“I know you’ve been really focused on prayer and celebrating Abigail, but don’t you think at some point we’re going to need to tell Sam what’s going on? We can’t just keep pretending that… that she’s going to be okay.” I tried to put it as gingerly as I could.
“Pretending? Who’s pretending, Isaiah?” Her expression was of stone cold confusion.
“How can we move on without facing the truth?”
“The truth? What truth?”
My patience was beginning to wear thinner; she remembered what we were told. I saw the impact in her eyes, like a car wreck of flames and twisted metal all crashing down. I watch an exciting dream become mangled and malformed, before being eventually obliterated. The beauty of it all had bowed, now we were only left with the ugly. I was aware of that, she was aware of that, at least at some point.
“Do we really have to go through this again? I’ll go through it for you again if you really need me to.”
“Sure, you go through what you need to say, then I’ll tell you what I have to say.” She agreed.
“Just remember these aren’t my words, they’re Dr. Aguilar’s. Your doctor.” I felt it necessary to remind her but was doubtful it could make a difference against the caliber of false impression she’d reached.
“And what did she say? What did my doctor say?”
“Well, do you recall the discussion about the cysts on the placenta or the missing bones in Abigail’s face?” I asked gently.
“Yes.”
“What about the bilateral clefts and overlapping fingers and toes?”
“Of course.” She responded confidently.
“Okay… and you recall Dr. Aguilar telling us that Abigail has no stomach?”
“Yes, I remember everything.”
“So, you know the only child that can come out of you will be a stillborn? You understand that our daughter is dead, right?”
“Yes, right now, I understand she’s dead.” The words made my gut sink. A horrible feeling that she wasn’t right was coming to light more profoundly than ever. Her smirk was even different than I remembered; she was nimbly walking a tightrope, teetering on psychosis. I might have left her to her own thoughts for too long during a dark time. I thought it was what she wanted but now I could see she’d filled herself with some kind of witchdoctor philosophy, clinging to impossible expectations. What could she possibly be alluding to?
“What do you mean ‘right now’?”
“This is why I’ve been telling you to read the Bible.”
I got down on one knee. It brought me back to the hot air balloon ride we’d taken together in Egypt, when we were just young and exploring. We always both wanted to see the pyramids because we could never agree on if we thought God, man or aliens built them. As we dangled thousands of feet off the ground with the hot fire blowing upward like a furious dragon, we came to the agreement that it was probably aliens. She never believed in God…
I kissed her and dropped down in the basket, causing it to bounce a little and removed with a shaky hand the two-karat rock from my jeans. When she said yes it was the happiest day of my life. A lot of people say that as a courtesy but for me it was just the truth. I wasn’t going to dress up the current affairs to appease myself, if I started lying to myself we’d be in the same boat on choppy waters with no guide. I was being honest; Erica’s most recent revelation had turned an uncertain evening into the worst day of my life. I was now digesting a living a nightmare. I was now being force-fed my once stable wife’s derangement on a daily basis and, with each conversation, it was only getting worse.
“Honey.” I said with tears welling up in my eyes. “I don’t read the Bible, and neither do you.” I reminded her in a tone that was begging her to reconsider.
“I do now and if you did, you’d realize that many of the perceived limitations around us are illusions—illusions of the unenlightened. You’d learn that there’s resurrection and, more importantly, life after death. If you want Abigail to be well again you need to read and believe, baby. We all have to believe, that’s why I haven’t told Sammy yet.”
“Believe what, Erica?”
“Believe in what the prophet Elijah did for the widow in Zarephath or the Shunammite woman’s son. Or when Jesus was in Capernaum and raised Jairus, the leader of the synagogue’s daughter. There are so many examples. Not just of children, but of men and women as well. And you have to believe in what comes after,” she explained to me, wide-eyed in way that almost made her seem like she was on something.
“Those are just stories, Erica! Don’t you understand that? Outside of what you read, when have you ever seen someone come back to life? You’re delusional, you can’t keep doing this to us, please!” I didn’t mean to yell but the swelling of emotions from weeks past had been mounting and it all came rushing out at once like a pimple eruption. She sat speechless, no longer looking at me. Now her focus had drifted back down to her stomach as she swirled her arms around her exaggerated belly.
“I can understand that you might think it’s a little crazy. I can’t expect you to have faith overnight but I feel in time you will. Maybe if you come and speak with Father Franklin, you’ll understand it better. He’s the one that set up the baptism for me this Sunday.” Her newfound worship was sustaining the chaos. What the hell was happening?
“You’re getting baptized?” I asked, still not believing the words coming out of my mouth.
“Not me, silly. Abigail.”
“You’ve lost it, Erica. You’ve completely fucking lost it. You can’t baptize a dead baby, it doesn’t work that way.” I unpacked it in layman terms for her, but at this point I didn’t expect her to get it. A concept my five-year-old could probably grasp, but my wife couldn’t, what alternative dimension had I slipped into?
