as much control as the Other would let me have.
Eventually, he would come back to feed again. I was starting to feel his inevitable return already. I had to focus on something that he could head towards. Something he’d want, but something that would most likely end him. I racked my brain thinking, before I finally stepped back into my childhood and understood what I had to do.
‘We’re going to go to the zoo, and we’re going to wrestle a gorilla.’
​
If you liked that story and want more, please upvote, share, follow, and support! My Twitter is iamsawyergreen My WordPress is sawyergreenblog.wordpress.com I want to write more, and for a wider audience, but I need your help and support to do that :)

CHAPTER ONE Sawyer Green
When I was a boy, I’d always wanted to wrestle a gorilla. Not kill it, mind you, but I’d always just wanted to pit the strength of man against the raw power of one of the most powerful land creatures on Earth. I’d daydream about things like this at school, as I’m sure many boys are bound to do, whether they be swashbuckling pirates on the Atlantic Ocean, or suddenly gaining a black belt in karate and convincingly defeating the shitkicker that would steal their lunch money.
I’d stay up at night thinking about it - not necessarily always a gorilla; sometimes, it was a tiger, or a wolf or a bear, or any other number of creatures. I never wanted to hurt them in any way. I loved my dogs, and I loved animals in general. It was just some childish fascination that I’d had, possibly borne from that youthful curiosity to discover my own limits.
I’ll spare you the long version of everything in my life leading up to our present day and just leave you with the knowledge that before last week, I was a happily married man of two years, who had just purchased his first home with his wife in the middle of Suburbia, USA. I had a business degree with a minor in biology, and I’d worked in commerce for about seven years. I was confident enough in our combined income to purchase a home and start our lives. Things were looking up; until last week, anyways.
Now, I’m a walking corpse. I don’t know where my wife, Alison is. I imagine she’s in the same boat, but when I changed, she wasn’t home. I was alone, in bed. Now, I know what you’re thinking. I must’ve been struck with the old “sickness” that you see in movies. You’re imagining that I fell into a fever, had chills, sweating, the whole nine yards before I eventually succumbed to the “virus”, huh?
If only it were that dramatic. It wasn’t that simple. I was only in bed because of the normal human need for sleep. My wife wasn’t home because she’s a registered nurse who works the night shift. I’d noticed that I was getting a little bit hungrier lately. I’d taken up weight-lifting recently, so I chalked that one up to an increased metabolism. Just my body trying to get nutrients in after a workout, you know? This change just kind of happened. I noticed little things like my skin growing paler and bags forming under my eyes, but I didn’t feel sick, so I didn’t really worry about it. Seasonal things happen, and allergies kick down your door at the worst possible time. How about living in a new environment? Spend half a decade in a city apartment where smog is practically a squatting citizen - and a thousand little ecosystems exist in a thousand little offices and homes. Then change it up to a suburban two-story, where you’re surrounded by a whole new realm of germs, bugs, and bacteria. That'll do things to you, right?
One morning, I looked in the mirror and saw a different man. That sense of wrongness hit me when I tried to lift my hand up to touch my face, pull the skin back a bit to get a closer look at the varicose veins that gave greetings from my pallid jawline, and examine the hue of blue that my pallor took while I’d been sleeping. Try as I might, I could barely muster the strength to do it. It wasn’t that my limbs were inoperable, they just seemed to have a mind of their own. My hands would rather reach towards the mirror and tap on it, paw at it – animalistic instincts you might observe from the family dog.
Confused, I pulled and tugged, typical brain waves, afferent signals going from my brain and through the nervous system. Routine things performed every day, and yet no matter the strain, I couldn’t bring myself to bring back my noticeably white hands, with even more noticeably darkened fingernails.
I then realized that it wasn’t me in the reflection. It was some other me. A new me. He was gazing at me in the mirror, peeking out beneath the speckles of toothpaste that dotted the bathroom vanity like stars, all because I'd waited too long to give it the old Windex one-two. His dull, brown eyes stared dumbly at themselves, pun intended. I could somewhat see inside his half-open mouth and noted that all his teeth were mine, even the fillings in the molars that were the all too often result of an adolescent candy addiction.
Once more, I tried to snap my body around. This was all just some weird loss of reality I was having. I was overworked and overtired, I must’ve been. I’d overslept, I’d undereaten, I’d somehow woken up in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. How in the hell did I wind up in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror? Either way, it was a no-go and I began to panic. I felt trapped in a flesh box, beating against its walls, unable to do anything but be subjected to this closed cable program of my own eyesight.
It took hours before I could will my body out of its vacant standing position. I tried to call for help, but only a low, gurgling moan came out. I’d only managed to leave because my cell phone started ringing in the bedroom. Who it was, I’ll never know, but it provided enough of a cry for my “other” to exit the toilet and shamble into the hallway.
At 10 o’clock, my television turned on – as it was programmed to do – and while my physical form didn’t care for the information, it turned to the noise and we stood, one of us horrified, the other indifferent, to the words that flashed on the screen.
STATE OF EMERGENCY
A wide shot of a newsroom opened after the flashy red letters and a clean-shaven, yet visibly panicked man with your typical newscaster haircut and baby blue eyes as wide as saucers appeared on screen, next to his co-host, a thin woman with just enough meat on her to be acceptable by media standards, sporting the all too familiar shoulder-length, straight, blonde hair. She appeared a little more collected than her slice-of-America male counterpart.
“Good evening, I’m Brian Williamson.” The voice was deep. Alive.
“And I’m Jeanette Bartholomew.” Higher. Vulnerable.
“The President of the United States”, Brian stammered, “has declared a state of emergency, in response to the growing epidemic of an unknown disease that has begun to ravage parts of the West Coast and Southern states. Those afflicted with the disease have been observed to show no visible signs of infection until it has fully formed within the individual. This results in their vital signs becoming absent before returning to a state, which experts describe as “zombie-like”. Once reaching this state, they exhibit dangerous and violent qualities, attacking anyone in their vicinity who isn’t carrying the disease. Looks like we’ve got a regular George Romero situation on our hands like in the movies, eh, Jeannette?” He forced a smile to his cohost in a show of network-directed humor. His own terror was barely hidden beneath the laugh lines.
Fear in Jeannette’s eyes. She stared at the camera as though it had her full attention, a look on her face that betrayed her to the quivering mess she could break into at any moment. She fidgeted some notecards in her hands, tapping their edges on the desk.
“The...those-”, she stuttered. “Those who have not been infected are asked to…to…t-t-”
Tears welling. A beautiful face, once tanned, now flushed with anxiety. Brian looked at her in deep concern before taking over. He gave off a look of fortitude, but his natural body functions betrayed him as well. The shaky breaths, the quivering lip.
“Those who have not been infected are asked to stay inside and lock your doors. Please pay attention to your body, and if you suspect infection, separate yourself entirely from those around you and call the Center for Disease Control immediately. It’s unknown if the disease originated from a host, from the air, or water. It is strongly advised that all carriers remain locked in their basements. Symptom-free citizens, please eat and drink only from sealed containers, such as cans or glass containers. Do not use your faucets or showerheads. Our reporter, Barry Lyles is on the sce-”
“Maddy, baby”, interrupted Jeannette. “If you’re watching this, Mommy’s coming home.” She stood up and broke free from the camera. It ewas her and the viewers, now. “Mommy’s coming home right now and we’re going to get the fuck out of here, before it’s too late!”
There was a sound out front. Footsteps, two pairs, one big, one small, heading this way from the north end of the suburbs. The Other let out a soft moan and turned from the television. All I could do was scream in my own head like some elephant rider trying to make his mount obey his commands.
‘No, you stupid son of a bitch! Go back to the television! They’re not done talking!’
He wouldn’t listen. I tried to focus a bit of our shared hearing on the flat screen, but it was as though now that some new, organic sound had roused the Other’s attention, that was all that mattered. Everything around me sounded muffled, but the quietness of the street beyond the front door sounded just like that; quiet. Like some black hole of sound ripped through in front of me and the Other was so focused on the noise that came and went that now, that area of the world was the only important part of the universe.
He walked curiously through the hallway and down the steps before arriving at the front door, directly ahead. He grazed his fingertips on it, disappointed by the barrier that stood between him and the now nonexistent sound. He slid his fingers up and down it for minutes, like a broken record. At this point, I knew what he was. It was good that he couldn’t escape. Beneficial to my own sanity, and for the safety of those who hadn’t caught what I had. I mentally breathed a sigh of relief.
‘We’re stuck in here together, forever, partner. Why don’t you pull up a chair and table? I’ll finagle you over to the junk drawer and we’ll get the deck of cards; play a couple rounds of something! Might as well get comfortable, numbnuts!”
Then I heard those goddamned footsteps again, this time headed straight to my door. The Other let out another soft moan. This one sounded a little more impatient. I could hear the lungs of my former body expanding, although I had a feeling that they were more for the sake of air powering my vocal cords now, rather than an actual aerobic need. The footsteps drew closer, louder, ever closer, until they halted at the other side of my door, and I realized something that would’ve sent chills up my spine, had I been capable of feeling at all.
Everything had gone quiet. The Other didn’t make a sound. He didn’t moan, he didn’t paw at the door, not a muscle twitched in the frame that used to be mine. He was like a statue, and for a moment, I stood with him, in amazement. How can I describe this…have you ever tried to stand perfectly still, not move a micrometer, yet you realize that involuntary muscle movements prohibit this? Try it. You’ll see that you can’t. No matter how still you try to be, you’re never completely still. Your heart is still pumping, making that naughty little thump on your chest if you look hard enough. Your eyes are still twitching, and your hands are still shaking, ever so slightly. This wasn’t the case with the Other. He was completely, irrefutably, perfectly still, and I came to the realization that my newfound doppelganger wasn’t as dumb as he’d initially shown.
He was preying on those two people on the other side, and oh, how I knew there were two of them. I could smell them. Their individual collections of blood, their deep, red tissues, both with a slightly different milky aroma, due to what I can only assume were their unique levels of lactic acid buildup. I could hear their heartbeats, both quick, but one more so than the other. Likely the owner of the smaller set of footsteps. “Is there anyone in there?” A male. Baritone.
The Other had exhibited an eagerness to investigate every noise he’d come across, but he remained motionless in the shadow of the entryway; an undead centipede, waiting for his mice to wander into his area of effect. I screamed obscenity after obscenity at him for polluting the floor I’d set my wife down after carrying her across the threshold of our new home. We shared “hello” and “goodbye” kisses here. We’d carried our first Christmas tree through the same door he now stood behind, ravenous and eager. We’d even made love in there against one of the walls, knocking down our wedding picture before laughing at each other because of the fright that the sudden BANG elicited in us. He would try to pervert them all. Every single memory there. But he couldn’t have his way. The door was locked, and so he was trapped, and his would-be victims were stuck outside.
“I don’t think anyone’s home, Johnny”, whispered a female voice, but through the Other’s senses, it sounded like she was screaming into a megaphone.
“We gotta get in, we don’t have time. I’m going to check for open windows. You stay here, because if a pack of those things is inside, I don’t want us both dying. It’s not just the two of us, anymore.”
“Let’s just go! There’s probably another house unlocked down the street!”
“We don’t have time, Linda! This house is as good as any.
If there’s no open windows, we’ll keep going. We ain’t gonna force our way in and ruin the only thing keeping them out.”
Whimpering. Crying. More fear. I could smell it this time. Is this what it smelled like? Is this what it tasted like on the tongue? Sour? Maybe there was some science behind meat from stressed animals, after all.
“I love you, Johnny.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t act like it might be goodbye.”
There was a long pause. They were staring into each other’s souls, the two of them wondering if this would be the last time. I could feel it.
“I love you too. I’ll see you in a minute.”
I felt my figurative sphincter tighten up as I remembered when it was. We were in the middle of July. We were in July, and in summer months like July, Alison always liked to leave the kitchen window above the sink open, just in case the trash started to smell in the middle of the night. If Johnny checked the windows first, he’d see me standing in wait, and would either decide to move on or get the drop on me and end my misery.
I couldn’t smell Johnny anymore, but I could hear him. I heard his footsteps sneaking around the perimeter of my quaint little house. My own little dream home, with a nightmare waiting just inside. He might as well be a rhinoceros stomping around, because the Other’s senses were so attuned to him, that that was all I could hear. The uneasy, unsteady war drum of his feet. I felt pity for him because I had no doubt that he was trying to be as silent as possible, but that was a completely useless endeavor. Despite my ability to hear Johnny, I found that because of the focus on him, Linda's organic functions were completely out of sight, out of mind, out of range. It was just like upstairs. All attention was focused on one specific thing, and that was all that mattered. With all my might, I tried to focus on Linda, but to no avail.
‘Come on, you moron. Something has to work with you. You can’t just take me over like this.’
I tried to listen for Linda again, but this time as I was focusing on the other side of the door, I imagined what Linda must look like. How meaty she was. Hair color, eyes, nose. Then, a hit of elation tickled at me. For just a flicker of time, I felt the Other get diverted back to the door. It was for a second, but just long enough for me to register that somehow, someway, there was a link between us. He wrested the control away from me, and although he made no outward indication, it became apparent he was frustrated at my intrusion.
As the Other resumed full control, poor Johnny’s outdoor footsteps suddenly appeared to the left of the entryway, behind one of the living room windows, and the focus was unequivocally back on him. My body couldn’t be seen from here, as the Other was quite inside of the entryway, away from prying eyes. I’d only wished I’d ponied up the money and bought a door with a big glass window, so there was nowhere to hide. Hopefully, the window hadn’t been found.
“Linda, there’s an open window back there that leads into the kitchen. I’m gonna crawl through it and let you in, okay?”
“Did you check if there were any creeps?”
“I didn’t see any, but I ain’t checked the upstairs yet. I’d rather there be two of us in there since it’s probably all bedrooms and hallways. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
What were the odds of him seeing me and ending this nightmare? Very good, I’d hoped. The Other was standing like a buffoon in the entryway. If Johnny crawled in through the kitchen window, he’d most likely walk through the kitchen and into the dining room, which was to the right of the entryway. I’d be in plain view, and assuming he had a gun, he could blow my brains out and give the photos of Alison and me a red and grey baptism. I wondered if I would see him beforehand. My first and last view of the assassin I never knew I wanted.
There was a twitch somewhere within the Other. A quick breath of air entered his (my) lungs, and without any stimulation, he started to move. It was a slow shamble, but he moved quietly from the front door. I could hear the strain of Johnny climbing though the kitchen window. The heavy breathing, the sidling back and forth as he wormed his way through the high opening. The Other continued into the living room before crossing the wide arch of the door-less threshold and turning to his right.
‘My God…don’t do this.’
What I’m about to tell you horrified me to no end, and even now, still sends me into small fits of mental unrest thinking about it. Forgive me if at times I sound like I’m at my wits end. As I said, the Other turned from the front door, and as I heard poor Johnny grab the edge of the countertop and give himself the final pull, stumbling over the sink and on to the aquamarine, tiled, linoleum floor, the Other stood as motionless as before, behind the other side of the living room archway, unseen.
Somehow, the thing that occupied my body must’ve registered my thoughts to the layout of mine and Alison’s abode, and reacted accordingly, for its own self-preservation. My mind was blown open. If I was a creep, or as old Bruce from the news would say a “zombie”, my counterpart wasn’t the brainless twit that Hollywood had always made him out to be. He had thoughts, a sense of preservation, and to some degree, logic. He had these, and somehow, he could pluck solutions from my mind and utilize them as needed. This led me to another horrifying conclusion:
The Other knew I was here!
He must’ve. He had to have known I was here! He’d somehow heard my advice, and reacted accordingly, moving to the area which I believed that the Other’s unfortunate prey wouldn’t go. I heard Poor Johnny climb to his feet and pass the buzzing refrigerator, go under the archway of the kitchen, of which above him hung a small cross. I heard him two rooms away, sneaking past the dining room chairs one by one, and I felt the vibrations of the floorboards beneath him as they creaked. Alison and I hadn’t even known there were creaky floorboards, and we’d sat in that room hundreds of times. Finally, I heard him reach the entryway.
‘Don’t.’
I could’ve screamed endlessly for poor Johnny. He had no idea what was lurking, waiting, just behind the wall in that entry to death’s door. He turned the handle, opening it wide for Linda, and before either of them had time to react, the Other had whipped around and sunk his teeth deep into the flesh of Johnny’s neck. We both tasted blood and felt muscle tear as a chunk the size of an apple was ripped from our victim. Linda screamed bloody murder and all I could think as her counterpart dropped helplessly from my arms was ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Please forgive me.’
I heard Johnny gagging on his own blood, suffocating in a pool of red as the Other looked directly ahead at Linda, who brandished a Louisville Slugger, a mix of hate and fright in her eyes. She was about five foot three. A Latino woman, with thick, curly brown hair that reached to the middle of her back. She wore a burgundy shirt, although I didn’t have time to make out the design. I only had time to think.
‘Swing for the fences, Linda. Godspeed, I hope to hell you make it out of here.’
She swung so hard that it knocked the Other off his feet, and he fell to a heap on the floor. I prepared myself for the inevitable end as Linda cried and screamed Johnny’s name. Her partner slowly faded away, his gurgling ceasing, dying…just like me, finally. I waited for the fade to black that all dying men must feel. Maybe it was a shining of white, which would make more sense if my neurons started going haywire.
But none of it happened.
Instead, the Other sat up and saw he was behind Linda, who was crouching over Johnny. I saw him (myself?) reach out and grab her shoulders before biting into her in the exact same spot as Johnny. She howled louder than I thought possible and weakly wrenched herself away from the Other’s grasp. I felt a crimson river of warmth drip down my chin and tasted the pound of meat in my mouth as the Other chewed it and stared at his latest victim. Linda stumbled drunkenly down my front walkway, staggering to the left and right, gripping her neck tightly. She wanted to reach the street so badly. She only made it halfway before falling on her side and into the grass, spasming and gasping for breath. The Other did nothing but chew on and on at Johnny’s body, watching her spit, cough, choke, convulse, and ultimately go limp.
‘Are you happy, you son of a bitch? You murderer? You cannibal? You’ve ruined everything! You’ve ruined my home! My memories!’
I was incensed. I rose to my feet, and punched the wall with all my might. A brand new hole looked back at me. I spat, I seethed, I…I punched a hole in the wall.
I stood up. I did it. Not the Other. It was me.
It was me! I was back! I’d regained control! But for how long? I rushed into Johnny’s belt, searching for a holster and found a small gun. I laughed hysterically, but all that came out were short, rapid moans. It appeared that while I had my independence back, my voice hadn’t returned. I checked to see it was loaded, and it was. Without hesitation, I put the gun to my head and pulled on the trigger. Nothing happened. I pulled again. Still nothing. I looked at my hand, and I understood.
I couldn’t pull the trigger. The Other-that goddamned Other- wouldn’t let me pull the trigger. He was still somewhere inside me, waiting to get out. Maybe this was a temporary reprieve.
Maybe he’d come back.
‘No matter. You wanna play this game, we’ll go right back to square one. I’ll pull Johnny Boy here in, lock the door, and you can feed on him for a few days until you’re trapped in here again!’
I went to pull Johnny, but I either lacked the strength, or the Other wouldn’t let me do that either. I wish I could say I cried at that point, but that would be a lie. A dramatization for the sake of keeping you listening. There were no tears. I couldn't. I just sat there in sadness, a body that was somehow alive, sharing it with something else.
The pictures lining the entryway walls glimmered in the sunlight. Alison looked beautiful. She wore a traditional veil. Her bright, blonde hair had been in a bun, and her white wedding gown had a train that stretched for six feet. I, on the other hand, looked like a dweeb in my tuxedo, with my white rose, and my dress shirt which was too big, so I had to walk around with pins holding my sleeves tight.
Short, rapid moans at that one.
On the other side was a picture of us in front of the house. It was me, her, and she was holding a sign by her stomach that said something beautiful: Coming soon. She had been pregnant, hadn’t she? I noticed my memories getting a bit foggier, but it came back to me. She was pregnant. Maybe she still was, still alive.
A moan on the floor. Light scratches on the hardwood. I looked down to see Johnny’s head lulling back and forth. His eyes were wide open and very much the color of pale death. I must've been reminiscing for hours. At least Hollywood got that part of the infection right. That meant Linda would be stirring pretty soon.
I couldn’t show Alison what I looked like. And besides, I couldn’t focus on her. To do so might kill her. No. I needed to focus on something I couldn’t kill. It was obvious that for now, I only had as much control as the Other would let me have.
Eventually, he would come back to feed again. I was starting to feel his inevitable return already. I had to focus on something that he could head towards. Something he’d want, but something that would most likely end him. I racked my brain thinking, before I finally stepped back into my childhood and understood what I had to do.
‘We’re going to go to the zoo, and we’re going to wrestle a gorilla.’
​
If you liked that story and want more, please upvote, share, follow, and support! My Twitter is iamsawyergreen My WordPress is sawyergreenblog.wordpress.com I want to write more, and for a wider audience, but I need your help and support to do that :)

