The End Is Her

by H. Claire Taylor

  Jimmy scowled at the stagehand before turning back to Trent. “Okay, now.”

  Trent, having been adequately knocked off his shame spiral by the technical interruption, blinked and said, “You want me to talk about the pig stuff?”

  “Yes,” Jimmy hissed through his teeth. “Go.”

  “Uh, okay. Well, um. I don’t really know where to start. I didn’t always have a thing for pigs …”

  Chris groaned, and Jessica couldn’t help but agree.

  “But I’ve spent basically my whole life thinking about how God is a Hog. And then when the Pretender started talking about how God was supposed to be a woman, I just got to thinking, ya know? I’m a straight guy, as the Hog intended, and I like women. Nothing wrong with that …”

  Oh wow. This. This was something Jessica had not foreseen, mostly because the timelines were so mismatched that the story shouldn’t have held any water. Members of White Light had been caught fucking pigs long before her recent campaign to turn God into a woman.

  But she should have known. She should have known that if she turned God into a woman, men would use God as their scapegoat for all their disgusting behavior. And here it was. As the logic went, if God was a Hog and God was a woman, then it made perfect sense for men to stick their dicks in hogs, who were just asking for it, really.

  She tried to muster up a little anger, but she found herself suddenly too exhausted.

  It was a rehearsed statement, no doubt about that. This twisted testimonial had Jimmy Dean’s signature all over it.

  Trent continued, “She looked at me, and because I was so mixed up, wondering if God was a woman like the Pretender kept saying, I could have sworn I saw the face of God on her. I thought I heard the voice of God, too, telling me that it would be all right if we … well, you know.”

  “Yes, please spare us the details,” Jimmy said. “Your confession makes it clear enough that you were made mentally ill by the falsehoods of the Pretender. This is increasingly common as she spreads her heresy.” He addressed the crowd. “Heed this warning! For I do not bring this disgusting man before you solely to punish him. Let his punishment save your souls and awaken you from any confusion you might be containing inside your soul. It was not my teachings that led him and so many like him down the road of temptation and into sin, but the lies of Jessica. The lies of the one who has tricked us into believing she could be born of Original Sin and yet be the child of Hog Himself!”

  The clock had ticked down, and only eighteen minutes remained until Jessica’s birthday officially began (in the central time zone).

  “You, Trent Wurst, have confessed your sins. Will you commit them again, if given the opportunity?”

  There seemed little chance of that happening, according to Jimmy’s narrative, unless Trent hopped right off the stage, undid his belt, and jumped wiener-first into the wild hog pen.

  “No, I repent for my sins and see the error of my ways. I was so confused by the sexual implications of a female God that I lost my mind temporarily.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Jimmy.

  “It’s not my fault!”

  “You were weak, but so are we all.”

  “I was so, so weak!”

  “And nothing in White Light’s teachings encouraged you to act in such a way. The church is faultless.”

  “The church is faultless! Oh, Hog! Forgive me!” His knees gave out, and he crumpled into a ball, remaining within his shame circle all the while.

  “And for all of you out there,” Jimmy said, “take note. He was blessed with an opportunity to confess his sins before the end. Some of you have not yet done so, despite your access to the confession corrals. So, I will leave you with a few minutes before your time runs out to relieve yourself of your burden so that you might receive Hog’s grace within you and ascend to Heaven upon death.”

  Chris muttered, “What are the odds that he’ll record every one of those confessions?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “It seems appropriate,” Jimmy announced, as Trent continued to sob, “that on this occasion we revisit the night when this all began, the night when God spoke to me in the body of a Hog and sent me to view a lowly birth that would show me the way until the Final Moment.” He nodded at someone on the side of the stage, and Ruth Wurst climbed the few stairs back up into the spotlight. Only now, she was wearing different clothes from the whites she’d previously worn. Those had included a thin white cardigan over a white blouse that hugged her neck so tight it seemed likely to strangle her.