“No, I found it, Isaiah! I found the power of the Holy Ghost! If the child isn’t washed of her original sin then God’s love will never find her. See baptism, it’s like a vaccine against sin. You can understand that, can’t you? You know, like how we got Sammy vaccinated at the hospital?” She spoke with a passion and fire that was convincing, if she had been delivering an argument about anything else, I might have almost believed her.
I couldn’t continue the conversation any longer; there was no way to propose a second side to anything. These last few weeks had convinced her that God was going to bring Abigail back. As horrifying as the situation had become, I tried to seek solace in the fact it would all be over in a few more weeks. Once Abigail left her body, she would understand that the glob of defective cells would never walk, talk or cry. She would cry, she would be shattered but I can only hope that being faced with the comatose corpse could pull her out of this crooked line of thought. I reconsidered my exit and turned back to her.
“I’ll go to the baptism with you. Just promise me you won’t tell Sammy.” I conceded, sacrificing my own peacefulness to keep Sammy free of the lunacy. It was the least selfish choice I could make.
“But Sammy has to go, he has to see his sister get baptized, don’t you think?” Again, she seemed confused about my offer.
I tried to show her the logic as best I could; you can bring a horse to water but can’t force it to drink. I thought about it, trying to be as unbiased as possible. Trying to understand Erica’s mentality and what steps I could take to keep us all as safe as possible in the future. What was going to help her rebound from this morbid odyssey? I decided that the three of us being together for the duration gave us the best chance. Sammy and I would have to suck this one up for her. We needed to get Erica through this window of absurdity safely, even if it meant submitting to her outlandish request. It would all be over in another week or so, if we got past this, she would have no choice but to confront the immobile dripping red truth when it fell out of her.
“Okay, we’ll go with you but after this we just stick together until Abigail arrives. Deal?”
She nodded her head with that imbalanced grin stretching the length of her face. “
You’re gonna see, when it happens everything will make sense.” I kissed her on the forehead hearing what she said but choosing not to respond to it. The only thing I could think about was kicking Father Franklin’s teeth down his fucking throat.
* * *
The next morning I called the church and asked to speak with Father Franklin. There were so many things that I wanted to say to him. Who was he to corrupt my wife’s mind with these unattainable ideas? How could he help foster this dishonest optimism in our family? Was this about money? Was he trying to capitalize off our horrific tragedy? Or, the most frightening question, did he believe what he was telling her?
“Good morning and God bless, this is Saint Francis church,” an older woman’s voice answered and spoke through the receiver.
“I need to talk with Father Franklin please.” I responded with an all business tinge to my tone.
“Father Franklin? I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have a priest by that name here.”
“Really? Is there another Saint Francis church in Plymouth?” I asked, my rage now morphing into confusion.
“Not that I’m aware of…” the voice answered, not quite sure how to conciliate my inquiry.
“Okay, thank you. Thank you very much then…”
I wasn’t sure how to assess this most recent development. Was she lying about going to church? Maybe I misheard the priest’s name or it was a different church? We’d already settled on the weird support system Sammy and I would provide her to get past the next few days. The baptism was tomorrow, her due date was the following Sunday. I was now faced with another delicate decision: confront her with what the church had told me or just play it out.
Since the baptism was tomorrow, I decided to avoid any conflict. The last thing I wanted to do was rile her up mere hours before the ceremony; it would only stir her into a more irrational frenzy and possibly pull back the curtain a little too far for Sammy. It was going to be difficult enough sitting there and explaining what was going on inside the church to a kid that just wrapped up pre-school and had never been afforded any information on Catholic beliefs.
* * *
When I awoke the next morning, before I’d even showered, I noticed that Erica was missing. I looked out the window and saw her sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, just staring forward and waiting. It was still hours before the baptism but there she waited in isolation, a blank nothingness swirling on her face. I woke up Sammy and let him know it was time to get ready. I dressed both of us in moderately formal attire since I had no idea what Erica was expecting of us.
When we got into the car with her, she immediately took off with a sense of urgency. “Whoa! Honey, slow down a little. We left even earlier than expected, no one is going to be late.” If it was up to me, I would have preferred to drive but she’d already solidified her position hours before I had a chance to interject the suggestion.
“I’m just excited. I’m excited for you to see our baptism.”
The minor shift in her syntax bothered me. “Our baptism” were words she had not previously joined together. Was she thinking that Sammy and I were getting baptized too now? The thought made my heart pump faster. I had tried to avoid going into the particulars of the ceremony with Sammy but now I felt that could have been a mistake. Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue or metaphorical speaking that was also possible but I knew deep down it would be foolish to discount it.
The first thing I noticed was that we weren’t driving into town. The buildings and concrete faded fast and were interchanged with trees and their gorgeous golden foliage. I continued to analyze the mystery internally, straining to settle on a definite outcome with any confidence. The church must have been elsewhere. That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation I could piece together. Either that or I’d seen some people get baptized outside, it was a beautiful day and that was an option I hadn’t anticipated until that very instant.
