12 Deaths of Christmas

by Paul Sating

  Now he was the odd man out. Person by person, row by row, the congregants turned to look at him. Unreadable expressions. This was a group that expected compliance, valued law and order. A group who praised unyielding structure. They wouldn’t react well to defiance.

  Taking the first step was the hardest, but Damien began to move forward, to join Kilo at the front of the room. The pastor’s stoic mask warmed when Damien complied.

  Pastor Richards moved across the stage again. Back and forth. Stomping. Stalking. “Our new brothers will be witnesses to the devotion of Heaven’s Light. Let them understand that He is not of us, we are of Him! We are Him! We are Him and we are here, together, in His house with His family!”

  “Amen!” The congregation shouted. One woman fainted, falling into the aisle behind Damien. He spun to check on her but was blocked by more and more congregants filling the open space, none of them bothering to assist the fallen woman. He looked toward the front door-toward escape. Panic seized his throat. The aisle was now completely filled with congregants. They raised their fists, shouting back at the preacher, lifting the message to the heavens. The air popped. He was trapped in the middle of a horde of zealous white people with no way to call for help. If this got weirder, he would be in serious trouble.

  “And the Lord works through us, for we are His vessels on this plane of existence!” The rhythmic annunciation made the air crackle. A man standing near Damien roared, his eyes wide with something that bordered on rage but most definitely wasn’t the spirit of a benign maker.

  Yet Damien walked on. What else could he do in a room of hundreds of religious freaks?

  Ahead, Kilo came to a sudden stop. The pastor looked down from above. “Don’t fear, brother,” Pastor Richards’ his voice dropped its heat, becoming softer, gentle. “Have a seat.”

  Kilo paused as Damien marched on.

  “Not everyone understands the work we’re here to do,” Pastor Richard said in a pained voice. “Not everyone will appreciate it. But we must still do it. The Lord demands it.”

  This time, the congregants echoed a soft, “Amen.”

  Damien glanced at them, unsure what was happening. He wanted to stride to catch Kilo but couldn’t. Too many bodies pressed in around and behind him, closing in as more and more mesmerized people spilled out into the aisle. Something hard was pressed into the middle of his back but Damien couldn’t even turn in this surge of humanity to see what it was. He heart galloped as free room disappeared in the swelling mass of humanity. Suffocating.

  The crowd began to sway, many holding a hand toward the ceiling, their eyes closed. As Kilo rounded the aisle to take his seat he raised his hands in the air. Kilo wasn’t a religious person by any stretch of the imagination. But he also wasn’t much of a thinker. He would follow along with almost anything if someone was convincing. Hell, that was how they ended up riding out to the middle of nowhere together on Christmas. Shelley batted her eyelashes, swayed her ass, and Kilo agreed to cross the Cascade Mountains to spend the holiday with her. Damien tagged along because he didn’t want to spend Christmas by himself.

  Even now, he wished he had stayed in Seattle. Damien felt very alone.

  The church body pushed him forward. He was almost at the front now.

  Food and warmth. Was it worth all this?

  The pastor’s hoarse voice filled the room again, building in temperature until it reached a crescendo. He held a Bible aloft. “But if the thing is true, and the evidence of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house. So you shall put away the evil from among you!” Pastor Richards was now panting.

  What the fuck is he talking about?

  Atop the stage, the pastor jabbed a finger toward the back corner, toward a part of the stage Damien hadn’t been able to see. He’d been so transfixed by the congregation, by their automatic responses, and every word the pastor had said that he hadn’t noticed the display. Now he could.

  The pastor’s mannerisms had captivated him. The charming looks and his commanding demeanor and charisma had made Damien ignorant, inattentive. But the facade began falling as his body warmed and his desperate need to escape the storm diminished. Damien now understood the full complexity of the situation they’d stumbled into.