  Now, however, in horrifically clingy tights and a leopard-print shirt that exposed her middle-age belly, which flopped over the waistline of the zebra-print tights, Ruth Wurst closely resembled someone Jesus would spend a lot of time with.

  Makeup like a clown in the rain completed the look with stringy and overly gelled hair.

  And yet, the self-righteous woman held herself with dignity as she approached Jimmy across the stage. Jessica wondered briefly if anyone else noticed the reverend’s slight eyebrow arch, the twitch at the corners of his lips, and the flare of his nostrils.

  Tucked beneath an arm, Ruth carried something white. Only when she handed it to Jimmy and he shook it out did it become clear that it was a bedsheet.

  The charade came into sharp focus like a slap to the face.

  No, no, no …

  Jessica shook free of Chris’s arm to free herself up. She scanned the audience urgently, looking for the shock of red wig. Where was she?

  HAVE FAITH.

  Are you kidding me?

  I KNOW WHAT YOU PLAN TO DO. CONSIDER HOW THIS COULD AID YOU IN IT.

  You know my plan? Of course you do. But you’re okay with it?

  No reply, so she was forced to consider God’s suggestion. Maybe She had a point. In fact, this whole thing was starting to play out like perhaps it had been orchestrated from the start by a single—

  “Are you okay?” Chris was staring down at her.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “I think maybe we should get out of here. The crowd is turning ugly.”

  “The crowd’s been ugly, Chris.” She looked back at the stage where Ruth Wurst was slinking from one side of the stage to the other, sticking her tongue out and rubbing herself suggestively while the crowd, and her wide-eyed son, looked on.

  Jeers issued from the crowd, and Jessica heard a man yell, “SLUT!” followed closely by a chorus of female voices parroting the insult.

  Jessica’s fingers tingled. Did Destinee see what was taking place on stage? And if so, had it clicked for her yet?

  Of course it hadn’t. Because once it had …

  Destinee’s moment of epiphany occurred not long after Ruth Wurst went down on all fours and began grunting, and Jimmy set the scene: “Away in the mobile home, on the dirty shag carpeting, a sow birthed a baby girl …”

  Destinee’s footsteps on the stairs to the stage were thunderous, and for the first time in her life, Jessica felt no moral obligation to step in and prevent her mother from kicking the ever-living shit out of Ruth Wurst.

  It was liberating. Exhilarating.

  The years her mother had spent watching football with Coach Rex had clearly improved her form. She got low, bending at the waist, and with one final push of her powerful thighs, leaped straight into her impersonator.

  Ruth, still grunting on all fours, didn’t see it coming. Destinee came at her from behind. Jimmy was smart enough not to get in the way of the bulldozer.

  Destinee flattened Ruth facedown beneath her, and kidney punches followed in short order. The crowd gasped and screamed, in delight as much as judgment, as the two women went at it. Ruth managed to twist around to face her attacker directly but made the crucial mistake of going for the hair. The red wig, which was already half off, yanked free completely, and in the wake of it, Destinee managed to sneak in a loud slap to Ruth’s right cheek and ear.

  “Behold! The sows squabbling!” Jimmy announced, and Jessica thought,
Now’s my time.

  It was eight minutes until midnight.

  She squeezed Chris’s hand to get his attention. “You don’t need to save me on this one, okay?”

  “Huh?”

  Grabbing his face, she pulled him toward her, planting her lips on his. But before he could respond, she let go and slipped through the crowd.

  It was time to make things right.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  00:00:08:49 until Doomsday

  No one had yet attempted to break up the catfight on stage as Jessica snaked her way through the tightly packed bodies toward it. But that was to be expected of a crowd full of cowards who got off on the novelty of open female aggression. Or perhaps, Jimmy’s unexpected mention of metaphor earlier had confused his followers just enough to make them wonder if they should be taking this as a literal brawl or if there was a deeper meaning they were supposed to glean from it.

