by Lucas Mangum
Paralyzed, I must move.
I don’t know where the fire comes from, but it spreads quickly. The hellish blaze is fueled by the writhing bodies of the damned. They dance in the flames, skin melting and growing back, melting and growing back. They wail and gnash their teeth. The sounds tear through me.
Marley is among them, reaching for me with blackened, smoldering hands. There are others I recognize, too. Boy crushes from whom I withheld affection so as to maintain power over Daddy. Nurse Danvers. Congregants from The Homestead. Ambrose himself, sexy Aryan Jesus features sizzling and smoking. Momma and Daddy, burning together as I knew they always would.
I can’t close my eyes, though I make several attempts. The lids won’t move. They’re paralyzed, just like the rest of me. I expect myself to burn, but I feel no heat from these flames. Instead, I feel incredibly cold, chilled to the bone, so bad it hurts.
I’m frozen in the fire. The flames and the bodies within turn blue and also freeze.
Then everything shatters and I start to fall.
I fall into darkness, and it isn’t empty. Rotting hands reach for me, tearing off my clothes, trying to tear off my skin. They catch me, and I twist out of their grasp. They pummel me, and my body lights up with points of exquisite pain.
Beneath my feet, the blackness rips open, and the light blinds me. I comprehend it not.
I fall through the opening and it closes overhead. I land on my feet, sinking to my ankles in sand. Teetering forward, I put out my arms to balance myself. There isn’t a rag of clothing left on me. Those rotting hands (whatever the fuck they were) completely disrobed me. I look around. Miles of desert lie on either side. The sun is beating down from above, scorching away the last of the chill. My baby bump is gone, but I don’t fear for my child. He’s only hiding.
Where the hell am I?
Hell itself, perhaps? Maybe. Probably. Wouldn’t surprise me anyway. If there was such a world, surely I’d earned my place in it. Doesn’t sound so bad really: finding your place.
Glancing again in each direction, I try to choose the most logical course. They all look the same. Two human shapes materialize some hundred yards ahead or so and make the decision for me. I decide to wait as the people (one wearing white, the other wearing black) draw near.
4
THE MAN WEARING WHITE IS dark-haired, bearded and olive-skinned. The man wearing black is pale and androgynous, with a smooth, delicate face and a muscular build. When they come within ten paces of me, the man in black speaks. For a brief moment, something glows around each man’s head and then disappears. Haloes. The man in white’s halo is gold in color; the man in black’s is violet. The closer they get, I notice they’re holding hands and talking in a language I don’t understand. By the expressions on their faces, I can tell they’re arguing. The man in black is making large gestures with his free hand. The man in white’s gestures are more subdued. I’m reminded of Satan tempting Jesus in the desert, and it occurs to me this is exactly what I’m witnessing take place.
But it looks far more in-depth than the Bible portrayed, far more nuanced and passionate.
And then they see me. They exchange glances and smile. As god and devil approach, I stand my ground. My gaze flicks to my feet. The dagger is lying in the sand between them. I consider bending to grab it.
Jesus, in white, says, “You have nothing to fear, Courtney.”
“We’ll take care of you,” Satan says.
I narrow my eyes and cock my head. My fingers twitch, itching to pick up the blade.
They draw closer, mere feet from me, and release each other’s hand. God and devil kneel before me and press their faces to my cunt.
Each tongue is distinct. That of the messiah is warm, but strangely coarse, as if covered in scales. The devil’s has the texture of a slug’s skin, slick with cool mucus. I reach for each deity’s head and take handfuls of thick hair, pressing each face closer. The tongues work their way inward, meeting at my clit, flicking each side of it. My breath deepens as waves of pleasure spread from the epicenter of my sex across my belly and thighs. My nipples harden. Gooseflesh breaks out over every inch of my pale flesh.
I crouch, guiding them down with me, and lie back on the sand, not minding a bit as it gets caught in my hair, as its roughness rubs my skin, as I squirm with blasphemous, holy pleasure.