Thanks for your patience guys! Instead of putting out one late and a second really late, I thought I’d offer you folks a one-two punch. Without further ado:
Steven wants to plant Alina on his personal planet, but his compulsive lying seems to bother her, and he’s not sure he wants to put up with that. Turns out he’s been shopping while Alina lingered in marriage layaway, and so Steven agrees to board up his social media once they return to the apartment. But at the apartment, Steven says that when he said “apartment” he really meant his mom’s basement, which is kinda like an apartment, except in the future. So Alina starts rifling through his messages, and discovers one of his ladies in waiting is looking to arrange an overnight play date.
“Did you have sex with this girl?” Is the question Alina should have asked.
“He doesn’t take my emotions seriously,” Alina says instead. “If only someone would come along and say the right things…”
“Never fear, skoodillypoop is here!” Steven announces. “That eggplant emoji is because we both like nightshades. Like you know how we trade hearts? We exchange vegetables.”
“You have also included heart. And questions about what is this, butt stuff?”
“We were just talking about farting. You know how it is.”
Steven is worried that his position as relationship authority is under threat, so he has no choice but to mansplain something in hopes of knocking her down a peg or two.
“I don’t want you to make any rash decisions. Now rash means —“
“I know what rash means,” Alina scowls. “And I know who I got it from.”
“I’m sorry Alina, but that never goes away.” Steven is torn between aw shucks and it is what it is, which he’s obligated to say at least three more times according to the terms of his 90DF contract.
Steven finally does the dang deletion, and then he suggests they go out for ice cream, because this dude stays snacking. Alina agrees, and before they leave Steven sneaks a square object into his backpack. Turns out Steven knew he’d be revealing himself as a master of illusion while in Turkey, and so he brought a suitcase full of apology gifts, and once the suitcase is empty he’ll ask her to crawl inside so he can saw it in half.
“I think I’ll call myself the Acceptable Stevinko!” Steven’s been planning.
What is the square object? A flower-adorned pink baby shower Dear Diary Book of Are You There God, it’s Me, Mormon.
“If you think this is amazing, you should see the gifts my future self will pack to explain why I disappeared that one weekend and now have a surprise baby.” Steven likes to plan ahead.
At the ice cream place Steven drops the potpourri BOM, and she has just the right disappointed expression for this offering. Then he starts reading a found essay composed with cut-outs from Hallmark cards, and Alina loves it, so let me just fuck right off.
“I haven’t dated so many people,” No shit, Alina.“I still believe in fairy tales, so I’m not giving up.”
Steven points out that there’s still empty space to add a second apology later. “Then I will have two love notes,” she swoons. “Oh my gosh, this is so crazy Steven.”
Next Steven is itching to play piano on television, and figures he might as well propose to Alina while he’s at it. He charters a boat, and a couple of guys drag a keyboard onto the poop deck, where Steven feels right at home. Okay, Steven. There’s effort here. You’re trying. I’m not totally a hater.
“Pay-ah-ten-shun-two-me!” Steven warms up his vocals. Then he asks the boat captain to stand there looking terrified so he can practice his proposal.
“I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff or something,” Steven says.
“This is a feeling you should embrace,” I see you, Anna.
They sail to the waterfall, and Steven unveils the hidden keyboard, and starts singing.
“This is a-bout me/And what you’ll do for me,” Steven warbles. “Before time runs out/And we lose our chance…”
“Look at the e-vi-dence…” Anna hasn’t left yet.
“Ask you e-tern-a-lly,” Steven has crafted a really convincing Bob’s Burgers audition. “Ask you to mar-ry me.” His voice cracks during this last line, which makes this performance more convincing.
Alina declares the proposal “perfect” and says yes, and that Steven is her Edward. Steven goes with the fantasy and promises to hover over her while she sleeps and put off transforming her into a vampire until she’s almost dead.
“Omigod!” Alina is not done being Alina.
In the next episode Alina is wandering the streets of Turkey, visiting her collection of cat friends. She introduces them and the outfits she knitted them, and admits it’s hard to make friends in Turkey. It’s also hard to get married, since there’s all this paperwork to do and places to go, and Steven still has his feet to drag. She confronts him about this, and it turns out Steven wants her to get baptized before marriage, but it’s impossible because of COVID, so now he’s worried that they’ll get married and then she won’t get baptized.
“I need her to be as committed to Mormonism as I am,” Steven really just says things.
“Shouldn’t I be the one with trust issues?” Alina is confused by his trepidation.
“What?” Steven is lost without a map.
In Mexico, Armando says his father is still on the fence about the wedding, but Kenny thinks it might be worth it to be on time to meet the wedding planners anyway. Armando and Kenny’s wine country location is where Armando first announced he was going to be high maintenance, and it offers a great view, and some pergolas to compliment the shade of the planner’s condescension. They all sit down to tell Kenny the one thing he wants is impossible, but something about a cake on a barrel is a go.
“So the wedding is in a month,” Armando keeps us with the timeline. “Are we going to, like…make plans?”
“If you focus on how relaxed we seem, you won’t notice we’re disorganized,” Event Planner #1 declares. “Sunset? Yes, that happens every day. And no, we have no problem-solving skills. Like none.”
“That sounds fine to me,” Armando wants to know where he signs.
“It’s weird how when you speak with authority, a lot of people won’t notice you’re full of shit,” Kenny knows what’s up. “I’m really into the sunset, and that invoice did say the DJ was for six hours. Sunset is at 7, and we’re booked until midnight.”
“Yes, the curfew is midnight, but we couldn’t possibly ask the DJ to pause the chicken dance for 15 minutes for a silly exchange of vows,” That Guy #2 says. “Also, Mexicans really like to party, so that should help you feel alienated. Don’t worry, we’re going to have you and your very pale offspring seated and waiting for vow exchange at the hottest, brightest time of day.”
“So this is not even a conversation.” Kenny isn’t sure why he came.
On the way back Kenny points out that Armando immediately tossed his preference to bend to the planners, and says he felt like it was three against one. Kenny knows he can’t change the sunset, but thinks Armando should remember that these people are working for them, and don’t get to dictate. Armando apologizes, and updates Kenny about his dad.
“My dad says he might show up if I’m not gay anymore and I’m marrying your daughter,” Armando reads off a text message. “Or if I have to marry a dude, whatever, so long as I’m not too gay about it or anything.”
“Well, we’re two men getting married, so it’s going to be pretty gay,” Kenny explains to Armando, who still seems hopeful.
“Yeah, but I think it’ll still work if we whisper.”
“You can’t have a wedding for him; it’s ours.”
“Like, me and the planners?” Armando sniffles.
Kenny encourages Armando to call his dad and make it known one last time that he’d like him there, but dad still insists he needs to sit on the roof with a shotgun to guard his mural of unvaccinated children chasing a dinosaur from hooligans. Armando tells him there will be a chair and food for him if he decides to show up. His father says that his position is their story’s only tension until Kenny’s children land, so he will just say some things, and then Armando will say some things. This gives us plenty of time to assess the interior design.
Armando: Something about my dad.
Me: What variety of jade am I looking at? I’ve never achieved red edges that glorious, not even in a south-facing greenhouse on a summer day.
Kenny: Cooper sadness. Dad advice.
Me: Is that a dwarf boxwood or a chia pet on their table? That bookshelf is downright enviable. They’ve created a Pottery Barn greenhouse. #balconygoals.
Kenny says that Madison has always been his “little sidekick,” and they lived together right up until Kenny departed. He leaves to fetch them from the airport, armed with flowers because this dude’s welcome game is flawless. Cooper spots Kenny and races towards him for a happy reunion.
“You look like somebody else!” Cooper announces, because kids are awesome.
“Feelings,” Kenny responds.
“How do you know us? What we look like?” Cooper is lost. “Are you the ghost in the machine?”
“I’m 17 years old,” Truffles the dog interrupts. “Did you catch that? I’m a fucking miracle. Worship me.”
“My friend, I gave Alina and Steven toxoplasmosis,” Mr. Cucumber is not about to surrender his crown prematurely. “You’re welcome.”
Cooper meets Hannah and Armando for the first time, and Cooper attacks the block on Hannah’s bike while Kenny and Madison retreat for a private conversation. Kenny says it’s not lost on him that he left a super-supportive family to be closer to a family that wishes he were a woman.
“Yeah, I caught that,” Kenny is no fool. “We’d also have a better life if planning it were a dialog and not a dictation.”
“And still no Spanish?” Madison needs details.
“He’s too old! He cannot learn anything!” Okay Mama Sumit, it’s not quite your turn yet.
After having the same dad conversation, Armando calls an exhausted relative who has fielded 40 similar calls, and she confirms dad is in the car, so fucking stop it already.
“Guess what?” Armando wanders inside grinning. “I’m still going to worry he’s not coming next episode!”
“Hooray!” Kenny shouts.
Ari is scheduled to tell Biniyam to shut the fuck up, and I’m scheduled to make it my ring tone, but first little Avi has to have the cutest surgery to ever happen to the cutest human alive. Janice drives them to the hospital, and Ari escapes without a panic attack, because she’s not flanked by people telling her she’s overreacting every time she has a question.
Little Avi’s surgery is a success, and she and Janice head home so he can complete his recovery, while they talk about her future, which doesn’t look nearly as healthy. Janice is still concerned about Ari’s relationshit with Biniyam, since he’s out at the clubs every night, and doesn’t get home until the next day, which is about as shady as shady shit can get. Ari thinks the solution is for them to move to Kenya, where they first fell in love, and where Biniyam’s outside influences won’t have free reign.
“It’s never Biniyam’s fault,” Ari Schaenas.
“Do you think he’ll tell you that you just need to never leave him again, and it’s your fault this happened?” Janice has some questions. “Or is he just going to keep punishing you by sulking?”
“Can it be both?” Kristen has met a few man-babies in her time.
Sister Kristen points out that Ari’s serious about her life and looking forward to marriage, while Biniyam is still toddling towards infancy with his entire family clinging to his ankles. Then Ari reveals that in addition to going out every night, Biniyam has gone full unsupervised-teenager, and has converted their home to a party den and music studio. And remember that relatively simple assignment (to answer his phone), but even that sliver of responsibility is too much for Baby to wrangle.
“I thought leaving would make Biniyam sad, and then he’d appreciate me more,” Ari says. “Instead, I appreciate his ex-wife more.”
Ari heads into the basement to call Biniyam, armed with new information provided by his sister, Wish. She’s been texting Ari to tell her that Biniyam has women running in and out of their house, which Ari confirms by looking at photos uploaded to their cloud, that feature her own house and her own bed and other people sleeping in it. Biniyam even packed away Avi’s stuff to make room for all his side pieces.
“It’s almost like his plan is to live off of wealthy American women while procreating,” Ari’s almost got it. “If he were a woman they’d call this an anchor baby and him a freeloader. But since he’s a guy I probably deserve it for being demanding and whiny.”
Ari calls to ask him about who these women are, and to tell him to get an STI test. Biniyam says he can’t be expected to remember every woman’s name, but he knows what herpes looks like, and he scraped those off, okay? Ari says she will go to Kenya and meet him there, because she has no intention of keeping him from his son, but she’s humiliated, and will never return to Ethiopia.
“You are surrounded by evil, and you are not the same man I knew,” Ari declares. Yep, the problem still isn’t Biniyam, but an unseen force piloting his actions. Biniyam tries to talk/laugh over her, which is part of his teen rebellion, and Ari decides to draw a line.
“Shut up, shut the fuck up and listen to me. This is your last fucking chance,” Ari says, before hanging up on him.
Biniyam limbos right under that line and continues to not answer his phone, which is generally how it goes when there’s no consequences for your actions. Ari gets on a plane anyway, and Janice comes too, because Biniyam sucks, and someone needs to tell him.
Ari calls this one of the most trying times of her life, and while crying admits she feels so broken-hearted. She looks exhausted, malnourished, and defeated. Meanwhile, Biniyam whines that Ari didn’t give him options other than Kenya.
“Answering the phone was an option,” the obvious machine is producing receipts for Biniyam to review.
“Yeah, but it’s like, I don’t know, it’s okay, but whatever,” Biniyam Mikes.
Biniyam hasn’t pieced together that Ari can see his photos, and so he can’t understand why she doesn’t believe him. After his plane lands he just shows up at the apartment Ari rented for three months, and starts playing with Avi like nothing happened, which floors Ari. She notes that Biniyam’s eyes are very red and yellow, and he says yes I’m high and experiencing liver failure. Janice tells Biniyam he has to take care of Ari, since she hasn’t been eating or sleeping well, which means she thinks this strategy that didn’t work last time should work this round.
“My daughter has an incubus in her life.” Whoa, maybe Janice is changing it up! “Would you like to be banished, Biniyam? Would you?”
The next day Ari and Biniyam leave to talk, and Ari has hired a translator to assist them. Ari doesn’t want Biniyam to use an inability to understand her as an excuse, and Biniyam thinks that’s more an excuse Ari uses to explain why he’s indifferent, because otherwise she’d have to admit he’s a shitty boyfriend. Biniyam accuses her of trying to create drama by reacting to things that he did.
“I’m like, man of the house,” Biniyam man-of-the-houses. “Not like in the adult sense, but in the don’t-care-what-you-think sense. Like this? So man.”
As the story goes on and the translator gets creative, Ari reveals that she’s ashamed to go back to Ethiopia, because there are one or two women he’s been seen with over and over, and it’s humiliating that he was partying while she was taking care of their son.
“Yikes.” The translator is having second thoughts about taking this on, and stabs Biniyam under the table to get his hand off her knee.
Biniyam says this isn’t true, and he doesn’t see any reason to continue talking about it. Instead of telling him that’s not really how this type of confrontation works, Ari declares until he admits what he’s done she won’t be in a romantic relationship with him again, and she feels sorry for Biniyam, because she can’t stop making excuses for this dink. If she was hoping for an apology or even acknowledgement that he’s a dick, he left that in his new Ari-financed studio, along with the fucks he has to give.
Ellie and Victor return to the island for a few days with supplies to begin the long process of rebuilding, starting with arranging space for a tent, opening windows, and repairing the roof. Ellie’s trying to be a trooper as her fantasy life dissolves before her eyes, but her hatred of “roughing it” is presenting a sizable obstacle, and she doesn’t understand why Providencia can’t get its shit together and make electricity happen.
Ellie asks how she can help, and Victor asks Ellie to open a window. Ellie ignores this request in favor of obsessing over clothing.
Ellie: These clothes are so wet.
Victor: Yes. They will also be wet when we put them in the trash.
Ellie: I didn’t realize you had that many clothes.
Victor: I don’t, but I’m sure a warm water cycle won’t wash the hurricane out of them.
Ellie: Why are you such a fucking jerk?
Victor: I’ve been a little preoccupied and angry since a category five hurricane decimated my home while I hid in a cupboard.
Ellie: How are we supposed to do dishes without water?
Victor: There is water. This is something you will learn by turning the faucet.
Ellie: Yeah, but my complaints.
Victor: Can you open that window?
Ellie: You’re so fucking mean to me!
Not sure how Ellie is going to cope with the coming climate disaster if she can’t handle Victor not raising his voice but being a little short in response to a cascade of ridiculous questions that didn’t need to be asked. This is cleanup from this hurricane, but it won’t be the last, so her island home will always need repair. But Ellie believes she has the financial upper hand, since Victor’s relief check from Colombia apparently hasn’t dropped yet, which creates a dynamic where Ellie believe he has to be nice to her, but she can do whatever because he should be grateful.
Later on they make a fire and sit outside to relax, and Ellie decides to bring up their chaotic arrival. Victor thinks they need to have more patience with each other, and listen to each other more so they can cooperate. Ellie says that’s all fine and good, but she needs ongoing gratitude, because in cases you forgot, she’s there to help. Victor reminds her that technically it’s her house too, so “helping” is less of a favor and more about what happens after a hurricane.
“I just think we need to be more aware of what the other person is feeling,” Ellie is unsure whether she’s ready for Victor to be the one struggling. “By we, I mean you.”
“I’m going to show you my PTSD cupboard next episode,” Victor says. “Then we can return to mosquitoes if you like.”
Jenny is trying to call in sick so she doesn’t have to go to school and face her bullies, but Mama Sumit knows that bullying starts at home.
“I was sick when I walked into her kitchen, but I vomited, and started cleaning,” Sadhna sees no problem. “Jenny must learn that she can stir the curry and shit herself all at once. Food poisoning is a woman’s responsibility. Or she can schedule diarrhea. Get up, drink tea, have diarrhea, do yoga.”
“The yoga is the part that scares me,” Jenny admits.
The whole family circles round Jenny’s horizontal corpse.
“Here lies Jenny,” Sadhna begins. “She could not learn. She cannot keep a household like a real Indian woman. So we now must bury her, along with the deception I see so well.”
“No you don’t.” Sumit knows. “I am Master of Illusion. Say it Steven.”
“Can’t we both have our own priesthood or something?” Steven doesn’t want to tap out. “Or like, different teams, same sport? Hare Krishna?”
Jenny says that maybe she’ll feel better when she’s in the bathroom, where they’re not.
“I was so mad,” Jenny jennies, which you could totally tell by the nothing.
Sumit’s mom says she taught Keanu Reeves the yoga required to move around bullets for The Matrix, so she might as well teach Jenny between reminders that she’s old.
“I don’t know anything about yoga,” Jenny admits. “And I haven’t done the splits since I slid on the ice and got stuck that way.”
The parents try to coach Jenny through it, straightening and extending various limbs. Jenny looks up to see if they’re done with each pose or if she has to keep not-focusing, which means she’s ready for any and every American yoga class.
“Do not give up, Jenny!” Papa Sumit coaches.
“I’m not giving up unless Sumit and I give up together!” Jenny wants to remind everyone that there’s a unit happening here.
“There is nothing fine about Jenny’s aging wine.” Sadhna sticks her head out the burn unit to give you a status update on her victim.“Let us say I am like a ten, and Jenny is 55%.”
“I think I’ll go to bed tonight clutching a bag of bagels,” Jenny jennies. “Bread is always there for me when Sumit isn’t.”
As a chaser, 90DF asked the parents to produce a disgusting food for everyone at home to cringe over, but they have already given us diarrhea, and mom and dad are thinking a netti pot with a side of nostril flossing is the way to best goat sacrifice and penis soup.
“We too have tried a netti pot,” says everyone working in the tech industry in the early 00s. “It shares a shelf with an accordion and an Instapot. Sometimes I use it for gravy.”
This scene breached my disgusting threshold, so I have no idea what happened, but I feel confident reporting it as gross. Jenny’s reluctance to do this shit has earned a second rebuke from the would-be MIL, but an endorsement from everyone at home waiting for this sensory assault to end.
The next day the family astrologer is slated to arrive and tell the family what to do without so much as consulting a star chart. Sumit interrupts Jenny getting ready to let her know that she should make snacks for the astrologer, while he and his mom go to Sears portrait studio to take photos in front of an autumn scene in their matching outfits. Sumit has high hopes that this astrologer will do him a solid and further delay the marriage he doesn’t want, just as he has before.
Instead, the astrologer emphatically disagrees with the route Sadhna has taken. He insists she stop interfering in another person’s house.
“Yes, I am on the astrology train now,” Jenny is all aboard. “Toot toot!”
The astrologer says that Sadhna has pre-lived a life for him, and is now mad that he’s failing to meet her directive and follow the script.
“What kind of mother are you? Are you a selfish mother?” This astrologer reads like a savage. “That’s what it looks like to me.” Sadhna is reduced to tears, and this is some aggressive astrology.
The parents listen and finally agree this is out of their control, and Sumit stares into the abyss, because he was really counting on his mom laying on the railroad tracks, so that Jenny wouldn’t notice she’s on the train alone.
Later on Sadhna wants to talk with just Jenny, and Sumit is worried his parents are going to bless their marriage and then he’s going to have to call Steven.
“It’s been nice having you,” Jenny says, proving that Sumit isn’t the only party with a dishonesty habit.
“Jenny, we will love you. In the future. I can change for my son,” Sadhna says, which makes Jenny cry, because it’s been a lot.
However, this is a sorta, but not really, endorsement, similar to the one Armando’s father offered. Jenny never thought she would hear such things, and can’t resist pushing for their marriage blessing. Sadhna looks like she’s in Jenny’s kitchen again, and the best she can offer is a wait-and-see approach, with the understanding that she’ll let Sumit lie in the bed he’s made. Dad says that even his ancestors have come back from the dead to express their disbelief in this union, but they’re going to shut up.
“If we stop hovering, maybe Sumit will have to take some responsibility,” Dad can’t wait to have a life again.
“Fucking astrologer,” Sumit is not paying this fucking guy. “I am so happy. Everyone has forgotten my mother is my favorite obstacle.”
The next day is Holi, a traditional festival celebrating spring where folks throw colored dye made out of flowers at each other. They color war in a small party of two, which only underscores how isolated they are, and before everything is over Jenny wants to know if they can get married tomorrow or what.
Sumit wants their wedding date to be decided by the family astrologer, because that’s in the future, and he’s already forgotten that guy’s name and deleted his number, and his parents don’t want to interfere so it’s not like he can ask. This might take longer than a Mormon baptism.
“Next episode I will say ‘I haven’t been honest with Jenny,’ because that’s kind of my thing.” Sumit is ready. “I’m not sure what I’ll say next. I don’t like to limit myself.”
NEXT TIME: Sumit tells Jenny marriage has all the appeal of a root canal, Victor takes Ellie to the origin point of his PTSD to coax out some empathy, Kenny tells his children they’re thinking of adopting, and his daughters freak out and think he’s crafting another family from scratch to start over elsewhere, and Janice puts Biniyam under the hot lights to demand answers about his behavior, and Biniyam thinks they should just call his ex.
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Steven wants to plant Alina on his personal planet, but his compulsive lying seems to bother her, and he’s not sure he wants to put up with that. Turns out he’s been shopping while Alina lingered in marriage layaway, and so Steven agrees to board up his social media once they return to the apartment. But at the apartment, Steven says that when he said “apartment” he really meant his mom’s basement, which is kinda like an apartment, except in the future. So Alina starts rifling through his messages, and discovers one of his ladies in waiting is looking to arrange an overnight play date.
“Did you have sex with this girl?” Is the question Alina should have asked.
“He doesn’t take my emotions seriously,” Alina says instead. “If only someone would come along and say the right things…”
“Never fear, skoodillypoop is here!” Steven announces. “That eggplant emoji is because we both like nightshades. Like you know how we trade hearts? We exchange vegetables.”
“You have also included heart. And questions about what is this, butt stuff?”
“We were just talking about farting. You know how it is.”
Steven is worried that his position as relationship authority is under threat, so he has no choice but to mansplain something in hopes of knocking her down a peg or two.
“I don’t want you to make any rash decisions. Now rash means —“
“I know what rash means,” Alina scowls. “And I know who I got it from.”
“I’m sorry Alina, but that never goes away.” Steven is torn between aw shucks and it is what it is, which he’s obligated to say at least three more times according to the terms of his 90DF contract.
Steven finally does the dang deletion, and then he suggests they go out for ice cream, because this dude stays snacking. Alina agrees, and before they leave Steven sneaks a square object into his backpack. Turns out Steven knew he’d be revealing himself as a master of illusion while in Turkey, and so he brought a suitcase full of apology gifts, and once the suitcase is empty he’ll ask her to crawl inside so he can saw it in half.
“I think I’ll call myself the Acceptable Stevinko!” Steven’s been planning.
What is the square object? A flower-adorned pink baby shower Dear Diary Book of Are You There God, it’s Me, Mormon.
“If you think this is amazing, you should see the gifts my future self will pack to explain why I disappeared that one weekend and now have a surprise baby.” Steven likes to plan ahead.
At the ice cream place Steven drops the potpourri BOM, and she has just the right disappointed expression for this offering. Then he starts reading a found essay composed with cut-outs from Hallmark cards, and Alina loves it, so let me just fuck right off.
“I haven’t dated so many people,” No shit, Alina.“I still believe in fairy tales, so I’m not giving up.”
Steven points out that there’s still empty space to add a second apology later. “Then I will have two love notes,” she swoons. “Oh my gosh, this is so crazy Steven.”
Next Steven is itching to play piano on television, and figures he might as well propose to Alina while he’s at it. He charters a boat, and a couple of guys drag a keyboard onto the poop deck, where Steven feels right at home. Okay, Steven. There’s effort here. You’re trying. I’m not totally a hater.
“Pay-ah-ten-shun-two-me!” Steven warms up his vocals. Then he asks the boat captain to stand there looking terrified so he can practice his proposal.
“I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff or something,” Steven says.
“This is a feeling you should embrace,” I see you, Anna.
They sail to the waterfall, and Steven unveils the hidden keyboard, and starts singing.
“This is a-bout me/And what you’ll do for me,” Steven warbles. “Before time runs out/And we lose our chance…”
“Look at the e-vi-dence…” Anna hasn’t left yet.
“Ask you e-tern-a-lly,” Steven has crafted a really convincing Bob’s Burgers audition. “Ask you to mar-ry me.” His voice cracks during this last line, which makes this performance more convincing.
Alina declares the proposal “perfect” and says yes, and that Steven is her Edward. Steven goes with the fantasy and promises to hover over her while she sleeps and put off transforming her into a vampire until she’s almost dead.
“Omigod!” Alina is not done being Alina.
In the next episode Alina is wandering the streets of Turkey, visiting her collection of cat friends. She introduces them and the outfits she knitted them, and admits it’s hard to make friends in Turkey. It’s also hard to get married, since there’s all this paperwork to do and places to go, and Steven still has his feet to drag. She confronts him about this, and it turns out Steven wants her to get baptized before marriage, but it’s impossible because of COVID, so now he’s worried that they’ll get married and then she won’t get baptized.
“I need her to be as committed to Mormonism as I am,” Steven really just says things.
“Shouldn’t I be the one with trust issues?” Alina is confused by his trepidation.
“What?” Steven is lost without a map.
In Mexico, Armando says his father is still on the fence about the wedding, but Kenny thinks it might be worth it to be on time to meet the wedding planners anyway. Armando and Kenny’s wine country location is where Armando first announced he was going to be high maintenance, and it offers a great view, and some pergolas to compliment the shade of the planner’s condescension. They all sit down to tell Kenny the one thing he wants is impossible, but something about a cake on a barrel is a go.
“So the wedding is in a month,” Armando keeps us with the timeline. “Are we going to, like…make plans?”
“If you focus on how relaxed we seem, you won’t notice we’re disorganized,” Event Planner #1 declares. “Sunset? Yes, that happens every day. And no, we have no problem-solving skills. Like none.”
“That sounds fine to me,” Armando wants to know where he signs.
“It’s weird how when you speak with authority, a lot of people won’t notice you’re full of shit,” Kenny knows what’s up. “I’m really into the sunset, and that invoice did say the DJ was for six hours. Sunset is at 7, and we’re booked until midnight.”
“Yes, the curfew is midnight, but we couldn’t possibly ask the DJ to pause the chicken dance for 15 minutes for a silly exchange of vows,” That Guy #2 says. “Also, Mexicans really like to party, so that should help you feel alienated. Don’t worry, we’re going to have you and your very pale offspring seated and waiting for vow exchange at the hottest, brightest time of day.”
“So this is not even a conversation.” Kenny isn’t sure why he came.
On the way back Kenny points out that Armando immediately tossed his preference to bend to the planners, and says he felt like it was three against one. Kenny knows he can’t change the sunset, but thinks Armando should remember that these people are working for them, and don’t get to dictate. Armando apologizes, and updates Kenny about his dad.
“My dad says he might show up if I’m not gay anymore and I’m marrying your daughter,” Armando reads off a text message. “Or if I have to marry a dude, whatever, so long as I’m not too gay about it or anything.”
“Well, we’re two men getting married, so it’s going to be pretty gay,” Kenny explains to Armando, who still seems hopeful.
“Yeah, but I think it’ll still work if we whisper.”
“You can’t have a wedding for him; it’s ours.”
“Like, me and the planners?” Armando sniffles.
Kenny encourages Armando to call his dad and make it known one last time that he’d like him there, but dad still insists he needs to sit on the roof with a shotgun to guard his mural of unvaccinated children chasing a dinosaur from hooligans. Armando tells him there will be a chair and food for him if he decides to show up. His father says that his position is their story’s only tension until Kenny’s children land, so he will just say some things, and then Armando will say some things. This gives us plenty of time to assess the interior design.
Armando: Something about my dad.
Me: What variety of jade am I looking at? I’ve never achieved red edges that glorious, not even in a south-facing greenhouse on a summer day.
Kenny: Cooper sadness. Dad advice.
Me: Is that a dwarf boxwood or a chia pet on their table? That bookshelf is downright enviable. They’ve created a Pottery Barn greenhouse. #balconygoals.
Kenny says that Madison has always been his “little sidekick,” and they lived together right up until Kenny departed. He leaves to fetch them from the airport, armed with flowers because this dude’s welcome game is flawless. Cooper spots Kenny and races towards him for a happy reunion.
“You look like somebody else!” Cooper announces, because kids are awesome.
“Feelings,” Kenny responds.
“How do you know us? What we look like?” Cooper is lost. “Are you the ghost in the machine?”
“I’m 17 years old,” Truffles the dog interrupts. “Did you catch that? I’m a fucking miracle. Worship me.”
“My friend, I gave Alina and Steven toxoplasmosis,” Mr. Cucumber is not about to surrender his crown prematurely. “You’re welcome.”
Cooper meets Hannah and Armando for the first time, and Cooper attacks the block on Hannah’s bike while Kenny and Madison retreat for a private conversation. Kenny says it’s not lost on him that he left a super-supportive family to be closer to a family that wishes he were a woman.
“Yeah, I caught that,” Kenny is no fool. “We’d also have a better life if planning it were a dialog and not a dictation.”
“And still no Spanish?” Madison needs details.
“He’s too old! He cannot learn anything!” Okay Mama Sumit, it’s not quite your turn yet.
After having the same dad conversation, Armando calls an exhausted relative who has fielded 40 similar calls, and she confirms dad is in the car, so fucking stop it already.
“Guess what?” Armando wanders inside grinning. “I’m still going to worry he’s not coming next episode!”
“Hooray!” Kenny shouts.
Ari is scheduled to tell Biniyam to shut the fuck up, and I’m scheduled to make it my ring tone, but first little Avi has to have the cutest surgery to ever happen to the cutest human alive. Janice drives them to the hospital, and Ari escapes without a panic attack, because she’s not flanked by people telling her she’s overreacting every time she has a question.
Little Avi’s surgery is a success, and she and Janice head home so he can complete his recovery, while they talk about her future, which doesn’t look nearly as healthy. Janice is still concerned about Ari’s relationshit with Biniyam, since he’s out at the clubs every night, and doesn’t get home until the next day, which is about as shady as shady shit can get. Ari thinks the solution is for them to move to Kenya, where they first fell in love, and where Biniyam’s outside influences won’t have free reign.
“It’s never Biniyam’s fault,” Ari Schaenas.
“Do you think he’ll tell you that you just need to never leave him again, and it’s your fault this happened?” Janice has some questions. “Or is he just going to keep punishing you by sulking?”
“Can it be both?” Kristen has met a few man-babies in her time.
Sister Kristen points out that Ari’s serious about her life and looking forward to marriage, while Biniyam is still toddling towards infancy with his entire family clinging to his ankles. Then Ari reveals that in addition to going out every night, Biniyam has gone full unsupervised-teenager, and has converted their home to a party den and music studio. And remember that relatively simple assignment (to answer his phone), but even that sliver of responsibility is too much for Baby to wrangle.
“I thought leaving would make Biniyam sad, and then he’d appreciate me more,” Ari says. “Instead, I appreciate his ex-wife more.”
Ari heads into the basement to call Biniyam, armed with new information provided by his sister, Wish. She’s been texting Ari to tell her that Biniyam has women running in and out of their house, which Ari confirms by looking at photos uploaded to their cloud, that feature her own house and her own bed and other people sleeping in it. Biniyam even packed away Avi’s stuff to make room for all his side pieces.
“It’s almost like his plan is to live off of wealthy American women while procreating,” Ari’s almost got it. “If he were a woman they’d call this an anchor baby and him a freeloader. But since he’s a guy I probably deserve it for being demanding and whiny.”
Ari calls to ask him about who these women are, and to tell him to get an STI test. Biniyam says he can’t be expected to remember every woman’s name, but he knows what herpes looks like, and he scraped those off, okay? Ari says she will go to Kenya and meet him there, because she has no intention of keeping him from his son, but she’s humiliated, and will never return to Ethiopia.
“You are surrounded by evil, and you are not the same man I knew,” Ari declares. Yep, the problem still isn’t Biniyam, but an unseen force piloting his actions. Biniyam tries to talk/laugh over her, which is part of his teen rebellion, and Ari decides to draw a line.
“Shut up, shut the fuck up and listen to me. This is your last fucking chance,” Ari says, before hanging up on him.
Biniyam limbos right under that line and continues to not answer his phone, which is generally how it goes when there’s no consequences for your actions. Ari gets on a plane anyway, and Janice comes too, because Biniyam sucks, and someone needs to tell him.
Ari calls this one of the most trying times of her life, and while crying admits she feels so broken-hearted. She looks exhausted, malnourished, and defeated. Meanwhile, Biniyam whines that Ari didn’t give him options other than Kenya.
“Answering the phone was an option,” the obvious machine is producing receipts for Biniyam to review.
“Yeah, but it’s like, I don’t know, it’s okay, but whatever,” Biniyam Mikes.
Biniyam hasn’t pieced together that Ari can see his photos, and so he can’t understand why she doesn’t believe him. After his plane lands he just shows up at the apartment Ari rented for three months, and starts playing with Avi like nothing happened, which floors Ari. She notes that Biniyam’s eyes are very red and yellow, and he says yes I’m high and experiencing liver failure. Janice tells Biniyam he has to take care of Ari, since she hasn’t been eating or sleeping well, which means she thinks this strategy that didn’t work last time should work this round.
“My daughter has an incubus in her life.” Whoa, maybe Janice is changing it up! “Would you like to be banished, Biniyam? Would you?”
The next day Ari and Biniyam leave to talk, and Ari has hired a translator to assist them. Ari doesn’t want Biniyam to use an inability to understand her as an excuse, and Biniyam thinks that’s more an excuse Ari uses to explain why he’s indifferent, because otherwise she’d have to admit he’s a shitty boyfriend. Biniyam accuses her of trying to create drama by reacting to things that he did.
“I’m like, man of the house,” Biniyam man-of-the-houses. “Not like in the adult sense, but in the don’t-care-what-you-think sense. Like this? So man.”
As the story goes on and the translator gets creative, Ari reveals that she’s ashamed to go back to Ethiopia, because there are one or two women he’s been seen with over and over, and it’s humiliating that he was partying while she was taking care of their son.
“Yikes.” The translator is having second thoughts about taking this on, and stabs Biniyam under the table to get his hand off her knee.
Biniyam says this isn’t true, and he doesn’t see any reason to continue talking about it. Instead of telling him that’s not really how this type of confrontation works, Ari declares until he admits what he’s done she won’t be in a romantic relationship with him again, and she feels sorry for Biniyam, because she can’t stop making excuses for this dink. If she was hoping for an apology or even acknowledgement that he’s a dick, he left that in his new Ari-financed studio, along with the fucks he has to give.
