Unmoved by the sweet wind of Gala’s forgiveness, Esme plowed on with the morning’s agenda. “We wouldn’t trouble you with it, but there is the question of Purgatory and/or Hell, and we thought we’d defer to you as an authority on how the young people today view eternal damnation as a lifestyle choice.”
GOD DAMN IT! Gala exclaimed. Her asteroid shattered and she floated free, backlit by a lens-flare-crazy corona of stardust. Thanks, Dad!
I love you . . . but I won’t be used, Gala proclaimed in a voice so powerful it crossed the empty space between them like gamma-ray sledgehammers. Esme recoiled, crushed into inert space debris by the concussive speech of the angry god she’d sat on several key steering committees to create.
And the Lord Gala looked down on the world and said, Let there be love, and she descended to the Earth like an extinction event on Valentine’s Day.
13
History destroys more than it preserves.
Think about it. That one fish that first walked out of the sea on lobe-fin legs. That one son of God who redeemed the world. That one cleric who posted his complaints about the Church and ushered in the Reformation, that one artist who instigated the Renaissance, that one hillbilly who invented rock and roll.
Is any of this true? Yes and no.
That one hypothetical fish was the most successful of countless mutants who set out to conquer the world beyond the waves. You couldn’t swing a lobe-finned fish anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago, without hitting a raging lunatic who professed to be the King of the Jews.
Even aberrant, evil local assholes like the Zodiac or the Golden State Killer turned out to be only the valedictorian of an invisible class of creeps who checked almost all the boxes, as if society was always grooming understudies, so badly did the monster need to happen. And Elvis wasn’t even the most gifted white redneck to steal rock and roll from the people who invented it.
What I’m trying to say is, the human need for saviors and innovators makes us pare down movements and epochal changes to make one person into their author, even if they weren’t the only ones doing what they did, even if they didn’t exist. Seldom, if ever, is one person more than just a figurehead for a change the world wants to make . . .
Until the day Gala Murowski returned to Earth in her final form.
An hour before dawn on Saturday morning, 4:47am PST, an unscheduled meteor shower lit up the murk above San Francisco Bay. Chunks of blazing metamorphic rock hammered the tranquil shallows into a steaming soup.
As Distant Early Warning networks lit up too late to do more than point a satellite or two at the deluge, a mass the size of the Chrysler building came tearing out of the starry darkness, shrieking a chain of supersonic booms as it tumbled towards the Bay Area with the force of five hundred Hiroshimas. Millions tumbled out of bed to run to their windows and watch in helpless terror as the flaming agent of their doom blocked out the moon, the sky . . .
Less than a thousand feet above Alcatraz, it braked in mid-air, the scream of its arrested descent rising to a thunderclap roar an impact that abolished every last trace of America’s most infamous prison.
Crouching amid the mushroom cloud of vaporized masonry, a shaggy, brown, apparently hermaphroditic gargantuan form emitted twin beams of blinding light that swept over the boiling bay and the steam-scoured sky before locking on the forested bluffs of Angel Island.
Tsunami waves radiated out from the guano-spattered rock to capsize fishing boats, waylay freighters and hurl commuter ferries out of the water. A pod of delinquent bottlenose dolphins, who were passing around an agitated puffer fish to get high off its tetrodotoxin emissions, watched as the fallen behemoth shook the dust off its towering form, drew itself to its full height and stepped off the demolished island.
They were immediately overcome by a sense of mission to found the world’s first delphine religion, and immediately began collecting rocks and shells to erect a shrine to the thing they fervently hoped had arrived at last to wipe humanity from the face of the earth.
Wading across the Tiburon Strait, the behemoth plowed through the chilly brine that swirled around her knobby knees and splashed at annoying helicopters circling round her head like winged leaf-blowers.
In the sauna at their retreat on Angel Island, Esme was already a shaking wreck. Draped in lavender-scented hot towels and sipping Sleepytime tea while a masseuse pummeled the knotted muscles of her back to jelly, she joined the sisters gathered around her in reciting the protective mantra.
“This house is surrounded by light,” she muttered, but she didn’t get any bolstering out of it. None of the energy that seemed to flow into her out of the earth and air yesterday came to her aid now. What had come of all their plans, all their service to humankind, in that short interval? What havoc had that godless little hood-rat wrought upon their divine mission?
You should’ve known better, she told herself. Loretta warned you her granddaughter was a lost cause, but you had to accept the hazard, because no more reliable vessel was presented by the universe. For one who believed that she was merely tuned in to the holy spirit’s eternal struggle to manifest itself for the highest good of all, it was a hard pill to swallow, that she might have been lost in a catastrophic ego-trip, all along.
The women around her went on invoking the saints of all religions to protect them from the abomination they’d unleashed. You weren’t there when she broke free, she bitterly thought. You didn’t feel it when she crushed my angelic body with a kind word.
