As I walked out, Gregoria, surrounded by a throng of people, nodded at me, and I smiled.
“Resist!” She said as she smiled at me. Then she signed autographs (not on her parachuting bloomers), and she took questions from those who had gone up to her.
The Zanzivahl triplets put Zambezi, Zeugma, and Zealot into the baby hearses.
“We need to get a pedicure for King Tut,” Zee One said.
“He’s such a lovely cat,” Zee Three said.
Oh, I thought to myself, why don’t Mauru and I also get a few cats for our kids and call the cats “Anubis,” “Nefertiti” or, even better, “CleopatiCat”?
9
Vipers and Voyages
Mandible Harquebus, a man built like a bus, and his wife, Stefana Frontispiece, a woman who might run after such a bus, were greeting all their congregants as they entered the Church of the Moral Elixir, which was founded in San Diego in 2035.
The church’s crest, emblazoned on its massive oak doors, had a giant wooly ram on it, and below it were the words, “Render therefore unto Caesar.”
“Oh, I do believe we have a new one, Mandible,” Stefana said as she saw me approach the entrance. “Family member, we are glad that you have come to the Church of the Moral Elixir. Family member, what is your name?”
“Janet.”
“Welcome, Janet,” Stefana smiled. “What a great name, like ‘Janet and Jill.’ Oh, I think it’s actually ‘Jack and Jill.’ Whatever. We are glad to have you with us, Janet. We are the divine chosen couple, Mandible and Stefana, of the Church of the Moral Elixir, and we can cure all manner of drought illness [sic].”
“Drought illness,” Mandible chimed in, “includes divorce, dust pneumonia, disloyalty, eye problems, homelessness, immorality, lung disease, malaria, malnutrition, the hatred, throat illness, treason, unemployment, valley fever, and” (I almost passed out when I heard this) “zoophilia.”
“You know, Stefana,” Mandible said, “in these water times [sic], there is so much drought illness [sic], so we have to elevate our game to the next level, or our words just won’t translate or compute in these times [sic].”
“Exactly, Mandible,” Stefana said as she welcomed other congregants. “You have to up your game, or it just won’t translate to anything [sic]. We are such charismatic people that even we have to up our game. We have to constantly bring our A-Game, and not our B-Game, or our C-Game, or, even worse, our D-Game, because that would be, um, let me see—It would be antioxidant [sic].” (I think Stefana meant “antagonistic” or “anathema.”)
“Janet,” Mandible said, “if you would like to be as charismatic, wealthy, and healthy as we are, you have come to the right place, where we are creating miracles unseen and unheard of since the beginning of time. Even our viewers abroad, who watch us online, can import themselves here through their imagination [sic], or they can ask the angels to deliver them to us in spirit.”
“Mandible,” Stefana responded in a heartfelt voice as she caressed his hand, “services are about to begin. Let’s show Janet and our worldwide viewers how charismatic, wealthy, and healthy we are at the Church of the Moral Elixir. We need their advice and help. They should join us.”
You could have sworn that the people on the stage at the front of the church were emphatically not the same people I’d met at the door. They carried themselves differently, and the cadence of their speech was very different from what I’d experienced at the front door.
The congregation was split into fifteen “zones.”
Zone one was for those dealing with divorce. Zone two for dust pneumonia. Zone three for disloyalty. Zone four for eye problems. Zone five for homelessness. Zone six for immorality. Zone seven for lung disease. Zone eight for malaria. Zone nine for malnutrition. Zone ten for the hatred. Zone eleven for throat illness. Zone twelve for treason. Zone thirteen for unemployment. Zone fourteen for valley fever. Zone fifteen for zoophilia.
Each zone was filled.
I asked an usher where I should sit, and I was told to “self-diagnose yourself, or you can go forward for a laying of the hands, and the divine chosen couple will see into your soul and assign you, accordingly.”
I didn’t want to assign myself to any of the zones, and I wished that I’d asked Maria to join me. It was all starting to feel a little overwhelming, and I was tempted to flee when Stefana came up to me and invited me to sit in the front row, and, at the right time, the truth would be revealed to me about who I was. She and Mandible were glad that I’d come to the Church of the Moral Elixir.
At the front of the church, there were seven massive fish tanks filled with snakes of various kinds, on either side of the dais.
The snakes raised their heads and tried to slither up the glass, with little success. I really was tempted to flee, but everyone about me seemed excited by the presence of the snakes, and every so often, members of the congregation hissed and applauded.
Mandible strutted to the dais.
“Family members!” Mandible boomed at the front of the church. “We have been ch-osen by the Author of all things to c-laim what is ours, to take what is ours, to s-natch what is ours from the jaws of death and des-truc-tion. We are the Author’s chosen ones. We are His be-loved. We are the ones who still have water in our homes, the ones who still have power in our light s-witches, the ones-ah who do not fear s-nakes!” [Hissing and applause from the audience.]
Mandible jumped up in the air, pumped his fist, and when his feet hit the ground, he pointed at the tanks filled with snakes.
