i think my brain Is rotting in places
Contains: Abuse, death, incest, pedophilia, rape, (religious) psychosis, suicide, violence, unreality.
You sit near the riverbank, with your bare feet in the rushing water. For a moment, you pretend the river is Jesus, washing your feet and taking your sins with it. That could be sacrilege. You drown the thought. Something crackles in the distance, but you don’t turn towards the sound. No one would think to look for you here, not in the dead of night. They’re all asleep, except for Devolo, who wouldn’t care if you died out here.
The night is cold, dry. It’s hard to find dry in a Georgia April, but you like it. You fiddle with the corner of your Bible. You can’t read much, even with the full moon, but you flip through the pages anyway. There’s a humming in the distance, a radio tower crackling. You find yourself harmonizing with it, letting the right words creep up your lungs and crawl through your throat and fall off your lips.
“You sound real nice,” says a voice behind you.
You stall and stop. You glance over your shoulder, watching in the corner of your eye as a boy in overalls– probably your age, maybe thirteen and not twelve– sits down next to you. He reaches out, and you can see his hand pick up a rock by your feet.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Ashton Peter Carter,” you say, like you’re introducing yourself to Mama’s church friends. “Who are you?”
“Jude.”
“Just Jude?”
“Just Jude.”
Just Jude turns his head and puts his hand out, offering you the rock. You shake your head and he pulls back.
“How old are you?” you ask.
“How old do I look?” he asks back, like he doesn’t quite know himself.
“Thirteen?”
“Don’t like that number. Better be fourteen instead.” He turns his head, moonlit brown curls falling in front of his eyes. “How ‘bout you?”
“Twelve. Really, how old are you?”
You can’t see it too well in the dark, but he seems to crinkle up his nose. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Fourteen’s good enough.”
He offers you the rock again. You hesitate. He pushes it into your hand.
You watch as it twists in your palm from a rock to a silver button, catching in the moonlight. You gasp, and marvel at it. “How?”
“I’m blessed by God. I’ve been doin’ this as long as I can remember.”
You don’t know how to answer that, so you go back to singing, and aren’t too surprised when he joins in. He makes a harmony in a voice he doesn’t have. Eventually the two of you fall into a rhythm, trading melody against each other. Just Jude takes to tapping out a beat against his thighs.
Then his song fades out, and so does yours. You can’t get yourself to turn your head to look at him.
“My mama says I’m blessed, too,” you try.
“Uh-huh?”
The button still has the weight of the stone. You toss it in your hand a few times. “I see angels. And demons. I can’t tell the difference, but… They talk to me, and I talk back. Mama knew it before I did. I think she sees them too.”
“Does she try to beat the blessin’ outta you?”
“N-No!”
“My daddy beats me,” Just Jude says, putting his bare feet into the water. You realize you never saw him take off his shoes. “Tries to kill me so I don’t have to live with God’s blessing anymore.”
Your stomach turns, and you press your thumb into the button. You see Just Jude smile out of the corner of your eye.
“God says I’m gonna kill him one day.”
You stammer for a second, feeling a cough welling up in your lungs. “He really wants you to do that?”
“He wouldn’t drive me to these thoughts if He didn’t want me to act on them,” he tells you.
“What if it’s a test? Something to teach you how to resist sin?”
“Is that what God was tryin’ to do when He made Lucifer? When He got Abel to give up his best sheep? That’s what He was tryin’ to do when He put the apple in Eden?”
“But Eve gave us free will.”
“No she didn’t,” Just Jude laughs. “She ate God’s favorite fruit and He got mad, so He cursed us all to think that we have control over the life He made for us. We’re fish in a pond for Him. Just fish in a pond.”
You stammer, and shake, and curl in on yourself.
Just Jude stands up, and walks behind you. He puts his hands on your shoulders, and leans down to whisper into your ear. “Ashton Peter Carter, are you scared of God?”
You find yourself shaking. “No.”
“Then why be scared of what He does? And what he can do? God is good, ain’t He?”
“Of course He is.”
“Then why are you trying to push Him away?”
He pushes you, and you fall into nothing.
You wake up in your bed, coughing and spluttering. You hack up a silver button, covered in your own blood, onto your bedsheets. You pick it up and it crumbles to ash at your touch. You have no idea when you stopped talking to him, when you came home and fell into your bed. You’re burning up a fever. Papa is calling you for breakfast. He sounds mad already. Your heart pounds in your chest as you clamber out of bed.
You don’t bother re-dressing yourself, still in yesterday’s sweat-soaked Sunday best.
The library is missing the fifth volume of The Complete Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Jane Turner. It’s a set of seven. I don’t know exactly why, but I hate the gap between the books. The day I realized what was wrong, I spent hours combing through the shelves, trying to see if it had been misplaced. I couldn’t find it, even in the basement. I tried to push volumes four and six together, just so the space wasn’t there, but that felt so much worse. Eventually, I just left the gap alone.
Now it’s always there, in the back of my mind. Like an itch I can’t scratch.
When I finally worked up the courage to tell Jaivyn, she told me that the fifth volume had been checked out a few months before I started working, and now it was just reported missing. She had been trying to get it replaced, but nobody had tried to check out any of the set since, so it wasn’t on her list of priorities.