Satan pushes Jesus aside and tries to mount me, but I roll him onto his back and mount him, offering my ass to my Lord and Savior. He takes it with a flurry of divine enthusiasm. Sinless he may be, but I guess that doesn’t stop him from enjoying anal sex.
For posterity’s sake, I’d like to note they’re both well-endowed, but where Jesus has the length, Satan has the girth.
It takes a while for the three of us to get in sync, but it’s well worth the wait. Each dick pleasures me in its own unique way. Each dick hurts me, too. I can feel something sacred and something sinister warring inside me, purity and filth, wrestling, embracing, one giving way to the other, power shifting back and forth, mixing and separating, bursting like fireworks as I climax.
It is I who is triumphant. God and evil incarnate unable to contain their jubilation, at the gates of my church. The Church of the Dripping Cunt.
It’s Satan that ejaculates first, like lava squirted inside me. Waves of heat surge through me, radiation from the nuclear explosion inside my sex. Jesus comes next, filling my ass with holy fire. Each stream of semen travels through my body, passing through membrane and bone, finding the baby now back in my womb and encircling him like two snakes fighting over (or sharing) prey. I cannot protect him.
If my story triggers you, imagine living it.
No safe space can protect you from yourself.
The holy and unholy disengage their cocks from me and leave me in a desert that is no longer a desert but a lush flowering garden, a lonely Eden. Vines curl around my naked, used body. I sink partly into the earth. Leaves sprout from my flesh. This is Paradise regained, not by blood sacrifice, not by repentance, but by fucking. By being used, I gain dominion over myself and the world. Submission begets supremacy.
I am the Goddess. I am the Gateway.
Worship me and you’ll receive both revelation and orgasm.
Flesh and spirit attended to in equal measure.
No denial of one for the sake of the other as purity and filth wed.
5
I RISE FROM MY KNEES in front of the door. The room is as if there has been no fire. I am clothed again, as if no rotting hands stripped me nude as I plummeted into the abyss. The golden blade has become one of Daddy’s guns, a black semiautomatic with an extended magazine. I turn the firearm over and over in my hand.
History rewrites itself and I no longer know what is real.
Daddy fucked me every night after I came home, until tonight. Tonight something changed.
While I lay at the edge of the bed with him thrusting into me, Momma entered the room. He was at the edge of climax when she shot him in the back of the head. Bloody hunks of brain and skull, not semen, sprayed across my tummy and tits, seconds before he collapsed on top of me, most of his face gone.
Momma helped push him off me. She got me cleaned up and put the gun in my hand. She stands behind me now.
“Go,” she says. “Go and be who I was always afraid to be until tonight.”
She doesn’t mean a killer. She’s talking about a much deeper identity.
The serpents of purity and filth slither around my womb. My baby maneuvers itself into the birthing position. I am the pale horse, and he is the Hell that follows.
Armageddon
1
THIS IS THE WAY THE world ends: me in a beat-up van, rushing onward to a Canaan built on lies and pain, clutching Daddy’s gun, ready to give birth at any given moment. This is Revelation. The Final Conflict. Armageddon. I don’t know which part I’m playing: God incarnate, the Antichrist, the False Prophet, or the Whore.
Maybe it’s none of those.
Maybe this is
my Apocalypse.
It doesn’t belong to anyone else, divine or otherwise. It’s only mine.
I wonder what awaits me at the end. What will be my New Heaven and New Earth?
How will I be reborn? What shall I name my son, and who shall he resemble more?
Daddy or me?
Someone else entirely?
The snakes surround him and I don’t know if they’re protecting him or corrupting him, but there’s nothing I can do now.
Nothing, but finish this.