“S-nakes fear us!” Mandible declared. “They will not bite us because we are the people who will never die, who will never get sick, who will never age, who will never s-tarve, who will never br-eak the law, who will never s-teal, who will never sin because we tithe! We tithe! This is why we are immortal! All together now: we are immortal because we—”
The congregation responded in unison, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s!”
Some congregants stood up and waved their hands at the ceiling as if they were bidding farewell to some angels. Others continued hissing and applauding.
Stefana walked up to the podium, and she read from Mark 16:18, “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”
Mandible, that bus of a man, rushed to the snake tank closest to him, where he lifted the top off a tank, and he raised three snakes aloft, before placing them around his shoulders.
The congregation stood on its feet, and it danced up and down as the church band played a song called “Fangs and Flames.” There were cymbals, drums, brass instruments, and a piano. All went wild as the song unfurled in the presence of the serpents. The congregation and hissed and applauded at the end.
The snakes still on Mandible’s shoulders, Mandible and Stefana were dancing at the front of the church, and I kept covering my eyes as the heads of the snakes got close to Mandible’s face and his neck.
“He never gets bitten,” a man sitting next to me said. “Stefana, too. They’re the divine chosen couple.”
Stefana took one of Mandible’s snakes, which she placed on her shoulders. Mandible now had two. He lifted one snake from his shoulders, and he placed it on the ground. The snake slithered across the stage, and it disappeared into the foot of the dais.
With Stefana’s help, Mandible milked his snake, a process that involves compelling the animal to express its fangs against a barrier and eject its venom into a jar.
The choir sang another energetic song, which I enjoyed, called “Vipers and Voyages.” The full band accompanied the choir, and the congregation offered hisses and applause.
The jar into which the snake had sunk its fangs was filled with quite a bit of venom, suggesting that several snakes had already been milked. Stefana then milked her snake.
Wild applause went up from the congregation as Stefana held both snakes aloft and then returned them to a tank behind her. Stefana then went on her knees and looked for th
e other snake in the dais, which she found and returned to the tank.
Hisses and applause from the congregation.
Mandible held the jar of venom in the air as the entire congregation sang singing “Vipers and Voyages,” and Mandible yelled, “Render therefore unto Caesar!”
The congregation stopped singing and responded, “the things which are Caesar’s!”
“Render therefore unto Caesar!” Stefana yelled.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
“Stefana and I,” Mandible boomed, “are the divine chosen couple that are here to br-ing you hope. ‘HOPE’ stands for ‘Healing Obtained. Pray Endlessly.’”
“You have come to the right place if you want HOPE,” Stefana said. “Even our snakes have HOPE because they know that they can get what?”
The congregation responded, “Healing Obtained. Pray, Endlessly.”
“Family members!” Mandible yelled. “We have been ch-osen by the Author of all things to p-erform some mag-ni-ficent miracles tonight! We will be c-uring, for the first time in the history of man and woman—”
“The hatred and the zoophilia [sic]!” Stefana said.
I almost fell off my seat.
Mandible and Stefana now held a gallon each of what looked like oil, extra virgin olive oil. They called for those who wanted “HOPE,” and, very quickly, there were, lined up at the foot of the stage, two older women in wheelchairs, two older men with canes, and three teenagers.
Stefana, with help from her ushers, distributed sheets of paper to the seven people at the front of the church, as Mandible told the congregation that the “Author of all things is about to bl-ess us to-day!”
The seven congregants read the sheets they’d been given, into the microphones held by the ushers.
“Psalm 6:2,” they all said in unison. “‘Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed.”
“Their bones are v-exed!” Mandible said. “They are w-eak!”
“Oh, yes, Author!” The congregation yelled as they raised their hands before Hissing and applauding again.
“Who among you has the hatred?” Stefana asked those gathered at the front.
The two frail, older women in wheelchairs raised their hands with much effort.
“Who among you has the zoophilia [sic]?”
The two older men raised their hands.
“Tell the Author of all things,” Stefana said, “why you have the zoophilia.”
A microphone was given to both older men.
“Divine chosen couple by the Author,” the first older gentleman said, his hands shaking, “I caught the zoophilia last summer when I spent more money on my poodle, Jamie, than I did on tithing. My bones are vexed! They are weak!”
“Render therefore unto Caesar!” Stefana yelled.
“The things which are Caesar’s!” the congregation responded.
“Divine chosen couple by the Author,” the second older gentleman said, “I caught the zoophilia three weeks ago when I spent more money on a funeral for Daisy, my platinum Arowana fish than I’ve spent on tithes over the past ten years. My bones are vexed! They are weak!”
“Render therefore unto Caesar!” Stefana yelled.
“The things which are Caesar’s!” the congregation responded.
Mandible then asked the three teenagers what their affliction was.
“Thank you, divine chosen couple by the Author,” the teenagers said with their heads held low. Then read from a script. “We are immoral beings. We’ve missed church for three months now, even when our parents begged us because we preferred to stay at home and play video games.”
“Render therefore unto Caesar!” Stefana yelled.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
“Family members!” Mandible said. “It is now time for some mi-racles!”
Mandible and Stefana then ran around the front of the church, spouting verses about tithing.