Ellie and Victor return to the island for a few days with supplies to begin the long process of rebuilding, starting with arranging space for a tent, opening windows, and repairing the roof. Ellie’s trying to be a trooper as her fantasy life dissolves before her eyes, but her hatred of “roughing it” is presenting a sizable obstacle, and she doesn’t understand why Providencia can’t get its shit together and make electricity happen.
Ellie asks how she can help, and Victor asks Ellie to open a window. Ellie ignores this request in favor of obsessing over clothing.
Ellie: These clothes are so wet.
Victor: Yes. They will also be wet when we put them in the trash.
Ellie: I didn’t realize you had that many clothes.
Victor: I don’t, but I’m sure a warm water cycle won’t wash the hurricane out of them.
Ellie: Why are you such a fucking jerk?
Victor: I’ve been a little preoccupied and angry since a category five hurricane decimated my home while I hid in a cupboard.
Ellie: How are we supposed to do dishes without water?
Victor: There is water. This is something you will learn by turning the faucet.
Ellie: Yeah, but my complaints.
Victor: Can you open that window?
Ellie: You’re so fucking mean to me!
Not sure how Ellie is going to cope with the coming climate disaster if she can’t handle Victor not raising his voice but being a little short in response to a cascade of ridiculous questions that didn’t need to be asked. This is cleanup from this hurricane, but it won’t be the last, so her island home will always need repair. But Ellie believes she has the financial upper hand, since Victor’s relief check from Colombia apparently hasn’t dropped yet, which creates a dynamic where Ellie believe he has to be nice to her, but she can do whatever because he should be grateful.
Later on they make a fire and sit outside to relax, and Ellie decides to bring up their chaotic arrival. Victor thinks they need to have more patience with each other, and listen to each other more so they can cooperate. Ellie says that’s all fine and good, but she needs ongoing gratitude, because in cases you forgot, she’s there to help. Victor reminds her that technically it’s her house too, so “helping” is less of a favor and more about what happens after a hurricane.
“I just think we need to be more aware of what the other person is feeling,” Ellie is unsure whether she’s ready for Victor to be the one struggling. “By we, I mean you.”
“I’m going to show you my PTSD cupboard next episode,” Victor says. “Then we can return to mosquitoes if you like.”
Jenny is trying to call in sick so she doesn’t have to go to school and face her bullies, but Mama Sumit knows that bullying starts at home.
“I was sick when I walked into her kitchen, but I vomited, and started cleaning,” Sadhna sees no problem. “Jenny must learn that she can stir the curry and shit herself all at once. Food poisoning is a woman’s responsibility. Or she can schedule diarrhea. Get up, drink tea, have diarrhea, do yoga.”
“The yoga is the part that scares me,” Jenny admits.
The whole family circles round Jenny’s horizontal corpse.
“Here lies Jenny,” Sadhna begins. “She could not learn. She cannot keep a household like a real Indian woman. So we now must bury her, along with the deception I see so well.”
“No you don’t.” Sumit knows. “I am Master of Illusion. Say it Steven.”
“Can’t we both have our own priesthood or something?” Steven doesn’t want to tap out. “Or like, different teams, same sport? Hare Krishna?”
Jenny says that maybe she’ll feel better when she’s in the bathroom, where they’re not.
“I was so mad,” Jenny jennies, which you could totally tell by the nothing.
Sumit’s mom says she taught Keanu Reeves the yoga required to move around bullets for The Matrix, so she might as well teach Jenny between reminders that she’s old.
“I don’t know anything about yoga,” Jenny admits. “And I haven’t done the splits since I slid on the ice and got stuck that way.”
The parents try to coach Jenny through it, straightening and extending various limbs. Jenny looks up to see if they’re done with each pose or if she has to keep not-focusing, which means she’s ready for any and every American yoga class.
“Do not give up, Jenny!” Papa Sumit coaches.
“I’m not giving up unless Sumit and I give up together!” Jenny wants to remind everyone that there’s a unit happening here.
“There is nothing fine about Jenny’s aging wine.” Sadhna sticks her head out the burn unit to give you a status update on her victim.“Let us say I am like a ten, and Jenny is 55%.”
“I think I’ll go to bed tonight clutching a bag of bagels,” Jenny jennies. “Bread is always there for me when Sumit isn’t.”
As a chaser, 90DF asked the parents to produce a disgusting food for everyone at home to cringe over, but they have already given us diarrhea, and mom and dad are thinking a netti pot with a side of nostril flossing is the way to best goat sacrifice and penis soup.
“We too have tried a netti pot,” says everyone working in the tech industry in the early 00s. “It shares a shelf with an accordion and an Instapot. Sometimes I use it for gravy.”
This scene breached my disgusting threshold, so I have no idea what happened, but I feel confident reporting it as gross. Jenny’s reluctance to do this shit has earned a second rebuke from the would-be MIL, but an endorsement from everyone at home waiting for this sensory assault to end.
The next day the family astrologer is slated to arrive and tell the family what to do without so much as consulting a star chart. Sumit interrupts Jenny getting ready to let her know that she should make snacks for the astrologer, while he and his mom go to Sears portrait studio to take photos in front of an autumn scene in their matching outfits. Sumit has high hopes that this astrologer will do him a solid and further delay the marriage he doesn’t want, just as he has before.
Instead, the astrologer emphatically disagrees with the route Sadhna has taken. He insists she stop interfering in another person’s house.
“Yes, I am on the astrology train now,” Jenny is all aboard. “Toot toot!”
The astrologer says that Sadhna has pre-lived a life for him, and is now mad that he’s failing to meet her directive and follow the script.
“What kind of mother are you? Are you a selfish mother?” This astrologer reads like a savage. “That’s what it looks like to me.” Sadhna is reduced to tears, and this is some aggressive astrology.
The parents listen and finally agree this is out of their control, and Sumit stares into the abyss, because he was really counting on his mom laying on the railroad tracks, so that Jenny wouldn’t notice she’s on the train alone.
Later on Sadhna wants to talk with just Jenny, and Sumit is worried his parents are going to bless their marriage and then he’s going to have to call Steven.
“It’s been nice having you,” Jenny says, proving that Sumit isn’t the only party with a dishonesty habit.
“Jenny, we will love you. In the future. I can change for my son,” Sadhna says, which makes Jenny cry, because it’s been a lot.
However, this is a sorta, but not really, endorsement, similar to the one Armando’s father offered. Jenny never thought she would hear such things, and can’t resist pushing for their marriage blessing. Sadhna looks like she’s in Jenny’s kitchen again, and the best she can offer is a wait-and-see approach, with the understanding that she’ll let Sumit lie in the bed he’s made. Dad says that even his ancestors have come back from the dead to express their disbelief in this union, but they’re going to shut up.
“If we stop hovering, maybe Sumit will have to take some responsibility,” Dad can’t wait to have a life again.
“Fucking astrologer,” Sumit is not paying this fucking guy. “I am so happy. Everyone has forgotten my mother is my favorite obstacle.”
The next day is Holi, a traditional festival celebrating spring where folks throw colored dye made out of flowers at each other. They color war in a small party of two, which only underscores how isolated they are, and before everything is over Jenny wants to know if they can get married tomorrow or what.
Sumit wants their wedding date to be decided by the family astrologer, because that’s in the future, and he’s already forgotten that guy’s name and deleted his number, and his parents don’t want to interfere so it’s not like he can ask. This might take longer than a Mormon baptism.
“Next episode I will say ‘I haven’t been honest with Jenny,’ because that’s kind of my thing.” Sumit is ready. “I’m not sure what I’ll say next. I don’t like to limit myself.”
NEXT TIME: Sumit tells Jenny marriage has all the appeal of a root canal, Victor takes Ellie to the origin point of his PTSD to coax out some empathy, Kenny tells his children they’re thinking of adopting, and his daughters freak out and think he’s crafting another family from scratch to start over elsewhere, and Janice puts Biniyam under the hot lights to demand answers about his behavior, and Biniyam thinks they should just call his ex.
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Steven wants to plant Alina on his personal planet, but his compulsive lying seems to bother her, and he’s not sure he wants to put up with that. Turns out he’s been shopping while Alina lingered in marriage layaway, and so Steven agrees to board up his social media once they return to the apartment. But at the apartment, Steven says that when he said “apartment” he really meant his mom’s basement, which is kinda like an apartment, except in the future. So Alina starts rifling through his messages, and discovers one of his ladies in waiting is looking to arrange an overnight play date.
“Did you have sex with this girl?” Is the question Alina should have asked.
“He doesn’t take my emotions seriously,” Alina says instead. “If only someone would come along and say the right things…”
“Never fear, skoodillypoop is here!” Steven announces. “That eggplant emoji is because we both like nightshades. Like you know how we trade hearts? We exchange vegetables.”
“You have also included heart. And questions about what is this, butt stuff?”
“We were just talking about farting. You know how it is.”
Steven is worried that his position as relationship authority is under threat, so he has no choice but to mansplain something in hopes of knocking her down a peg or two.
“I don’t want you to make any rash decisions. Now rash means —“
“I know what rash means,” Alina scowls. “And I know who I got it from.”
“I’m sorry Alina, but that never goes away.” Steven is torn between aw shucks and it is what it is, which he’s obligated to say at least three more times according to the terms of his 90DF contract.
Steven finally does the dang deletion, and then he suggests they go out for ice cream, because this dude stays snacking. Alina agrees, and before they leave Steven sneaks a square object into his backpack. Turns out Steven knew he’d be revealing himself as a master of illusion while in Turkey, and so he brought a suitcase full of apology gifts, and once the suitcase is empty he’ll ask her to crawl inside so he can saw it in half.
“I think I’ll call myself the Acceptable Stevinko!” Steven’s been planning.
What is the square object? A flower-adorned pink baby shower Dear Diary Book of Are You There God, it’s Me, Mormon.
“If you think this is amazing, you should see the gifts my future self will pack to explain why I disappeared that one weekend and now have a surprise baby.” Steven likes to plan ahead.
At the ice cream place Steven drops the potpourri BOM, and she has just the right disappointed expression for this offering. Then he starts reading a found essay composed with cut-outs from Hallmark cards, and Alina loves it, so let me just fuck right off.
“I haven’t dated so many people,” No shit, Alina.“I still believe in fairy tales, so I’m not giving up.”
Steven points out that there’s still empty space to add a second apology later. “Then I will have two love notes,” she swoons. “Oh my gosh, this is so crazy Steven.”
Next Steven is itching to play piano on television, and figures he might as well propose to Alina while he’s at it. He charters a boat, and a couple of guys drag a keyboard onto the poop deck, where Steven feels right at home. Okay, Steven. There’s effort here. You’re trying. I’m not totally a hater.
“Pay-ah-ten-shun-two-me!” Steven warms up his vocals. Then he asks the boat captain to stand there looking terrified so he can practice his proposal.
“I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff or something,” Steven says.
“This is a feeling you should embrace,” I see you, Anna.
They sail to the waterfall, and Steven unveils the hidden keyboard, and starts singing.
“This is a-bout me/And what you’ll do for me,” Steven warbles. “Before time runs out/And we lose our chance…”
“Look at the e-vi-dence…” Anna hasn’t left yet.
“Ask you e-tern-a-lly,” Steven has crafted a really convincing Bob’s Burgers audition. “Ask you to mar-ry me.” His voice cracks during this last line, which makes this performance more convincing.
Alina declares the proposal “perfect” and says yes, and that Steven is her Edward. Steven goes with the fantasy and promises to hover over her while she sleeps and put off transforming her into a vampire until she’s almost dead.
“Omigod!” Alina is not done being Alina.
In the next episode Alina is wandering the streets of Turkey, visiting her collection of cat friends. She introduces them and the outfits she knitted them, and admits it’s hard to make friends in Turkey. It’s also hard to get married, since there’s all this paperwork to do and places to go, and Steven still has his feet to drag. She confronts him about this, and it turns out Steven wants her to get baptized before marriage, but it’s impossible because of COVID, so now he’s worried that they’ll get married and then she won’t get baptized.
“I need her to be as committed to Mormonism as I am,” Steven really just says things.
“Shouldn’t I be the one with trust issues?” Alina is confused by his trepidation.
“What?” Steven is lost without a map.
In Mexico, Armando says his father is still on the fence about the wedding, but Kenny thinks it might be worth it to be on time to meet the wedding planners anyway. Armando and Kenny’s wine country location is where Armando first announced he was going to be high maintenance, and it offers a great view, and some pergolas to compliment the shade of the planner’s condescension. They all sit down to tell Kenny the one thing he wants is impossible, but something about a cake on a barrel is a go.
“So the wedding is in a month,” Armando keeps us with the timeline. “Are we going to, like…make plans?”
“If you focus on how relaxed we seem, you won’t notice we’re disorganized,” Event Planner #1 declares. “Sunset? Yes, that happens every day. And no, we have no problem-solving skills. Like none.”
“That sounds fine to me,” Armando wants to know where he signs.
“It’s weird how when you speak with authority, a lot of people won’t notice you’re full of shit,” Kenny knows what’s up. “I’m really into the sunset, and that invoice did say the DJ was for six hours. Sunset is at 7, and we’re booked until midnight.”
“Yes, the curfew is midnight, but we couldn’t possibly ask the DJ to pause the chicken dance for 15 minutes for a silly exchange of vows,” That Guy #2 says. “Also, Mexicans really like to party, so that should help you feel alienated. Don’t worry, we’re going to have you and your very pale offspring seated and waiting for vow exchange at the hottest, brightest time of day.”
“So this is not even a conversation.” Kenny isn’t sure why he came.
On the way back Kenny points out that Armando immediately tossed his preference to bend to the planners, and says he felt like it was three against one. Kenny knows he can’t change the sunset, but thinks Armando should remember that these people are working for them, and don’t get to dictate. Armando apologizes, and updates Kenny about his dad.
“My dad says he might show up if I’m not gay anymore and I’m marrying your daughter,” Armando reads off a text message. “Or if I have to marry a dude, whatever, so long as I’m not too gay about it or anything.”
“Well, we’re two men getting married, so it’s going to be pretty gay,” Kenny explains to Armando, who still seems hopeful.
“Yeah, but I think it’ll still work if we whisper.”
“You can’t have a wedding for him; it’s ours.”
“Like, me and the planners?” Armando sniffles.
Kenny encourages Armando to call his dad and make it known one last time that he’d like him there, but dad still insists he needs to sit on the roof with a shotgun to guard his mural of unvaccinated children chasing a dinosaur from hooligans. Armando tells him there will be a chair and food for him if he decides to show up. His father says that his position is their story’s only tension until Kenny’s children land, so he will just say some things, and then Armando will say some things. This gives us plenty of time to assess the interior design.
Armando: Something about my dad.
Me: What variety of jade am I looking at? I’ve never achieved red edges that glorious, not even in a south-facing greenhouse on a summer day.
Kenny: Cooper sadness. Dad advice.
Me: Is that a dwarf boxwood or a chia pet on their table? That bookshelf is downright enviable. They’ve created a Pottery Barn greenhouse. #balconygoals.
Kenny says that Madison has always been his “little sidekick,” and they lived together right up until Kenny departed. He leaves to fetch them from the airport, armed with flowers because this dude’s welcome game is flawless. Cooper spots Kenny and races towards him for a happy reunion.
“You look like somebody else!” Cooper announces, because kids are awesome.
“Feelings,” Kenny responds.
“How do you know us? What we look like?” Cooper is lost. “Are you the ghost in the machine?”
“I’m 17 years old,” Truffles the dog interrupts. “Did you catch that? I’m a fucking miracle. Worship me.”
“My friend, I gave Alina and Steven toxoplasmosis,” Mr. Cucumber is not about to surrender his crown prematurely. “You’re welcome.”
Cooper meets Hannah and Armando for the first time, and Cooper attacks the block on Hannah’s bike while Kenny and Madison retreat for a private conversation. Kenny says it’s not lost on him that he left a super-supportive family to be closer to a family that wishes he were a woman.
“Yeah, I caught that,” Kenny is no fool. “We’d also have a better life if planning it were a dialog and not a dictation.”
“And still no Spanish?” Madison needs details.
“He’s too old! He cannot learn anything!” Okay Mama Sumit, it’s not quite your turn yet.
After having the same dad conversation, Armando calls an exhausted relative who has fielded 40 similar calls, and she confirms dad is in the car, so fucking stop it already.
“Guess what?” Armando wanders inside grinning. “I’m still going to worry he’s not coming next episode!”
“Hooray!” Kenny shouts.
Ari is scheduled to tell Biniyam to shut the fuck up, and I’m scheduled to make it my ring tone, but first little Avi has to have the cutest surgery to ever happen to the cutest human alive. Janice drives them to the hospital, and Ari escapes without a panic attack, because she’s not flanked by people telling her she’s overreacting every time she has a question.
Little Avi’s surgery is a success, and she and Janice head home so he can complete his recovery, while they talk about her future, which doesn’t look nearly as healthy. Janice is still concerned about Ari’s relationshit with Biniyam, since he’s out at the clubs every night, and doesn’t get home until the next day, which is about as shady as shady shit can get. Ari thinks the solution is for them to move to Kenya, where they first fell in love, and where Biniyam’s outside influences won’t have free reign.
“It’s never Biniyam’s fault,” Ari Schaenas.
“Do you think he’ll tell you that you just need to never leave him again, and it’s your fault this happened?” Janice has some questions. “Or is he just going to keep punishing you by sulking?”
“Can it be both?” Kristen has met a few man-babies in her time.
Sister Kristen points out that Ari’s serious about her life and looking forward to marriage, while Biniyam is still toddling towards infancy with his entire family clinging to his ankles. Then Ari reveals that in addition to going out every night, Biniyam has gone full unsupervised-teenager, and has converted their home to a party den and music studio. And remember that relatively simple assignment (to answer his phone), but even that sliver of responsibility is too much for Baby to wrangle.
“I thought leaving would make Biniyam sad, and then he’d appreciate me more,” Ari says. “Instead, I appreciate his ex-wife more.”
Ari heads into the basement to call Biniyam, armed with new information provided by his sister, Wish. She’s been texting Ari to tell her that Biniyam has women running in and out of their house, which Ari confirms by looking at photos uploaded to their cloud, that feature her own house and her own bed and other people sleeping in it. Biniyam even packed away Avi’s stuff to make room for all his side pieces.
“It’s almost like his plan is to live off of wealthy American women while procreating,” Ari’s almost got it. “If he were a woman they’d call this an anchor baby and him a freeloader. But since he’s a guy I probably deserve it for being demanding and whiny.”
Ari calls to ask him about who these women are, and to tell him to get an STI test. Biniyam says he can’t be expected to remember every woman’s name, but he knows what herpes looks like, and he scraped those off, okay? Ari says she will go to Kenya and meet him there, because she has no intention of keeping him from his son, but she’s humiliated, and will never return to Ethiopia.
“You are surrounded by evil, and you are not the same man I knew,” Ari declares. Yep, the problem still isn’t Biniyam, but an unseen force piloting his actions. Biniyam tries to talk/laugh over her, which is part of his teen rebellion, and Ari decides to draw a line.
“Shut up, shut the fuck up and listen to me. This is your last fucking chance,” Ari says, before hanging up on him.
Biniyam limbos right under that line and continues to not answer his phone, which is generally how it goes when there’s no consequences for your actions. Ari gets on a plane anyway, and Janice comes too, because Biniyam sucks, and someone needs to tell him.
Ari calls this one of the most trying times of her life, and while crying admits she feels so broken-hearted. She looks exhausted, malnourished, and defeated. Meanwhile, Biniyam whines that Ari didn’t give him options other than Kenya.
“Answering the phone was an option,” the obvious machine is producing receipts for Biniyam to review.
“Yeah, but it’s like, I don’t know, it’s okay, but whatever,” Biniyam Mikes.
Biniyam hasn’t pieced together that Ari can see his photos, and so he can’t understand why she doesn’t believe him. After his plane lands he just shows up at the apartment Ari rented for three months, and starts playing with Avi like nothing happened, which floors Ari. She notes that Biniyam’s eyes are very red and yellow, and he says yes I’m high and experiencing liver failure. Janice tells Biniyam he has to take care of Ari, since she hasn’t been eating or sleeping well, which means she thinks this strategy that didn’t work last time should work this round.
“My daughter has an incubus in her life.” Whoa, maybe Janice is changing it up! “Would you like to be banished, Biniyam? Would you?”
The next day Ari and Biniyam leave to talk, and Ari has hired a translator to assist them. Ari doesn’t want Biniyam to use an inability to understand her as an excuse, and Biniyam thinks that’s more an excuse Ari uses to explain why he’s indifferent, because otherwise she’d have to admit he’s a shitty boyfriend. Biniyam accuses her of trying to create drama by reacting to things that he did.
“I’m like, man of the house,” Biniyam man-of-the-houses. “Not like in the adult sense, but in the don’t-care-what-you-think sense. Like this? So man.”
As the story goes on and the translator gets creative, Ari reveals that she’s ashamed to go back to Ethiopia, because there are one or two women he’s been seen with over and over, and it’s humiliating that he was partying while she was taking care of their son.
“Yikes.” The translator is having second thoughts about taking this on, and stabs Biniyam under the table to get his hand off her knee.
Biniyam says this isn’t true, and he doesn’t see any reason to continue talking about it. Instead of telling him that’s not really how this type of confrontation works, Ari declares until he admits what he’s done she won’t be in a romantic relationship with him again, and she feels sorry for Biniyam, because she can’t stop making excuses for this dink. If she was hoping for an apology or even acknowledgement that he’s a dick, he left that in his new Ari-financed studio, along with the fucks he has to give.
Ellie and Victor return to the island for a few days with supplies to begin the long process of rebuilding, starting with arranging space for a tent, opening windows, and repairing the roof. Ellie’s trying to be a trooper as her fantasy life dissolves before her eyes, but her hatred of “roughing it” is presenting a sizable obstacle, and she doesn’t understand why Providencia can’t get its shit together and make electricity happen.
Ellie asks how she can help, and Victor asks Ellie to open a window. Ellie ignores this request in favor of obsessing over clothing.
Ellie: These clothes are so wet.
Victor: Yes. They will also be wet when we put them in the trash.
Ellie: I didn’t realize you had that many clothes.
Victor: I don’t, but I’m sure a warm water cycle won’t wash the hurricane out of them.
Ellie: Why are you such a fucking jerk?
Victor: I’ve been a little preoccupied and angry since a category five hurricane decimated my home while I hid in a cupboard.
Ellie: How are we supposed to do dishes without water?
Victor: There is water. This is something you will learn by turning the faucet.
Ellie: Yeah, but my complaints.
Victor: Can you open that window?
Ellie: You’re so fucking mean to me!
Not sure how Ellie is going to cope with the coming climate disaster if she can’t handle Victor not raising his voice but being a little short in response to a cascade of ridiculous questions that didn’t need to be asked. This is cleanup from this hurricane, but it won’t be the last, so her island home will always need repair. But Ellie believes she has the financial upper hand, since Victor’s relief check from Colombia apparently hasn’t dropped yet, which creates a dynamic where Ellie believe he has to be nice to her, but she can do whatever because he should be grateful.
Later on they make a fire and sit outside to relax, and Ellie decides to bring up their chaotic arrival. Victor thinks they need to have more patience with each other, and listen to each other more so they can cooperate. Ellie says that’s all fine and good, but she needs ongoing gratitude, because in cases you forgot, she’s there to help. Victor reminds her that technically it’s her house too, so “helping” is less of a favor and more about what happens after a hurricane.
“I just think we need to be more aware of what the other person is feeling,” Ellie is unsure whether she’s ready for Victor to be the one struggling. “By we, I mean you.”
“I’m going to show you my PTSD cupboard next episode,” Victor says. “Then we can return to mosquitoes if you like.”
Jenny is trying to call in sick so she doesn’t have to go to school and face her bullies, but Mama Sumit knows that bullying starts at home.
“I was sick when I walked into her kitchen, but I vomited, and started cleaning,” Sadhna sees no problem. “Jenny must learn that she can stir the curry and shit herself all at once. Food poisoning is a woman’s responsibility. Or she can schedule diarrhea. Get up, drink tea, have diarrhea, do yoga.”
“The yoga is the part that scares me,” Jenny admits.
The whole family circles round Jenny’s horizontal corpse.
“Here lies Jenny,” Sadhna begins. “She could not learn. She cannot keep a household like a real Indian woman. So we now must bury her, along with the deception I see so well.”
“No you don’t.” Sumit knows. “I am Master of Illusion. Say it Steven.”
“Can’t we both have our own priesthood or something?” Steven doesn’t want to tap out. “Or like, different teams, same sport? Hare Krishna?”
Jenny says that maybe she’ll feel better when she’s in the bathroom, where they’re not.
“I was so mad,” Jenny jennies, which you could totally tell by the nothing.
Sumit’s mom says she taught Keanu Reeves the yoga required to move around bullets for The Matrix, so she might as well teach Jenny between reminders that she’s old.
“I don’t know anything about yoga,” Jenny admits. “And I haven’t done the splits since I slid on the ice and got stuck that way.”
The parents try to coach Jenny through it, straightening and extending various limbs. Jenny looks up to see if they’re done with each pose or if she has to keep not-focusing, which means she’s ready for any and every American yoga class.
“Do not give up, Jenny!” Papa Sumit coaches.
“I’m not giving up unless Sumit and I give up together!” Jenny wants to remind everyone that there’s a unit happening here.
“There is nothing fine about Jenny’s aging wine.” Sadhna sticks her head out the burn unit to give you a status update on her victim.“Let us say I am like a ten, and Jenny is 55%.”
“I think I’ll go to bed tonight clutching a bag of bagels,” Jenny jennies. “Bread is always there for me when Sumit isn’t.”
As a chaser, 90DF asked the parents to produce a disgusting food for everyone at home to cringe over, but they have already given us diarrhea, and mom and dad are thinking a netti pot with a side of nostril flossing is the way to best goat sacrifice and penis soup.
“We too have tried a netti pot,” says everyone working in the tech industry in the early 00s. “It shares a shelf with an accordion and an Instapot. Sometimes I use it for gravy.”
This scene breached my disgusting threshold, so I have no idea what happened, but I feel confident reporting it as gross. Jenny’s reluctance to do this shit has earned a second rebuke from the would-be MIL, but an endorsement from everyone at home waiting for this sensory assault to end.
The next day the family astrologer is slated to arrive and tell the family what to do without so much as consulting a star chart. Sumit interrupts Jenny getting ready to let her know that she should make snacks for the astrologer, while he and his mom go to Sears portrait studio to take photos in front of an autumn scene in their matching outfits. Sumit has high hopes that this astrologer will do him a solid and further delay the marriage he doesn’t want, just as he has before.
Instead, the astrologer emphatically disagrees with the route Sadhna has taken. He insists she stop interfering in another person’s house.
“Yes, I am on the astrology train now,” Jenny is all aboard. “Toot toot!”
The astrologer says that Sadhna has pre-lived a life for him, and is now mad that he’s failing to meet her directive and follow the script.
“What kind of mother are you? Are you a selfish mother?” This astrologer reads like a savage. “That’s what it looks like to me.” Sadhna is reduced to tears, and this is some aggressive astrology.
The parents listen and finally agree this is out of their control, and Sumit stares into the abyss, because he was really counting on his mom laying on the railroad tracks, so that Jenny wouldn’t notice she’s on the train alone.
Later on Sadhna wants to talk with just Jenny, and Sumit is worried his parents are going to bless their marriage and then he’s going to have to call Steven.
“It’s been nice having you,” Jenny says, proving that Sumit isn’t the only party with a dishonesty habit.
“Jenny, we will love you. In the future. I can change for my son,” Sadhna says, which makes Jenny cry, because it’s been a lot.
However, this is a sorta, but not really, endorsement, similar to the one Armando’s father offered. Jenny never thought she would hear such things, and can’t resist pushing for their marriage blessing. Sadhna looks like she’s in Jenny’s kitchen again, and the best she can offer is a wait-and-see approach, with the understanding that she’ll let Sumit lie in the bed he’s made. Dad says that even his ancestors have come back from the dead to express their disbelief in this union, but they’re going to shut up.
“If we stop hovering, maybe Sumit will have to take some responsibility,” Dad can’t wait to have a life again.
“Fucking astrologer,” Sumit is not paying this fucking guy. “I am so happy. Everyone has forgotten my mother is my favorite obstacle.”
The next day is Holi, a traditional festival celebrating spring where folks throw colored dye made out of flowers at each other. They color war in a small party of two, which only underscores how isolated they are, and before everything is over Jenny wants to know if they can get married tomorrow or what.
Sumit wants their wedding date to be decided by the family astrologer, because that’s in the future, and he’s already forgotten that guy’s name and deleted his number, and his parents don’t want to interfere so it’s not like he can ask. This might take longer than a Mormon baptism.
“Next episode I will say ‘I haven’t been honest with Jenny,’ because that’s kind of my thing.” Sumit is ready. “I’m not sure what I’ll say next. I don’t like to limit myself.”
NEXT TIME: Sumit tells Jenny marriage has all the appeal of a root canal, Victor takes Ellie to the origin point of his PTSD to coax out some empathy, Kenny tells his children they’re thinking of adopting, and his daughters freak out and think he’s crafting another family from scratch to start over elsewhere, and Janice puts Biniyam under the hot lights to demand answers about his behavior, and Biniyam thinks they should just call his ex.
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Mom always loved Jesus more than she loved me. She told me so herself, over and over again, when I was growing up. Every morning she would say to me, “Jimmy, you’re my only child, and I love you more than I love myself. But I love Jesus even more.”
Then she would read the 22nd chapter of Genesis to me out loud. That’s the part where God tests Abraham, the great patriarch of the Faith, by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering to the Lord. Isaac was bound to the alter, the wood for the fire was piled up beneath him, and Abraham’s shaking hand was bringing the killing-knife down when, finally, the Lord spoke from the heavens and ordered Abraham to stay his hand. Having passed the test by being willing to kill his own son for God, Abraham was given a ram to sacrifice instead. Then God promised him future glory as a reward for his Faith.
After that cheery Bible story was done, Mom would pour me a glass of grape juice, warn me to be careful and not spill it, and then read more from the Bible while we ate breakfast. After breakfast, she would pray with me while we waited for the school bus. She always prayed that I would love Jesus like she did, so that I could grow up to be a mighty man for the Lord.
# # #
“Do you love Jesus?” Mom woke me up with this question on my eighth birthday.
“Yes, Mommy.” I answered through my fog of sleep.
“Do you REALLY love Jesus?” she persisted. “Do you love Him more than me? Do you accept Him as your personal Lord and Savior?”
By that point I was awake enough to open my eyes. Mom had the disheveled look she got after staying up all night praying and reading scripture. She was silhouetted in the darkness of our living room over the couch I slept on, her hair frayed out around her head like a flaming halo.
“Yes, Mommy,” I told her.
Mom looked at me hard in the dim light. Then she shook her head.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re old enough now to be accountable to the Lord God. You WILL be punished in eternity for your sins if you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, but you’ve got to TRULY accept him.”
Tears were streaming down her face in hot, glistening streaks as she continued.
“You can’t just tell me that you love Jesus to make me happy, you have to REALLY love Jesus, love Him like I do, so that you can be baptized and saved from the eternal fires of Hell. Do you understand me, Jimmy?”
I nodded my head.
“Good,” she said as she wiped her eyes with the ratty t-shirt she wore to bed. “I’ll ask you again tomorrow, I’ll ask you again every day until you are ready to love Jesus. Now, go get ready for our Bible Time.”
“Yes, Mommy,” I answered. Then I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth real slow. I always took as long as I could with dental hygiene, just to put off having to listen to the story of Isaac being bound-up and offered on an alter to my mother’s Lord.
# # #
I’ve never known who my father was. I never asked Mom about him. The closest I ever came to bringing him up happened when I was in the third grade. All the other kids’ fathers were invited to come in to talk about their jobs, but I didn’t have a father to come in. Or an uncle. Or a grandfather. Or anyone other than Mom.
I didn’t ask Mom about my father or her parents. I just told her what was happening at school. I probably hoped that she would tell me something about my family beyond her, but instead she just told me not to let any of those men lead me away from Jesus. Then she added a lot of stories about harlots and whores to our morning Bible Time.
# # #
I guess religion’s done a lot of good for a lot of people. At least that’s what I hear tell. I’m sure that those missionaries thought that baptizing an unwed, disowned mother and giving her a Bible would help both the mother and the child. I’m sure those missionaries believed their Good Works would bear Good Fruit, but, as Mom pointed out to me over and over again, the Good Works of religion will never get us into heaven. Us sinners are justified by Faith alone.
Without Faith in Jesus we all face eternal fire and torment. The Bible teaches us that Faith has healed the sick, raised the dead, and saved the sinners. Mom knew that religion couldn’t do anything without Faith, so we never went to church. Mom wasn’t concerned with mere religion; she only cared about Faith.
We moved around town a lot when I was a kid. Just in my third grade year, we went from a ramshackle house to a roach-infested duplex to an apartment over a mechanic’s garage. Everywhere we lived, Mom would use a magic marker to write “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” all over the walls. I asked Mom why she did that, and she told me that we are commanded to inscribe the words of God on our doorposts and our gates, but that since we didn’t have either doorposts or gates the walls would have to do.
# # #
Mom had Faith in her Bible, she really did, but by the time I was in junior high she stopped trusting her own ability to read it and understand what her God wanted of her. It started when she was studying the Epistles, trying to really understand what they meant for her. As a person of Faith, she read the words and truly believed them. She believed them even though they told her that, as a woman, she was a “weaker vessel.” I found her crying over the passages in First Corinthians, where the Apostle Paul told the believers in Corinth that a woman with questions about the Faith had to ask her husband to explain it to her.
Mom was working part-time as a checkout girl at the grocery store during those years, and money was so tight that the only way we had enough food to eat was because her manager let her take home expired baked goods, dented cans, and old eggs. A typical dinner for us back then was dry toast, a can of beans, and hard boiled eggs. Yet, somehow Mom found the money to get her first smartphone. We could barely make rent on our dilapidated duplex three blocks from the grocery store, but she needed a phone to plunge into the world of online dating. She signed up for some Christian dating service she’d heard advertised on her favorite radio station, the one with the preachers going on all the time about the Power of Faith.
I didn’t know much about online dating back then, but now I know that most people with an online dating account are looking for love, or at least affection and fun. Not Mom. She was looking for a male Head to answer her questions about God and the Bible. I snuck her new phone out of her purse when she was in the shower one night, praying loudly that the water would be her new baptism. I opened her phone and read the dating profile she’d written:

I am a Christian Woman who Tries to Serve the Lord Jesus. His Word has Convicted me that I need a Man for Headship over me and my son. He was conceived in Sin, but I have Repented Very Much. I have Tried to Bring the Boy to Jesus, but he needs a Christian Man to Lead him. I Hope that my Shame don’t scare you off. 1 Corinthians 14:35

Her profile picture was a blurry photo of the cover of her Bible.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Mom didn’t get any gentleman callers from her dating app. I guess even Uber-Christian men who take dating advice from radio-evangelists aren’t that desperate.
# # #
When I started high school, Mom was still waking me up every morning by asking me if I loved Jesus. I always answered yes, and she always refused to believe me. She would cry for my damned soul, and then she would read to me from the Bible as I tried to choke down the grape juice she was still certain I loved.
Mom’s readings began to skip around the Bible a lot, with passages plucked from context and read to me in a staccato rhythm over breakfast. Mom was a real fan of the Book of Proverbs in those years. Her favorites were “wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words” and “the mouth of an adulterous woman is a deep pit; a man who is under the Lord’s wrath falls into it.” She always admonished me with another Proverb as I was leaving for school: “Don’t lust for her beauty. Don’t let her coy glances seduce you.”
I was the only kid in my grade that wasn’t allowed to take sex ed classes. I guess Mom figured that Proverbs had given me everything I needed to know.
# # #
By the time I graduated from high school, Mom had given up on finding a man to be her “Head.” Since she knew that a “mere woman” like her could never fully understand God’s Word, she started using her old smartphone to take online Bible classes (taught by male preachers, naturally). She never stuck with one for long, though, and hopped from one “virtual ministry” to another.
After graduation I worked as close to full-time as I could at the convenience store. It took several months, but I was able to save up enough to move out of the tiny duplex Mom had been able to keep since I was in junior high. It was the closest thing to a home that I’d ever had, but it was a relief to get a couple of blocks away from Mom and have a small space of my own in the decrepit apartment building.
Mom still called and texted me at weird hours asking if I loved Jesus, and I would say yes, and then she would tell me that I had to MEAN it to be saved. She started taking walks that just so happened to bring her by my new place. She wouldn’t knock on my door or anything, she would just walk around the small apartment building a few times and then head back toward her place.
Even with the constant calls and texts and the frequent surveillance, it was the most freedom I’d ever known. I wasn’t waking up to a disheveled woman with fly-away hair asking me if I loved Jesus and then refusing to take my yes for an answer. I didn’t have to listen to macabre Bible stories while drinking disgusting dark purple juice every morning. I was paying for my own place and had my own phone, and that phone was eye-opening in ways that Mom wouldn’t have approved of had she known about the app I was swiping on.
# # #
After a year of living alone, Mom started to get desperate in her search for spiritual guidance. I know it’s probably hard for you to believe, but I still visited her two or three times a week. She was the only family I had, and I couldn’t just leave her all alone. On one visit she told me that she HAD to find a teacher she could trust. She needed a Wise Man to lead her because the Bible warns not to “lean on your own wisdom.” I told her that I hoped she found what she was looking for soon.
After praying and fasting for a week seeking a man “anointed by God” to teach her, Mom visited me at work to share the news that her fast was over because the Lord had revealed the Teacher she was supposed to follow. I couldn’t talk to her much because of the long line of customers buying smokes and booze, but I was glad that she was going to start eating again.
I wanted to treat her, so after I clocked out that night I got us a pizza from the convenience store and took it over to her. We were eating pizza as Mom explained that the Lord had revealed to her that she should study under Pastor Aiden Foley. I was shoving pizza into my mouth like a hungry 20 year-old guy, even though I’d been eating pretty regular since I’d moved out and away from Mom’s spontaneous fasting. Despite having not eaten for seven days, Mom was eating dainty and slow.
“Who’s Aiden Foley?” I asked through my full mouth.
Mom swallowed her own small bite before answering.
“Pastor Foley,” she said, “founded Light-Bringer Ministries. His teachings focus on the Redemption of Sinners and bringing us to Salvation.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Even with all the years of Mom reading her Bible at me, I’d never figured out how to respond to her projection of cosmic dread in my direction. All I could think to say to her was, “If it makes you happy, I’m glad for you, Mom.”
“My happiness doesn’t matter,” she answered. “What matters is pleasing the Lord.”
I shrugged.
“If you think following this Paster Aiden Foley will make God happy with you, and if making God happy will make you happy, then I guess I want you to do what this man says.”
Mom smiled at me then. It was the first true smile I can remember her ever giving me in all my years on Earth with her. She handed me a tract with a drawing of a blazing star encompassing a cross on the front. On the back of the tract an intense man stared out from a black and white photo.
“Jimmy,” she said to me, “I really want you to read this. It will change your life.”
“Okay, Mom,” I answered.
I skimmed the tract as I walked home. The front was dominated by a blazing star printed in garish yellow ink. The star almost subsumed the small cross silhouetted before its brilliant light. Around the logo were the words, “Jesus sacrificed for you. What will you sacrifice to him?” Inside, the text made it clear that Pastor Aiden Foley was big into sacrificing what you valued most to the Lord, only naturally those sacrifices needed to be routed through Light-Bringer Ministries to be effective. I couldn’t see what my mom found appealing about the man, but since she had nothing to sacrifice it didn’t seem like she was at much risk from him. I tossed the tract into the recycling when I got home.
# # #
Mom started cooking for me again, and not just the canned goods and past-date eggs we used to live on. By then she was Head Checker at the grocery store, so while she wasn’t making good money she didn’t have to rely on charity anymore, either. Between having improved pay and still getting a store discount, Mom took to making dinners that were fancy, at least by our prior standards. I would come by, she would ask me if I loved Jesus and pray for me, and then we would eat together.
I was still only coming by two or three nights a week, which made Mom sad because she wanted to see more of me. Of course, those two or three nights a week were plenty to annoy my girlfriend, the first and only woman I’ve ever “known” in a Biblical way.
I met Elaine on a dating app Mom wouldn’t have approved of. She lived a couple of towns over, in the county seat where the courthouse and hospital are. She’s older than me by a couple of years. She’s been to college. She has an office job, and she even has a car.
Maybe it’s weird for the girl to drive on a date, but I didn’t mind. She would drive to town to pick me up, and then we’d go to movies and bars and restaurants and other places Mom would never allow and couldn’t afford. There wasn’t any way to avoid Mom’s duplex leaving my apartment, so I would scrunch down in the seat as we drove by to keep her from seeing me riding around with a woman I knew Mom would assume to be a harlot of Biblical proportions.
Our first date had been the night before Mom got convicted to follow Pastor Aiden Foley and his Light-Bringer Ministries. It was immediately clear that things were serious between Elaine and I. Since my work schedule was so unpredictable, she wound up spending a lot of time at my apartment right away.
But as much as she loved me, Elaine was more than a little angry over being my dirty little secret.
“There’s no reason for us to be in the closet,” she said to me one Friday night at my place. “It’s bad enough to shove gay people into the closet, but I at least understand how fucked up shit like that happens. We’re a super boring straight couple. We’re both adults. This sneaking around so that you mom doesn’t notice me has got to end.”
I promised her that I would find a way to tell my mom about her by our first anniversary. I swore that if I couldn’t find a way for Mom to accept Elaine, then I would cut Mom out of my life and focus on the woman I loved. I wasn’t sure how I was going to come clean to Mom, much less convince her to accept Elaine into my life. I didn’t doubt that Pastor Aiden Foley and Light-Bringer Ministries had more than confirmed Mom’s longstanding conviction that a woman who regularly spent the night at her boyfriend’s apartment was exactly the kind of dangerous harlot Mom needed Jesus to deliver me from. I hated hurting Elaine, but Mom was the only family I had, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, either.
I didn’t believe in Mom’s God, anymore, and I don’t think that I ever really did, but I still I felt guilty for wishing that Mom would just die before the year was up. That would spare me the pain and anguish of telling her that I had a girlfriend.
# # #
When Mom invited me over for what her text called a “Special Dinner to Celebrate A Year of Serving the Lord God and Pastor Aiden Foley,” Elaine was looking over my shoulder as I read the message.
“It’s almost been a year, babe,” she said to me.
“I know, sweetie. I will tell her. Just as soon as I figure out how.”
Elaine looked at me with her piercing blue eyes.
“You’re going to figure out how, and you’re going to tell her,” she said. “Or you’re going to tell her to fuck off for good. You promised it would just be a year. If you don’t come clean to your Mom by the end of her special dinner for the Sky-Man she loves so much more than you, you and I are through.”
She was sobbing as he said it, though, and I started to bawl too. I hugged Elaine and held her close. I hoped rather than prayed that somehow this would work out and that I would be able to have both my mother and my girlfriend in my life. In that moment I wished that I had the Faith of my mom, Faith that everything would work out according to some divine plan.
# # #
“Do you love Jesus, Jimmy?”
Mom greeted me at the door with her usual question. I was fidgety. My palms were sweating, and my mind was on Elaine. I’d left her pacing in my apartment waiting for me to get home from Mom’s. She could have stayed at her own place, but she told me that she wanted to be there for me in the aftermath of whatever happened with Mom. I hoped there wouldn’t be an aftermath, but knowing Mom I figured there would be.
I looked at Mom standing there inside of her front door. She looked even frailer than usual, and I suspected that she’d been fasting again. Her hair was gray now, but still long and unrestrained. She was wearing a simple white linen dress I’d never seen before.
“Yes, Mom,” I answered her. “I love Jesus.”
She continued our ritual.
“Then do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God? Do you accept him as your personal Savior?”
“Yes, Mom, I do.”
There was a tear in her eye when she looked up at me and said, “Then you should be baptized for the remission of Sin.”
That wasn’t what I expected her to say, and I think the surprise showed on my face. Mom ignored my bewilderment.
“Come inside, Jimmy. I'll draw the bathtub full, and we’ll use it to baptize you before dinner.”
“Umm, okay,” I answered. I didn’t really want or need to be baptized, but I figured that it would make Mom happy. Once I was saved in her her eyes, maybe she would take my news a little bit better.
She led me down the hallway, past the single bathroom and into what used to be my bedroom. My old single bed was still shoved up against the wall shared with the vacant unit next door, but everything else about the room had changed.
To begin with, the closet had doors. They were just cheap folding doors made out of fake wood, but they were doors just the same. Over the years our landlord had always refused to put doors on our bedroom closets, saying that we would just break them anyway. Mom must have put those doors up herself, but I didn’t know how or why.
Mom had also painted the faux-wood paneling on the walls with dingy white paint, then she’d scrawled more Bible verses all over the cleanish slate. There was Mom’s old favorite verse, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” but there were others, too.
She opened the new folding doors on the closet just enough to slide her hand inside. She pulled out a linen garment like the dress she was wearing, but longer. She handed it to me.
“Put this robe on for the baptizing while I go draw the bath,” she told me.
I nodded. The wall behind her shouted, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Mom left and closed the bedroom door behind her. I stripped and donned the white linen. It was scratchy and new on my skin. I folded my clothes and put them on the bare mattress of my former bed.
“You shall not commit adultery.”
I heard the water running in the bathroom next door as Mom filled the tub.
“Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your mind.”
I wondered what Mom was hiding in the closet.
“Be not deceived: neither fornicators, not idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”
I opened the folding doors and peaked inside.
“The fire will test the quality of each person’s work.”
There where I used to pile my clothes and toss my shoes was an altar made from a secondhand sofa table. The table bore a small cross and a large framed picture.
“A promiscuous woman is as dangerous as falling into a narrow well. She hides and waits like a robber, eager to make more men unfaithful.”
The picture was a black and white photo of Paster Aiden Foley staring out with a fiery passion. Large font printed over the picture read, “Do you love Jesus enough to give Him your all?” I shook my head and stepped away from from my former closet.
“I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire.”
On the closet wall behind the makeshift altar was an enormous poster of the Light-Bringer Ministries logo. When the logo was blown up to that size, it was as if the blazing star was swallowing the tiny cross.
“This is the way of an adulterous woman: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, I’ve done nothing wrong”
I heard the water in the bathroom turn off.
“Bad company ruins good morals.”
I slammed the closet doors closed with a gasp and tried to compose myself before Mom opened the door to the bedroom.
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
The door opened.
Mom stood just beyond the threshold. For some reason her dress was already soaked from filling the tub.
“It is time, Jimmy,” she said.
I walked into the bathroom.
# # #
The baptizing wasn’t easy, because I’m a good foot taller than the tub was long. Mom wound up holding my head under water while my feet stuck up on either side of the faucet. She used a plastic cup to pour water over my exposed legs while the rest of me was submerged. She was meticulous in her work, deluging my toes, my ankles, my shins, all while her other hand on my brow held my face beneath the surface.
I started to squirm, not wanting to disappoint my mother but desperate for air. Finally, she grasped the hair of my head and drug me gasping up into the air.
# # #
Mom insisted that we eat right after the baptizing, even though we were still dripping in our raiments. Dinner was simple, just fish and dinner rolls. She’d bought them both frozen, and they’d apparently been baking while I was getting baptized. After I sat down at the kitchen table, Mom opened her refrigerator and poured me a tall glass of grape juice.
“I always think of you when I see this in the store,” she told me. “You used to really love grape juice when you were a little boy.”
I took a sip of the deep purple juice and gagged a little on its cloying sweetness.
“You were so pure and innocent then,” she continued as she sat down across from me began to eat the fish and the bread. “I’ve been praying for you to accept Jesus ever since then. You know that, don’t you, Jimmy?” She looked like she was about to cry.
“I know that you’ve prayed for me, Mom. I know that you wanted me to be baptized more than you wanted anything else in this world.” I took a bite of the fish and was surprised by its saltiness.
“It’s not just that I wanted you to be baptized, Jimmy!” Her eyes were glistening with tears and glowing with zeal. “I wanted you to be SAVED! I want your sins to be forgiven! It’s because I LOVE you, Jimmy!”
I took another drink of the juice to wash down the salty fish.
“Thanks, Mom, I know you love me.” Then, before she could say anything back to me I added, “but not as much as you love Jesus. And not as much as I love Jesus, either.”
Mom smiled at me, almost like she was trying to convince herself to be happy. She topped off my glass of grape juice.
My mind was getting fuzzy, somehow, but I remembered that there was something I needed to do, something I needed to say.
“Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.”
She shushed me like I was a baby.
“Not now, Jimmy. Wait until after dinner. Right now you’re pure and clean from your baptism.”
Then my chin drooped to my chest and it took an act of will to snap my head back up.
“Mom, I—“
Then my forehead hit the juice glass, shattering it into a thousand shards. The pain woke me for a second, and I remember the blood from my forehead mingling with the dark purple juice. The mixture ran across the table and coated my face. It dripped down onto the tattered vinyl floor of the kitchen. It stained the clean, wet linen I wore. Then my eyes closed, and the world went dark.
# # #
Mommy, if Jesus loves us, why would he burn us for being naughty?
Mommy, Mommy, please, it’s too tight, it hurts, it hurts!
Please, Mommy, please . . .
# # #
I heard the splash of liquid being poured out around me, or perhaps it was the righteous vengeance of an angry God. There was the taste of blood and grapes on my tongue. I smelled gasoline on still air.
Eyes. I had eyes. “He who has eyes, let him see,” I told myself. Then I raised my heavy lids.
I was in the closet atop the alter. Around me were rags of Mom’s old clothing, all stinking of gasoline. Above me I saw the blazing star of Light-Bringer Ministries. Beside my head, the grim photo of Pastor Aiden Foley asked if I loved Jesus enough to give my all.
Even though my head throbbed and blood still dribbled from my forehead, I knew that I shouldn’t remain on my mother’s altar. I began to swing my feet down, but there were ropes around me, binding me in place. I managed to turn my head away from the wall and the picture of Pastor Aiden Foley, and when I did I saw Mom sitting on the bare bed I used to sleep in. She was stroking a pack of matches like she used to stroke my hair when she read me bedtime stories from the Old Testament.
She smiled at me when my head turned.
“Welcome to Salvation, Jimmy. We’ll be with Jesus soon.”
Then she struck a match.
# # #
I don’t remember if I screamed, but I do remember Mom smiling as the flames shot up the walls and licked at me upon the altar. I remember her praying for deliverance from our sins as her gown caught fire and raged around her. I remember the smell of my own hair burning and the pain of my sizzling flesh, but I don’t remember if I screamed.
# # #
Elaine found the inferno.
When I’d been gone too long for her comfort, she’d texted me. When I didn’t respond to her text, she turned her pacing in my apartment into a nervous walk toward my mom’s duplex. When she saw the flames and smelled the smoke, she called 911 before she crashed through the door.
It would be poetic to tell you that my brave Elaine saved me from my mother’s burning altar, but that would be a lie. The walls of flame were too much for her to penetrate, and the smoke turned the tiny duplex into a confusing maze. Elaine gave herself first degree burns trying to save me, but the firefighters are the ones who drug me out. They came in a torrent of water and sparks and black smoke that I still taste and smell, even here in the ICU.
I don’t know how much of me remains beneath these bandages. Elaine sits with me for as many hours as the hospital will let her. I think that she was here even through the two weeks I was drugged into a stupor to keep me from feeling the worst of the pain. All I remember from those days of haze is the anguish of a blue-eyed angel. Elaine tells me it was probably just the drugs.
Now there are stretches of time when I’m conscious enough to slur short conversations with Elaine and answer the doctors’ questions. The price of my wakefulness is that I feel the fire take my flesh again, until finally my next dose of pain killers returns me to a cloudy state that exists beyond pain but still far from salvation.
They’ve wrapped me in a shroud, from head to toe, as if for burial. The doctors tell me that I will be in these bandages for many more weeks. Perhaps I will yet be able to cast them off and be raised, but I just don’t know if I have that kind of Faith.

Mom always loved Jesus more than she loved me. She told me so herself, over and over again, when I was growing up. Every morning she would say to me, “Jimmy, you’re my only child, and I love you more than I love myself. But I love Jesus even more.”
​
Then she would read the 22nd chapter of Genesis to me out loud. That’s the part where God tests Abraham, the great patriarch of the Faith, by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering to the Lord. Isaac was bound to the alter, the wood for the fire was piled up beneath him, and Abraham’s shaking hand was bringing the killing-knife down when, finally, the Lord spoke from the heavens and ordered Abraham to stay his hand. Having passed the test by being willing to kill his own son for God, Abraham was given a ram to sacrifice instead. Then God promised him future glory as a reward for his Faith.
​
After that cheery Bible story was done, Mom would pour me a glass of grape juice, warn me to be careful and not spill it, and then read more from the Bible while we ate breakfast. After breakfast, she would pray with me while we waited for the school bus. She always prayed that I would love Jesus like she did, so that I could grow up to be a mighty man for the Lord.
​
# # #
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“Do you love Jesus?” Mom woke me up with this question on my eighth birthday.
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“Yes, Mommy.” I answered through my fog of sleep.
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“Do you REALLY love Jesus?” she persisted. “Do you love Him more than me? Do you accept Him as your personal Lord and Savior?”
​
By that point I was awake enough to open my eyes. Mom had the disheveled look she got after staying up all night praying and reading scripture. She was silhouetted in the darkness of our living room over the couch I slept on, her hair frayed out around her head like a flaming halo.
​
“Yes, Mommy,” I told her.
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Mom looked at me hard in the dim light. Then she shook her head.
​
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re old enough now to be accountable to the Lord God. You WILL be punished in eternity for your sins if you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, but you’ve got to TRULY accept him.”
​
Tears were streaming down her face in hot, glistening streaks as she continued.
​
“You can’t just tell me that you love Jesus to make me happy, you have to REALLY love Jesus, love Him like I do, so that you can be baptized and saved from the eternal fires of Hell. Do you understand me, Jimmy?”
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I nodded my head.
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“Good,” she said as she wiped her eyes with the ratty t-shirt she wore to bed. “I’ll ask you again tomorrow, I’ll ask you again every day until you are ready to love Jesus. Now, go get ready for our Bible Time.”
​
“Yes, Mommy,” I answered. Then I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth real slow. I always took as long as I could with dental hygiene, just to put off having to listen to the story of Isaac being bound-up and offered on an alter to my mother’s Lord.
​
# # #
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I’ve never known who my father was. I never asked Mom about him. The closest I ever came to bringing him up happened when I was in the third grade. All the other kids’ fathers were invited to come in to talk about their jobs, but I didn’t have a father to come in. Or an uncle. Or a grandfather. Or anyone other than Mom.
​
I didn’t ask Mom about my father or her parents. I just told her what was happening at school. I probably hoped that she would tell me something about my family beyond her, but instead she just told me not to let any of those men lead me away from Jesus. Then she added a lot of stories about harlots and whores to our morning Bible Time.
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# # #
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I guess religion’s done a lot of good for a lot of people. At least that’s what I hear tell. I’m sure that those missionaries thought that baptizing an unwed, disowned mother and giving her a Bible would help both the mother and the child. I’m sure those missionaries believed their Good Works would bear Good Fruit, but, as Mom pointed out to me over and over again, the Good Works of religion will never get us into heaven. Us sinners are justified by Faith alone.
​
Without Faith in Jesus we all face eternal fire and torment. The Bible teaches us that Faith has healed the sick, raised the dead, and saved the sinners. Mom knew that religion couldn’t do anything without Faith, so we never went to church. Mom wasn’t concerned with mere religion; she only cared about Faith.
​
We moved around town a lot when I was a kid. Just in my third grade year, we went from a ramshackle house to a roach-infested duplex to an apartment over a mechanic’s garage. Everywhere we lived, Mom would use a magic marker to write “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” all over the walls. I asked Mom why she did that, and she told me that we are commanded to inscribe the words of God on our doorposts and our gates, but that since we didn’t have either doorposts or gates the walls would have to do.
​
# # #
​
Mom had Faith in her Bible, she really did, but by the time I was in junior high she stopped trusting her own ability to read it and understand what her God wanted of her. It started when she was studying the Epistles, trying to really understand what they meant for her. As a person of Faith, she read the words and truly believed them. She believed them even though they told her that, as a woman, she was a “weaker vessel.” I found her crying over the passages in First Corinthians, where the Apostle Paul told the believers in Corinth that a woman with questions about the Faith had to ask her husband to explain it to her.
​
Mom was working part-time as a checkout girl at the grocery store during those years, and money was so tight that the only way we had enough food to eat was because her manager let her take home expired baked goods, dented cans, and old eggs. A typical dinner for us back then was dry toast, a can of beans, and hard boiled eggs. Yet, somehow Mom found the money to get her first smartphone. We could barely make rent on our dilapidated duplex three blocks from the grocery store, but she needed a phone to plunge into the world of online dating. She signed up for some Christian dating service she’d heard advertised on her favorite radio station, the one with the preachers going on all the time about the Power of Faith.
​
I didn’t know much about online dating back then, but now I know that most people with an online dating account are looking for love, or at least affection and fun. Not Mom. She was looking for a male Head to answer her questions about God and the Bible. I snuck her new phone out of her purse when she was in the shower one night, praying loudly that the water would be her new baptism. I opened her phone and read the dating profile she’d written:
​

I am a Christian Woman who Tries to Serve the Lord Jesus. His Word has Convicted me that I need a Man for Headship over me and my son. He was conceived in Sin, but I have Repented Very Much. I have Tried to Bring the Boy to Jesus, but he needs a Christian Man to Lead him. I Hope that my Shame don’t scare you off. 1 Corinthians 14:35

