Jessica crossed her arms over her chest, gazing out over the watermelon pedestals. “Okay, yes. I’m pissed at a lot of people. Some I don’t even know.”
“Perfect. That’s why we’re here”—she held out her arms and motioned to the array of melons—“at your very own smiting range.”
Jessica laughed before realizing that not only was Miranda serious, she was sort of an evil genius. “A smiting … range?”
“Yeah. Well, I figured if you’re going to be pissed off all the time and have the ability to make things go boom, you should probably practice a little bit so that the next time you decide to perform a little vigilante justice outside a bar—Chris told Quentin because he thought it was sexy, then Quentin told me—you can rest assured that you won’t hit the wrong target. I mean, I know you’ve gotten better, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little practice outside of the real thing.”
As the situation settled in, more questions surfaced than dissolved. “You’re not worried I might accidentally smite you out here?”
“Nope. Not at all.”
“Huh.” She looked around at the setup once more. It was actually brilliant. How had she not thought of it sooner? Sure, she still had a ton of questions, but those could wait. First, she wanted to smite some melons to … hell?
Sheesh, I hope that’s not where I send smote things.
And, god dammit, Miranda had out-friended her once again.
When the hint of annoyance the thought caused reared its ugly head, Jessica used it, focused on one of the watermelons and smote it with all she could muster.
The watermelon two pedestals over from where she’d aimed exploded instead. “Oof. Yeah. I guess practice is a good idea.”
Miranda wiped a bit of juice from her arm and grimaced. “Wow, that was really bad. How have you not accidentally killed someone yet?”
“I suppose by the grace of God.” She met her friend’s eye and both chuckled.
“Sure,” Miranda said.
“Right? I wish.” Jessica focused on the same watermelon and this time it exploded when she threw her wrath its way. The thunk immediately preceding the explosion was morbidly gratifying, and as she went down the row, missing a few and taking out a juniper tree then a distant prickly pear—thankfully far enough away that none of the spines made it back to where Miranda and Jessica stood—and finally, much to their chagrin, a small field mouse, Jessica struggled to focus her mind. The temptation to imagine that each watermelon was Eugene’s stupid face with his stupid mustache and stupider eyebrows was strong but did present a moral question Jessica didn’t feel like considering at present. So she put him out of her mind. The whole point of being out there was less thinking and more smiting anyway.
Once the semicircle of watermelon targets had been properly neutralized, Miranda and Jessica headed over to the pile of spare melons and reset the range.
“Hey, do me a favor,” Jess began, “and don’t tell Chris about this. He has this thing about superheroes, and if he hears I’m doing this kind of training …” She cringed. “I occasionally need a real night’s sleep without sex dreams. And you wanna talk about someone tampering with my food? I’m fairly sure NyQuil will make it into everything I eat around him if he catches so much as a hint of this.”
“I don’t think you’re wrong.”
“He brought up marriage the other day.” She bit her lips and waited for Miranda’s response.
“Cool. And?” She didn’t sound nearly as frantic or excited about it as Jess had hoped. Rather, she carefully balanced the last watermelon, stepped back, and pulled her phone from her back pocket to check for notifications as she strolled to the center of the range.
“And we’ve never talked about it before, so it was kind of weird and unexpected.”
Miranda’s eyes shot up from her phone, which she tucked away again. “Seriously? Y’all are just now talking about marriage?”
“What do you mean, ‘just now’? We’ve only been together for ten months.”
“No, you’ve been together for years off and on. There’s a difference. Hell, Quentin and I have been talking about marriage for almost a year now, and we haven’t been together nearly as long as you and Chris. To be honest, I’m surprised you’re not already married.”
Jessica crossed her arms, glaring at Miranda. “You’re not helping here. It kinda freaked me out.”
“Don’t let it. It would be weird if you two weren’t talking about it. And just because you’re talking about it doesn’t mean he’s going to propose tomorrow.” She looked Jess up and down, a mischievous smirk forming on her lips. “But if he were to propose tomorrow, you’d say yes, right?”
Jessica’s stomach clenched. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Oh.” Miranda’s grin faded. “Oh.”
“It’s just that I have a lot going on right now. I can only worry about so much at one time. It’s not like Chris is going anywhere, so I don’t see why we can’t deal with this the whole marriage thing once I open the bakery.”
“So you’re still planning on opening the bakery?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t really know what else I would do.”
“You’re not going to let the money problem stop you cold?”
Jessica turned to face her directly. “No. Should I?”
“Hell no! Who would you even be if you let anything stop you? You’ve spent your whole life dealing with assclowns set on keeping you from getting what you want.” She ran her hand over her sweaty hair where it was pulled back into a high ponytail. “You know, sometimes I get the feeling you’re always so busy fighting to push forward, you don’t allow yourself a second to see how far you’ve come. And that’s a damn shame, Jess. Because you’ve overcome a whole hell of a lot. I know everything’s a struggle for you. I see it. I feel it. But that doesn’t mean you’re losing all the time. It just means everything in your life has been hard won.” She shrugged. “And as long as you don’t give up, this bakery will happen. You have my word on that.”