“Family members!” Mandible said. “In the name of the Author, the Scr-ibe, the Ori-gi-nator of all things that happen to us, I c-ast out the hatred from these loving gr-annies, the zo-ophilia from these loving gr-andpas, and the immo-rality from these way-ward teens!”
Mandible raised a jar of snake venom and a gallon of extra virgin olive oil, and he told the congregation that “through the process of spiritual academy” (I think he meant “alchemy”), he and Stefana had “mutated the snake venom into a moral elixir, which cures all manner of drought illness.”
Hissing and applause went up from across the congregation, and people stood up and raised their hands to the ceiling.
After the members of the congregation sat down, the grannies afflicted with the hatred (who, of course, didn’t have the hatred at all), the grandpas suffering from zoophilia (whose real sin was not tithing enough), and the teens who’d missed church (whose real sin was annoying their parents), were all given little vials filled with extra virgin olive oil. They drank them as Mandible and Stefana prayed for them.
“Render therefore unto Caesar!” Stefana yelled.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
Cured by the “academic snake venom” the frail grannies rose from their wheelchairs, danced, and ululated; the grandpas ran about the front of the church and took wads of cash from their wallets and put them in the offering baskets; and the teenagers walked up to their parents and asked for forgiveness, just as the offering baskets came around.
“Render therefore unto Caesar!” Stefana yelled again.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
“How many of you wanted to see a miracle tonight?” Stefana asked the church. “Stand up if you wanted a miracle, and now you know that you saw not one, not two, not three, not four, not six [sic], but seven miracles, granted to us by the Author of all things!”
The congregation stood up, hissed, applauded, and they sang “Vipers and Voyages” again with the band.
“This is a time of wides-pread immo-ra-lity,” Mandible told us as many serpents looked like they wanted to to be let out of the tanks so that they could bite us all. “We have a party in power in Sac-ramento that would have us join them like they are a religion!” [“Never!” the congregation responded.] “They want us to not only pay taxes, but they also want us to wear their sp-ecial uniforms, to say a special prayer called ‘Scr-im-mage,’ and to follow their so-called ‘Right Path.’” [“Never!”] “They are also deeply em-balmed in adultery.” [I think Mandible meant “embroiled.”] “They are so deeply em-balmed in sin that they visit people in the early hours of the morning, they threat-en them, they beat them up, and they kill them so that they join their ranks!” [“Never!”] “They visit our friends, our fa-mily mem-bers, and they may even have visited some of us!” [“Never!”] “When Jesus was tempt-ed by the serpent, he dom-inated the serpent, he triumphed over the serpent, and he cast the serpent to the cage!”
Mandible pointed at the tanks full of serpents, and “Vipers and Voyages” was played again as the congregation stood up, danced, and little vials of extra virgin olive oil were passed around.
As soon as people drank the oil, some of them collapsed in the aisles. Others ran around the church, hurling themselves this way and that, just like rag dolls. When it had all calmed down, the offering baskets were passed around again. All the tithes were delivered to the front of the church.
Then came something I had never seen before.
The tithes were tallied by zone, and the amount of money given by each zone was announced.
“As you know,” Stefana said, “we can only stay alive in these times if our family members, both here and abroad, tithe. Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, tells us that Abraham gave one-tenth of all his goodies to the Author of all things [sic].”
“Render therefore unto Caesar,” Mandible called.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
“As per usual,” Stefana told us, “Zones five, nine, and thirteen—the homeless,
the malnourished, and the unemployed—have given the least amount of money, a pittance. 2 Corinthians 9:6 tells us that those who are stingy will receive stinginess in return.”
“Render therefore unto Caesar,” Mandible called.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
“We understand why the stingy zones keep doing this,” Stefana told us, “but it’s about HOPE, family members. When you have HOPE, you find a job, you’re no longer homeless, and you’re no longer unemployed or malnourished. Our overhead costs at the Church of the Moral Elixir are very high, and the snakes need to be fed, too. The big snake over there, Donald, loves munching on organic rodents. We tried feeding him roadkill once, but he wouldn’t eat it. He’s a very choosy snake. Quite bougie. Now, we have to import the organic rodents from New York City, which is filled with them.”
Stefana was too annoyed to tell us how much the homeless, the malnourished, and the unemployed had given.
“As per usual,” she said, “we provide a free buffet for the homeless, the malnourished, and unemployed after each service. We also give free clothing, thanks to donations from our family members here and across the world. Still, let’s keep HOPE alive.”
“Render therefore unto Caesar,” Mandible called.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
“Oh, Stefana,” Mandible said. “We have a new winner when it comes to tithing! To-day, those su-ffering from the zoophilia have given the most money! And we have a check here for fifty thousand dollars from the Zan-zivahl sisters! Would they pl-ease stand up so that we can acknowledge them? This brings the Zanzivahl donations to the church over the past year to almost nine mill-ion dollars!”
“Render therefore unto Caesar,” Stefana called.
“The things which are Caesar’s!”
I had heard of the Zanzivahls, but I’d only seen photos of the matriarch and patriarch of the clan, which was from Honolulu, Hawaii.
Fire Sweeping: The California Ballot Killings Book II Page 11