Whenever I have downtime, I’m in that corner of the library, staring at the gap in the books. I put my hand between the covers, pulling back the dust that’s collected over the months.
I wonder what was actually in the volume. Volume four ends with Confirmation, and volume six starts with Fiction.
“Ace? Ace!” someone calls, and there’s almost a hand on my shoulder. I glance over both, but there’s no one there.
I don’t think I ever liked that nickname. Devolo gave it to me when I was seven, the same weekend I was baptized. It was another kick in the teeth to Papa, already unhappy about the implications of Ashton. But Devolo is– was– in love with War, and he decided to rope me into it, so I was Ace. I guess it’s my name now, since everyone calls me it.
What comes after confirmation? Eucharist is my first answer, but that isn’t right.
I still don’t know how exactly I ended up in Chicago. There’s a handful of missing months, between my birthday and getting hired, caught in my memory like splinters. But I do know that it’s been a few years since I was killed, and I don’t think he– He– can find me here.
I think I’m safe for once.
I wish I could go back to church. Just the thought makes my stomach turn knots, but I miss it somehow.
It’s the midnight of Ash Wednesday, and I’m still staring at the space for the missing fifth volume.
What comes before fiction?
Reality, chimes the voice that’s almost mine.
Just Jude starts taking up space in your house on late Sunday nights and early Monday mornings. You sit with him at the kitchen table and do a puzzle with him under low light. You take him to meet the chickens and the pigs, and he names all of them without you ever telling him who’s who. You turn on the TV for him– and he always laughs and giggles, pointing at the static like it’s the best program he’s ever watched.
Once, you offer to fix him a snack, like Vivatina does for you when you can’t sleep, but he’s never hungry. You make a double portion anyway, and he eats from your plate without taking a bite.
The house never looked the same in the dead of night, when Ashton was awake and staring at the ceiling. He would hear the rats scratching between the walls. When he couldn’t sleep, he’d slip downstairs with a book or his Bible and read at the kitchen table. It was the only time he ever got peace in the house.
He was ten, terrified of the nothing, when he turned on the kitchen light to find something already sitting in his place at the head of the table. A woman, a long white dress and dark skin. The head of a goat, long horns, longer fingers. She opened her hand, motioned to the seat to her right. Ashton shook his head, trying to do something other than scream. Her fingers curled, and she pointed, more forcefully. He sat. Not next to her, not like she wanted, but at the other end of the table. He opened his book and sank into the wooden chair, trying to block as much of her as he could.
She chittered, chirped, warbled, sang like a mourning dove. He watched as the ink melted off the pages. He bit at his lip, screwed his eyes shut, anything to make her stop. He saw her in his mind’s eye instead. She stood, her dress shifting from white to red to water to black. She put her arms out. She walked through the table. She disappeared under it. He couldn’t move.
She spoke like a babbling brook, a rooster’s step, a pencil scratching, the bells of the church. Her face was on the pages of the Bible, and her lips were moving, showing rows of maggot-stained teeth. The Bible slipped from his fingers, thumping once against the table before she closed it, her claws digging into the black leather cover. As if it was instinct, Ashton pulled his legs to his chest, planting his face into his knees, covering his neck with his hands, shaking and sobbing quietly as he could.
“Hark, dear child.”
Her voice was smooth, now, gentle like silk and stained glass. He screwed his eyes tight, determined not to let the Devil speak to him.
“Poor, scared thing.”
There were hands on his legs, his arms, his throat.
“Hark, darling prophet.”
Nails clawed into his flesh, pierced his palms and his eyes. Barbs grew against his limbs, pulling him apart. It was the worst pain he’d felt yet, the most he’d remember for years. Something constricted around his heart, like vines crawling into a statue. The Devil flickered in and out of his vision as a tan boy with curly hair and mud-stained overalls, a young girl in a bloody dress with hair over her face, a mosquito, an old woman with a music box in a rocking chair, a flame, an ash tree, a golden calf, warping and twisting and nothing and everything.
“Go, find God.”
He was on his feet before he realized what he’d done, the thorns around his heart stabbing against his chest with every shaking beat. The Devil was nowhere to be seen, but he knew she was just behind him.
Ashton ran. Of course he did. Up the stairs, hands close to his chest, willing his heart to stay between his ribs. He ran into Vivatina’s room, the only place he could possibly be safe.
But there was the Devil, in front of him again, sitting on Vivatina’s bed with a smile on her goat-like face. She reached down to his sleeping sister, clawed at her breasts, convulsed over her. The Devil drooled and hissed and laughed. He was frozen, paralyzed, watching like some sick voyeur. He tried to move his lips, form the words of a prayer, but the room was cold and slick and the Devil stared at him from all angles.
The Devil grew a second head. Away peeled the dress and the goat and the woman, leaving mortal flesh. A man, as old as his father, naked from the waist down, stared with scorn and green eyes as he held Vivatina’s head against her pillow.
And then the wool was over his eyes again, and Ashton woke in pitch black of night.
i think my brain Is rotting In places
Contains: Abuse, God’s love, God’s mercy, Suicide. Rape, the only love you deserve.