Jessica nodded along, knowing there was truth to Miranda’s words, but that if she thought too much about them, her aggression might melt to the primary emotion driving it, and that would be no good for target practice.
So instead of responding verbally, she inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, imagined two of the targets, and then let loose. The thunk was louder this time, and when she opened her eyes, both watermelons had been obliterated.
With Miranda backing her up, maybe it was possible after all. Maybe, just maybe, she didn’t have to do it all on her own.
“You are so totally Jessica McCloud.”
Jessica glanced up from her copy of Railed to the Cross. The ambient noise of Bat-Ass Brew surfaced in her field of awareness as she was pulled from the pages of Jimmy’s annoyingly relatable life story.
The person staring down at her was definitely not what she was expecting, even after Wendy’s repeated cryptic warnings of, “I promise they’re the best at what they do. I know you’re small-town, but treat them with an open mind.” And then her further clarification, after Jessica had inquired whether her social media problems really necessitated more than one person to handle them, “No, I’m not sending a team. I’m just sending you Cash Monet.” And then her even further explanation, once Jessica said she didn’t see how a bit of money would fix her publicity issues, “No, Cash is a person. And they’re the best there is.”
Jessica eventually resigned herself to not understanding what the hell was going on but promised she would get her ass to Bat-Ass Brew by two on Wednesday afternoon regardless.
The face staring down at her did begin to answer some of the riddles in a sort of now-this-makes-sense-but-I-still-don’t-quite-get-it way. Said face was composed of smooth cream-colored skin, a shaggy blond pixie cut, and crystal blue eyes beneath lashes that might’ve been completely invisible, were the sunlight not reflecting off them like icicles. “Are you … Cash?”
“Oh my god, that’s such a Jessica McC
loud thing to say. Yes. Cash Monet. At your service.”
Cash already had his … her? coffee in hand and made himself … herself? at home in the chair facing Jessica. Leaning forward, a self-satisfied grin on his or her face, he or she waggled a finger at Jessica and said, “I know that look. Wendy didn’t explain.” Cash sighed but leaned back in the chair, threw one arm over the back and crossed his or her legs. “It’s okay. I can’t expect everyone to get it right away, and considering you’re from small-town Texas, I have to say, you’re handling my very presence admirably. Let’s clear the air, shall we? I am a genderless gift from God, which means two things. First, I prefer for people to use gender-neutral pronouns to describe me, which in English means my options are to be called an ‘it,’ which isn’t okay for obvious reasons, or accept the plural of they, their, them and so on. And you wonder why society can’t wrap its head around people like me? We don’t even have a pronoun for that shit!” They laughed. “Anyway, being referred to in the plural kind of reminds me of being royalty, so duh, I’m gonna go with that.
“And the second thing you should know going forward is that if you ask me what’s between my legs, I’ll tell you the same thing everyone—regardless of gender—should tell others who ask that, which is ‘none of your goddamn business.’ You understand?”
Jessica nodded dumbly. Much to her own surprise, she did understand.
“Is any of that going to be a problem for you?” Cash asked, raising a mostly transparent eyebrow.
“Nope. I actually prefer not to think about what’s between everyone’s legs.”
Cash cackled with laughter and leaned over the table, swatting Jessica on the arm. As they did so, their eyes landed on the book, and they recoiled. “Oh dear Lord Almighty! What are you doing with that in public?”
“Huh? Just reading it. I’m supposed to read it, aren’t I?”
Cash clutched at their heart, speaking to no one in particular when they said, “Oh have mercy. She didn’t even take off the dust jacket. Oh hell.” Their eyes refocused on her again. “I have my work cut out for me more than I thought. But that’s okay. I like a challenge. And you’re about as challenging as they come. That’s why I jumped at this opportunity to help out. This could launch my reputation into the stratosphere. I mean, if I can help Jessica McCloud break a streak of non-stop social media blunders, I can help anyone. No offense.”
“Little taken?”
Cash reached in their bag and pulled out a pen and notebook, flipped it open to a clean page in the middle, and clicked the pen before slapping both down on top of Railed to the Cross. “Let’s start with you writing down all your social media logins and passwords.”
Jessica wracked her brain and came up with them one by one, jotting them down. “There.” She slid the pad back over to Cash, who averted their eyes when the cover of Railed to the Cross was visible again. “Please put that in your bag.” As she did, Cash began tsk-ing across the table from her.
“What? What is it?”
They put their hands over the login info. “Two things. One, you use the same password for every account. It’s a literal miracle that you haven’t been hacked. Second, I just asked you to write your logins and passwords down on a piece of paper without showing you any type of official identification, and you did it. Just like that. I could be anyone, forcing me to ask: are you or have you ever been involved in a multi-level marketing scheme?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Cash mouthed, thank you to the ceiling. “That’s yet another miracle, then, because you’re gullible as hell. If I didn’t know better, I would actually believe you were the daughter of God himself, avoiding so many possibly catastrophes despite your best efforts to trigger said catastrophes with your reckless online behavior.”
“Should I take back those logins, then?” she said, reaching for the notepad.