​
Her profile picture was a blurry photo of the cover of her Bible.
​
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Mom didn’t get any gentleman callers from her dating app. I guess even Uber-Christian men who take dating advice from radio-evangelists aren’t that desperate.
​
# # #
​
When I started high school, Mom was still waking me up every morning by asking me if I loved Jesus. I always answered yes, and she always refused to believe me. She would cry for my damned soul, and then she would read to me from the Bible as I tried to choke down the grape juice she was still certain I loved.
​
Mom’s readings began to skip around the Bible a lot, with passages plucked from context and read to me in a staccato rhythm over breakfast. Mom was a real fan of the Book of Proverbs in those years. Her favorites were “wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words” and “the mouth of an adulterous woman is a deep pit; a man who is under the Lord’s wrath falls into it.” She always admonished me with another Proverb as I was leaving for school: “Don’t lust for her beauty. Don’t let her coy glances seduce you.”
​
I was the only kid in my grade that wasn’t allowed to take sex ed classes. I guess Mom figured that Proverbs had given me everything I needed to know.
​
# # #
​
By the time I graduated from high school, Mom had given up on finding a man to be her “Head.” Since she knew that a “mere woman” like her could never fully understand God’s Word, she started using her old smartphone to take online Bible classes (taught by male preachers, naturally). She never stuck with one for long, though, and hopped from one “virtual ministry” to another.
​
After graduation I worked as close to full-time as I could at the convenience store. It took several months, but I was able to save up enough to move out of the tiny duplex Mom had been able to keep since I was in junior high. It was the closest thing to a home that I’d ever had, but it was a relief to get a couple of blocks away from Mom and have a small space of my own in the decrepit apartment building.
​
Mom still called and texted me at weird hours asking if I loved Jesus, and I would say yes, and then she would tell me that I had to MEAN it to be saved. She started taking walks that just so happened to bring her by my new place. She wouldn’t knock on my door or anything, she would just walk around the small apartment building a few times and then head back toward her place.
​
Even with the constant calls and texts and the frequent surveillance, it was the most freedom I’d ever known. I wasn’t waking up to a disheveled woman with fly-away hair asking me if I loved Jesus and then refusing to take my yes for an answer. I didn’t have to listen to macabre Bible stories while drinking disgusting dark purple juice every morning. I was paying for my own place and had my own phone, and that phone was eye-opening in ways that Mom wouldn’t have approved of had she known about the app I was swiping on.
​
# # #
​
After a year of living alone, Mom started to get desperate in her search for spiritual guidance. I know it’s probably hard for you to believe, but I still visited her two or three times a week. She was the only family I had, and I couldn’t just leave her all alone. On one visit she told me that she HAD to find a teacher she could trust. She needed a Wise Man to lead her because the Bible warns not to “lean on your own wisdom.” I told her that I hoped she found what she was looking for soon.
​
After praying and fasting for a week seeking a man “anointed by God” to teach her, Mom visited me at work to share the news that her fast was over because the Lord had revealed the Teacher she was supposed to follow. I couldn’t talk to her much because of the long line of customers buying smokes and booze, but I was glad that she was going to start eating again.
​
I wanted to treat her, so after I clocked out that night I got us a pizza from the convenience store and took it over to her. We were eating pizza as Mom explained that the Lord had revealed to her that she should study under Pastor Aiden Foley. I was shoving pizza into my mouth like a hungry 20 year-old guy, even though I’d been eating pretty regular since I’d moved out and away from Mom’s spontaneous fasting. Despite having not eaten for seven days, Mom was eating dainty and slow.
​
“Who’s Aiden Foley?” I asked through my full mouth.
​
Mom swallowed her own small bite before answering.
​
“Pastor Foley,” she said, “founded Light-Bringer Ministries. His teachings focus on the Redemption of Sinners and bringing us to Salvation.”
​
I didn’t know what to say to that. Even with all the years of Mom reading her Bible at me, I’d never figured out how to respond to her projection of cosmic dread in my direction. All I could think to say to her was, “If it makes you happy, I’m glad for you, Mom.”
​
“My happiness doesn’t matter,” she answered. “What matters is pleasing the Lord.”
​
I shrugged.
​
“If you think following this Paster Aiden Foley will make God happy with you, and if making God happy will make you happy, then I guess I want you to do what this man says.”
​
Mom smiled at me then. It was the first true smile I can remember her ever giving me in all my years on Earth with her. She handed me a tract with a drawing of a blazing star encompassing a cross on the front. On the back of the tract an intense man stared out from a black and white photo.
​
“Jimmy,” she said to me, “I really want you to read this. It will change your life.”
​
“Okay, Mom,” I answered.
​
I skimmed the tract as I walked home. The front was dominated by a blazing star printed in garish yellow ink. The star almost subsumed the small cross silhouetted before its brilliant light. Around the logo were the words, “Jesus sacrificed for you. What will you sacrifice to him?” Inside, the text made it clear that Pastor Aiden Foley was big into sacrificing what you valued most to the Lord, only naturally those sacrifices needed to be routed through Light-Bringer Ministries to be effective. I couldn’t see what my mom found appealing about the man, but since she had nothing to sacrifice it didn’t seem like she was at much risk from him. I tossed the tract into the recycling when I got home.
​
# # #
​
Mom started cooking for me again, and not just the canned goods and past-date eggs we used to live on. By then she was Head Checker at the grocery store, so while she wasn’t making good money she didn’t have to rely on charity anymore, either. Between having improved pay and still getting a store discount, Mom took to making dinners that were fancy, at least by our prior standards. I would come by, she would ask me if I loved Jesus and pray for me, and then we would eat together.
​
I was still only coming by two or three nights a week, which made Mom sad because she wanted to see more of me. Of course, those two or three nights a week were plenty to annoy my girlfriend, the first and only woman I’ve ever “known” in a Biblical way.
​
I met Elaine on a dating app Mom wouldn’t have approved of. She lived a couple of towns over, in the county seat where the courthouse and hospital are. She’s older than me by a couple of years. She’s been to college. She has an office job, and she even has a car.
​
Maybe it’s weird for the girl to drive on a date, but I didn’t mind. She would drive to town to pick me up, and then we’d go to movies and bars and restaurants and other places Mom would never allow and couldn’t afford. There wasn’t any way to avoid Mom’s duplex leaving my apartment, so I would scrunch down in the seat as we drove by to keep her from seeing me riding around with a woman I knew Mom would assume to be a harlot of Biblical proportions.
​
Our first date had been the night before Mom got convicted to follow Pastor Aiden Foley and his Light-Bringer Ministries. It was immediately clear that things were serious between Elaine and I. Since my work schedule was so unpredictable, she wound up spending a lot of time at my apartment right away.
​
But as much as she loved me, Elaine was more than a little angry over being my dirty little secret.
​
“There’s no reason for us to be in the closet,” she said to me one Friday night at my place. “It’s bad enough to shove gay people into the closet, but I at least understand how fucked up shit like that happens. We’re a super boring straight couple. We’re both adults. This sneaking around so that you mom doesn’t notice me has got to end.”
​
I promised her that I would find a way to tell my mom about her by our first anniversary. I swore that if I couldn’t find a way for Mom to accept Elaine, then I would cut Mom out of my life and focus on the woman I loved. I wasn’t sure how I was going to come clean to Mom, much less convince her to accept Elaine into my life. I didn’t doubt that Pastor Aiden Foley and Light-Bringer Ministries had more than confirmed Mom’s longstanding conviction that a woman who regularly spent the night at her boyfriend’s apartment was exactly the kind of dangerous harlot Mom needed Jesus to deliver me from. I hated hurting Elaine, but Mom was the only family I had, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, either.
​
I didn’t believe in Mom’s God, anymore, and I don’t think that I ever really did, but I still I felt guilty for wishing that Mom would just die before the year was up. That would spare me the pain and anguish of telling her that I had a girlfriend.
​
# # #
​
When Mom invited me over for what her text called a “Special Dinner to Celebrate A Year of Serving the Lord God and Pastor Aiden Foley,” Elaine was looking over my shoulder as I read the message.
​
“It’s almost been a year, babe,” she said to me.
​
“I know, sweetie. I will tell her. Just as soon as I figure out how.”
​
Elaine looked at me with her piercing blue eyes.
​
“You’re going to figure out how, and you’re going to tell her,” she said. “Or you’re going to tell her to fuck off for good. You promised it would just be a year. If you don’t come clean to your Mom by the end of her special dinner for the Sky-Man she loves so much more than you, you and I are through.”
​
She was sobbing as he said it, though, and I started to bawl too. I hugged Elaine and held her close. I hoped rather than prayed that somehow this would work out and that I would be able to have both my mother and my girlfriend in my life. In that moment I wished that I had the Faith of my mom, Faith that everything would work out according to some divine plan.
​
# # #
​
“Do you love Jesus, Jimmy?”
​
Mom greeted me at the door with her usual question. I was fidgety. My palms were sweating, and my mind was on Elaine. I’d left her pacing in my apartment waiting for me to get home from Mom’s. She could have stayed at her own place, but she told me that she wanted to be there for me in the aftermath of whatever happened with Mom. I hoped there wouldn’t be an aftermath, but knowing Mom I figured there would be.
​
I looked at Mom standing there inside of her front door. She looked even frailer than usual, and I suspected that she’d been fasting again. Her hair was gray now, but still long and unrestrained. She was wearing a simple white linen dress I’d never seen before.
​
“Yes, Mom,” I answered her. “I love Jesus.”
​
She continued our ritual.
​
“Then do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God? Do you accept him as your personal Savior?”
​
“Yes, Mom, I do.”
​
There was a tear in her eye when she looked up at me and said, “Then you should be baptized for the remission of Sin.”
​
That wasn’t what I expected her to say, and I think the surprise showed on my face. Mom ignored my bewilderment.
​
“Come inside, Jimmy. I'll draw the bathtub full, and we’ll use it to baptize you before dinner.”
​
“Umm, okay,” I answered. I didn’t really want or need to be baptized, but I figured that it would make Mom happy. Once I was saved in her her eyes, maybe she would take my news a little bit better.
​
She led me down the hallway, past the single bathroom and into what used to be my bedroom. My old single bed was still shoved up against the wall shared with the vacant unit next door, but everything else about the room had changed.
​
To begin with, the closet had doors. They were just cheap folding doors made out of fake wood, but they were doors just the same. Over the years our landlord had always refused to put doors on our bedroom closets, saying that we would just break them anyway. Mom must have put those doors up herself, but I didn’t know how or why.
​
Mom had also painted the faux-wood paneling on the walls with dingy white paint, then she’d scrawled more Bible verses all over the cleanish slate. There was Mom’s old favorite verse, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” but there were others, too.
​
She opened the new folding doors on the closet just enough to slide her hand inside. She pulled out a linen garment like the dress she was wearing, but longer. She handed it to me.
​
“Put this robe on for the baptizing while I go draw the bath,” she told me.
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I nodded. The wall behind her shouted, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
​
Mom left and closed the bedroom door behind her. I stripped and donned the white linen. It was scratchy and new on my skin. I folded my clothes and put them on the bare mattress of my former bed.
​
“You shall not commit adultery.”
​
I heard the water running in the bathroom next door as Mom filled the tub.
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“Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your mind.”
​
I wondered what Mom was hiding in the closet.
​
“Be not deceived: neither fornicators, not idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”
​
I opened the folding doors and peaked inside.
​
“The fire will test the quality of each person’s work.”
​
There where I used to pile my clothes and toss my shoes was an altar made from a secondhand sofa table. The table bore a small cross and a large framed picture.
​
“A promiscuous woman is as dangerous as falling into a narrow well. She hides and waits like a robber, eager to make more men unfaithful.”
​
The picture was a black and white photo of Paster Aiden Foley staring out with a fiery passion. Large font printed over the picture read, “Do you love Jesus enough to give Him your all?” I shook my head and stepped away from from my former closet.
​
“I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire.”
​
On the closet wall behind the makeshift altar was an enormous poster of the Light-Bringer Ministries logo. When the logo was blown up to that size, it was as if the blazing star was swallowing the tiny cross.
​
“This is the way of an adulterous woman: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, I’ve done nothing wrong”
​
I heard the water in the bathroom turn off.
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“Bad company ruins good morals.”
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I slammed the closet doors closed with a gasp and tried to compose myself before Mom opened the door to the bedroom.
​
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
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The door opened.
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Mom stood just beyond the threshold. For some reason her dress was already soaked from filling the tub.
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“It is time, Jimmy,” she said.
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I walked into the bathroom.
​
# # #
​
The baptizing wasn’t easy, because I’m a good foot taller than the tub was long. Mom wound up holding my head under water while my feet stuck up on either side of the faucet. She used a plastic cup to pour water over my exposed legs while the rest of me was submerged. She was meticulous in her work, deluging my toes, my ankles, my shins, all while her other hand on my brow held my face beneath the surface.
​
I started to squirm, not wanting to disappoint my mother but desperate for air. Finally, she grasped the hair of my head and drug me gasping up into the air.
​
# # #
​
Mom insisted that we eat right after the baptizing, even though we were still dripping in our raiments. Dinner was simple, just fish and dinner rolls. She’d bought them both frozen, and they’d apparently been baking while I was getting baptized. After I sat down at the kitchen table, Mom opened her refrigerator and poured me a tall glass of grape juice.
​
“I always think of you when I see this in the store,” she told me. “You used to really love grape juice when you were a little boy.”
​
I took a sip of the deep purple juice and gagged a little on its cloying sweetness.
​
“You were so pure and innocent then,” she continued as she sat down across from me began to eat the fish and the bread. “I’ve been praying for you to accept Jesus ever since then. You know that, don’t you, Jimmy?” She looked like she was about to cry.
​
“I know that you’ve prayed for me, Mom. I know that you wanted me to be baptized more than you wanted anything else in this world.” I took a bite of the fish and was surprised by its saltiness.
​
“It’s not just that I wanted you to be baptized, Jimmy!” Her eyes were glistening with tears and glowing with zeal. “I wanted you to be SAVED! I want your sins to be forgiven! It’s because I LOVE you, Jimmy!”
​
I took another drink of the juice to wash down the salty fish.
​
“Thanks, Mom, I know you love me.” Then, before she could say anything back to me I added, “but not as much as you love Jesus. And not as much as I love Jesus, either.”
​
Mom smiled at me, almost like she was trying to convince herself to be happy. She topped off my glass of grape juice.
​
My mind was getting fuzzy, somehow, but I remembered that there was something I needed to do, something I needed to say.
​
“Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.”
​
She shushed me like I was a baby.
​
“Not now, Jimmy. Wait until after dinner. Right now you’re pure and clean from your baptism.”
​
Then my chin drooped to my chest and it took an act of will to snap my head back up.
​
“Mom, I—“
​
Then my forehead hit the juice glass, shattering it into a thousand shards. The pain woke me for a second, and I remember the blood from my forehead mingling with the dark purple juice. The mixture ran across the table and coated my face. It dripped down onto the tattered vinyl floor of the kitchen. It stained the clean, wet linen I wore. Then my eyes closed, and the world went dark.
​
# # #
​
Mommy, if Jesus loves us, why would he burn us for being naughty?
​
Mommy, Mommy, please, it’s too tight, it hurts, it hurts!
​
Please, Mommy, please . . .
​
# # #
​
I heard the splash of liquid being poured out around me, or perhaps it was the righteous vengeance of an angry God. There was the taste of blood and grapes on my tongue. I smelled gasoline on still air.
​
Eyes. I had eyes. “He who has eyes, let him see,” I told myself. Then I raised my heavy lids.
​
I was in the closet atop the alter. Around me were rags of Mom’s old clothing, all stinking of gasoline. Above me I saw the blazing star of Light-Bringer Ministries. Beside my head, the grim photo of Pastor Aiden Foley asked if I loved Jesus enough to give my all.
​
Even though my head throbbed and blood still dribbled from my forehead, I knew that I shouldn’t remain on my mother’s altar. I began to swing my feet down, but there were ropes around me, binding me in place. I managed to turn my head away from the wall and the picture of Pastor Aiden Foley, and when I did I saw Mom sitting on the bare bed I used to sleep in. She was stroking a pack of matches like she used to stroke my hair when she read me bedtime stories from the Old Testament.
​
She smiled at me when my head turned.
​
“Welcome to Salvation, Jimmy. We’ll be with Jesus soon.”
​
Then she struck a match.
​
# # #
​
I don’t remember if I screamed, but I do remember Mom smiling as the flames shot up the walls and licked at me upon the altar. I remember her praying for deliverance from our sins as her gown caught fire and raged around her. I remember the smell of my own hair burning and the pain of my sizzling flesh, but I don’t remember if I screamed.
​
# # #
​
Elaine found the inferno.
​
When I’d been gone too long for her comfort, she’d texted me. When I didn’t respond to her text, she turned her pacing in my apartment into a nervous walk toward my mom’s duplex. When she saw the flames and smelled the smoke, she called 911 before she crashed through the door.
​
It would be poetic to tell you that my brave Elaine saved me from my mother’s burning altar, but that would be a lie. The walls of flame were too much for her to penetrate, and the smoke turned the tiny duplex into a confusing maze. Elaine gave herself first degree burns trying to save me, but the firefighters are the ones who drug me out. They came in a torrent of water and sparks and black smoke that I still taste and smell, even here in the ICU.
​
I don’t know how much of me remains beneath these bandages. Elaine sits with me for as many hours as the hospital will let her. I think that she was here even through the two weeks I was drugged into a stupor to keep me from feeling the worst of the pain. All I remember from those days of haze is the anguish of a blue-eyed angel. Elaine tells me it was probably just the drugs.
​
Now there are stretches of time when I’m conscious enough to slur short conversations with Elaine and answer the doctors’ questions. The price of my wakefulness is that I feel the fire take my flesh again, until finally my next dose of pain killers returns me to a cloudy state that exists beyond pain but still far from salvation.
​
They’ve wrapped me in a shroud, from head to toe, as if for burial. The doctors tell me that I will be in these bandages for many more weeks. Perhaps I will yet be able to cast them off and be raised, but I just don’t know if I have that kind of Faith.

Sorry, I'm completely faded and just following any developments here on this subreddit, but this thought came to my mind just now. If everything was moved to Zoom for 2020, and there were no assemblies or conventions, does that mean that there were no baptisms? If everything stays as a virtual platform for 2021, does that mean another year of no baptisms?
Or do they do it virtually and you have to dunk yourself in your bathtub or.....run your head under the kitchen faucet if you lack a bathtub?

They Do Not Want The World To Know They Are For Real And They Do Exist And Because No One Wanted To Talk About The Truth And Who The Real Murders Are They Kept It A Secret And Have Poison Their Minds To Keep Them In The Dark!
They paid the price because of sin and sometimes a person may have to hurt for them to see the truth and people sometimes have a hard time facing the truth when they are being told something important they do not want to hear it and people have not heard this before is because no one talk about the truth and this is how
they kept this a secret the day when our ancestors stop keeping God commandments and no one wanted to talked about the truth and turn their backs and abandon the gospel and people in this time thinks they can do the same thing their ancestors did they are abandoning the gospel and think they can take it for
granted and our ancestors did this they abandon the gospel and thought they could take it for granted and because of their carelessness and mistake people here in this time is paying the optimal price because of their sins. And this is why people in this time have not hear this before is because our ancestors wanted nothing to do with
the truth and turn their backs and abandon the gospel and because of it God is allowing this enemy descendants to rule over them here in this time. And how can people suppose to find out the truth if no one wants to talk about it and this is where the problem is coming from and things are the way it is here is because no
one wants to talk about the truth and how much more can people take and when will they find out what God is telling them is because there is no more time left here to wait because they are attacking them here. And no one told people here in this time when they came here into this world it was their choice they can choose to live
here but do not have to know what God is telling them and people do not want to talk about the truth but how do the person know if God is just letting them live here and people just do not seen to get it and what God is telling them and have to spell it out for them and the truth about their government and church and even if a
person do not want to know what God is telling them cannot stop what is happening here. And some things a person may not understand and how this creature written in the bible (the devil ) became to have descendants and his descendants is ruling over people here in this time and is attacking them here and
how this all happen in the beginning from that time in the bible in the book of Genesis 3:14-16 when God put enmity between the devil seed and Eve seed here centuries ago because of Adam and Eve disobedience and the devil have off springs and has been a on going battle since the beginning of time.'' And when a person is
reading and studying in the bible they can see in that time in the bible many great battles and wars took place here centuries ago and all through out history. And the devil has many descendants and this may sound unbelievable but is true and we are dealing with real intelligent terrestrial beings and spirits in celestial bodies here in
this time with us attacking people here and they are the real murders and crooks who rapes on men, women and children and animals.
1 Corinthians 15:39-41 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the terrestrial is another.
And some of them have bodies and some of them do not have bodies and the ones without a body people have already seen here appearing to them in orbs and ghost manifestation and they can live in a person body and manipulate the person and when a person is studying in the bible they was in people in that time in the bible
and the bible tells you how they can be cast out and the person would have to be born again in Christ and cannot be in sin and God gives power to the church to have them cast out. In the bible they are call unclean spirits and a person can have unclean spirits in them when they are in sin and is separate from God. To continue
reading and for more info and how they can be cast out and your ancestors history and how they kept the gospel a secret from people here in this time check out the below Links and posts with bible scriptures. And this enemy descendants is ruling over people here in this time is because of their ancestors mistake when they
abandon the gospel and did not keep God commandments and it is their government and church attacking them here and this was how God punish people in that time in the bible and from generation to generation he would allow the person enemy to rule over them.
And people sometimes have a hard time facing the truth when they are being told something important and whether a person wants to know the truth are not a person would have to face their fears and what is happening here in this time is very real and this is what a person
will learn when they are studying in the bible and they do not want the world to know they are for real and they do exist and they are spirits in celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial pretending to be your government and church leaders here and they have millions of churches here world wide just to deceive people and make
them think they are being told the truth and there is no salvation in any of them and they are not your friendly average type they are descendants of this enemy and his off spring written in the bible and the people who ruled over your ancestors here centuries ago and from generation to generation and sold them into slavery and
rape and beat and murdered your ancestors and ripe up their women with child and they are doing the same thing here in this time and are the ones attacking them here and young women and boys are being kidnap here and sold into sex trafficking and their history is written in the bible and if people keep sitting here and annoying
this stuff they are seeing here they do not have much long to go before God deals with them here. And a person cannot serve God in a corrupt church with evil and unclean spirits until this trash gets clean up and the whole earth is defiled and is corrupt with sin and whether a person wants to talk about the truth are not the
great tribulation is still coming here when this prophecy comes to pass in the book of Revelation and whether a person wants it to come cannot do anything about it and whether a person wants to talk about who the real murders are here in this time attacking them here cannot do nothing about it. And a person do not have to talk
about the truth and this is what everyone here in this time have to deal with here, curses and plagues and evil spirits and violence and hate and things will stay this way until this trash gets clean up and this is only just the beginning and according to the bible prophecies the worse is yet to come. And people in this time thinks they
can do the same thing their ancestors did they want nothing to do with talking about the truth either and thinks they are getting away with murder and breaking God's commandments and because no one here in this time wants to talk about the truth would have to deal with the consequences and unclean spirits.
Extended Post Original KingJamesBible
What Your Church And The Government Have Been Hiding From You Here Is No Longer A Secret And Think They Can Rechange History And What They Have Been Hiding For Years Is No Longer A Secret''.
Galatians 1:9 As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be a cursed.
Revelation 22:18-21 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things which are written in this book.
St.Luke 8:17 For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest, neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad 2 Peter 1:20-21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
And what is in the dark shall come out into the light'' And no one does not like having the truth told on them exspecially when they know they are lying and the churches here in our community and state world wide is having the truth told on them and might as well admit they are liars and crooks every single one of them.
And the church might be thinking they are setting here getting away with lying but sooner are later time will catch up with them and will turn on them and will reap back what they soweth and cannot see it coming and what will befall them. And people in this time is not aware what God is telling them is because it have been a
long time since the day when their ancestors stop keeping God's commandments and because it have been a long time they know people in this time is not aware what God is telling them and had false doctrine and phony history books written to make people think they are being told the truth about their ancestors and God's
commandments. The real gospel is talking to them here in this time about their ancestors and what they did here in their time and from generation to generation and the false doctrine is not and they are using our media and television we have in this time to corrupt your minds and to create distraction and from finding out the
truth and your ancestors was separate from God and was in slavery because of their disobedience and God allowed the enemy to rule over them and the churches here in our community and state world wide everyone of them have fed people with lies and have poison their minds and made them think and believe they was told the
truth and they was never told the truth and was set free because of their ancestors disobedience and people believe and think they are serving God because they was not told the truth and is not aware what God is telling them in the bible for them selves and the only way they can become aware unless they read and study the bible
for them selves. And this is how the church is deceiving people here is because people is not aware what God is telling them for them selves and the church is making people think and believe they was told the truth and people in this time do not know their ancestors broke God's covenant his commandments because they
covered it up and had false doctrine written and incorrect history books about your ancestors history to make people think they are being told the truth about their ancestors and God's commandments and people do not know God is talking to them and is telling them in the bible they are not hearing him and is rejecting
knowledge and this is why people is having problems here in their life and bad things is happening to them here is because they are not hearing him and is rejecting knowledge and they know it is true because they see it.
Proverbs 1:1-33 Proverbs 1:24-31 Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your
destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.
Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.
And they are using the false doctrine along with the real gospel here and is lying to people about the truth and think they can rechange history because they do not want people to know the truth about their ancestors and God's commandments and what they did here in their time and from generation to generation. They think
they can rechange history and had false doctrine and incorrect history books written to keep people here in this time from finding out the truth. And the church is not telling people their ancestors was separate from God and because of their disobedience God is allowing the enemy to rule over them here and because people
was not told the truth they do not know the enemy is ruling over them here. And God is talking to them and is telling them in the bible their ancestors broke his covenant and did not keep his commandments and he gave them into the hands of the enemy and they have been into the hands of the enemy ever since until this day.
And a person will know what they had written in history books about your ancestors along with the false doctrine is incorrect because the real gospel is telling you about your ancestors and God's commandments and what they did here in their time and from generation to generation and the bible are real ancient prophecies we are
bringing to pass here in this time and the future and your ancestors was in slavery here centuries ago was because your ancestors broke God's covenant and did not keep his commandments. We come along way from generation from the people in the bible and is descendant of their tribe and people in that time in the bible and
from generation to generation many of them kept God's commandments and many of them did not and because of your ancestors disobedience God is allowing the enemy to rule over them here and the people who is ruling over them here in this time is not your friends they are enemies and is descendants of this enemy off
spring written in the bible pretending to be your government and church leaders. And they have millions of churches here world wide to deceive people and make them think they are being told the truth and there is no salvation in any of them and they know people here in this time do not know what God is telling them in the
bible because of their ancestors disobedience and is preventing people here in this time from receiving salvation. A person would have to read and study both the old testament and the new testament in order for them to understand what is happening here in this time and to discern the spirit. The bible are real ancient
prophecies written to tell us about our time and about our ancestors and about the future and God's commandments. The king James bible have other different types of version and is not the same like the original king James bible and only the
original king James bible is the real gospel of your ancestors history and prophecies we are bringing to pass and God's commandments. A person with a false doctrine bible will not tell you the whole truth about your ancestors and what God is telling
them. The real gospel will tell the person what God is talking to them about here and what is happening here in this time and in the future and what happen here in that time here centuries ago when our ancestors was here.
Jeremiah 16:10-18 And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt show this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God? Then shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the Lord, and have walked after other gods, and have serve them, and have worshipped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law;
And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me: Therefore will I cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not, neither ye nor your fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night.
Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
Daniel 9:1-27 and Daniel 9:5-6 We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments: Neither have we hearkened
unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.
Daniel 9:10-11 Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not
obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.
Psalms 107:1-43 Psalms 106:1-48 Therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, insomuch that he abhorred his own inheritance. And he gave them in the hand of the heathen; and they that hated them ruled over them. Their enemies also oppressed them, and they were brought into subjection under their hand.
Zechariah 1: 1-6 The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. Be ye not as your
fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the Lord. Your fathers, where are they? and the
prophets, do they live for ever? But my words and my statutes,which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.
Isaiah 66:1-5 Yea, they have chosen their own ways and their soul delighteth in their abominations, I also will choose their delusions and will bring their fears upon them because when I called, none did answer, when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes and chose that in which I delighted not.
Romans 10:3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God
Isaiah 9:16-17 For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.
And the only way a person will know the truth and find out they was lying here in this time is from studying the bible and what is happening here in this time is very real and this was the same way in that time in the bible people was separate from God and had unclean spirits in them. People is being punish here the same way
their ancestors in the bible was and people sometimes likes to pretend because they do not want to face reality are because when they are not familial with something they think what they are hearing is not for real. Because people was not told the truth they are not familial with this and think what they are hearing is not for real
are think what someone is telling them their lying too and just because what a person is making them selves think how do they know what is not real to them and what they are here in this world for if they do not know what God is telling them and people sometimes make them selves think what they know is because what they
do not understand and because people is not hearing God and is rejecting knowledge they are not familial what is happening here in this time right now. And in spite of the lies they have told people here in this time the person still have no excuse and it does not hurt to check things out to see whether are not if it is true
and whether a person wants anything to do with the gospel are not cannot stop what is happening here and coming to pass. And just like the church they have no excuse for lying and making them selves look like they are God's one and only true church just to deceive and how would people feel when they finds out the church lie
to them and will get the chance to see just how much a true church they are and if they are God's one and only true church and they told the truth then it should not be a problem with someone speaking the truth about them and think they can mock people for being a lair they are because people is deceive and foolish and the joke is
on them and will back fire on them for being a lair making people think they are God's true church to get the whole world condemn and lying against God and his kingdom. And this is not the reason God is allowing people to be here is because he do not mind and is letting the person make the choice they can choose how they
want to live here and serve him and God is not telling a person in the bible they can live here but do not have to know what he is telling them and will not be punish for it because his laws is written for everyone just like the people in the bible. And another reason people in this time is confuse about the gospel and what God is
telling them is because of false doctrine and history books written with incorrect information about their ancestors and God's commandments and people is not concern about the church and what they are doing here in their community and think as long as they are sitting here and is getting away with murder they do not
care and think they can use it to their own advantage and tempt God. And how can the same thing be happening here in this time what happen in that time here centuries ago and from generation to generation they had false prophets and people worship to false Gods and was attack by their enemies and had unclean spirits in
them and was destroy in storms and was killed by wild beasts and curse with plagues. And God is telling them in the bible how he will punish a person and is punishing people here in this time the same way he punished people in that time here centuries ago and from generation to generation. And how can the bible be talking about the same thing they are seeing here in this time.
Leviticus 26:1-26 and Leviticus 26:14-46 But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments but that ye break my covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over
you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.
And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate. And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet
seven times for your sins. And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gather together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast
your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter
you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. If they shall confess their iniquity, and the
iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their
iniquity: Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
And people is seeing the same thing here in this time what God is telling them in the bible and God is not telling a person in the bible he do not mind and they can choose how they want to live here and serve him and think God do not mind and is ok with a person denying him and think God will keep giving them time here if they are denying him.
St. Matthew 10:33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
St.John 3:18- 21 He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is
the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
And how would a person feel if someone is denying them and they think it is not ok but it is ok they can deny God and what he is telling them in the bible is not coming to pass. And a person who think life is a game to them and think they can take it for granted will regret when the time comes and their own lies and deceit and
foolishness and disobedience will run out sooner are later and will back fire on them. People in this time is not aware what God is telling them is because it have been a long time since the day when their ancestors stop keeping God's commandments and because it have been a long time they know people in this time
is not aware what God is telling them and had false doctrine and phony history books written to make people think they are being told the truth about their ancestors and God's
commandments and they are using our media and television we have in this time to corrupt your minds and to create distraction and from finding out the truth and they know these things has no value to it and the person is breaking God commandments and is being tempted and blinded by the things of this world.
2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
And another reason people is not hearing God and is rejecting knowledge is because they are being tempted by the devil and is spiritually blind and because they are so spiritually blind they think life is a game to them even this deadly plague and if people do not take the necessary steps here now to protect them selves and
their love ones from becoming affected this virus can remain here in every community and state world wide. And cure means a person cannot be affect by a virus even if they are being expose to it and if the person can still become affected being expose how can they be cure and people is risking them selves being expose
and is also risking the people in their community and state world wide becoming affected and it is the people and their jobs and the government of the united states what makes up the economic and when a person is risking them selves they are risking other people around them as well and if this virus remains here the
economic can collapse and people will do more harm and danger to them selves and to their environment and their community like never before and this is where the whole world is heading for right now and the air in their environment can become contaminated from droplets produce by coughing and sneezing and food supple can
become contaminated from bacterial exposure because of carelessness and wrong thinking. And this virus is now out of control and once something is out of control it is hard to contain it and a person who have been expose more than once will burn out sooner are later and the person is putting their life and the people around them
in danger when they risk them selves being expose. And if you hear someone saying are telling you this virus is gone now is a lie because there are to many people out there being expose to this virus at different times and once something is out of control it is hard to contain it and because of carelessness and wrong thinking
people do not see this deadly disease as a threat and people is being expose to this deadly disease at different times because of ignorance and carelessness is keeping the virus here and is now out of a person hands and only God him self can heal a person of this disease and deadly plague and not man. Wearing a mask does not
just protect a person alone from this disease because the person can still come in contact with the virus from touching something with the bacterial on it and that can be anything from computers, books, phones, countertops, door handles and gas pumps handles, car steel wheels, can food, faucets, food plaster raps, glass bottles
and steel and iron meters, food containers made of plaster and glass and hard plaster and keys and oranges and apples and peppers with skins on them and much more things and children in school can come in contact with the germs with the virus on it and can bring it back home to their family members and people being in
groups together is a breeding ground to invoke germs and the person can come in contact with the virus and be expose to it and the person be putting their children and them selves at risk. And how can people in this time was told the truth if their ancestors in the bible did not keep God commandments for them to know in this
time what God is telling them and because people is not hearing God and is rejecting knowledge they are not aware what is happening here in this time because people in this time have unclean spirits in them the same way it was in that time here centuries ago and from generation to generation and the person who is being
possessed by them may not be aware what is happening to them and the person may not appear to be them selves at times and their behavior can change swiftly one minute the person can appear calm and then the next minute the person snaps and can become violent and the person can go into a trance state and is under demonic
possession and can have multiple personality and unstable behavior. A man in the bible was possessed with 2,000 devils in him and a person who is under demonic possession can be very dangerous and can be control by the spirit and can become very strong and a evil spirit can deceive a person into thinking they are the person
spirit guard are the person deceased family member are a ghost people have seen here appearing to them in orbs and other manifestation. And how can the gospel be telling a person the same thing what happen in that time is happening here.
St.Mark 5:1-20 And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.
St.Mark 5:13 And the unclean spirit went out and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, they were about two thousand and were choked in the sea.
People have been brain wash and fed with lies and was not told the truth here in this time and they will continue fighting people here in this time until when the time they leave this earth and perish and if people do not get this understanding now and what God is telling them and think as long as they are sitting here and time is on their side they are not concern about the churches here in their
community and think what God is telling them is not coming to pass here and will keep giving them time here and the only time when a person becomes concern is when they see all hell break loose and a person is being foolish thinking they can tempt God is for nothing and will be punish for it when the time comes. And how can the church make people think they told them the truth if they did not tell them
what God is telling them in the bible and their lies have cause people nothing but pain, sorrow and hell and things will continue getting worse here and will not be this way for long according to the bible prophecies. And a person cannot free them selves from evil spirits a person would have to be born again in Christ and cannot be in sin and God gives power to the church (a man) who is anointed and is
ordained by him to cast out unclean spirits to do deliverance and baptism and preach and God does not give power to a woman to lead the church and preach and do deliverance and baptism. A priest would have to be ordained and is anointed by God first before they can lead and God spirit would have to be with the person to lead the church because the person cannot lead them selves without God and the
churches here in our community and state world wide neither one of them was call by God to preach are to lead the church.