It’s a Sunday morning on the cusp of your thirteenth birthday, and you’re sitting at the kitchen table. You were so tired that you slept right through Vivatina trying to wake you. She always gets you up on Sundays, asks you if you want to go with the rest of the family. You never do. It’s too many people. You only go for the rites, for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, Easter and Christmas. The church is convinced you have something wicked. In a way, you do.
Mama took everybody to church today. You push the grits around on your plate.
“Eat it,” Papa says. “Ain’t gonna give you anythin’ else.”
You keep quiet, glancing at the full cup of coffee Papa sets down next to your plate. You won’t drink it. You saw him slip something into it, something that changed the color from pitch to tar. It’s the third time he’s done it. You won’t have it.
Papa sighs. “How the Hell does Viva do it…”
He grumbles into the morning paper as he sits down across from you. You don’t look at him. You push your fork into the grits, and they seep out between the prongs like blood from a cut.
Papa tells you the story of your brother’s Confirmation. Your sisters are Ruth, Jezebel, and Esther. Your brother is Abel.
“Of all men, Abel,” Papa scoffs. “I should’ve marched to the pulpit and smacked him straight. Ain’t no self-respecting man calling himself that. Your mother named him as she saw fit, and you don’t see me questionin’ it, but she filled his head with fantasies. Ain’t nothin’ in the Holy Book that says you’ve gotta use the name your momma picked for you. Look at ‘im. Hardly a man at all.”
You frown and push your plate away.
“When you go for Confirmation next Sunday, what’ll you tell Father Elijah?”
Papa’s been testing you like this for years. Today, you respond, “Peter.”
He scoffs again. Every answer is wrong. “Followin’ in Volo’s footsteps? Dumbass.”
You feel your throat tighten for a moment.
“You’d make a damn good Eli,” Papa says.
“Eli,” you respond.
“Good man.”
That night you stay inside, stay in your room, and sob into the book of Samuel.
MENLO POLICE DEPARTMENT
AUDIO LOG — TRANSCRIPT
Case #09011939 – Log #15, August 24th, 2020. 3:35 A.M.
[Transcript begins.]
DETECTIVE ERIKA BLACK: Time’s about 3:30. Figured it’s as– [yawn]– as good a time as any to go back to the scene of the crime. Even with the bodies carted out, it gives me the creeps. There’s blood on this ceiling, damnit.
[Pause.]
They found Vivatina here. Wes and his wife were chopped to pieces in their bed. The twins were practically vivisected in the kitchen, all their organs tied together or rearranged or replaced. One of ‘em had all her hair cut off, stuffed into her womb. And Vivatina was in the rafters of this room, hung on her own intestines. There was a fetus on the floor, right… right here, still attached to its placenta. G- God, what the hell drives somebody to do that?
[SFX: Chair scraping across floor. Fabric rustling.]
The whole lot of them. Dead. And we’ve got no leads, and there’s still blood in these floorboards, and–
[SFX: Wind whistling.]
Huh? W- Who’s there?
[Pause.]
Nothing. Nothing’s there except the damn rats. Of course. [Sigh.] Whoever did this covered their tracks real well. We have suspects– Porter, mostly– but without a clearer picture, this case might just go dead. We don’t have prints. We don’t have leads. We just have five rotting bodies and a dead girl’s diary.
UNKNOWN BOY(?): That’s awful.
[SFX: Wood hitting wood. Gun safety clicking.]
BLACK: Freeze! Menlo Police!
BOY: I– I’m sorry! I d-didn’t–
BLACK: Who are you? How did you get in here?
BOY: I– I live here!
[Pause.]
[SFX: Gun safety clicking. Fabric rustling.]
BLACK: Erika Black. Detective.
BOY: Oh. Why are you… here?
BLACK: Because of the… murders?
BOY: You… have the wrong house.
BLACK: There is blood on this fl– huh?
BOY: You have the wrong house, ma’am.
BLACK: But it was– There was– Who are you?
[Pause.]
Who are you?
BOY: Father Elijah called me Peter. Papa called me boy. God called me His. Mama called me prophet.
BLACK: What’s your actual name?
‘PETER’: I don’t like that question.
BLACK: Then– You live here?
‘PETER’: Mhm. Seventeen years. Don’t I look older?
BLACK: Nineteen, at least.
[Pause.]
‘PETER’: This is Viva’s room.
BLACK: Vivatina? Vivatina Carter?
[SFX: shuffling. Creaking of floorboards and bedsprings.]
Hey–
‘PETER’: She would sit me down on her bed, tell me to talk about whatever I wanted. She would write it all down, and then burn the pages. She handed me the ashes, told me “Now, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
BLACK: (quiet) Oh.
‘PETER’: She was a good sister. The best I could have asked for. She knew me. She knew who– what I was. She let me sleep in her bed when I didn’t want Hannah to have me. She never told Papa that I hid in the cellar, or the woods. She would have been a good mother. She would’ve protected her children from what happened to her. I never got the chance to protect myself. He would always–
[SFX: Distant crashing, clattering.]