Cash smacked her encroaching hand. “Absolutely not. I need these. From now on, you don’t touch Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat or Tumblr and especially not MySpace, however desperate for social media you become. Instead, you send me updates about where you are and pictures of what you’re doing multiple times a day, and I filter those through my much more refined judgment. After a few months without snafus, we might just heal your online image.”
“Let me get this straight,” Jessica said. “You want me to not get on social media?”
“Yuh-huh.”
“Not post, not even look at it?”
“That’s the deal, yes.” They nodded empathetically, offering a gentle frown of commiseration.
“You’re telling me I’m not allowed to read the comments and replies and mentions?”
Cash sat up straight, staring firmly at Jessica. “Yes, I know it’ll be hard at first, but—”
“You’ve got yourself a goddamned deal!” She leaned forward, offering her hand to Cash, whose mouth popped open in surprise as they shook.
“I really thought this would be more of a battle,” Cash said.
“Nope.” Jessica scrubbed her hands together, wiping them clean of her long-dreaded responsibility. “It’s all yours, Cash Monet. Enjoy the trolls.”
“Really? But won’t you have to go through withdrawals?”
“Nope. I hate social media.”
Their head rolled forward, their eyes locked onto Jessica’s face. “You hate … But you’re young! You can’t be a day older than I am.”
Jessica reached in her tote and pulled out her sunglasses and cap, sliding them on. “I have literally no idea how old you are, Cash. Not even a guess. But it’s all yours. Do with those logins what you will. Meanwhile, here’s my first update.” She grabbed her large Nosferabrew with rabies and stood. “Even though I’m about to head back home to subject myself to more of Jimmy Dean’s mega upsetting bullshit memoir, I’m having a great day, and it’s all thanks to you.” She punched them playfully on the shoulder, winked, then turned and headed toward the exit.
From behind the counter, Rebel shouted after her, “Offer still stands!”
Jessica shot him with a finger gun, said, “Still not taking you up on it,” and walked out into a beautiful September afternoon. Not even Rebel’s unnecessary reminder of his lewd comment half an hour earlier could dampen Jessica’s spirits today.
She was free. Free of the trolls.
Excerpt from Railed to the Cross
Once we were back on our feet again with more of my mother’s government money, I was hardly four, my memory beginning to store small but impactful moments, which was unfortunate timing, because that was when Terrance came into our lives. I never needed my mother to tell me what happened between her and Terrance, because he was Lust, and I heard that loud and clear from where I slept in my mother’s bedroom closet each night. I dare not tell you about the obscene moans or about the positions I witnessed my mother and Terrance assume through the crack where the shifting foundation of the crumbling house had separated door from frame. Throughout the rest of my childhood, when I learned of Hell on Sundays, saw the illustrations of the damned writhing in agony in the eternal flames of condemnation, my mind returned to my mother and Terrance in their tango of damnation, as if their souls were already set aflame by the Heavenly Father each time they peeled off their dirt-caked clothes and crawled onto my mother’s mattress.
In the time between Dale and Terrance, I’d begun sleeping in my mother’s bed, seeking the comfort from her warm, unconscious form that was always denied me when she was awake. But after Terrance left, driven away at gunpoint by my wrathful mother upon learning that he would be a father in a few short months and the baby wasn’t hers, I never slept on that tainted and god-forsaken mattress again, not even for the maternal warmth my young body so craved.
My mother’s wrath didn’t subside in the weeks that followed Terrance’s departure. It only grew, the fire stoked by the flammability of alcohol that kept it burning hot in her soul. And as flames consume, occasionally forking, fanning out, breaking off, bu
t ultimately uniting again, so did my mother’s rage seem to find and combine with Gustav’s.
Gustav had lost his home, his family, and his country, and as his boat had approached Ellis Island, Lady Liberty extending long-sought warmth to him that he had come to believe was dead, he began to hope again. Maybe he could rebuild his home. Maybe he could rebuild his family. Maybe America could be his country.
But he was turned away at Ellis Island on suspicion of being a Soviet spy, and the rejection was like a lash across the back of that small body of hope just as it’d clambered to its feet again. The tail of the whip curved around its side, tearing open the hope’s flesh, sending all the entrails tumbling out below the ribcage.
Gustav never recovered.
So after paying what little money he had on him to the right man—or wrong man, depending on your view—he smuggled himself aboard a series of ships that eventually landed him in New Orleans, where nobody cared about mere spies among the horde of crazed, sin-drunk locals and their devil-worshipping voodoo priests.
He traveled from town to town, working for next to nothing in each new location until he was inevitably fired for his temper and moved onto the next place. Then one Sunday morning he wandered up the path to my mother’s home right after we’d returned from church. Someone in town had told him there was a single mother who might need help tending to things, so that’s what he offered us: help in return for room and board.
Gustav was built like a bull, and about as hairy as one. From a distance, he appeared to have the arms of a black man, his hair was so dense. It always disturbed me that he appeared some sort of biracial Frankenstein monster, but at the same time, his monstrous appearance suited him.
My mother accepted his help before he’d even finished presenting his offer in harsh, broken English. I wasn’t sure what she thought we’d need help with. Tending to the mud? Running off the occasional gator or moccasin from the backyard?
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