Part 1
What Your Church And The Government Have Been Hiding From You Here Is No Longer A Secret And Think They Can Rechange History And What They Have Been Hiding For Years Is No Longer A Secret''.
Galatians 1:9 As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be a cursed.
Revelation 22:18-21 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things which are written in this book.
St.Luke 8:17 For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest, neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad 2 Peter 1:20-21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
And what is in the dark shall come out into the light'' And no one does not like having the truth told on them exspecially when they know they are lying and the churches here in our community and state world wide is having the truth told on them and might as well admit they are liars and crooks every single one of them.
And the church might be thinking they are setting here getting away with lying but sooner are later time will catch up with them and will turn on them and will reap back what they soweth and cannot see it coming and what will befall them. And people in this time is not aware what God is telling them is because it have been a
long time since the day when their ancestors stop keeping God's commandments and because it have been a long time they know people in this time is not aware what God is telling them and had false doctrine and phony history books written to make people think they are being told the truth about their ancestors and God's
commandments. The real gospel is talking to them here in this time about their ancestors and what they did here in their time and from generation to generation and the false doctrine is not and they are using our media and television we have in this time to corrupt your minds and to create distraction and from finding out the
truth and your ancestors was separate from God and was in slavery because of their disobedience and God allowed the enemy to rule over them and the churches here in our community and state world wide everyone of them have fed people with lies and have poison their minds and made them think and believe they was told the
truth and they was never told the truth and was set free because of their ancestors disobedience and people believe and think they are serving God because they was not told the truth and is not aware what God is telling them in the bible for them selves and the only way they can become aware unless they read and study the bible
for them selves. And this is how the church is deceiving people here is because people is not aware what God is telling them for them selves and the church is making people think and believe they was told the truth and people in this time do not know their ancestors broke God's covenant his commandments because they
covered it up and had false doctrine written and incorrect history books about your ancestors history to make people think they are being told the truth about their ancestors and God's commandments and people do not know God is talking to them and is telling them in the bible they are not hearing him and is rejecting
knowledge and this is why people is having problems here in their life and bad things is happening to them here is because they are not hearing him and is rejecting knowledge and they know it is true because they see it.
Proverbs 1:1-33 Proverbs 1:24-31 Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a
whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.
And they are using the false doctrine along with the real gospel here and is lying to people about the truth and think they can rechange history because they do not want people to know the truth about their ancestors and God's commandments and what they did here in their time and from generation to generation. They think
they can rechange history and had false doctrine and incorrect history books written to keep people here in this time from finding out the truth. And the church is not telling people their ancestors was separate from God and because of their disobedience God is allowing the enemy to rule over them here and because people
was not told the truth they do not know the enemy is ruling over them here. And God is talking to them and is telling them in the bible their ancestors broke his covenant and did not keep his commandments and he gave them into the hands of the enemy and they have been into the hands of the enemy ever since until this day.
And a person will know what they had written in history books about your ancestors along with the false doctrine is incorrect because the real gospel is telling you about your ancestors and God's commandments and what they did here in their time and from generation to generation and the bible are real ancient prophecies we are
bringing to pass here in this time and the future and your ancestors was in slavery here centuries ago was because your ancestors broke God's covenant and did not keep his commandments. We come along way from generation from the people in the bible and is descendant of their tribe and people in that time in the bible and
from generation to generation many of them kept God's commandments and many of them did not and because of your ancestors disobedience God is allowing the enemy to rule over them here and the people who is ruling over them here in this time is not your friends they are enemies and is descendants of this enemy off spring written in the bible pretending to be your government and church leaders.
And they have millions of churches here world wide to deceive people and make them think they are being told the truth and there is no salvation in any of them and they know people here in this time do not know what God is telling them in the bible because of their ancestors disobedience and is preventing people here in this time from receiving salvation. A person would have to read and study both the old
testament and the new testament in order for them to understand what is happening here in this time and to discern the spirit. The bible are real ancient prophecies written to tell us about our time and about our ancestors and about the future and God's commandments. The king James bible have other different types
of version and is not the same like the original king James bible and only the original king James bible is the real gospel of your ancestors history and prophecies we are bringing to pass and God's commandments. A person with a false doctrine bible will not tell you the whole truth about your ancestors and what God is telling
them. The real gospel will tell the person what God is talking to them about here and what is happening here in this time and in the future and what happen here in that time here centuries ago when our ancestors was here.
Jeremiah 16:10-18 And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt show this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God? Then shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the Lord, and have walked after other gods, and have serve them, and have worshipped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law;
And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me: Therefore will I cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not, neither ye nor your fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night.
Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
Daniel 9:1-27 and Daniel 9:5-6 We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments: Neither have we hearkened
unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.
Daniel 9:10-11 Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not
obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.
Psalms 107:1-43 Psalms 106:1-48 Therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, insomuch that he abhorred his own inheritance. And he gave them in the hand of the heathen; and they that hated them ruled over them. Their enemies also oppressed them, and they were brought into subjection under their hand.
Zechariah 1: 1-6 The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. Be ye not as your
fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the Lord. Your fathers, where are they? and the
prophets, do they live for ever? But my words and my statutes,which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.
Isaiah 66:1-5 Yea, they have chosen their own ways and their soul delighteth in their abominations, I also will choose their delusions and will bring their fears upon them because when I called, none did answer, when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes and chose that in which I delighted not.
Romans 10:3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God
Isaiah 9:16-17 For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.
And the only way a person will know the truth and find out they was lying here in this time is from studying the bible and what is happening here in this time is very real and this was the same way in that time in the bible people was separate from God and had unclean spirits in them. People is being punish here the same way
their ancestors in the bible was and people sometimes likes to pretend because they do not want to face reality are because when they are not familial with something they think what they are hearing is not for real. Because people was not told the truth they are not familial with this and think what they are hearing is not for real
are think what someone is telling them their lying too and just because what a person is making them selves think how do they know what is not real to them and what they are here in this world for if they do not know what God is telling them and people sometimes make them selves think what they know is because what they
do not understand and because people is not hearing God and is rejecting knowledge they are not familial what is happening here in this time right now. And in spite of the lies they have told people here in this time the person still have no excuse and it does not hurt to check things out to see whether are not if it is true
and whether a person wants anything to do with the gospel are not cannot stop what is happening here and coming to pass. And just like the church they have no excuse for lying and making them selves look like they are God's one and only true church just to deceive and how would people feel when they finds out the church lie
to them and will get the chance to see just how much a true church they are and if they are God's one and only true church and they told the truth then it should not be a problem with someone speaking the truth about them and think they can mock people for being a lair they are because people is deceive and foolish and the joke is
on them and will back fire on them for being a lair making people think they are God's true church to get the whole world condemn and lying against God and his kingdom. And this is not the reason God is allowing people to be here is because he do not mind and is letting the person make the choice they can choose how they
want to live here and serve him and God is not telling a person in the bible they can live here but do not have to know what he is telling them and will not be punish for it because his laws is written for everyone just like the people in the bible. And another reason people in this time is confuse about the gospel and what God is
telling them is because of false doctrine and history books written with incorrect information about their ancestors and God's commandments and people is not concern about the church and what they are doing here in their community and think as long as they are sitting here and is getting away with murder they do not
care and think they can use it to their own advantage and tempt God. And how can the same thing be happening here in this time what happen in that time here centuries ago and from generation to generation they had false prophets and people worship to false Gods and was attack by their enemies and had unclean spirits in
them and was destroy in storms and was killed by wild beasts and curse with plagues. And God is telling them in the bible how he will punish a person and is punishing people here in this time the same way he punished people in that time here centuries ago and from generation to generation. And how can the bible be talking about the same thing they are seeing here in this time.
Leviticus 26:1-26 and Leviticus 26:14-46 But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments but that ye break my covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over
you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.
And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate. And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet
seven times for your sins. And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gather together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast
your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter
you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. If they shall confess their iniquity, and the
iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their
iniquity: Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
And people is seeing the same thing here in this time what God is telling them in the bible and God is not telling a person in the bible he do not mind and they can choose how they want to live here and serve him and think God do not mind and is ok with a person denying him and think God will keep giving them time here if they are denying him.
St. Matthew 10:33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
St.John 3:18- 21 He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is
the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
And how would a person feel if someone is denying them and they think it is not ok but it is ok they can deny God and what he is telling them in the bible is not coming to pass. And a person who think life is a game to them and think they can take it for granted will regret when the time comes and their own lies and deceit and
foolishness and disobedience will run out sooner are later and will back fire on them. People in this time is not aware what God is telling them is because it have been a long time since the day when their ancestors stop keeping God's commandments and because it have been a long time they know people in this time
is not aware what God is telling them and had false doctrine and phony history books written to make people think they are being told the truth about their ancestors and God's
commandments and they are using our media and television we have in this time to corrupt your minds and to create distraction and from finding out the truth and they know these things has no value to it and the person is breaking God commandments and is being tempted and blinded by the things of this world.
2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
And another reason people is not hearing God and is rejecting knowledge is because they are being tempted by the devil and is spiritually blind and because they are so spiritually blind they think life is a game to them even this deadly plague and if people do not take the necessary steps here now to protect them selves and
their love ones from becoming affected this virus can remain here in every community and state world wide. And cure means a person cannot be affect by a virus even if they are being expose to it and if the person can still become affected being expose how can they be cure and people is risking them selves being expose
and is also risking the people in their community and state world wide becoming affected and it is the people and their jobs and the government of the united states what makes up the economic and when a person is risking them selves they are risking other people around them as well and if this virus remains here the
economic can collapse and people will do more harm and danger to them selves and to their environment and their community like never before and this is where the whole world is heading for right now and the air in their environment can become contaminated from droplets produce by coughing and sneezing and food supple can
become contaminated from bacterial exposure because of carelessness and wrong thinking. And this virus is now out of control and once something is out of control it is hard to contain it and a person who have been expose more than once will burn out sooner are later and the person is putting their life and the people around them
in danger when they risk them selves being expose. And if you hear someone saying are telling you this virus is gone now is a lie because there are to many people out there being expose to this virus at different times and once something is out of control it is hard to contain it and because of carelessness and wrong thinking
people do not see this deadly disease as a threat and people is being expose to this deadly disease at different times because of ignorance and carelessness is keeping the virus here and is now out of a person hands and only God him self can heal a person of this disease and deadly plague and not man. Wearing a mask does not
just protect a person alone from this disease because the person can still come in contact with the virus from touching something with the bacterial on it and that can be anything from computers, books, phones, countertops, door handles and gas pumps handles, car steel wheels, can food, faucets, food plaster raps, glass bottles
and steel and iron meters, food containers made of plaster and glass and hard plaster and keys and oranges and apples and peppers with skins on them and much more things and children in school can come in contact with the germs with the virus on it and can bring it back home to their family members and people being in
groups together is a breeding ground to invoke germs and the person can come in contact with the virus and be expose to it and the person be putting their children and them selves at risk. And how can people in this time was told the truth if their ancestors in the bible did not keep God commandments for them to know in this
time what God is telling them and because people is not hearing God and is rejecting knowledge they are not aware what is happening here in this time because people in this time have unclean spirits in them the same way it was in that time here centuries ago and from generation to generation and the person who is being
possessed by them may not be aware what is happening to them and the person may not appear to be them selves at times and their behavior can change swiftly one minute the person can appear calm and then the next minute the person snaps and can become violent and the person can go into a trance state and is under demonic
possession and can have multiple personality and unstable behavior. A man in the bible was possessed with 2,000 devils in him and a person who is under demonic possession can be very dangerous and can be control by the spirit and can become very strong and a evil spirit can deceive a person into thinking they are the person
spirit guard are the person deceased family member are a ghost people have seen here appearing to them in orbs and other manifestation. And how can the gospel be telling a person the same thing what happen in that time is happening here.
St.Mark 5:1-20 And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.
St.Mark 5:13 And the unclean spirit went out and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, they were about two thousand and were choked in the sea.
People have been brain wash and fed with lies and was not told the truth here in this time and they will continue fighting people here in this time until when the time they leave this earth and perish and if people do not get this understanding now and what God is telling them and think as long as they are sitting here and time is on their side they are not concern about the churches here in their
community and think what God is telling them is not coming to pass here and will keep giving them time here and the only time when a person becomes concern is when they see all hell break loose and a person is being foolish thinking they can tempt God is for nothing and will be punish for it when the time comes. And how can the church make people think they told them the truth if they did not tell them
what God is telling them in the bible and their lies have cause people nothing but pain, sorrow and hell and things will continue getting worse here and will not be this way for long according to the bible prophecies. And a person cannot free them selves from evil spirits a person would have to be born again in Christ and cannot be in sin and God gives power to the church (a man) who is anointed and is
ordained by him to cast out unclean spirits to do deliverance and baptism and preach and God does not give power to a woman to lead the church and preach and do deliverance and baptism. A priest would have to be ordained and is anointed by God first before they can lead and God spirit would have to be with the person to lead the church because the person cannot lead them selves without God and the
churches here in our community and state world wide neither one of them was call by God to preach are to lead the church. And how can a church be call by God if they are not telling the truth and is suppose to teach people God's truth and love and leading them to salvation and to encourage people and help build their faith. And this is why it is important a church must be setting a good example at all
times because it reflects how it affects the person and their life because the person can become discourage and corrupt them selves and people have seen the evil and cruelty here in their world before but never like this and I have never seen so much evil and cruelty and hate and have never had anything like this happen to me before.

It was raining when Marty Sheppard woke up in the morning, tired from too little sleep. It was raining as Marty ate a breakfast of leftover spaghetti that he didn’t bother to reheat, the sauce like congealed blood in his mouth. It was raining as he sat around watching old cartoons dressed in a wife-beater and boxers, and it continued raining when he made lunch (a frozen turkey TV dinner that he heated up in the microwave because the oven took too long). It was raining when he realized that his car wouldn’t start, the damn hunk of junk that he should have replaced a year ago when his cousin offered him a used vehicle that could be paid off in installments. It was raining during the entirety of his walk to work, the leaden afternoon sky dumping an ocean of raindrops down on the town of Cedar Falls as if some judgment was at hand and the little town had been found guilty of all charges. If life had a sense of humor, the rain would have stopped just as Marty arrived at his place of business, which a sign above the door helpfully identified as Marty’s Place. In a comedy, Marty would have shuffled through the back door of the restaurant soaking wet, cursing under his breath and making an oath to finally buy an umbrella as he’d been meaning to do, and just then that great faucet in the sky would have shut off as if at some cruel jester’s command. Marty Sheppard would have thrown up his hands in a gesture of anger, confusion, and reluctant acceptance that the world was absurd and unreasoning. The audience laughs, the image freezes as the credits roll over the screen; the show is over. But life is not a sitcom, and so it just went on raining.
Jo and Chris were already at the restaurant when Marty arrived. They each gave him a look filled with pity as rainwater dripped from every inch of him, making a trail of puddles as he moved around. Chris was the cook (Marty thought calling him a “chef” would be a bit of an embellishment), and Jo was a server. In his job as owner, proprietor, and namesake of the joint, Marty would spend his day watching over the whole affair like the captain of a ship, while occasionally filling in where needed, sometimes as an auxiliary server, a dish-washer, a sweeper, or just about anything. Since he was reluctant to hire enough people to do all the jobs that needed doing, he was always needed somewhere. But it was early, and the place wasn’t yet open for the day’s business, and so Marty went back into his little office, closing the door behind himself before taking off his jacket and hanging it up on one of the hooks on the wall to drip-drip-drip on the floor. Next, he took off his pants and hung them from a second hook, and the pants also drip-drip-dripped. He took a seat at the tiny desk, setting out to do a little paperwork before the workday started in earnest. Wanting some background noise to half-listen to while he did the papework, Marty flipped on the little radio sitting on the corner of the desk.
A voice from the radio:
“…authorities caution the public to remain vigilant, and to be on the lookout for…”
Marty tuned away from the news broadcast and found a station playing golden oldies. The Shirelles were on, and Shirley Owens was asking if you would still love her tomorrow. The downpour kept pouring down outside, the rain sheeting down the office window. Before long, Marty heard the sound of the door chime chiming, a customer placing an order, and Chris firing up the grill. Then more chiming, more ordering, and more grilling. Marty put aside the paperwork, shut off the voice of Buddy Holly singing about the day he would die (when he’d recorded those words, did he know that day be so soon?), and put his pants back on. They were still wet, but they were the only pair on hand, and so he would have to put up with it. He went out and lent Chris a hand at the grill as Luis, another server, came walking in the back door. Marty checked the clock, noting that Luis had set a new personal record for promptness, having arrived only twenty minutes late.
The day went on in the usual way, the way it had gone one for just about every day that Marty had owned the place. Customers came and went; Jo, Chris, and Luis took staggered lunch breaks, with Marty filling in for them when needed; Shawn came into work to do some dish-washing, but only stuck around for half a day because that’s all Marty was paying him for. The day wore on, and the day turned from light gray to dark gray; through it all, the rain kept coming down.
Just before six o’clock, Stevie walked into the restaurant. He was a regular; he placed a different order each day of the week, but always the same thing on the same day the following week. Mondays were a tuna melt with a bag of chips and a glass of lemonade. Tuesdays were a chili cheese dog, a medium fry (with a side of barbecue sauce to dip them in), and a Sprite. Today was Wednesday; on Wednesdays, he always ordered a double cheeseburger with cheddar cheese fries, with a glass of flavored sparkling water. When Jo saw Stevie taking a seat, she put the order in without asking him what he’d have, knowing it by heart. When the order was ready, Marty took the food out himself, setting the meal down in front of Stevie before taking a seat facing the man.
“How’s it going, Stevie?”
“About as well as it can go,” Stevie said, the exchange a common one among the two men.
Stevie tucked a paper napkin into his shirt collar and commenced eating as Marty signaled to Jo, a gesture that those who worked for him knew to mean that he wanted a cup of coffee. Jo was preoccupied and didn’t notice the gesture, but Luis saw and acted on her behalf. Luis set the cup of hot brew on the table along with a packet of sugar, two creamer packets, and a red swizzle stick. Marty dumped the sugar and cream into the coffee and stirred it around, then waited for it to cool a bit.
“Awful what happened, ain’t it?” Stevie asked, shaking his head at the awfulness of it as he took a bit out of the greasy burger.
“Yep,” Marty replied before realizing he had no idea what the other man was referring to. “Wait, what was awful?”
Stevie looked at Marty as if Marty were a complete idiot, which was strange coming from a man who probably couldn’t spell “cat”.
“Ain’t you heard?” Stevie asked.
Marty told the man that no, he ain’t heard.
“Been all over the news,” Stevie said.
Marty said that might be so, but he still ain’t heard.
“Three loons from the nuthouse up in Easton busted loose last night. Killed a coupla guards, too. Two of them have been caught already; the cops found them on Highway 53 trying to hitch a ride. The third one is still on the lam. The guy on the news said he was the most dangerous of the three. He was put in the nuthouse after killing his whole family with a hatchet on Thanksgiving.”
Marty knew that Stevie was referring to the Easton State Hospital. The place had been around since Marty was a boy. When he was young, he’d thought the place must be a bit like Arkham Asylum from the comic books. His family had driven by there one time while driving north on a trip to Wisconsin; as they’d passed the hospital, ten-year-old Marty couldn’t take his eyes off the place, his head filled with images of supervillains locked up in there while plotting their escape, after which they would go on a cartoonish crime spree until caught by a masked vigilante who would return them to the hospital; they would then start plotting their next escape. Turns out that there were no supervillains within those walls, just guys who’d hatcheted their families to death on Turkey Day.
“Crazy world,” Stevie said around a mouthful of dead cow.
“Yep,” Marty said in concurrence, shaking his head for emphasis.
Marty finished his coffee and left the other man to finish his meal alone. Stevie did just that, paid his bill, and left. Time moved on, as is its stubborn habit, and the day turned from dark gray to black. Marty’s Place didn’t close until 11:00 PM, but the hour between ten o’clock and closing time was typically a dead hour with few customers. Marty had been considering changing the closing time to ten o’clock; in fact, he’d been considering it for the last two years and was scarcely closer to a final decision that he’d been at the beginning of the period of consideration. Luis left at nine o’clock, leaving Marty, Jo, and Chris to finish out the day.
The place was empty at quarter past ten when a man with long, stringy hair walked in from the street. Even the rain (which was still falling, and you could bet your bottom dollar that the low areas around Sag Creek were going to be flooded come morning time) hadn’t been able to wash away the greasiness of that mane. The man carried a satchel with him, the bag of a faded green color. He held the bag close, as if it contained some priceless relic. The man took a seat, setting the bag between his feet underneath the table.
Over the years, Marty had come to recognize bad characters almost on sight. He could tell the ones who were planning to dine and dash; or the ones who’d had a little too much fun with the bottle and were sure to start a ruckus over some small point of contention (whether real or imagined); or the ones who just wanted to use the restaurant as a place to sit and nurse a cup of coffee while they waited for someone else to show up, at which point an exchange would be made, cash for who knows what, beneath the table. There was another class of trouble in human form, and in some ways, he considered this one the worst of all: the Question Mark. When a Question Mark walked into the place, they immediately gave off a bad vibe, a miasma of bad intentions. It radiated from them like a strange heat. They were Question Marks because, unlike those other malefactors, Marty could never quite guess precisely what bad news they would get up to, but only knew that they were bad news indeed. Sometimes they just ate their meal, paid their money, and left; Marty was grateful to be rid of them, his opinion that they were bad news not shaken one bit by their failure to display the exact nature of that news. Other times…well, he could still recall the night that a weird hombre walked up to the counter, said, “How’s it going?”, pulled out a revolver, pointed it his head (Marty’s head, that is), and pulled the trigger. It had all happened so fast that Marty hadn’t even registered that a firearm was being pointed at him. He saw the man reaching toward him and instinctively flinched away just as the barrel spat fire. The bullet grazed the top of his head, leaving a bloody groove. Jo had busted a metal napkin dispenser over the man’s head, and Gary (who was the cook before Chris) had hopped over the counter and brained the guy with a frying pan. There had been some talk of the courts sending the man up to Easton, but he’d been sent instead to the state prison downstate.
The guy who’d recently entered Marty’s Place, and who now sat in a chair with hair that was both greasy and wet, fidgeting like mad, with his bag down between his feet, was a Question Mark, and Marty, who didn’t like dealing with a Question Mark at any time of day but especially not in the dead hour, wished like hell that the man had picked some other eatery to eat at. He caught Jo’s eye and saw that she wasn’t crazy about the newcomer either, and he waved her off, deciding that he would attend to the man himself.
“What’ll it be, fella?” Marty said. “The grill’s been shut off for the night, so I hope it’s something cold.”
It was a lie, but something cold would be quicker to make and to serve. The man said nothing at first; he merely stared into space while fidgeting. Marty was about to repeat himself when the man spoke:
“Turkey sandwich. With Swiss cheese. White bread. Coca Cola, no ice.”
“Sure thing. I’ll bring it right out.”
Marty turned toward the counter. Chris, who’d been standing at the entrance to the kitchen watching the proceedings, turned back into the kitchen to fetch up the food. In no time flat, he brought out a plate and glass, setting them on the counter. Marty grabbed the plate and the glass and took them to the man. As he set them down, he could hear the man muttering something under his breath, too quiet to make out. Marty went back over by the counter, where Jo stood watching the greasy man. The guy was skinny as a rail, and looked like he hadn’t finished a meal in the past six months; he took little bites out of the sandwich, alternating with tiny sips of his beverage. Jo pulled out her phone, tapped the screen for a bit, and then held it out to Marty. He looked at what she had pulled up: it was the story about the escapee from Easton, the one who hadn’t had a lot of thanks to give and whose family had paid the price. He shook his head; no, he didn’t think the man eating a turkey sandwich just five yards away from them was that man. What were the odds? No, it couldn’t be.
Jo put the phone back in her pocket, but she kept an eye on the stranger, Marty’s head-shake not having entirely convinced her that this man wasn’t the same one who’d killed his family. The man was barely halfway finished with his sandwich when he set it down on the plate, reached down, lifted the satchel, and looked inside. Then he put the satchel back on the floor between his feet, picked up his sandwich, and resumed taking tiny, child-sized bites. He stopped again a few bites later, looked into his bag, and then set the bag down again to resume eating.
The chimes chimed as someone entered the restaurant. Marty and Jo (and Chris, too, who was peeking out from the kitchen) turned to see a cop walking in out of the rain. The cop doffed his hat, shook it off, and then placed it back on his head. He smiled with good cheer.
“Whooh! It’s like Noah’s Flood out there.”
The cop walked over to the counter and took a seat at one of the high stools. Jo moved to take his order, but Marty waved her off again.
“Go ahead and head home,” Marty said. “I’ll take care of this.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
Jo didn’t ask twice; she spared one last look at the thin man eating his sandwich before gathering her things and heading out the back door. In the meantime, Marty talked with the cop.
“What can I get for you, Officer?”
“I could use a juicy bacon burger right about now.”
Marty thought for a moment. He’d told the Question Mark that the grill had been shut off; to serve the cop a bacon burger would be an admission that he’d been lying. Not wanting to give trouble any excuse to start, he stuck with the fiction.
“Grill’s been turned off,” Marty said. “It’ll have to be something cold.”
The cop turned in his seat, saw the other man eating his sandwich.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” the cop said.
“Turkey and Swiss on white, and a Coke with no ice?”
“Is that what he’s having?”
“It is.”
“Then that’s what I want.”
Chris disappeared into the kitchen, and Marty followed after him.
“I’ll get the man his food,” Marty said. “Go ahead and head out.”
Chris didn’t even ask once; he just put on a green raincoat and went out the back way. Marty shut off the grill, made the sandwich, poured the soda, and took the food out to the cop.
“Thanks; I’m starving.”
The cop took his hat off again, setting it on the counter, and started eating. The other man had finally finished his own sandwich, and now sat with his bag cradled in his arms. Marty made out a check and took it over to the table, setting it down. The man didn’t even seem to realize that he wasn’t alone; he stared at nothing, cradling his bag and fidgeting. Marty went back to the counter.
“How’s your day been?” the cop asked.
Marty shrugged.
“It’s just been a day. Nothing special.”
The cop took a big bite.
“Say,” Marty said, “do you know Officer Lyons?”
The cop looked at him.
“Mm-hmm,” the cop said. “How do you know him?”
“He comes in here from time to time.”
The cop nodded and took another bite.
Marty looked over at the skinny guy, who hadn’t looked at the check yet. He still clutched the bag to his chest, his knees knocking together under the table. The man glanced around at the cop, and then went back to staring at the empty space in front of him. Was the idea that the man who escaped from the state hospital passing through Cedar Falls so outlandish? No, it really wasn’t. And if you accepted that it wasn’t so outlandish, you also had to accept that he might get hungry, that he might stop off at the first restaurant he saw that was still open. If you accepted all of that, then you had to accept that the skinny man with the green bag might be the family destroyer who’d taken early leave from the state hospital in Easton.
As Marty was thinking this, the man got up from the table and hurried into the men’s room, taking the bag with him. Marty got up close to the cop, speaking low:
“Listen, Officer; I know this might sound crazy, and it’s probably nothing, but…”
“But what?”
“That other guy who was just sitting at that table there…well, he’s been giving me the heebie-jeebies ever since he got here. There’s something off about him. It’s just…”
“Spit it out, man; I ain’t got all night.”
“Well, I’ve been hearing about that escapee from Easton, and I just thought…”
The cop swallowed the bite of turkey sandwich in his mouth and set the remainder of the sandwich down on the plate. His face was like stone now. He looked over at the empty table.
“Where’d he go?” the cop asked.
“It’s probably nothing.”
“Where’d he go?” the cop repeated with a sharp edge to his voice, making it a question and a command all at once.
“He went into the men’s room. He took a green satchel in there with him.”
The cop got up off the stool and walked slowly towards the men’s room door, one hand on the butt of his pistol. He pushed the door slowly open and disappeared inside. There was silence for a few moments, and Marty wondered if he should go in there and check the situation out. Then the door opened again and the cop came out, dragging the man out with one hand as he held the green bag in his other hand. The cop sat the man down into the seat he’d recently vacated (the check was knocked off the table, and fell gently through the air to the ground).
“Sit there, and don’t move.”
The man obeyed as the cop stepped up to the counter, setting the bag down on the countertop. He opened the bag and searched through it. He reached in and grabbed something out. It was some kind of framed certificate.
“What is it?” Marty asked as he kept one eye on the man, who was still sitting where he’d been told to sit.
“A certificate of baptism,” the cop said.
Marty looked at him.
“What else is in there?” he asked.
The cop looked into the bag again, and then shook his head.
“That’s it; that’s all there is.”
The cop replaced the certificate of baptism and turned back to the man.
“Do you have any ID on you?”
The man said nothing until the cop took a meaningful step towards him, and then:
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s see it.”
The man reached into his pocket and withdrew a wallet that looked just as skinny as he did. He took a card out from it and handed it over to the cop. The cop studied the card before handing it back.
“Maybe it’s time that you headed off to wherever it is you’re going, buddy,” the cop said.
The man slipped the ID back into his wallet and slipped the wallet back into his pocket. He stood up, grabbed his bag from the counter, and disappeared into the rain. It wasn’t until the man had left that Marty noticed the check on the floor and realized the bill hadn’t been settled. He sighed.
“He wasn’t the guy,” the cop said. “The guy who escaped from Easton was named Kemp. That guy’s ID gave his name as Laurence Fallon.”
The cop smiled before taking his seat and finishing his sandwich in two more bites, washing it down with the last of his soda. Marty bent to pick up the fallen check, then took it behind the counter and dropped it into the trash back there.
“What do I owe you?” the cop asked.
“Nothing,” Marty said. “It’s on the house.”
The cop smiled.
“That’s mighty nice of you.”
“Think nothing of it.”
Marty’s eyes drifted down to the cop’s name tag, and he froze. The tag had the name Lyons on it, and there was something smeared on it…something red.
It happened quickly, so quickly that he didn’t even have time to flinch like the last time a gun had been pointed at him. The gun went off, and Marty fell to the ground, leaving a fine mist of pink vapor in the air where his head had just been.
“Mighty nice,” Frank Kemp repeated.
He grabbed the hat off the counter and set it on his head; it wasn’t his hat, but it fit well. It was almost as if it were meant for him.
“I got a lot of work to do tonight,” he spoke to no one. “The job of a lawman is never done.”
Kemp, dressed in a dead man’s uniform, left Marty’s Place then, getting soaked as soon as he stepped outside. It was raining as he got into the police cruiser and drove away. It was raining when he pulled over a car on the nearby highway and shot the couple in the front seat (the child asleep in the backseat was unharmed, but only because Kemp hadn’t noticed him there). It was raining later, when the sun rose unseen behind the clouds, and was raining still when Luis came into work early for the first time since he’d been working there. Even as he shouted out in surprise and fear when he found his boss, the man who’d given Marty’s Place its name, lying dead behind the counter, it was raining.
 