That was what unnerved her the most, not that they had lost control so quickly, but that they had been unseated by the simplest of loopholes. The end, whatever unacceptable form it took, would not be long in coming. Esme had switched to ginseng even before Sister Priscilla barged in to report that the sky was on fire.
She felt the seismic rumble shoot up through the cedar floorboards to tickle the soles of her bare feet and stumbled to the doorway, shoving aside the others to hog the dubious shelter of the frame for herself.
As soon as the vibrations subsided, she shouted for order. “Maintain defensive prayer postures, sisters. That wasn’t an earthquake. It was something much worse.”
The assembled sisters squawked and clucked. Esme raised her hands for order to no effect, but a moment later, they all fell silent and looked to their leader.
Another rumbling wave surged beneath their feet. Fainter than the initial impact, but the next one was louder and more distinct, the third louder still, as if something enormous was making its way towards them.
Shivering, she let herself be dressed by her attendants. Esme pushed through the scrum of blue-haired penitents wailing and watching the sky. Something loomed over the whole island like a runaway skyscraper in the fog, but she knew by the slouching posture and nervous flinching as Coast Guard choppers darted around her head that it could only be her.
Very well, then. Let her come. Esme was not completely unprepared for this. To Sister Priscilla, she gave orders to bring the girl’s mortal remains out to the fire ring and prepare a rite of exorcism.
If she knew her mark, Gala wouldn’t just trample them underfoot. She couldn’t resist giving them a piece of her half-baked mind first, and might find herself less able to exert her divine will, than she thought.
The shapeless anger that drove her was also what kept her in check. The only way she could have slipped their grasp was an attack of agape, which would also prevent her from lashing out until it was too late.
The trick now was to keep her talking until the ritual could be completed. All of their work would be undone and the marketing campaign for The Galatine Prophecies (available NOW for pre-order in trade hardcover, Audible and Kindle, $39.95/$29.98/ $19.98) thrown into a cocked hat, but it was a small price to pay to save their own skins. Whatever plagues she visited upon them, they would regroup to purify their intent and begin again. And again, if necessary, until they got it right.
“Esme,” Gala said in a voice so intimate
, she might have been whispering directly in the older woman’s ear. None of her sisters seemed to notice it. Esme’s hand went to her hearing aid just as it repeated itself louder, causing the device to whine with dissonant feedback like one of those awful electric guitar amplifiers. “Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you,” she mumbled into her concave chest. Holding out her arms, she donned a white robe and led the chattering host of sisters downstairs and out onto the cobblestone path to the grove, where the fire ring was already gushing tongues of flame around the coffin in which rested the body of Gala Murowski.
Esme took her place beside the fire and gestured to Sisters Priscilla and Ruth to expedite the ritual. “Gala, we’re on the verge of writing a new book of the Bible. We’re undoing all the evil that men have perpetrated on the earth. Don’t ruin that, the way you ruin everything else.”
“This new book of yours should do what, exactly, besides proving that women are just as awful as men, given half a chance? Listen, Mother Superior, I forgive you, but I’m not a doormat. Just because you tricked me into this thing doesn’t mean I’m down for knocking out whatever target you point me at.
“I mean, just from what you told me . . . When the world had real gods, how’d that work out? Seems like nothing really got better, until we got rid of them. If they didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent them? Well, someone had to destroy them all, too. Now you want to bring back devils? I’d actually love to see those plans for a heaven and hell. I bet you made all the same mistakes Hollywood reboots always make.”
“Why shouldn’t we? All those souls go into the dark. So much wasted energy. Every day, belief in our cause grows stronger, we gather more influence, more power to shape the world into what it should be . . . ” Keep talking, you spoiled little bitch. You’ll see what our hell is like from the inside. You’ll be our first customer . . .
“What you think it should be. You still have a landline so you can answer surveys. People like you kept five versions of Law & Order on the air for thirty years, but cancelled Firefly. You’ve never really suffered the way the people you want to judge have suffered. But the real reason you shouldn’t have this kind of power? Because you want it.”
“You have no idea how I’ve suffered,” Esme snarled, loud enough that the others paused the exorcism for fear the Mother Superior herself had become possessed. Lowering her voice and withdrawing to an alcove, she hissed, “How dare you presume to judge me, little girl. I have seen evil. I’ve been its victim in ways you could never imagine.”
“Great! Are you going to fix problems, or just punish the people who can’t obey your rules? You know how religious people always tell each other that atheists don’t really disbelieve in God, they just resent God because he wasn’t there when they needed him?”
“I’m not aware that they . . . ”
“Didn’t you see God’s Not Dead? I would’ve thought it was right up your alley.”
“I don’t watch commercial television—”
“Well as usual, you people have it backwards. You love God because you hate humanity for failing you, and you want God to punish everyone who wronged you, while the rest of the world just goes on like a vampire sucking its own blood.”