  In the corner of the stage, away from the choir and the band, was a woman. Completely naked, her arms were tied above her head, lifting her breasts that did not need any assistance to remain firm and perky. Her smooth legs spread at a wide angle. She was tied to something that looked like a cross that had tipped over. Damien stopped, taking in the sight. She was gorgeous, stunning. Her body was the stuff of magazines, perfectly proportioned. Her manicured pubic hair demanded his attention. Yet his sense of right and wrong overrode those carnal observations. Whatever weird things this congregation was into, this woman with not a willing participant. Her red eyes were swollen. Her disheveled hair gave her a wild appearance. The divot between where her collarbones met was as red as the small area above her breasts, which heaved as she gasped for breath.

  The woman’s eyes met Damien’s and his soul dwindled. He was staring into the pit of madness.

  “What the fuck is going on?” He couldn’t contain himself anymore. He couldn’t acquiesce to their righteous demands and interpretation of civility and morality. The woman on the stage had been tortured. Red blotches dotted her beautiful skin. Cigarettes. Cigars. Car lighters, maybe? It didn’t matter. Hundreds of small circles peppered every part of her. With revulsion and a sliver of guilt, Damien noticed her inner thighs suffered the same fate.

  “Heretic,” someone snarled behind him.

  “Filthy sinner,” another voice snapped to the other side.

  “Satan!”

  “Devil spawn!”

  More and more voices raised in protest against him. Word began to filter to the back of the congregation about his defiance. The ecstatic praise for the heavenly turned to vitriolic hatred. A large man shook a fist at him. He was holding something.

  On the stage, Pastor Richards raised a hand and the crowd immediately quieted. “Brothers and sisters, forgive him, for he knows not what he does.”

  “He’s a sinner! Take him to the rock!” a disgruntled congregation member shouted.

  “Take him to the rock!” The other hundred voices joined in concerted urging.

  “Take him to the rock!”

  “Take him to the rock!”

  “Take him to the rock!”

  “Take him to the rock!”

  The congregation repeated the mantra over and over, growing louder with each turn. Even Kilo shook his fist. How could he fall for this madness?

  Pastor Richards allowed this to go on for a time before holding up his hands and urging, demanding, quiet. “In time, brothers and sisters. In time. We still have work to do.”

  A frustrated groan fell over the mob. The music ministry struck up Judy Garland’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, accompanied by the choir. Their voices rose into a controlled crescendo along with the melody of the band. Pastor Richards stepped to the edge of the stage. Hundreds of zealots around Damien swayed back and forth, now silent. Satiated.

  “Felicity has wronged her community,” Pastor Richards began in a passionate voice. “She wronged her parents. She wronged her church. And she wronged her God.”

  With each proclamation from the pastor, the congregation thrust fists into the air. They held stones. Damien hadn’t noticed them before. Why were they carrying them?

  “She has failed to control her lust, her animal desires,” Pastor Richards spat. “And she must be purified. Purified in the ways of our forefathers, the ways the world is too weak to adhere to any longer. But we of Heaven’s Light will not capitulate to contemporary demands. We will not fail our Lord, our Savior, not today. Not ever!”r />
  Electricity raced through the barn that was a church. The mob moved together, a swarm of purified rage. The man next to him grunted like an animal in heat. One woman fell on the ground, convulsing like a fish thrown into a boat. The grunting, the groaning, the growling among the congregation grew in volume and veracity. It could be contained no more.

  “Take her to the rock!” The pastor said and stepped down from the stage. A flood of humanity surged forward. Congregation members jumped up onto the platform and those who lacked the physical ability to do so did whatever they could to pull themselves up. As one body, they approached the woman in the corner, stopping only when they were a few feet from her. Damien could no longer see her, could no longer hear her.

  Pastor Richards stood shoulder to shoulder with Damien now, wrapping Damien’s hand in his. He didn’t ask for permission. The pastor’s hand was strong, warm. “Watch, my child. Watch as we redeem her on the rock.”