  Ruth’s ground fighting skills had improved somewhat since the women’s last brawl, or perhaps she was simply channeling her opponent through the ridiculous costume she wore. Either way, it looked to be an even fight, and Jessica thought someone ought to intervene. Would it be a fight to the death, otherwise? Or would Destinee get the upper hand, force Ruth to cry uncle, and then walk away? She wouldn’t make it far in that scenario before the mob turned on her.

  There didn’t seem to be a good end to this, but that was the theme of the hour, wasn’t it?

  Unless …

  Perhaps if there was a distraction big enough, it would make the onlookers forget about the brawl completely while serving the secondary purpose of getting all eyes on Jess. And she was about to need all of the eyes.

  Before she resorted to that, she would attempt to get attention the old-fashioned way.

  She approached Jimmy, who gave her a quizzical look.

  Oh right. The disguise.

  She pulled off her wig and discarded it, immediately realizing that it meant her hair would appear unfavorably smashed for the duration. Damn.

  Jimmy cocked his head to the side, processing the strange new development.

  But when she pulled off her thick rimmed glasses, he gasped, at first in shock but quickly in delight. “I had a feeling she would come. She was there at the beginning, so of course she’s here at the end. My friends, the Pretender, Jessica.”

  But not even Jimmy with his charisma of mass destruction could wrestle away the undivided attention of his congregation from the brawl, and with the attention split, faint lines of frustration appeared in thin parentheses around his mouth.

  She checked the clock over her shoulder. Six minutes left.

  She turned to the crowd. “Is no one going to stop them?” She pointed to the tangle of woman still grunting and squealing on the stage. Nope, no one was going to stop them.

  Well, someone would.

  She marched over, grabbed her mother’s right arm—the odds of the other fist whipping around to knock her away were high, and she’d prefer her mother’s non-dominant hand for that—and by the grace of God alone, when Destinee did as Jessica had predicted, the swing went high and she was able to duck under it. One hard tug, and she’d pulled her mother away and onto her ass.

  Ruth, wheezing, readied herself to spring, but Jessica planted her feet in front of the bloodied woman. “I didn’t bring you back from the dead just to have you act like a fucking fool, Ruth.” The words felt silly as they slipped from her lips, but she’d had an intended result in mind, and she got it.

  Ruth blinked with the one eye that wasn’t already swollen shut and used her arm to wipe away a stream of blood from her nose. It looked broken, and if it looked broken, that meant it would have to be professionally set later. That seemed punishment enough.

  “Get out of here and take your son with you, you pathetic excuse for a mother.” This part, she didn’t have to fake, the anger came easily, flowing through her arms. Hold onto that, she told herself.

  Ruth did as she was told, scrambling to her feet and limping pitifully across to the shame circle, where she grabbed her son by the arm and tried to lift him.

  “No, Mom! I belong here!”

  She muttered persuasion at him, but he shook her off.

  “This is my punishment! I need to see it out before the end of the world!”

  Jessica groaned. “For fuck’s sake, Trent. Get out of here! Go take care of your mother, you idiot.”

  He glared at her but didn’t move, and it was something about that dead-eyed stare, the contempt he deigned show for her, that pulled the pin from the grenade.

  Jimmy commanded, “Stay there, Trent, if you care about your soul and that of your slut mother!”

  Trent’s face contorted. “Huh?”

  Not used to hearing your mom called that, huh, Trent?

  But her gratification was short-lived if the spark of life ever inhabited it at all.

  Jimmy grinned. “She’s a slut, your mother. I’ve seen it firsthand.”

  “Huh?”

  Jessica didn’t have time for this. “They slept together, Trent! A bunch. Come on, you didn’t know that?”

  “I was confused!” Ruth howled, cheating outward toward the audience. “I’d spent too much time in the presence of the True Slut”—she pointed, of course, to Destinee—“to know right from wrong anymore!”

  Destinee slipped free of Jessica’s hold, and charged forward for round two.

  But before she even got close to her target, the statue of Jimmy Dean and the archway below it exploded into a spray of rock and sand.