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I wasn’t sure how old I was. Five, six or something like that. It doesn’t matter. My mom was a truck driver and I lost my dad before he even knew he had a son. Whenever I think of my dad, I can only picture my mom’s face. Thankfully, for both my mom and I, we had my grandfather who took us in after the passing of my dad. We didn’t have much, but we have each other which is something I will forever we grateful for.
My mom would sometimes take me on her trips, especially if my grandparents were too busy. I like those trips. We always got to stay at motels. It wasn’t anything fancy but I liked the fact that I didn’t have to make my bed or clean up the house in the morning.
One such trip, I remember cuddling up with my mom watching Christmas Carol or whatever they were playing when we both heard loud banging on our room door. Whoever it was, we both didn’t want to open the door. My mom rushed to the peephole to see a tall, brawny man with a bloody shirt. That didn’t frighten her as much as observing the equally bloody axe he was clenching too.
“Please open the door,” He started whimpering. My mom didn’t answer. “Please, I know you’re there. I can see your shadow.”
My mom didn’t answer or move. She held to the door to make sure he won’t come in. With every passing second, he only got angrier and angrier. His begs soon turned into threats.
“Open this door now or I’ll make sure I am the last person you see today!” He yelled as he started knocking harder and harder.
I wasn’t sure what was happening but I knew my mom was afraid. She gestured me to call 911 but I couldn’t. I froze. After all, I was just a kid. I could see the door budge the more he knocked. I knew the lock wasn’t enough to keep this man out. I squeezed my eyes shut and cupped my ear to keep the yelling away.
Thankfully, that’s when I heard the sirens. The motel manager had called the cops who came and arrested the man. He put up a huge fight, almost knocking two of the cops down but in the end he lost. More gruesome than the man’s yellings were what he had left in the bathtub in his motel room.
My mom and I heard murmurs of how the man had killed his own wife. He chopped her limbs while she was still alive, but the cause of death was the final blow to her head. The cops concluded that he was hunting to kill more, but fortunately, we had the common sense to lock our doors.
After that, you would imagine me having PTSD or some sort of trauma that turned me to some creepy kid but no. Everything was surprisingly good for us. I remember nothing but happy memories after that happened.
However, I wish I cherished those moments better. I wish I never what was going to happen next.
We moved into a new place 2 years after that incident. A beautiful 3-bedroom bungalow that I loved mainly because I finally got my own room. The fact that it was just down the street from my grandparents place was the cherry on top. My mom quit her job as a truck driver and decided to open her own delivery service business. That meant she would stay put in one location while her employees did the driving for her. The best thing was she was around all of the time. She had had one of the rooms turned into a charming office, so she would have more time with me.
Everything seemed to so normal until I met her.
I still remember the night I first met her. I was sleeping in my room when the bathroom door slowly creaked open. At first, she was no more than a chill in the air, a shimmer of mist, diffuse. Then, she slowly materialized in front of me. She whimpered like a lost child with her head still facing down. I could water dripping, but it wasn’t a loose faucet. It was her blood dripping all over the floor. Slowly, she approached me. I still couldn’t find a wound on her for the blood.
Slowly she crawled onto my bed climbing it. I closed my eyes. I told myself it was a dream but could feel the weight of her hand on the covers, moving upwards as if to pull them off me. A foul smell of rotting flesh filled the air. I knew this couldn’t possibly be a dream. I screamed for my mom.
Thankfully, her bedroom was right next to me. She dashed into my room to only watch me whimpering in fear underneath my bedsheet. She sat next to me on my bed and gently opened my blanket to see me crying in fear.
She assumed it was still the trauma of the axe-killer. She kissed my forehead and offered some reassurance that it was all just a dream. Soon, I believed it was simply a dream as well. I wish I wasn’t so naive. I wish I put up a fight, so we would move out right there and then. But, I didn’t.
I visited her every single night since then. Every time I saw her, I would yell for my mom. She did come running to me the first few times but soon her running slowed down to walking and her walks vanished to her, yelling at me to just go back to bed.
I remember one such night. The lady was back, but rather than her whimper, I heard her giggle. No, cackling like a mad woman. That frightened me even more. As usual, she didn’t say a single word but started crawling towards me. I screamed for my mom, but she didn’t come. She didn’t even say a single word.
I prayed and begged for her to go away. I could feel her squarely on top of me as I hid under my blanket. The only shield I had from this monster was a thin layer of linen. Knowing this didn’t give me much comfort. I feel a sudden warm moist spread through the bedsheet followed with a pungent smell.
It occurred to me that I had peeded my bed. Now both disgusted and afraid, I screamed for my mom louder. She finally came in to see a seven-year-old boy screaming underneath the pee, drenched bedsheets and nothing else.
My mom had never hit me before. That night she took her hanger and hit me. She yelled at me for giving her a bad time. She yelled at me for being a coward. After a while I had forgotten how many times, she had hit me. I could only feel the pain throbbing on my skin with bruises and mark all over me. The wounds, already sore, stung when my tears touched them. I whimpered in pain, apologizing over and over again begging her to stop.
However, she didn’t stop until she was satisfied. She finally stopped after what seemed like forever and left me alone in my room. I cried even after she left. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was sure that no one will believe me. No one wanted to help a child who pees his bed.
I decided to solve the issue myself. I ran away to my grandparents and begged them to baptize me. My mom was not religious, but my grandparents were. They took me in, but against my many pleads to not tell my mom where I was, they insisted on calling her.
My mom didn’t seem to care that I had ran away which my grandparents found shocking. But, again with her running her own business and me being a child, they had merely assumed that I was a bit too much for my mom to handle. Moreover, it’s not like I ran away to a stranger’s house.
I must have stayed with them for 1 week until I finally got baptized. My mom was there too. She didn’t appear happy about it, but she didn’t say a word to disagree with my decision. I ended up staying with them for another week before finally going back to my mom.
My mom didn’t even acknowledge that I was back when my grandparents dropped me off. She gave me a cold shoulder and my grandparents a disapproval speech on how they had brainwashed me into baptism.
I didn’t really care because I thought I won’t see her again. But I have never been so wrong.
That night, things only got worse. I always slept with my lights turned on and that night was no exception. I remember tucking myself in since my mom was still mad at me. I slept almost immediately.
I envy heavy sleepers, especially those who could sleep through an explosion. Unfortunately, I wake up easy. The fact that I live in a haunted house probably didn’t help my case, especially that night.
I woke up to a shriek. It couldn’t have been my mom or any other human because the shriek lasted for at least 5 mins. The shriek was close. It sounded as if someone was screaming directly outside the room door. I didn’t dare to get up or call out for my mom.
When the shriek finally stopped, I mustered up the courage to creep out from my bed. I remember that I tiptoed in hopes to not wake anything up or point out my exact location. As soon as I opened the door, my mom was waiting for me, but her glowing red eyes proved that it was something else in her body. Both of her hands was behind her as if she had a surprise for me.
“Tim,” She called out my name. I was certain it must be my birthday. Yes, maybe this was all just a ruse for my surprise party, I remember naively expecting even though deep down I knew my birthday is at least 6 more months to come.
Her head dropped to her left shoulder as if she was a puppet and her right arm pulled from the back showing an axe.
“You’ve been naughty, Tim.” She said. I only could watch in fear, knowing there is not escape for me. I slowly stepped back as she stepped into my room. I glanced to my left catching my bathroom door wide open.
Out of the closet, that lady stepped out grinning with her head dropping to her left.
My mom and the lady whispered to each other as she mimicked every single thing the lady did. My mom and the lady had me corralled in the corner of the bedroom. My mom pointed the axe at me and I couldn’t help closing my eyes in fear. Then, came her chilling word, “I got you now,”
Almost as if I knew what was going to happen, I fell down. However, rather than some shrewd plan I had concocted, it was solely my 7-year-old self struggling to understand what was happening and his legs failing him in the right moment. Thank God for that because I fell down just as my mom threw at my axe at my direction.
With an almighty crash, the axe smashed through the window above me, shards of glass falling all over me, one of them cutting my hand. The sting shocked me enough for me to open my eyes. My mom screamed in anger, hurrying towards me. I was backed to the room window and with no other choice, I jumped out the window.
I wasn’t sure what happened afterwards.
I opened my eyes to the white room with beautiful colorful balloons floating all over me and the sweet smell of flowers. I felt a hand holding my right hand. I looked to my right to see grandma smiling. She was saying something but I couldn’t make up the words. I could hear nothing but a beep.
It took me a while to realize I was in a hospital. My grandpa came rushing in as soon as I opened my eyes with tears rolling down his cheeks. After a while, I was in a position to hear my surroundings.
I couldn’t find my mom anywhere. I asked them where she was but no one answered. Everyone merely glanced away from me. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that she died. I didn’t even attend her funeral.
My grandma told me I survived because I was lucky. My next-door neighbor had seen me fall out of my window when he was bringing his dog out to the pee. He had immediately called the cops and ambulance.
How about that? Saved by a good boy’s urge to pee.
While I was rushed to the hospital, the cops raided my house to find my mom killed with an axe to her head and her limbs chopped. There was no evidence that showed anyone else was there except for me and her.
That was a decade ago. I am content now. I moved in with my grandparents but I don’t have any nightmare, sleeping or awake. I actually even managed to gain a few friends at school.
But I feel like I do still see that lady. Solely from the corner of my eyes, I see her grinning, reminding me that I have never truly escaped. Sometimes she even whispers, “I got you now,”

The distant chirping of birds and the excited chatter of campers roused Seth from his late morning slumber. To maintain a body as devastatingly beautiful as his ego believes he possesses requires a strict regimen of waking up whenever he wants because it doesn’t actually matter. Thank God this wasn’t like a real summer camp, with enforced activities and forced socializing. One of his darkest memories was of a macaroni art session gone wrong when he was nine years old.
The horror. The blood. The glue. The stale pasta. Never again.
He glanced at the clock with a groggy moan of content. 10:31. After blearily brushing his teeth, splashing some warm water on his face, peeling off his unicorn-themed jammies, a confidence-boosting pep talk in the bathroom mirror, a few kissy faces at said foggy mirror and finally taking a nice relaxing bubble bath he emerged from the Hermes cabin stretching and yawning to a bright new day.
For most demigods their morning routine had already started. Training, training, training. Training. All the time? God. He wondered how these maniacs managed it. For the last three months he has coasted along just fine by hopping into the more leisurely activities and trying his hand at the basic sparring lessons. He wasn’t bad at fighting. He also wasn’t good. He also wasn’t great or fantastic or superb or even awful and really that just left ‘pathetic’ as the only remaining descriptor left. The truth hurts, but not as much as a hilt to the side of the skull does. So he gave up that avenue entirely. Being a badass sword-swishing brick shithouse like the War God counselors or that one Heracles demigod was a nice fantasy to have, but just that: a fantasy. His purely average physique could never match some of the unstoppable beefcakes or hyper-competent heroes of literal legend he had been introduced to so far.
“Morning,” he flashed his signature move of double finger guns and a winning wink at a passing pair of gossiping Aphrodite girls. They muttered some less than flattering obscenities about him under their breath as he took up a whistle and gave an overly eager wave to a child of Enyo that shoved him off of the path with just his shoulder in response.
“Loser,” the Enyo Demigod grumbled before going off somewhere to, as far as Seth knew, devour mortal babies to fuel his rippling muscles and listen to heavy rock. What a Gods-damn specimen. He fanned his collar in mock fluster and hopped back onto the trail. “Not so rough, darling,” he called back, shrugging and wiggling his fingers goodbye. Being so unapproachably uncomfortable to bullies always worked in the past, and it was working well now. The angry tower of biceps just groaned and shook his head in disgust. This was only slightly incredibly damaging to Seth’s self esteem.
His stomach grumbled. Speaking of devouring… he could sure go for a big magical breakfast that the magical plates just shit out one after the other. Being semi-divine has got its perks. Plucking the newly purchased silver yoyo from New Argos out of the hammerspace of his back pocket, he continued his musical soliloquy into the pavilion. He’d manage to stack a plate of banana waffles, top them with powdered sugar, sit down and lift up his fork before the entire camp exploded.
A cataclysmic eruption shook Long Island. Shouts of alarm went up into the air. Weapons are drawn. By the time Seth has risen to his feet in a jolt he is brushed aside by a legion of campers. Kit is calling for a head count of his cabin, a younger child from the Demeter cabin is crying, and smoke is rising from what he can only surmise as the canoeing lake. How in the hell did something catch on fire near a body of water?
Thunder cracked like a whip and an oppressive shockwave of heat rolled across the pavilion. Seth felt a magnetic pull urging him towards the epicenter of disaster even as all of his senses screams for retreat. A column of multicolored flames was rising into the sky and roaring, a noise out of subconscious nightmare that rippled with voices belonging to countless tortured souls. It exploded and several cabins wilted under the ensuing shockwave. Seth’s eyes watered and his nose filled with smoke as several splintered pieces of burning wood fell down all around him. What was left of the dock had been jettisoned from the lake and tossed several hundred meters like flaming projectiles.
Someone grabbed at his arm and tried to pull him back. Nobody else was heading towards the sight of the disaster. Nearly everyone was running away. This isn’t right, is it? These people were supposed to be heroes. Why was he the only one unafraid?
“Rally the cabins. Evacuate the beach. The younger demigods need a chaperone. Take them to the Sound. What has happened?” Chiron’s voice commanded immediate order and discipline. The centaur’s hooves galloped behind Seth as the demigod gazed at another volleys fireballs launching into the air. The flickering spheres of death rained down on the cabins, plunging into their roofs and spitting showers of sparks, and a stray blast landed dangerously close to an wooden building near the Arena. The structure went up in flames and a nearby camper screamed.
“The pegasi!”
Chiron roared instructions over the chaos while a dry aura of heat washed over the pavilion. “Send half a dozen capable campers to free them. Hurry! Where is the stable master? We need a visual confirmation of what has invaded our borders.”
“Lord Chiron, she… the Stable Master was at the lake. A date, she said-”
A deadly silence followed another explosion as another camper spoke up. Terrified whispers from eyewitnesses sprouted like weeds in the disorganized assembly about a date at the lake, then a great light enveloping the area. Then the flames, and then the noises. The person grabbing Seth let go, having been startled away by another unearthly howl coming from the blazing beacon, and he marched unbidden towards the heat. The crackling of flames filled his ears with the pounding of blood. He did not notice the sky slowly tinge with yellow melting into the otherwise cloudless blue.
An enormous concave pit of glass and fire awaited him.
The Lake was gone. One hundred percent, as though a God had come down to Earth with aching thirst and taken an unceasing drink until it was all gone. The only hint that there had once been any water at all was the blackened seaweed and charred, misshapen objects that smelled like cooked fish dotting the landscape, steam bursting from their gills with the hiss of escaping air.
The fire had shrunk to a smaller inferno the size and shape of a large crouching figure at the center of the crater. The sounds of camp were replaced by the entity’s labored wheezing and hacking while it clawed repeatedly at something in the clumps of vitrified sand all around it.
The monster had no legs. A mangled blackened torso of twisted metal and bronze wires cut off at the stomach was curled around a pile of cinders, rubbing its face into a blazing and torn Camp Half-Blood t-shirt clutched by bent iron nails. It comforted itself with the shirt even as the article of clothing was quickly annhiliated by unnatural fire. Bronze ribs poked out of a skeletal chest cavity and oil leaked from every orifice. The aberration wailed and rubbed its hollow and sunken eyeless indentations with clenched fists of flaming charcoal. Lava poured from its empty sockets, dripping down the wires like liquid sunlight and the legless creature reared back, extending an unnaturally long neck and exhaling a cone of rippling heat that baked the front of Seth’s body with another layered voice of anguish. He was transfixed by the bizarro renaissance portrait presented to him. The tendrils of glowing wires trailing from its bisected stomach reticulated in a lattice pattern before stretching out and undulating across the sand.
Bits of metal bulged and popped like blisters along its emaciated back. The creature must have been at least twenty-five feet tall with its whole body intact. Whatever it was doing, it hadn’t noticed Seth yet, and that worked just fine. It was time to turn tail and run. He pulled back, his morbid curiosity sated, but clumps of vitrified sand and scorching wires had snaked through the ground and sprouted near him like striking serpents, rooting his shoes down. He swore and began to kick himself free until he heard what would unmistakably be the worst sound to ever enter his ears.
The mechanical devil had glanced down and plucked several burnt bones from the pile of ashes that used to belong to a camper and messily devoured them while retching in disgust at its own actions. The orange knives that formed its teeth managed to cough out a word that resembled ”Crecklan” while it choked on the bones, grinding its unhinged jaw and grabbing at the bone matter that tumbled out of its torn metal throat to pour it back into its maw. Crackling? Cracking? There sure was a whole damn lot of cracking going on, that was for sure.
An aura of fire ballooned outwards from the evaporated lake. Seth’s clothes steamed and small fires started on the trees lining the forest. The world melted around the desiccated automaton colossus. Bronze gears fused together by heat ground against each other and sent glittering sparks out of its spine.
“Excuse me,” Seth croaked from the top of the lake, which may have been the stupidest move ever conceived, because the thing actually heard him, craning its neck and gnashing the knife-teeth into a skull that still had a few strands of burning blonde hair. It planted its fist into the ground and the sand exploded as it loomed up and then reached out, a seaweed-clogged truss of bronze and deformed joints that clawed at the air before plunging down and gripping the beach. It dragged its body forward with a wail of hunger, rolling an oily black tongue that flicked across its face and then fell out, twitching and trailing wires. The wormlike tongue twisted in on itself and sank into the melting sand.
The behemoth’s speed increased and Seth only had time to scream an unflattering noise of pure fear before it was upon him, wrapping its white-hot nails around his body and picking him up before breathing a wave of haunting laughter mixed with unrelenting flames right into his face. His eyebrows and hair were alight, and he only had to suffer for a few moments more in the nuclear baptism before the sky turned white and so did the rest of the world.
Seth sat up and flung the blanket away. The clock by the bed read 10:31. He was burning up, drenched in sweat and clawing for his throat. He stumbled off of his bed and hurried for the bathroom sink, tripping over piles of folded laundry. He put his mouth to the faucet, a move that made brain explode with shame, as he drank from the bathroom sink until he leaned back sputtering and clutching the porcelain for support. The events of the nightmare played like a movie reel in the back of his eyes. The looming machine of coal and Hell. The blazing wires like Medusa’s serpents, or veins dangling from its legless body as it cried and ate the remains of a camper. That wasn’t real. Just a dream. Just a nightmare.
He looked down and saw charcoal on his hands. Seth trembled and thrust them into the water to clean them even as the burning sensation was still licking at him from the inside.
The ensuing bubble bath was a lot less fun than it should have been. All he could picture was the tub going up in smoke, the cold water evaporating against his overheating skin, the bubbles filling with gunpowder and exploding. Never before had a nightmare of his been so vivid, not even when he dreamt of his mother, dreams of the funeral parlor’s caskets opening one by one and revealing copies upon copies of Fiona before closing again in a macabre magician’s act. That recurring nightmare was creepy. This was downright maddening.
Time for breakfast. Hopefully they had pancakes today.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s historical thesaurus lists eleven words in the category “undress or remove clothing [verb (intransitive)],” not including subcategories. These are, listed from least seductive to most: unrig, unbusk, uncase, peel, disarray, unattire, disapparel, disrobe, strip, undress, and shuck. Unlike the lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines, which were removed and placed in jars, Egyptian pharaohs were mummified with their hearts, which, if proven unworthy in the afterlife, would be eaten. So, what’s your ribcage protecting?
Our classmates all said that her hair was windswept, but they’re just unobservant. There was never a strand out of place on her head, and her locks bobbed lighter than air as she wove through the air. If anything, her hair swept the wind across the ground she trod. Aristotle said that there must have been a first, unmoved mover to set the cosmos in motion. Why not her?
They were too stunned to be attracted to her. They looked at her like a work of fine craftsmanship or a beautiful but meaningless natural phenomenon, like snowfall or an especially bright lightning bolt. I thought that she had all the best parts of all the best women, or, to be more precise, they had all taken a piece of her as a dividend for their share of existence. The Norse believed that the world was fashioned from the body of a giant. Why not her?
She shucked me like an oyster; here is my pearl.
On our first date, she had smelled like Cuir de Russie. I never thought that a girl like that would alter something as intimate as her scent for a guy like me. She was my friend, my love, my cynosure, my lab partner.
We took a chemistry course together one summer, but we were astronomy majors. We both had a thing for ice giants and, later, each other. We studied together for our final, and she told me that her family had a place in the woods. She wanted to take me there for the weekend before the start of the second summer session. We were in a rural-enough town that having a cabin in the woods wasn’t weird, and it was just the encouragement I needed to pull the trigger on a new telescope. She got an A in the class; I got an A-. There was something very summa-cum-laude about her that made classmates sigh in anticipation of time wasted on irrelevant minutiae every time she opened her mouth without really giving her a chance to prove them wrong, although I’d probably hate her too if I just wanted to get in, get my C, and get out.
She picked me up. We drove for a long time. I thought that at any second the telephone poles by the side of the road would just stop, and we’d have slipped the tendrils of civilization. It was night-time when we finally arrived, and she got out of the car to unlock the wrought-iron gate. As we meandered up the drive, I tried to remember her last name. Plantagenet, de’ Medici, Hapsburg? Maybe she’d have monogrammed hand towels to give me a hint. The estate was huge. I didn’t think that we had châteaux like that in America.
“There’s something that I didn’t tell you,” she said after shutting the front door behind me. “I’m a nudist.” She left me a trail of clothes to the bedroom, and we slipped the tendrils of civilization.
I thought that she was joking, but she never put her clothes back on. We went to the roof and set the telescope up. It was a warm summer night. We had an alright view of Mars and Jupiter. I was really excited to try the new telescope out, but she wasn’t enthusiastic about anything but the planets. I went to bed after a while, but she stayed. As I left, she was looking through the telescope unmoving and entranced. I found a bathroom just to run the faucet to check if there was running water. The telephone poles had followed us, but I was skeptical of the water pipes. Sure enough, hot and cold water were available at the twist of a cross handle.
I’m a pretty light sleeper, and she didn’t wake me up coming to bed. The next day, she told me that she had gone to the wrong bedroom and slept there because she was too tired to find mine.
She made scrambled eggs for me for breakfast, but they were just way too creamy for me, with nary a curd to be found. Why even cook eggs if you’re just going to liquefy them again? She told me that her jaw hurt, so she didn’t eat anything. She didn’t drink anything, either. She kept moving it around and rubbing it from ear to throat.
After breakfast, she took me on a tour of the house. There were black-and-white photographs of her ancestors on the walls. I noticed that none of them really looked liked her, but there’s no polite way to ask if someone’s adopted. I eventually realized that her ancestors didn’t really look like each other, either. I’m still not sure if it’s more impolite to ask if everyone in a family is adopted than to single out one member. As we walked past one door, she said, “The crypt is down there.”
The farther we walked through her labyrinthine home, the more her nudity menaced me. I’ve always been a bit of a prude, and standing naked before a picture of your great-uncle definitely lacks decorum—you share twelve-and-a-half percent of your genes with those—, but this wasn’t prudishness; it was fear. She was exultant in a way that I couldn’t understand, as were her ancestors, who lacked their era’s signature severity. She was still rattling her jaw around her mouth like she had forgotten where it naturally rests, moving it in and out, side to side, and up and down. When she stuck her jaw out, I thought that maybe she really was a Hapsburg. Back in the kitchen, I heard two pops and a shallow moan of satisfaction. Her jaw had become unhinged. She wrote me a note that said that it was a recurring condition and she just needed to take an aspirin, pop it back in, and lie down for a while. She locked herself in some bedroom, and I tried to call her an ambulance. The phone wasn’t working.
I tried knocking on her door, but she slipped another note under the door to say that she wanted just to sleep it off and she’d wake up from her nap before lunch. I fell asleep on a couch watching a VHS of “Gremlins” and tried to reassure myself with the thought that I was dating the only girl in the world prettier than Phoebe Cates and the current weirdness was totally worth it.
When I awoke, she was on all fours and watching me. Her jaw hung loose, seemingly only attached to her face by skin without muscles. Her limbs were splayed out to the side like a lizard. I climbed over the couch, tipping it over to run away. She chased me down a hall at a swaying gallop. I twisted the knob of every door as I ran, but they were all locked until I got to the crypt. The crypt key was in the keyhole on the inside, and I locked her out. Her cries faded as I descended the stairs into the crypt.
The crypt was almost worse than her. The spiders and centipedes were bad enough, but at least natural. At some point, the brick floor, walls, and ceiling ended, and I was in a tunnel with wooden frame support. I walked along the dirt floor with a light bulb hanging overhead every few feet. There were paintings of the same men and women whom I had seen upstairs nailed to the frames, but after their transformations. Below each portrait in a niche was the skull of the individual. All were toothless and had too many eye sockets, although the exact number and arrangement varied. Despite the range of their deformities, they did have a certain cohesion in the same way that different breeds are all recognized as dogs. I’m sure that they would say that that had been reformed rather than deformed, and they looked out on me with dignified compassion from eyes at every angle. I found them sickening all the same and puked on natural history’s unluckiest house centipede.
I came to an elevator at the end of the tunnel. It only went down. Rather than stay or take my chances with the elevator, I returned to my girlfriend to negotiate a conditional surrender through the door. It was lunchtime, and I was hungry again. Her speech had returned. She spoke in siren syllables allophonic to the vowels and consonants of our tongue. I’m still not sure if I understood the words themselves, or only their beauty.
She told me her side of the story, the tale of living bodies. Everyone is familiar with astrology, the thesis of which is that our fortunes and feelings are influenced by the lights in the night sky. This belief of the Romans has even influenced our language. Mercury was said to make one mercurial; Venus, venereal, Mars, martial; Jupiter, jovial; Saturn, saturnine. She told me that this was understated to falsehood. The planets had invented these emotions and had been guiding our evolution, psychology, and society since earliest life.
I asked her about the sun, stars, earth, moon, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. She told me that sun and stars are lifeless. The moon, unlike the other bodies, has two lives in it. The moon was formed by the collision of the planet Theia and the earth, after which the living substances of both planets were launched into space with the debris that coalesced into the moon, leaving the earth lifeless. The contradictions in the moon’s dual natures are why it enflames lunacy. She told me that no one had ever heard the voice of a planet passed Saturn. They were just too far away.
I asked her why she had transformed, and she told me that she was reanimating the earth. The portraits in the mansion weren’t of her ancestors, but of her predecessors who had climbed down into the earth to revive it. The paintings in the crypt were self-portraits. The skulls weren’t theirs, but another kind of self portrait carved from the skull of someone whom the craftsman had loved. They had called out to her to tell her that she was next and invited her into their consciousness. I was her plus-one to the end of the world. The great undertaking had begun here centuries ago, and the estate was once a colony for the elect in our region. Their vein was almost full, and she would be the last, along with me if I accepted. She told me not to make my mind up until I had seen it for myself.
I opened the door and saw how she had managed to talk to me. She was sitting on her hind legs with one of her forelimbs under her jaw and the other in her mouth. Her new tongue and loose and immobile jaw had made the usual mechanics of speech impossible, so she was using her hands to do what they do in a normal mouth. She looked, more than anything, like Winnie the Pooh with a pawful of honey in his mouth. I couldn’t help but smile, and she smiled back with a new sort of smile. She fell forward onto all fours and looked at me with an eye on top of her head. It was the same green as her other eyes.
We walked back to the elevator. She wasn’t so scary at a trot. As she sidestepped my mess, she gave me a look every bit as expressive as those given by her front eyes. The elevator was too small for both of us to stand, but it was tall enough for her to climb up the side and hang from the top. It was a long ride down. I occasionally glanced back up at her, and, during one glance, she opened a fourth eye on the back of her head. It winked at me.
I had forgetting what a playful little scamp she was! I wondered how much of our afternoon tiff was due to my disappointment at breakfast. Those eggs had caused all of the day’s problems. “How many of those are you going to grow?” I asked. She let go with her forelimbs, hung down, and assured me that that was the last one, and then we Spider-Man kissed. She tasted better than ever, but my tongue and lip nerves misfired as we touched. She was intactile.
The elevator stopped, and we walked out to a chasm. She took me to the edge, and I looked down. I saw a squirming knot of bodies, the aristocracy of the transmogrified. More than by the sight and sound, I was taken aback by the enormity. “The training used to last for years,” she told me. The entire estate had been an orchard, and young men and women worked during the day and learned at night from the elders, who spent their days in communion with the vein. After years of deafening oneself to the planets, joining the great undertaking was baptism, matrimony, and funeral. As the colony waned and the vein waxed, the rites had fallen into disuse. She was sorry I had to choose so soon, but she didn’t want me to lose me to the planets.
I had only just learned of the living bodies, but if I owed them everything, then could they be so bad? Could they be real? The idea of a new earth for a new humanity was romantic, but was it good? I couldn’t see lunch from breakfast, let alone the fate of our species from a cosmic revolt. The great undertaking was too great be a lateral move. I was being asked to participate in the salvation or damnation of cellular life, and couldn’t tell the difference. I couldn’t feel it, but she held my hand.
“I hope that I’ll see you down there,” she said before jumping. The vein took on a faint, chrysolite glow. They were beautiful. I heard her voice in their song. My toes and nose peeked over the edge. The air smelled so warm. All I could think about were my favorite stuffed animals, like they were the ones who had stitched and stuffed every sign of affection from my childhood to beg my patience until they could hold me themselves. I only gave them my tears.
I took the elevator back up to the crypt. It was night-time. I went to the roof to collect my telescope before searching the house for her car keys. I took a moment to look at the planets. If earth was lifeless, then who had taught them how to revive it? I had thought that the veins transformed the chosen, but then how had the first man or woman been transformed, and by what power? Which planets had invented kindness, forgiveness, and tenderness? I wish that I had asked. As I stood there, my love lay miles underfoot, and the planets hung from the firmament, quick and queathing.