BLACK: The hell was–?
‘PETER’: Oh. He’s gotten mad. You should leave.
BLACK: Who’s mad? What’s your name?
PETER: God, of course.
[SFX: Footsteps.]
Goodnight, Miss Black.
BLACK: Don’t just walk away from–!
[SFX: Wet squishing (Unidentified).]
What the hell?
[Pause. Gasp.]
O–Oh my God!
End of log.
It’s the early hours of the morning, just barely your fifteenth birthday, when Just Jude comes out of the tall grass, a pile of rocks in his arms. He hurls them at the planter underneath your window until you sneak down and let him in.
He takes your hand and pulls you through the house, down to the basement. You try to tell him you can never reach the chain for the light. He does it for you, and now you sit on the stairs as he wanders around.
He disappears from your view for a second, then comes back holding a Mason jar of dark liquid. It catches crimson in the light. “Hey, what’s this?”
“Papa collects pigs’ blood. I’m not sure why.”
“All by himself?” He starts to unscrew the lid.
You nod. “Devolo used to help him, but he’s no good with a knife.”
Just Jude tosses the parts of the lid onto the concrete floor, and they clatter like bullet casings. He raises the jar to his lips and takes a long drink. His nose crinkles up as he pulls away from it. “It’s good.”
He extends it to you. You frown. “It’s Papa’s. I shouldn’t–”
And then he’s in front of you, almost too fast. He tilts his head. “Try it.”
You stammer, then shake no.
And then he’s grabbing your head with one hand and tipping the liquid into your mouth with the other. You can’t do anything but drink. It tastes like metal and ashes, like the time Devolo nearly shoved your face into the burning fireplace. Heat and flames raze their way up your throat, leaving you spluttering, choking, drowning in the taste.
Just Jude is smiling. Gentle. Overwhelming. Kind. Burning. He looks like the stained glass Jesus in the church, curly hair catching a multicolored halo in the single-bulb light.
Finally, he pulls back. The heat is gone, the fires of Hell and the pain of his fingers in your hair. The jar is empty, and it shatters against the ground as you push him away. He laughs, light and easy, and you regret it immediately. Your stomach hurts.
“Was that your first drink?” he asks you, almost gloating. “Did I steal another first?”
“Another?”
Just Jude just giggles.
Your head is spinning before you know it. Nothing feels right. Just Jude takes your hand, pulls you to your feet and up the stairs. Nothing’s pricking at the corners of your vision or taking the space in your blindspots. Just Jude is humming, singing, chirping, trilling. You’re outside now, and it’s too dark for an August morning. Your guts churn figure-eights, bile rising up your throat like fire and brimstone. You find yourself vomiting into the pig pen. Just Jude rubs circles into your back, but it doesn’t help.
When your stomach finally empties itself, the ground and your vision have gone red. You grimace, and turn away from the smell of metal.
“Why do you think he hurts you?” Just Jude asks.
“Huh?”
“Why do you think He makes you suffer?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Everything happens cuz God wills it, doesn’t He?”
You nod.
He takes your hand. “Then why’s it all hurt?”
“Because…” You pause, words catching in your throat with the aftertaste of acid and alcohol. “It’s another test, isn’t it? Like how Job had to–?”
“Job was a victim and you know it.”
You clam up at that.
“We never had a choice, did we?” Just Jude chuckles dryly. “God sends us plagues and murderers. He makes wars and tragedies. Plays us all like fiddles, uses us like puppets to throw out when He gets bored. We’re all toys for Him.”
“Don’t– Don’t say that.”
“Hell, your family’s probably His favorite right now. Think about how much He likes hurtin’ you. He kills your momma’s babies in her stomach. He gets your daddy drunk and violent. He tells you to rip the pages outta your Bible, makes the shadows appear in the corners of the rooms you leave.”
You stammer, try to shake your head. The shadows around the two of you shift, twist and curl. You pull your legs to your chest, plant your head into your knees. You try to tell him to stop. You can’t get the words out.
“He likes seein’ your brother beat you senseless with the garden shovel and tie you to the fences. He likes it when the twins fight and pull hair and cut each other to ribbons. He tells your neighbor to rape your big sis ‘til she’s stuffed full of his kids.”
“Stop– Stop that!”
“He’ll have you raped one day, too. Assumin’ you can’t pluck up the courage to shoot ‘im dead by then.”
Tears prick in the corners of your eyes, your stomach turning in too-familiar knots again. “How do you know that? I don’t like it!”
“And He won’t stop for nothin’,” Just Jude says. “‘Cept maybe food.”
You turn your head. Something in his face, in his hair, in his tan skin, looks wrong. You try not to look too hard.
“Yeah, guess it’d be easier than killin’ Him. He’s actin’ out cuz He’s hungry,” he continues, his nose crinkling again. “Like an angry babe. You feed ‘im, you get a few weeks of peace.”
“I… I can’t do that.”
“You’d rather try to kill God?”
“I’d rather drown myself.”