  Yelling, screaming. Even Jimmy, the ever unflappable, ducked and covered. And slowly, once the thick dust settled, the charlatan turned to face the only person who hadn’t flinched at the explosion.

  Jessica.

  She couldn’t keep from glaring at the panicking crowd, not with contempt, but out of sheer disappointment. She’d had to show might before they would listen.

  Snatching the mic off Trent’s head, she held it to her mouth. “Do I have your attention yet?”

  It was three minutes and forty-one seconds till midnight.

  As it turned out, she did have their attention. All of it. Her mother’s gasping attempts to catch her breath, the occasional passing car on the highway, and the contented snorting of the hogs were the only sounds wafting through the night air of the parking lot.

  She scanned faces in the crowd for ones she knew and found Chris and Rex right away. Jesus was easy enough to spot next, since he was waving at her. Then there was the horrified face of Courtney Wurst, watching the humiliation of her estranged family happening in real time, and, next to her, Judith with a steadying arm around her shoulders. Somewhere out there would be the rest of her priestesses and Jeremy and even Quentin, dear Quentin, whose response to her End of the World invite had simply been, “I can’t explain it, but I have to see this shitshow through.”

  But, before she could locate the rest, something else caught her eye. One of the hogs had its front hooves braced on the top of the fence. It stood on its hind legs and stared straight at her. Then it waved.

  “I’m here to bring you, everyone, an important message, and it’s this: Jimmy is right. The End is coming. But it’s not the end of the world. It’s the end of many other things that never should have happened in the first place.” She gestured at Trent and his mother, both huddled together now in the shame circle. “You look at them and presume to see so much—their sin, their imperfection, their weakness. But the one thing you can’t see is the most important part of them.

  “I thought that the key to peace was for everyone to see themselves in God. I believed that was why I was born, so that women could finally see themselves in God and stand up to the people who want to keep us down. It’s why black churches have a black Jesus and why Mormons have a white Jesus. But that was never the problem. Women have never seen themselves in their professed messiah. So, they’ve found other avenues to self-love. They’ve had to.” She returned her attention to Ruth. “Well
, not all of us. Some of us have ingested the poison, haven’t we? But it’s not just Ruth.

  “No, the key is, and has always been, that there can be no peace until we see God in everyone around us. But we’re pretty stupid animals, all told. As Jimmy pointed out, metaphors don’t work that well for us. We need to see a literal child of God who looks like those we oppress before the oppression has any chance of ending. I mean, we are truly dumbasses in this department. But it’s how things are.

  “When I was fifteen years old, I was assigned a mission to restore peace to the United States. I know now that I was never intended to see that moment. I’ve only ever been able to start the process, and I can’t do it by myself.

  “Because while I’m the daughter of God, I’m still the white daughter of God. There’s no getting around it. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, that it was just luck of the draw, that the odds simply favored it based on demographics. But I can’t pretend anymore. God made me white for a reason.

  “She spoke to me recently. She always does. But this conversation especially changed me.”

  DID IT? WOW. NICE TO KNOW YOU’RE LISTENING FOR A CHANGE.

  “She told me that her next child would be here soon.”

  WAIT, WHAT?

  “In fact, she could already be among us. Yes, God is having another daughter. And this one will be black.”

  WHOA, REALLY?

  “There will be no peace until we can learn to see God in her, no hope for our future until we learn to love her more than we love ourselves.”

  HEY, SO, I LOVE THE DIRECTION YOU’RE GOING WITH THIS, I REALLY DO, BUT …

  God downloaded a short history lesson into her mind. Jessica cursed, then quickly added, “Oh, and, this should go without saying, but like I already mentioned, we’re all a bunch of fucking idiots, so if you go around trying to kill black baby girls to avoid the next coming, I promise it won’t work. Also, you’ll be smote to shit. God thought I ought to mention that.”

  Good call.

  I DO LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.

  You truly have changed, then.