2
IT’S NIGHT AGAIN WHEN I park the van in the same spot where I first saw it, where I first saw beautiful, doomed Marley. The volume of the engine keeps me tense long after I cut it. I’m sure someone has heard me. I creep along the perimeter, hoping to blend in among the cornfields. I keep the gun raised. The safety’s off. I’ll kill anyone who gets too close. There’s no way of telling who means me harm anymore.
Perhaps I’ll think twice about shooting Nurse Danvers. She helped me escape, after all, but I’m not sure. Who knows what changes she’s gone through since I’ve left? Is she even still here? Is she even still alive?
This place has changed. Maybe it’s the dark, but the crops don’t look as healthy as before. Many stalks of corn and trees and vines stand with withered leaves, enshrouded by spider webs and gypsy moths. Even The Homestead compound looks less cared for. I wonder if it’s now abandoned.
When I’m sure no one heard me pull up, I make my approach.
The entrance I intend to use has been left ajar. And it’s not a trick of the light: the exterior of the structure is filthy. Some of the siding has come loose. The nearby window is broken.
What strange luck: for me to come all this way after all this time only to find that Ambrose and his congregation had moved on.
I enter what I’m almost certain now is an empty building. A hallway stretches before me and I trek down its corridor. My footsteps are lonely sounds. In the darkness, it’s difficult to see. The moonlight from outside only illuminates so much, and as I travel farther from the door, its power diminishes.
I turn a corner into utter darkness and have to feel my way along the wall. I keep my ears perked up, so I’m not snuck up on, even though I’m sure I’m alone. I turn more corners and kick open doors. I even consider calling out. The cafeteria is empty. All the rooms are empty. The Homestead has become a tomb without corpses. It crosses my mind the premises may be haunted, but I don’t feel the presence of anything. Not even the subtlest hint someone is here with me, flesh or spirit.
I leave the building, perplexed, and slump against the outer wall. I rest the gun between my knees and put my head down against its cool shaft. I contemplate turning the barrel on myself, but movement from the baby reminds me death isn’t an option. My breath is slow, but shakes with the threat of panic.
I look up and turn my head toward the tin-roof chapel. My breath catches. I straighten. A muscle works in my jaw.
There’s a light in the window. It looks like fire.
3
I RISE TO MY FEET and walk toward the chapel. I hold the gun at my side. The closer I get, the surer I am a fire is burning inside, for real this time. The serpents tighten their embrace on my unborn child. Each step I take, my heart seems to double its beat. I reach the door and pull it open.
The fire burns in the middle of the floor. The concrete is covered in dark stains. The slideshow plays on the now dirty and torn projection screen.
The Martyrdom of St. Philip.
The Martyrdom of St. Matthew.
The Crucifixion of St. Peter.
Death of Marat.
Beheading of John the Baptist (Salome must have really been able to shake her ass!).
I recognize all the works because I’ve sat through dozens of Ambrose’s sermons. Martyrdom obsessed him, and he insisted it must be tied to the Earth. Only then could one see the true face of God or Mother Gaia or whatever batshit crazy idea of a deity entered your mind.
Me, I saw only myself, my pain.
This is my story, my life, my body, my child.
Goddess and Gateway. Prophetess Whore.
Courtney Ashlyn Burnet. Just me.
Sitting by the fire, with his back to the screen, a man dressed in rags with dirty hair and a long beard clicks a remote, changing from slide to slide. His eyes are downcast. His mouth invisible through his beard. He rocks back and forth like a mental patient whose been given too little medication or too much. Though he has changed considerably, I know it’s Brother Ambrose. Saint Sadist himself, broken by his own bullshit, the way most people end up in the end.
I approach him but keep the gun at my side. He lifts his face to view me. His eyes brighten. He smiles, revealing rotted and chipped teeth behind his overgrown facial hair.
“Courtney,” he says and laughs like he’s been drinking and I showed up too late to the party to have any hope of catching up to his inebriated state.
“Hello, Ambrose.”
Click. Slide.