He giggles, like it’s the funniest thing in the world. And then he’s behind you again, like he always is. You tense up, waiting for a push that doesn’t come. Instead, he sets his hands against your throat, fingers trailing up your neck. A chain catches on his nails, and you look down to see a cross necklace, set with black gems that catch red in the moonlight. You reach up to touch it, and it’s freezing cold.
“Don’t lose this, okay?” Just Jude whispers against the shell of your ear.
You promise him you won’t.
Grace asks you where you got it three days later. You tell her. She tells you she’s never heard of a boy named Jude.
I run.
I always run.
It’s the only thing I’ve ever known.
Devolo set a gun to my head and told me run when I was twelve. I ran until I tripped over tree roots, I thought he’d kill me when he caught me. I ran from our property, ran into the Porters’ farm.
Jude was the one to find me, three days later, hanging by my ankle from a tree I swore had no vines. I was starved, five pounds lighter than I used to be. He cut me down from the ivy and walked me back home, then disappeared the moment I walked up the porch steps. It was the only time I’d ever seen him in the sunlight.
Vivatina was ill when I came through the door.
I don’t blame her. She would always sit outside the bathroom when I bathed. I never asked her to, but it was the only way I would after I started hearing His voice. She couldn’t bring herself near me that night. It wasn’t her fault. She went upstairs to write. I tried to drown myself in the bathtub to cover the shame. The walls must have sent the word through the house.
Hannah found me asleep in the tub. Hannah would always find me asleep. Hannah always said I was so cute. Hannah had walked in on Mister Porter and Vivatina too many times. Hannah hated me with a passion Devolo could never accomplish. Hannah could have killed me. Hannah should have held my head under the water. Hannah should have killed me. Hannah tried to give me a different death, to the tune of Let me take care of my little brother. Hannah loved the way I cried and squirmed away from her. Hannah thought it was all part of the fun.
It was the first time anyone had ever touched me like that.
I hated every second.
I hated it more than I’d ever hated before.
Mama and Papa knew all about Mister Porter. They never even gave Hannah a second glance. She was too good at hiding. She knew every pattern in the house, and the floorboards always listened to her.
I hate her. I love her. I envy her. She died first, walking into the right room at the right time, cutting herself to ribbons with a kitchen knife. It isn’t fair. I should have died before she did. She didn’t deserve God’s mercy. She didn’t deserve His judgement. She shouldn’t have been eaten at all. But God liked Hannah’s hair, the way she curled it and put tinsel in it. God liked the way it slipped from her shoulder down to her breast, how the light caught fractals against the plastic strands and made her look like a gentle devil. God liked the sun-bleached honey-wheat color that disappeared in the winter. She was only ever sad in the winter. She said if Mister Porter looked at her and not Vivatina, she wouldn’t be sad anymore.
I prayed when she touched me. I prayed for her to live. I prayed for God to leave her alone on Earth and suffer. I prayed and I cried and I told her she was sinning. I prayed for the day she cared enough to stop.
God ate her first.
I think my brain Is rotting In places
Warning: If someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him? (1 Samuel 2:25)
The farm was a quiet place. Of course there were livestock always making noise, the constant turning of the windmill, the distant humming in the distance that no one could seem to get rid of, but they all faded into the gentle perception of nothingness and quiet. He loved it like that.
He sat outside of the greenhouse, looking inside. He didn’t want to go in out of fear that he would disturb the plants, but looking at them was always nice. And Just Jude looked so happy in there, lanky limbs and poorly fitting clothes, dancing to music surely only he heard. He looked so healthy. Nothing like Ashton, bone-thin and too short for fourteen. He glanced away from the greenhouse just in time to notice a brown leaf falling. It handed on the crown of his head. He smiled, pulling it away. Autumn must be closer than he thought.
“Ace.”
He turned around, still cradling the leaf in his hand. His brother towered over him, three years older and half a foot taller. He plucked the leaf from Ashton’s hand and crushed it to dust in his.
“It’s late. What are you doing out here?”
“I was–” He glanced back to the greenhouse. Just Jude had disappeared from sight, and the only thing left was the swaying of leaves behind green glass.
“Get back inside.”
Devolo was always like that. He rarely said more than ten words at a time and he had a penchant for accidentally seeing things that Ashton liked buried or crushed.
“Don’t want to.”
“Supper’s already going cold. Pa said he’ll–”
“He was going to anyway.”
Sometimes it was losing a matchbox car down the garbage disposal and sometimes he managed to get both of their bikes into the creek to drown and rust while Ashton cried about it.
“Don’t be a dumbass. Just get inside. Sun’s going down. You know how the woods are.”
“Do you like them, big brother?”
“The Hell are you talking about?”
“How many times has Viva shooed you from the house when Mister Porter comes by?”
“Shut up.”
One time, he had found a bird with a broken wing in the birdbath, and he took it to Devolo with a smile on his face. His older brother took it and pinched its head until its skull caved in.
“Don’t you always end up in the woods? How many of Papa’s knives have you stolen?”
“Shut up, Ashton.”
“What have you caught? What have you killed? Don’t you smell it rotting in the woods, Devolo? Why haven’t you brought it home?”
“Be happy I don’t get Pa out here to–”
“Where are you when Mister Porter hurts her? Out skinning baby deer?”