  There was nothing to watch, nothing to see. The crowd overwhelmed the stage. But Damien didn’t want to see what was about to happen. There was nothing he could do to change the fate of the poor woman as the mob raised their fists, rocks aloft, and one by one began hurling them at her.

  Their rage screams drowned out her death yell.

  Damien’s stomach churned. He was grateful that he didn’t have to hear the thudding of the rocks off the poor woman’s arms. Off her chest. Against her skull. He didn’t have to hear the breaking of her bones or the collapsing of her lungs. He didn’t have to hear her ribs break, piercing vital internal organs. And he didn’t have to hear the moment one of the larger men hurled his rock as if it were a baseball, striking her in the head and collapsing the side of her face.

  Not until the end. By then only a handful of armed congregates remained. Everyone else moved off the stage, beyond their seats, toward the kitchen.

  Kilo was amongst them. Kilo was smiling.

  As Pastor Richards held Damien’s hand, the music ministry continued on playing. This time it was a joyous song of revelation and rejoicing.

  He began to understand. Understand everything. He was in the mouth of madness with no escape.

  Pastor Richards gave his hand a quick squeeze, still examining the collapsed pile of skin and bones that once was a very beautiful young woman. “We’ll feast now,” the pastor said. “Her lover was an older man, in his 30s, and a prominent member of our community. Married, sadly. But as he failed to serve his Lord in life, he will serve us in death. Come, join us at the feast so that you too can become one of Heaven’s Light.”

  Damien wouldn’t become part of this madness, but he was aware he was being watched. He was also aware that large men blocked the front door. They held identical machetes in their humongous hands.

  Pastor Richards tugged him one more time. Something told Damien that this was no longer a request. “Come, child. Serve your Lord and his flock.”

  The pastor pulled Damien toward the kitchen. Somewhere in that mass of humanity, in a room filled with thousands of utensils which could maim and kill, Damien heard a scream. A scream from a familiar voice. And he knew.

  The pastor sighed, shaking his head. “I’d hoped he would be stronger. Disappointing. Surely you won’t let us down as your friend has.”

  Utter madness.

  Insanity.

  “What the fuck have you done to him?” Damien tried to pull himself away and was immediately surrounded by a horde of congregates, all larger than him. There was no way out of this. No escape.

  Pastor Richards smiled over his shoulder, releasing his grip now that Damien was being escorted into the kitchen by the band of believers. “Felicity’s lover was only the entrée. An entrée must have side dishes, lest it be unfulfilling. And no meal is complete without a desert.”

  Damien was in the kitchen now, populated only by the women cooking. Without the crowd to block his view, he saw it. There, on a large stainless steel table, lay Kilo, his chest ripped open. Three women fished out his organs, separating them into large bowls.

  Damien’s stomach evacuated itself.

  The pastor stood over him, shaking his head. “We’ll have to get that cleaned up,” he said. “Such a shame. So weak, a sure sign you are without the Lord. I knew it the moment my scouts told me of your predicament out there. Sinners, the pair of you. Even if the sign of your impure skin wasn’t enough, your actions have convinced my flock. Oh well, you will still serve His purpose.”

  On his hands and knees, Damien looked up, tears streaming down his cheeks. “What are you going to do?”

  A few women laughed.

  But the pastor didn’t. He wore a ravenous expression. “I told you. You will serve the Lord,” Pastor Richards wiped the trail of saliva from his chin. “You will be the dessert.”

  Damien was set upon by the large men before he could even scramble to his feet. Chopped and diced, he was prepared for the festive meal.

  END

  Dear Savior Born

  A King of Many Names.

  The King of Kings.

  Set upon a mound of corpses.

  His throne.

  The gathered throng, attendees to the Feast of Minds, reluctantly lift their glasses in salute. They regurgitate the official toast to the young king who led them away from the edge of eternal despair. For it was him, born of fate and fury, who set the world right by setting it alight. And all, even the most skeptical, understood the power he wielded. It was an easy display, the day he conquered the world; his power evident to even the casual observer, the ignorant and the uninitiated.