“Sit, sit.” He gestures across the fire. I obey, but not because I fear him or think I can benefit in any way. I only want to know what happened. He laughs again. “You came back.”
I don’t speak. I merely lift the gun and wave it but don’t point it at him.
“You came to kill me? Lady, I’ve already died. Many times.” Click. Another slide. “Then again, don’t we all?”
He laughs again. This time it’s a cackle. I wonder if there’s anything sane left inside him. I point the gun at him, right between his eyes. Blue eyes now gray.
“If I killed you now, you’d die for real,” I say.
“Any more real than the other times? I somehow doubt that! You’ve died, too! Many times. And you’ll die again and again. That’s all this is, you know.”
Another cackle. He plunges into a coughing fit. When it subsides, he clicks, and the slide changes.
“You want to know the best part of this, Courtney? You think you’re somehow less crazy than I am.” He half-laughs, half-coughs. “You think you know who you are and where you’re going. But no one does. It’s impossible. It’s all patterns of chaos.” He spits on the word patterns and coughs again.
“What about the Mother God?” I say.
Now, when he laughs, he nearly tips over. He tries to right himself and his beard dips into the fire. He coughs and drops the clicker. He slaps his beard, putting out the small flame.
“No one knows a goddamn thing, except . . .” He looks up at me, eyes twinkling, the smell of burnt hair oppressive. “Except, I knew you’d come. I knew you’d come tonight.”
“You always were full of shit, Ambrose.”
“Not always and not now.” He gestures to the gun I still have pointed at him. “Now, do you aim to use that thing on me or yourself? Choose wisely.”
I tighten my grip on the gun, put another hand on it to steady my aim. He laughs and laughs, tilting backwards and forward.
“You’ll never avenge the horrible things you’ve endured.” His voice changes, becomes my father’s. “I’ll always be with you.”
He points to my swollen belly. “You figure out a name for him yet?”
“How about ‘fuck you.’” The authority in my voice falters. I’m on the verge of tears.
“I think Emmanuel is already taken,” he says. “‘God is with us.’ Heh. Like that’s a good thing?”
He picks up the clicker, examines it, and throws it back to the ground.
“What’s the use in anything? You want a useful idea? How about you and me, hand-in-hand, stand inside this here fire and see how long we can stand it?” He’s now speaking in my dad’s voice, but he looks the same: a disheveled version of the man who claimed to be a prophet. “I bet I can last longer than you. I’ve been in hell a long time. Hell is knowing you’re a monster, and being unable to stop it. You watch yourself sow destruction and hurt, and part of you likes it and part of you loathes it, and you just want to die, but you’d rather kill.”
&n
bsp; He’s talking nonsense now. I should put him out of his misery.
“There you go again,” he says. “Thinking I’m crazy and you’re not. If that’s true, why are you hearing Daddy’s voice through my lips, huh? Thought I didn’t know about that? ‘I know a lot about you, Courtney.’ Remember that? Of course you do. You remember all sorts of things that never happened. Whether you’re a prophetess whore or goddess or avenging angel, you’ve always been completely crazy.” He shrugs. “Can’t say I blame you though. You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve managed to survive, death itself even. Gonna knock a few screws loose, I reckon.”
I don’t know why, but shooting him now feels wrong somehow. I shut my eyes and try to concentrate. On what, I’m not sure. Nothing makes sense right now, and for a frightening moment, I forget where I am.
Why am I holding a gun?
Why am I pregnant?
Why am I alive?
Who am I?
I open my eyes and see the mad prophet teetering back and forth as he laughs, his voice changing from his to my father’s with every syllable. I keep the gun pointed at him, both hands trembling now. He stops moving and grins like I’m going to snap a picture, then resumes laughing and rocking.
Everything has risen in volume. Even the crackle of burning kindling is oppressive. I’m slipping into something terrible, some sort of fugue. Only two things keep me here: the weight of the gun and the weight of the baby. I try to focus on these things and will everything else to be quiet.