Suddenly, Ashton’s head was in the dirt, blossoms of red forming around him from the rock cutting into his flesh.
He knocks three times at your window.
You only stall to take your Bible and one of Papa’s pocket knives. Just Jude takes your hand and starts to run, pulling you along until you get out near the creek, where your property borders the Porters’. Where the two of you met.
He sits down on the bank as you strip off your shoes and socks, and the two of you dip your feet into the water. He leans against you while you read from your Bible. You barely need the moonlight for it now, especially when Just Jude is smiling bright enough to light up the night sky. You’re almost seventeen, and he’s been there for a month, when he asks you to go back to the Book of Genesis. You answer him with In the beginning.
When you get to the story of Sodom, he stops you. “I thought you’d hate this one.”
You shake your head. “Why would I?”
“Cuz your brother’s a fag.”
That’s news to you. You stammer and shake your head for a few seconds. Just Jude laughs, harder than you’ve ever heard him laugh before. He’s buckling with it, spilling from his lips and dripping from his fingers, bursting at the seams with an elation you’ve never seen.
“I heard Father Elijah tellin’ your daddy after church! I thought your whole family would know by now, with the way he was fuming!”
You feel your fingers claw into the pages, suddenly aware of how the ink burns against your skin. “If it’s true, then he’ll get better. I’m sure God’s just testing him.”
“Scared of him going to Hell?”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“What if he ain’t headed for Hell? What if God just made him a queer and that’s the end of it?”
You shake your head. “Man shall not lie with man as he does woman.”
“Mormons can’t drink coffee cuz their fake god wants ‘em to follow an arbitrary commandment.”
“We aren’t Mormon.”
“Neither was Jesus.” Just Jude sighs. “Mormons know how to make a mean story, y’know? They say there’s a whole planet for ‘em out there.”
“Oh.”
“Gotta kill themselves to get there, though.”
“Oh.”
There’s silence for a moment. Not a real, dead-of-sleep silence, but the silence of nature and the creek and Just Jude’s breathing. You’re glad he breathes. Some of the things you see never figured out how to breathe.
“Are you mad at your brother? Ruinin’ the family and whatnot?”
“He hasn’t ruined anything,” you insist. “If God Himself is an angry child, what does that make His creations? If He has growing pains and a hunger for things He can’t have, who says it doesn’t happen to the things He made in His own image?”
“You can have whatever you want. So can He. That’s the glory of God.”
“But–”
“He’s got growin’ pains and bellyaches cuz He still doesn’t know what He’s aching for. He’s flailin’ around without a single clue in the whole damn world and He doesn’t realize what He needed all along was right in front of Him.” Just Jude chuckles, almost to himself. “And He controls all of us like puppets cuz He fancies Himself a sadist. He’s not, but He pretends.”
“So what does He want?”
“Adam had Eve. Joseph had Mary. Boaz had Ruth. Who’s God have? Nobody. God doesn’t have a counterpart. No one that He connects with, no one that really understands Him.”
“Lucifer?”
“God hates his guts.”
You close your mouth, afraid of attracting flies.
“I think the only way God’ll ever get what He wants is if He gives up a rib for once.”
The silence that settles is deep, intense. Even the creek shuts itself up. The world curls in, focused on the centerpoint that is Just Jude and his words, almost sacrilegious as they fall off his lips.
“Will Devolo be okay?” you ask, mostly to yourself.
“No,” he says. “But no one ever is, so what’s a temporary death?”
It’s another stone stacked on your chest. You close your Bible, trace the peeling gilded letters.
“Do you wanna know a secret?”
Just Jude takes your hand off of your Bible, and pulls you towards him. For the first time, you see his eyes. You realize the color, the swirling blue and green and brown and gray, and you realize that you’ve never seen him like this in your life. Something bubbles up in your chest, sits heavy like lead and stones. For a second, he looks like Hannah. For a second, you think you’re about to cry.
He pulls you forward. You’ve seen this before. You try to twist your hand away, to pull back before he does something stupid.
“Jude–”
“Would you be mad at me if I said I was goin’ to Hell like your brother?”
“No, no, but don’t–”
And then Jude kisses you, square on the lips. Hannah never had the guts to, but he kisses you and kisses hard and it tastes like silver and dirt and radio static and bird song. He knocks the Bible from your hands in his haste. You follow its path and it disappears in the tall grass and suddenly he’s pushing you down too, straddling you like he’s getting on a horse. He grabs your face and kisses over and over and over again, til you’re drowning in it, til you’re dizzy from the taste and the lack of air.
You gasp when he pulls back, and for a second that’s the end of it. You push him up, push him away, try to form a sentence while you shake like a leaf. You just shake your head, over and over and over again. Tears prick in your eyes.
“Ashton Peter Carter,” he says. “I will not let you deny me again.”
His hands fumble for your belt. You’re telling him Stop, stop it, Jude, don’t, and the words blend together in your head. You’re not really sure what you’re pleading for. You’re almost certain it’s not because you hate the feeling. Hannah ruined that for you. But you can’t stand the idea of Jude going to Hell, so you try to push him away.