The distant chirping of birds and the excited chatter of campers roused Seth from his late morning slumber. To maintain a body as devastatingly beautiful as his ego believes he possesses requires a strict regimen of waking up whenever he wants because it doesn’t actually matter. Thank God this wasn’t like a real summer camp, with enforced activities and forced socializing. One of his darkest memories was of a macaroni art session gone wrong when he was nine years old.
The horror. The blood. The glue. The stale pasta. Never again.
He glanced at the clock with a groggy moan of content. 10:31. After blearily brushing his teeth, splashing some warm water on his face, peeling off his unicorn-themed jammies, a confidence-boosting pep talk in the bathroom mirror, a few kissy faces at said foggy mirror and finally taking a nice relaxing bubble bath he emerged from the Hermes cabin stretching and yawning to a bright new day.
For most demigods their morning routine had already started. Training, training, training. Training. All the time? God. He wondered how these maniacs managed it. For the last three months he has coasted along just fine by hopping into the more leisurely activities and trying his hand at the basic sparring lessons. He wasn’t bad at fighting. He also wasn’t good. He also wasn’t great or fantastic or superb or even awful and really that just left ‘pathetic’ as the only remaining descriptor left. The truth hurts, but not as much as a hilt to the side of the skull does. So he gave up that avenue entirely. Being a badass sword-swishing brick shithouse like the War God counselors or that one Heracles demigod was a nice fantasy to have, but just that: a fantasy. His purely average physique could never match some of the unstoppable beefcakes or hyper-competent heroes of literal legend he had been introduced to so far.
“Morning,” he flashed his signature move of double finger guns and a winning wink at a passing pair of gossiping Aphrodite girls. They muttered some less than flattering obscenities about him under their breath as he took up a whistle and gave an overly eager wave to a child of Enyo that shoved him off of the path with just his shoulder in response.
“Loser,” the Enyo Demigod grumbled before going off somewhere to, as far as Seth knew, devour mortal babies to fuel his rippling muscles and listen to heavy rock. What a Gods-damn specimen. He fanned his collar in mock fluster and hopped back onto the trail. “Not so rough, darling,” he called back, shrugging and wiggling his fingers goodbye. Being so unapproachably uncomfortable to bullies always worked in the past, and it was working well now. The angry tower of biceps just groaned and shook his head in disgust. This was only slightly incredibly damaging to Seth’s self esteem.
His stomach grumbled. Speaking of devouring… he could sure go for a big magical breakfast that the magical plates just shit out one after the other. Being semi-divine has got its perks. Plucking the newly purchased silver yoyo from New Argos out of the hammerspace of his back pocket, he continued his musical soliloquy into the pavilion. He’d manage to stack a plate of banana waffles, top them with powdered sugar, sit down and lift up his fork before the entire camp exploded.
A cataclysmic eruption shook Long Island. Shouts of alarm went up into the air. Weapons are drawn. By the time Seth has risen to his feet in a jolt he is brushed aside by a legion of campers. Kit is calling for a head count of his cabin, a younger child from the Demeter cabin is crying, and smoke is rising from what he can only surmise as the canoeing lake. How in the hell did something catch on fire near a body of water?
Thunder cracked like a whip and an oppressive shockwave of heat rolled across the pavilion. Seth felt a magnetic pull urging him towards the epicenter of disaster even as all of his senses screams for retreat. A column of multicolored flames was rising into the sky and roaring, a noise out of subconscious nightmare that rippled with voices belonging to countless tortured souls. It exploded and several cabins wilted under the ensuing shockwave. Seth’s eyes watered and his nose filled with smoke as several splintered pieces of burning wood fell down all around him. What was left of the dock had been jettisoned from the lake and tossed several hundred meters like flaming projectiles.
Someone grabbed at his arm and tried to pull him back. Nobody else was heading towards the sight of the disaster. Nearly everyone was running away. This isn’t right, is it? These people were supposed to be heroes. Why was he the only one unafraid?
“Rally the cabins. Evacuate the beach. The younger demigods need a chaperone. Take them to the Sound. What has happened?” Chiron’s voice commanded immediate order and discipline. The centaur’s hooves galloped behind Seth as the demigod gazed at another volleys fireballs launching into the air. The flickering spheres of death rained down on the cabins, plunging into their roofs and spitting showers of sparks, and a stray blast landed dangerously close to an wooden building near the Arena. The structure went up in flames and a nearby camper screamed.
“The pegasi!”
Chiron roared instructions over the chaos while a dry aura of heat washed over the pavilion. “Send half a dozen capable campers to free them. Hurry! Where is the stable master? We need a visual confirmation of what has invaded our borders.”
“Lord Chiron, she… the Stable Master was at the lake. A date, she said-”
A deadly silence followed another explosion as another camper spoke up. Terrified whispers from eyewitnesses sprouted like weeds in the disorganized assembly about a date at the lake, then a great light enveloping the area. Then the flames, and then the noises. The person grabbing Seth let go, having been startled away by another unearthly howl coming from the blazing beacon, and he marched unbidden towards the heat. The crackling of flames filled his ears with the pounding of blood. He did not notice the sky slowly tinge with yellow melting into the otherwise cloudless blue.
An enormous concave pit of glass and fire awaited him.
The Lake was gone. One hundred percent, as though a God had come down to Earth with aching thirst and taken an unceasing drink until it was all gone. The only hint that there had once been any water at all was the blackened seaweed and charred, misshapen objects that smelled like cooked fish dotting the landscape, steam bursting from their gills with the hiss of escaping air.
The fire had shrunk to a smaller inferno the size and shape of a large crouching figure at the center of the crater. The sounds of camp were replaced by the entity’s labored wheezing and hacking while it clawed repeatedly at something in the clumps of vitrified sand all around it.
The monster had no legs. A mangled blackened torso of twisted metal and bronze wires cut off at the stomach was curled around a pile of cinders, rubbing its face into a blazing and torn Camp Half-Blood t-shirt clutched by bent iron nails. It comforted itself with the shirt even as the article of clothing was quickly annhiliated by unnatural fire. Bronze ribs poked out of a skeletal chest cavity and oil leaked from every orifice. The aberration wailed and rubbed its hollow and sunken eyeless indentations with clenched fists of flaming charcoal. Lava poured from its empty sockets, dripping down the wires like liquid sunlight and the legless creature reared back, extending an unnaturally long neck and exhaling a cone of rippling heat that baked the front of Seth’s body with another layered voice of anguish. He was transfixed by the bizarro renaissance portrait presented to him. The tendrils of glowing wires trailing from its bisected stomach reticulated in a lattice pattern before stretching out and undulating across the sand.
Bits of metal bulged and popped like blisters along its emaciated back. The creature must have been at least twenty-five feet tall with its whole body intact. Whatever it was doing, it hadn’t noticed Seth yet, and that worked just fine. It was time to turn tail and run. He pulled back, his morbid curiosity sated, but clumps of vitrified sand and scorching wires had snaked through the ground and sprouted near him like striking serpents, rooting his shoes down. He swore and began to kick himself free until he heard what would unmistakably be the worst sound to ever enter his ears.
The mechanical devil had glanced down and plucked several burnt bones from the pile of ashes that used to belong to a camper and messily devoured them while retching in disgust at its own actions. The orange knives that formed its teeth managed to cough out a word that resembled ”Crecklan” while it choked on the bones, grinding its unhinged jaw and grabbing at the bone matter that tumbled out of its torn metal throat to pour it back into its maw. Crackling? Cracking? There sure was a whole damn lot of cracking going on, that was for sure.
An aura of fire ballooned outwards from the evaporated lake. Seth’s clothes steamed and small fires started on the trees lining the forest. The world melted around the desiccated automaton colossus. Bronze gears fused together by heat ground against each other and sent glittering sparks out of its spine.
“Excuse me,” Seth croaked from the top of the lake, which may have been the stupidest move ever conceived, because the thing actually heard him, craning its neck and gnashing the knife-teeth into a skull that still had a few strands of burning blonde hair. It planted its fist into the ground and the sand exploded as it loomed up and then reached out, a seaweed-clogged truss of bronze and deformed joints that clawed at the air before plunging down and gripping the beach. It dragged its body forward with a wail of hunger, rolling an oily black tongue that flicked across its face and then fell out, twitching and trailing wires. The wormlike tongue twisted in on itself and sank into the melting sand.
The behemoth’s speed increased and Seth only had time to scream an unflattering noise of pure fear before it was upon him, wrapping its white-hot nails around his body and picking him up before breathing a wave of haunting laughter mixed with unrelenting flames right into his face. His eyebrows and hair were alight, and he only had to suffer for a few moments more in the nuclear baptism before the sky turned white and so did the rest of the world.
Seth sat up and flung the blanket away. The clock by the bed read 10:31. He was burning up, drenched in sweat and clawing for his throat. He stumbled off of his bed and hurried for the bathroom sink, tripping over piles of folded laundry. He put his mouth to the faucet, a move that made brain explode with shame, as he drank from the bathroom sink until he leaned back sputtering and clutching the porcelain for support. The events of the nightmare played like a movie reel in the back of his eyes. The looming machine of coal and Hell. The blazing wires like Medusa’s serpents, or veins dangling from its legless body as it cried and ate the remains of a camper. That wasn’t real. Just a dream. Just a nightmare.
He looked down and saw charcoal on his hands. Seth trembled and thrust them into the water to clean them even as the burning sensation was still licking at him from the inside.
The ensuing bubble bath was a lot less fun than it should have been. All he could picture was the tub going up in smoke, the cold water evaporating against his overheating skin, the bubbles filling with gunpowder and exploding. Never before had a nightmare of his been so vivid, not even when he dreamt of his mother, dreams of the funeral parlor’s caskets opening one by one and revealing copies upon copies of Fiona before closing again in a macabre magician’s act. That recurring nightmare was creepy. This was downright maddening.
Time for breakfast. Hopefully they had pancakes today.
OOC: Please enjoy the first of several word vomits, featuring Brandon, except not quite. :)

This post will mostly be about me, but to explain what I'm striving towards I have to explain not only my own religious views but also why I think that religion and spirituality can go hand in hand with being a Sith. A member of the Discord-server and I got into a discussion about the occult which then stumbled unto my religious views, as some might know I identify as Christian and the question from was: How can I conform to Christianity and still be a Sith? With the focus being that Christianity is a form of slavery of the self with absolute adherence to a belief system and a malevolent entity that demands our praise. So I'm here to write a post about how and why I can call myself a Christian and a Sith at the same time because I think it can be enlightening to many but I have to start at the beginning.
My spiritual journey began at a young age, I grew up in a semi-devout Christian family and was taught all the standard platitudes of what that entails. The short story is that I never considered myself a Christian growing up and I imagined everyone (including my family) was deluded into believing any of that crap. When I then reached my teenage years I found myself lacking spirituality in my life and started my life-long quest of finding out "the truth". Was there anything out there that we mere humans couldn't grasp or understand? I took a deep dive into anything spiritual and specially the occult practices that I could lay my hands on. I studied all the major religions except Christianity since I reasoned that I already knew that stuff since I grew up with it, and tried many different religious practices all to no avail, I felt no closer connection with anything. Then I stumbled upon the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey, it was a different type of spirituality since there was no dogma, the only 'god' that existed was me according to LaVey. But at the same time the book discussed so-called Satanic Magick and detailed not only rituals but it also contained within it the Enochian Keys which to me felt very spiritual at the time. So I knew that I was still searching for something... More.
My research led me unto Gnosticism and from that to Luciferianism, seeing Lucifer not only as a symbol but rather as a true entity of Light, the light bearer, the bringer of freedom and knowledge. Here I started to find a true spiritual connection, I felt some connection with the divine realm and for many years I kept referring to myself as a Luciferian. I viewed the light bringer as the divine entity of freedom, of untethered knowledge, of enlightenment and as the champion of what was good from my point of view. This is in great opposition to the Lucifer described in Jewish and Christian mythos, since I never associated Lucifer with Satan. I remember clearly one time where I was in an argument with a Christian who called me a devil worshiper that I said: "I don't worship the Snake, I worship the fruit of Eden, bringer of knowledge."
In later years I shed the epithet of Luciferianism, mostly because it brought with it so many deeply ingrained opinions and ideas that Lucifer was the Devil. Instead I started to call myself a Promethean Gnostic, seeing that I saw Prometheus and Lucifer as the same entity with different names. This due to reading up for years, still searching for the truth. During the same time my sense of right and wrong got it's foundations built as I was becoming an adult (~22 years old) and I started seeing not only spirituality as important but also things like morals and ideals concerning 'real life'. 2013 I laid the foundations of the Sith Order based mostly on my own believes and based on the different philosophies that I subscribed to. This is why many members rightfully has claimed that our order has similarities with Satanism (LaVeyism) and the ideals of people like Nietzsche to name a few sources. It was with what I knew at the time that I laid the foundations of the order. But what was clear to me at that time was that the most important thing, beyond any spiritual practices or morals was the edict that still rules the foundations of the order: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." This was the epitome of freedom in my eyes (and still is) and whatever spirituality I myself followed and used as a foundation for the order, the ideals of freedom above all was most important.
So, at the age of 23 I thought I was done with the quest to find the right path and that I only needed to perfect my spirituality, only needed to fine-tune the practices in my life. I settled into adult life going forth with my daily life as best I could. But there would come times where I faltered in my faith, sure I "knew" that I was right, that I had found the right path but I still deep down also knew that I was missing something, I had still not learned the truth that I had been seeking for, the truth that started my journey. So I hit the books again, dove deeper into gnosticism, trying to find the ultimate truth with one question in mind: "If the light bringer is real, who created him?"
This question drove me further than I care to admit, I tried to find the truth with many differing occult practices. Everything from scrying for answers, to channeling spirits, to summoning malevolent entities. I learned deep meditation and self-hypnosis techniques to further explore the depths of my soul, figuring that if I could find out where I came from then maybe I could find "the source" - The creator, the beginning of all things. I went to mystics, I had my cards read, I had a trained hypnotherapist guide me through a "past life regression"-therapy and I searched for answers to the eternal question - Who is the creator? And with each step I took I felt less and less connection to my own spirituality, because the more I learned, the more I realized that people had gone mad in search for the answer to this question long before I drew my first breath. I fell into a spiritual black-hole of sorts, disavowing Prometheus. Sure, 'he' was a symbol for all the things I held sacred, but he wasn't the source of everything, he wasn't the creator, he was just part of creation and that wasn't what I had been searching for. At this time I was 28 years old and my life was falling apart due to other circumstances than my spirituality. I got deeply depressed due to many circumstances, but it got compounded by the fact that I was going through what is called a spiritual crisis.
I told myself and anyone who would listen (anyone in this context is any spiritual entity) that if I was shown true divinity, some absolute proof, I would dedicate my life to whichever entity that would unveil the truth for me. I was also going through massive pain due to my fibromyalgia at this point, and the pain I went through in 2018 was the worst pain I have ever been in thus far. I prayed, to Prometheus, to the world spirit, to anything that I could think of, to show me some way to escape this pain. No one listened. No answers came. Nothing revealed itself and the truth was still being kept from me all while my pain just kept getting worse. I started to wonder if all my spiritual and occult experiences in my life was just my own delusions. I had no absolute proof of what I had seen, heard and felt. I only knew pain and with that pain it was getting harder and harder to keep any spiritual practices and spirituality became null in my mind. I gave up. In 2019 I was hospitalized due to a damaged nerve in my spine and the pain I experienced then almost drove me to suicide. I wanted to die. Then I met Tim.
Tim came to the hospital to visit me due to one of his friends who was sharing a room with me. His friend had invited him to help me deal with the doctors because I wasn't being listened to nor treated at that hellhole. But to my surprise, the first thing he asked of me was if he could pray for me. I was surprised and a bit angry, but I shrugged and told him that I would allow it, not that I believed it could actually do anything, as I had had people pray for me before in my life and it never did anything other than make me watch them with contempt at their stupidity. So he lay his hands on me and started praying, in tongues, an I rolled my eyes in disbelief but I let him continue without interrupting him thinking that it was better to just let him finish so we could proceed. But to my astonishment, something happened. I felt a crack in my spine and I fell down on the floor with tears pouring from my eyes as if someone had opened a faucet and I started to say: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, forgive me" over and over again, all while crying my eyes out. I didn't know why, I didn't know to whom I was speaking nor to what purpose I was still laying on the floor. But he continued praying for me as if nothing had happened and after a while he asked me to stand up and to walk through the room (which I was hardly able to do before we sat down together). I was alarmed to realize that not only could I walk properly without experiencing pain, my I could feel my fibromyalgia pain receding too.
A month after this encounter, I had deep-dived into the bible, I had thousands of questions that I felt needed to be answered. Because I was sure that I could find something, anything, that would disprove what he did as not being part of the Christian doctrine. I was sure that whatever happened must've been part of something more... sinister. But the more I read, the more I researched the more at peace I felt. Then on a cold late autumn afternoon, I got baptized in a lake here in Sweden, by the very person who had prayed for me and a friend of his. And in that baptism something wondrous happened. I felt it, with my entire essence, my very soul - Eternity. I was down under the surface of the water for no more than two seconds, but I experienced a lifetime of spiritual presence unlike anything I had ever felt before. I connected with an entity that was so pure, an entity of infinite love, I became one with the Creator and creation itself. I had finally found the truth and I had the absolute proof I had asked for. Today, my pain is better than it has been for years and for each passing day it keeps getting better and better. Sure I am still struggling with things like depression and other mental disorders such as my PTSD, but even through that I still feel at peace, I feel loved and most importantly I feel FREE.
So - How can I identify as a Christian and a Sith at the same time? Easy, my connection to Christ hasn't hindered how I live my life. Many people think that being a Christian means that you subscribe to some sort of self imposed slavery, bowing to a malevolent God that demands our loyalty but it's simply not true for many reasons with the main reason being that being a Christian simply means that you have accepted Jesus as your savior, through the baptism and through faith and love. Through Jesus I was healed and through Jesus I was set free from the things that bound me to the physical realm, mainly pain. It was a choice that I made, not one that was forced upon me and I made the choice gladly because why wouldn't I love a benevolent entity like God when I could sense him, feel him, hear his voice and receive the healing that was offered to me even when I doubted? Being a Christian is not synonymous with being a Catholic or a Protestant, being a Christian has nothing to do with which Church you visit nor which of the passages of the bible you choose to live your life according to. Being a Christian is all about accepting the love of Christ into your heart.
I don't feel less free, I don't feel that I have to live my life in adherence to some archaic rules put forth by humans that has done so "in the name of Christ" nor do I feel a sense of not being in control of my own life. I am the one in control of my own life, God has given me the free will to do what I want, and I choose to praise him, with my breath I breathe in the love of God and with my words I praise him, not as a slave but rather as a free man. Not because I want to gain something out of it, but rather because I love him, with all my heart, because of all that he has given me. I choose to follow the path laid out by God because I feel that he knows best about those things that I know nothing about, he is the Creator who has forged eternity and I feel blessed to walk by his side by my own free will.
Let's as a closing point examine the Sith Code.
Peace is a lie. There is only Passion. Through Passion I gain Strength. Through Strength I gain Power. Through Power I gain Victory. Through Victory my chains are Broken. The Force shall free me.
What is love if not passion? My love of God has granted me strength. Through that strength I have gained power over my own life, I feel less alone, less afraid and more in tune with the universe around us. That power has allowed me to come closer to personal victories, in short term my pain, in long term the victory over my spiritual crisis. The end of my crisis broke many of my chains that kept me bound to thoughts that undermined my progress through life. And the force, did free me. I just call that force, God.