I noticed we were traveling uphill. As we elevated higher, the roads and setting were starting to click; yes, I was familiar with them. At first I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I remembered them, but as I looked over the guardrails that lined the road’s edges, I started to remember. The cool blue ocean seawater around us, the sun shone down and reflected off the skin of the waves. As our ascension continued, it struck me, Mount Fitch, we used to come here all the time when we were kids. Our old car even had a bumper sticker that read: THIS CAR DROVE UP MOUNT FITCH!
A barrage of good times flooded back, the hikes and fishing, the camping trips and stories by the fire. It was a sweet and simple time. The imagery in my head began to feel poisoned, like a corrosive acid was bleeding all over pictures. It melted away to reveal that exact moment in time; Erica’s state, dead Abigail and mixed up Sammy. I would have given anything to crawl back into my head and sit beside the glowing campfire with the Erica of old. The one I understood and had never been afraid of.
Instead I looked over at her most recent rendition that I was seated beside; the mostly mute, scatterbrained zealot. The disturbed woman that I loved, if that campfire was my hope then it had dwindled down to a flicker. But even if it were only warm ash, I would stick it out until the eleventh hour, I would never leave her behind. I had to assert myself to drag my consciousness back out of my skull again, as much as I didn’t feel like it, I knew I had to.
“Erica, are we almost there, Sweetie?” I asked her with the fondness I remembered I used to ooze with.
“Just about. Do you remember when I told you that you’d understand? That I could show you how to believe?” She turned to me as if trying to project her enlightenment inside me.
“Yes,” I replied anxiously.
“I need you to believe now.”
As the words left her, she pressed down with her swollen bare foot onto the gas pedal. Time froze. I wanted to scream as the van busted through the chintzy old guardrail and launched into the air. I thought the thousands of feet between our vehicle and the ocean water would close quickly but it didn’t. Instead, I had about a thousand thoughts flash though my mind at once. I felt the warmth of her demented, yet now, somehow angelic stare invade me.
For a moment I prayed that God’s hand would stretch out from the clouds and prevent what came next. Then, suddenly, the lights came on. There was never any church or Father Franklin. Her announcement of Abigail’s baptism was a swerve subtly seeded to steer me away from our scream-worthy ending. She never had any intention of reviving Abigail; it was the three of us that would be resurrected in the next realm. I’d only focused on that aspect, but when she initially spoke to me she said, “there’s resurrection and more importantly life after death.” I should have known the only possibility of us being with Abigail was after death.
She wanted to make sure we got baptized together by nature’s blessed waters before we broke through. Once we’d been purged of our original sin, we would make the shared sacrifice together. As the epiphany dawned, the body of the van crumpled and bonded into our vessels. The top of the roof caved in and smashed my face, part of the console ripped into my gut and I felt my stomach fall out from my torso and onto the car mat. My fingers had been crushed by the vehicle’s warped steel and melded into larger, singular masses of glistening gore.
I couldn’t turn to see Sammy or Erica, but their silence said more than any words could. I was wedged perfectly in alignment with the cracked rearview mirror. It had twisted in such a way that I was now faced with my own horrific reflection. I noticed two deep lines shredded through my top lip amongst the other facial destruction. As I listened to the salty ocean water fill up the van, the only thing I could think was that I looked a lot like Abigail.
THE END
THE FLENSED GOD
By Drew Nicks
The lonely moon of Planeta Luminus never received the light of its closest star. The only light on its rocky surface came from the reflections of the cities on the planet itself and the solitary twinkles of stars far off in the ocean of black that was the sky.
The residents of the moon were a peculiar breed. All were brothers of the Order of St. Anton, patron saint of human sacrifice and bloodshed in the name of our lord. The Order resided in the monastery constructed there by the governing body of Planeta Luminus. In the year 3165, it was decided by the original colonists of Luminus that religion would never be allowed on the planet’s surface. While it was originally deemed a highly controversial decision, both the Order and the colonists agreed to this. For the last forty years, the Order had practiced in the hallowed halls of the Abbey of Antoninus. Over those years, the Order went from a militant wing of their religion with extreme fundamentalism at its core to a far more lax and understanding sect. This positive progress was attributed to the Abbot, Karl Friedrich. He had been a zealot in his youth, but as he aged and the universe around him changed, he no longer saw a need for such a harsh view of reality.
Six days prior, though the monks did not know it, a strange and powerful object had entered their orbit. The skeletal remains circled the planet and very soon its effects began to take hold.
* * *
Brother Matthias sat in the abbey’s courtyard gazing up at the stars, contemplating his place in the universe. A bright student of the seminary, the Abbot had been grooming him to eventually assume the important role.
He had recently been noticing some discontent brewing among the brothers. There was discussion that the Order had drifted from their purpose and mandate; arguments over their effectiveness on an isolated moon far from the people who required them. The Abbot held a meeting to discuss this dissension. He preached loudly to the younger members of the Order, extolling to the virtues of the moderate approach he himself had instituted. Explained to them that the violence and fundamental approach had nearly torn the sect apart. He prided himself on the direction the Order had taken. His strong words seemed to abate some of the anger.
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