“He don’t have enough room for all of us,” he tells you. “Maybe it’s this whole world that needs to go to Hell instead of just me. Maybe He’ll give up on Hell entirely then.”
You thrash and scream and plead with him, recite scripture and sob as his fingers choke your soul. He tells you how pretty you sound, how well the moonlight catches your tears. He’s warm and soft and he claws at your hips and your chest and your body feels like lead. It was easier with Hannah when you just took it. It would be easier to just take it. You can’t find it in yourself to go down without a fight.
“Dear– Dear Lord, I pray for strength–”
“God’s already here,” Jude says. “Right in front of you.”
And he touches you in a way that almost makes you believe it. Maybe this is really what God feels like. Maybe God claws His way in just like Jude did. Maybe God is really in Vivatina’s stomach, and Devolo’s song, and Hannah’s hair, and Jude’s body. Maybe you really are blessed.
When will you ever find a love like this again?
You trip through your words, quoting His own scripture back to Him. He giggles, rewards you, kisses your cheek to taste your tears. He’s made a Garden just for you. You try your best to take it gratefully. Even if you kept screaming, no one would care enough to find you now.
You find words spilling like wine off your tongue. Begging God to stop, louder than ever. Your stomach has tied itself in knots. You can’t stand the feeling. Hannah’s never gotten you like this before. God refuses to slow down, tells you Come to me, and the moment you feel yourself lose control of your body is the moment He grabs your head and claws His fingers into your chest.
God must have taken Adam’s rib just like this.
You wake up in the creek with the sun high in the sky, using a rock as a pillow as the water rushes over you. You’ve been soaked to the bone. Your Bible is still on the bank, untouched by the water.
You try to drown yourself. You can’t seem to breathe, no matter how hard you try.
You pick yourself up, grabbing your Bible with dripping wet hands. A shadow follows you home and you can’t find it in yourself to care. It shouts and jeers and you don’t look at it once. In any other circumstance, you’d be pleased as punch.
But He carved a hole in your chest, betrayed you like–
The realization dawns on you the moment you walk through the door. Vivatina gasps at the state you’re in.
Who is God?
God makes your heart beat.
God tells you what’s scary.
God saved you from him.
God put His Light in you.
God let you get revenge.
God loves you.
He loves you most of all.
God saved you.
He saved you from the nightmare.
God smiles when you smile.
He wants to see you happy.
God laughs when you feed him.
He wants you to bear fruit.
God swallowed you whole.
He deserves to be happy too.
God says you’ll taste delicious.
He wants to eat the world.
God has made a feast of you.
He will be so happy when He feasts.
Food for the body
and the body for food
and God will devour them both.
Food for the body
and the body for food
and God will devour them with a smile.
Food for the body
and the body for food
and God will devour you too.
The body for food.
The body for food.
The body for food.
God loves you.
God loves you.
God loves you.
God loves you.
God loves you.
God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you God loves you God loves you God loves you God loves you God loves you God loves you Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou Godlovesyou GodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouGodlovesyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou
i think my heart is ready to die
And He said, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground.”
Sleep is the devil I never escape. I put my head on the pillow and I’m consumed by the Nightmare. It claws its way into me, makes a home in my chest, sets goading whispers ablaze in my head.
I scream and I cry, I beg for it to be over. I beg for my brother to come back, to kill me like I killed him. I pray that he never realizes I’m alive like this. I know I’m a sick animal. I know if he finds me, he’ll kill me on the spot. I want to die, but not like this. Never like this. Anything but this.
The fingers in my brain claw deeper. Blood wells in my throat.
The whispers tell me the truth. The whispers sound like Him.
Lot’s daughters are heralded as heroes. Lot was never a victim.
What a broken thing I am.
I have the knowledge that Lot doesn’t. Does that make me better than him? Worse? Am I to be pitied for my inaction when knowledge is the greatest gift of God?
How could you weep at the kindness of another, the gentle death that she gave you?
Would Lot smile upon me, if he knew what his daughters had done?
Would Lot pity me?
Would Lot love me?
I miss Jude.
I miss Him sorely, deeply, harshly. It’s been seven years since He destroyed me. I almost wish He’d come back just to destroy me again, properly this time. His touch hurt more than any bullet, any knife, any rope. Maybe He’s forsaken me for what I’ve done.
I think I’d let Him kill me. I think I’d like that.
Words fell from his mouth like maggots. He barely felt like he was in control of them. Was he smiling? He couldn’t tell. Silver glinted in the moonlight.
Hannah’s guilt had taken her before he got the chance. He didn’t know how or why. He wanted to call it a blessing. He’d call it everything except suicide when the time came. She was hanging from the rafters now, her wrists slit and stomach undone, a note clutched in her hand reading I can’t take the Nightmare anymore. Ashton, you are a demon from Hell.
Grace was the one to find her, and Ashton followed, quiet as a mouse when she screamed. He pulled the note from her hand and shoved it into her open stomach.
He was pushed down the stairs, feeling the heartbeat of the house in every missing step. Grace nearly trampled him, running down to tell everyone. Mama was inconsolable, moments away from putting her head in the oven. Papa had gone out to the toolshed– God would take care of him. Vivatina had fled to Mama and Papa’s room, locked the door, started praying to God. Devolo was nowhere to be found. It felt cold as winter, in the dead, rotten heat of summer. He was just carrying out the will of God.