“Of course you know best, sweetie. How would you have it, then? All of us hanging on your every word, trying to make a better world for freaks and failures who blame everyone else for their problems . . . ”
“That’s where you’re wrong, sweetie. If there is a God, even a fake one, who controls everything, they are to blame for all the trouble in the world. But God is a verb, or fucking well should be . . . ”
Esme had heard enough. Plucking out her hearing aid, she shoved Priscilla aside, planted an Ariat custom leather riding boot against the side of the coffin and kicked it over, so its contents spilled into the fire.
The sisters averted their eyes. Esme squinted into the flames, her nostrils flared to drink in the reek of Gala’s flesh burning, but the stench was all wrong. It was the reek and poison smoke of plastic and foam rubber.
Esme could still hear the angry hornet buzz of Gala’s voice. She threw her hearing aid into the flames and edged closer to the fire-ring with her hand clamped over her mouth and nose.
“What the hell is that?” she demanded.
Choking on the fumes, Priscilla said, “Mother Superior, it appears to be a CPR practice dummy.”
Realizing she’d been outflanked by a vulgar girl and the gutter-nuns from Saint Candy’s, Esme tried to force the state of serenity that let her leave her body before the lanky apparition could crush them underfoot, but of course, it was easier said than done.
All of them fell down on their knees, awaiting the judgment they knew was coming, but the monstrous behemoth fell silent and still, its glowing eyes dimmed and dull.
A faint, receding tone chimed in Esme’s head, a voice she could barely resolve into words: I forgive me—
No sooner had it died than the amazing, colossal corpse began to spontaneously decay, emitting a gust of sweet, spicy wind redolent of cinnamon, cardamom and apple blossoms, and a storm of shrieking seagulls.
In the same breath with which she blessed providence for having delivered them, Esme looked up to the sky and let out a curse on Gala Murowski as the overstuffed seagulls cut loose with a deluge of guano as they fled the imminent collapse of the carrion-mountain, which tilted alarmingly and toppled out of the sky.
Esme trampled a different sister with every step she took in the direction of the limousine in the turnaround, but she got no closer to it than anyone else before the avalanche came pounding down to engulf Point Blunt and bury the sisterhood’s retreat under forty solid feet of potpourri-scented god-flesh.
14
And so passed the second age of miracles, and the brief, chaotic reign of Gala Murowski. When the world woke up on Sunday morning, it was with an exquisite mix of wonder and dread that it reached for its phone or newspaper or television remote, steeling itself for literally any fucking thing to be reported as commonplace truth.
And so it was with a deep sigh of mistrustful relief that the world learned that nothing much had changed. Wars were cautiously poking their heads out of their burrows and daring to hope for a return to senseless carnage.
Experts trotted out theories in varying degrees of insulting obtuseness to explain the mass hysteria that had come to a head with the plague of flowers and the kinky brown gargantua carcass washed ashore in San Francisco Bay, only to dissolve in a flurry of new age books consigned to the remainder bin almost before they could be printed.
Yes, everything had returned to normal.
Or had it?
Lost amid the flood of empty speculation were the odd little news items that percolated up every time the sun rose and the world turned. In China, feedlot and slaughterhouse workers walked off the job en masse and many were hospitalized claiming they were dying only minutes into their jobs processing poultry and pork. No pathogens or unsafe work conditions were identified, but even replacements were unable to bring themselves to shed a drop of animal blood for mortal terror that they themselves were the ones being slaughtered.
Miners stampeded out of diamond mine shafts in the Congo in a panic. They complained to company medics that they felt parasites boring around inside their bodies, but examinations failed to turn up any physical evidence. Nonetheless, the symptoms resumed the moment the miners returned to work, and operations were suspended.
Word of similar incidents at open pit copper mines in Nevada, rare earth extraction sites in Venezuela and logging operations in Brazil had begun to creep out past hastily imposed corporate media blackouts, galvanizing a global movement to recognize the personhood of the Earth itself. But those people were fucking crazy, and disregarded accordingly.
Only those who watched the sunsets and breathed deeply of the wind at evening time noticed how it smelled of cinnamon, cardamom and apple blossoms. No one who didn’t keep company with animals would note the d
ifference in the nature of their play that began after the days of religious hysteria fell behind them.
Only those who listened and accepted with gratitude the little gifts young girls bring might notice the peculiar way in which they asked permission before picking each sacred wildflower.
My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now and it is all you need.
I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.
You are absolutely free to create in your life. Heaven or hell.
—Spinoza
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I'm exceedingly grateful to Matthew Revert, whose collage inspired the book you're holding; to Max Booth III and Lori Michelle for challenging me to write it; and to my parents for giving me refuge in which to complete it. Without these folks, this book would not exist at all, but if it's not all it ought to be, the blame rests solely with me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CODY GOODFELLOW has written nine novels and five collections, and has won three Wonderland Book Awards. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene films Stay At Home Dad and Baby Got Bass, which have become viral sensations on YouTube. He appeared in numerous short films, TV shows, music videos and commercials as research for his previous novel, Sleazeland. He also edits the hyperpulp zine Forbidden Futures. He “lives” in San Diego. Find out more at codygoodfellow.com.
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