  His was a reign of terror and blood.

  The man-still-a-boy simply known as Marr leaned over the side of his throne, reaching down. Thana watched his every move.

  It was her job.

  It was her fate.

  Then the King of Rage sat upright, holding the tiny arm he’d severed from a young peasant boy just a few hours ago. Thana had been present to witness the ‘justice’ of the ritual. The boy had been no more than eight, fragile and weak from a lifetime of malnutrition under Marr’s reign. He painted a pathetic picture—a representative of the victims of madness. The boy’s crime? Stealing a loaf of bread from a vendor at the market. The vendor hadn’t requested justice because he understood the child’s plight. So many people did. But he was still brought to justice, his arm severed at the shoulder in the Hall of Witnesses in front of his mother, father, and siblings, lest they think to repeat the violation against the king. Marr refused to let the mother hold him as he died, instead displaying his interpretation of kindness by allowing the family to return home after the boy bled to death on the floor.

  The Council proclaimed his kindness. Publicly and loudly. Even the day he ordered his motorcade to run down a group of elderly protesters trying to prevent Marr from using chemical weapons to oust native people from a sliver of land he claimed was his.

  There was nothing Thana could do for the boy or his family. There was nothing anyone could do. In the 15 years of Marr’s reign, hundreds of thousands had died in his pursuit of justice. Marr always raved that overpopulation of the planet bred profane tendencies in the human species, that the battle for territory and resources was intensifying beyond anyone’s capability to contain it. History taught him that, he claimed, citing the deaths of billions during the earlier part of the twenty-second century. According to Marr, humankind committed atrocities against one another in the fatal game of survival and what Marr was doing, he did for the people. His visions showed him a future devoid of hope and prosperity unless he led them. And the people believed. Marr was a master of instilling fear in the populace.

  He and those who maneuvered him into power built his impunity on the back of perniciousness.

  From the beginning, there were signs for those who watched, for those who analyzed the behaviors of the King of Fear. But what was one to do in a world balancing on the precipice between the rational and irrational, driven by hatred, prejudice, and fear of others? Significant progres
s drove the regression that was the rise to power for the King of Kings and he was only too happy to snatch the crown when it was laid upon his head, the great child hope of a people. Fear was his platform and religion was the vehicle. Thana was young, only a few years older than Marr, but even she saw the moral purity he claimed as his own was nothing more than a façade to appease the self-professed righteous.

  But it worked. A simple, effective strategy. With Marr, people understood again, comprehending a changing world, a world that made them uneasy. A world that made them fearful they were fading into obscurity. And Marr’s charismatic proclamations reminded them of a time before, a time of relevancy. And the people embraced him.

  Many did, even now. Even at this time of year, when families would celebrate the holiday season in generations past, the holiday season Marr had erased from the calendar. Even after the mutilations and annihilations of enemies, near and far. Even after every unfair policy, every self-serving action; many of those who put him on the throne still reveled at his majesty, even as they suffered as a direct consequence of his machinations.

  Marr held the child’s severed arm aloft in front of his face, quizzically examining it. Blood dripped onto his lap, but it didn’t seem to bother him. To his Council, this was who Marr was. They tolerated his proclivities because he’d made them rich. The people of the kingdom of Aether put the King of Fear upon his throne, allowing him to wield madness like a scythe, and they accepted his temperament because it was too late to stop him. Marr was far too powerful now.

  But Marr was mad. The entire Council knew that. The entire country knew that. Looking back, it was easy to see that Marr was mad from the very beginning. He and his trusted assembly simply constructed a persona around his charisma, hiding Marr’s greatest weakness. But the shadow taught Thana about the true nature of the King of Kings and the demons who haunted him. It taught her, in hopes that she would free the king from his psychopathy.