He wished he knew how it happened. He wished he could understand the pain that split his skull open, the creatures swimming past his vision, the words he said as he cried and cried and cried. But the devils were singing church hymns in his ear, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He needed to exorcize the evils in his home.
He found it in Vivatina’s room, naked from the waist down. The knife sank into Porter’s groin easily, like cutting into soft butter. His shocked face warped, melting against heat and agony. His eyes shot open, sclera blood red and pupils overtaking irises. He looked more demonic in death than in life. He really was laughing at that.
“Ace!”
He turned, his fingers dripping like water as the knife slipped from his grasp. Devolo had a gun. Devolo was pointing the gun at his head. Devolo’s hands shook, as if he couldn’t tell where to aim anymore.
“How the Hell are you doing that–?”
Devolo lurched forward. The shadows themselves had warped to take him by the legs. The gun clattered to the ground, squirming like worms as it was swallowed up.
“I just wanted to protect her.”
Devolo couldn’t speak.
“I wanted to keep her safe, like she did for me.”
The wood of the house creaked. He was tripping over the knives on the dark floor. He grabbed one and it turned to sand between his fingers. He grabbed another. Another. Willed one into his hand.
“I can’t keep her safe like this. You turned the other cheek.”
“Ashton, put that thing down–”
“Would God be proud of you, Devolo?”
“He will be when I put you down. Sick fuckin’ dog that you are.”
Devolo had lost control of his hands for just a moment, the wallpaper twisting into his veins and binding his bones to the brick and mortar.
“Was Cain sick?” Ashton found himself saying. He staggered forward on the legs of a lamb, a new arm clutching at his side. “When Abel gave up the best of his flock for God, was Cain sick to hate him? Was Cain sick to know that there was a better way? Was Cain evil for wanting the best for his family? Love thy brother, love thy neighbor, love thyself as you would love God. Do what is best for your family, do right by your brothers and sisters, and you shall do right by God.”
He turned his head further than he thought he could, staring at Porter’s twitching form. He’d taken to clawing into his own wounds with his demon-sharp nails, howling and crying as if an animal had curled up against his heart.
“Why would Cain kill Abel? Why would Eve eat the apple? How could Lucifer, and Jezebel, and Judas ever come to be? What of Hannah, Mister Porter, Mama’s forgotten babes? Why would God allow such suffering, if it wasn’t already His will?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?!”
He could feel himself flickering, coalescing, dying, crushing, bleeding, coming back again with every step he took. He realigned his body, and scooped up a knife. This one was strange, ceremonial in a way. It had no weight. It was sharp and perfect.
“God loves you,” he said. “God loves you so much. That’s why He wants me to do this. He wants you to know the depth of His love. He’ll make you one with Him. Isn’t it wonderful, Devolo? God’s gonna eat you. I’m gonna feed you to Him. He loves you already, He’ll love you even more now.”
“Ash–”
“God says you should be grateful.”
“Ashton, get away from me–”
“He loves you, he loves you, He loves you, he loves you, He loves you, he loves you.”
“Don’t do this–”
“Food for the body and the body for food.”
Then the knife was in his chest, and the whole world was blinding white. Devolo retched, but never cried, and he crumpled as Ashton backed away.
Will You be proud of me, too?
The walls dripped with blood and black saliva.
He stumbled back to Porter, the poor man bloated in his gut and arms, swarming with flies and crawling with maggots. He giggled, pushing sharp fingernails into twitching eyelids, watching as the ugly thing gurgled and choked on his own blood. He pushed deeper, the flesh and bones of the face melting at his touch. By the time his wrist had been swallowed by the rotting meat, he’d sunk his fingers into the soft meat of the brain. It felt familiar, in a way that almost made his stomach churn.
He pulled it out, let it writhe on the floor. The body had gone still. He staggered backwards, turning on his heel.
He found Grace in her room, on her knees, staring at Hannah’s swaying body as if it was her only chance of salvation. She reached up, pulled a piece of flesh from the inside of her body, set it to her lips. He touched her and she screamed. Then she was cut open from cheek to chest, her finger bones twisted into her heart.
The house quaked on its foundations. He felt something bubble inside him. It tasted like silver and dirt, cherry pie and tinsel, blood, salt, communion wine. Fear.
The doorknob of Mama’s room melted at his touch, and he stumbled through the wood. Vivatina sat on the bed, curled in on herself, praying the rosary. She looked up, extended the cross to him, gasped as it turned to ashes in her hand. She didn’t speak, not anymore, not in a language he understood. He stepped towards her, wrapped his arms around her, sobbed into her shoulder.
He pulled back and you look her in the eye and there’s a hole in her skull for just a barely a moment and suddenly your brain feels like it’s exploding and it all goes
God is proud of you.
Hear that? God’s proud of you.
I’m proud of you, Ashton Peter Carter.
Food for the body and the body for food.
You’ve made Me so happy.
I’m so proud of you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
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