Blood and Blasphemy

by Gerri R. Gray

  Yet, they follow that unworthy god with slavish faith and devotion. So, it comes as no surprise that they do the same thing with those they choose as their temporal leaders. Government and godhood by the worst is a recipe for disaster.

  Part II

  In Alien Skullduggery 101, they taught us to keep a journal. They said writing would sharpen my interface with this body and make it easier for me to think and act human. I did what they said but managed to lose the first three journals I started because I had memory problems. No doubt because the human brain is a kluge—a workaround that is clumsy, inelegant and inefficient. But I figure if some human finds them, he or she will think it’s a fiction, a bad script for an unmade movie.

  The plan, as originally conceived, consisted of transmitting multiple minds into earthly bodies, co-opt those minds, then infiltrate, observe, test, and report back. Based on our collective recommendations, one of three things will happen: Earth will be manipulated into leaving Europa alone, but otherwise, untouched; or it will be colonized through the mass migration of Cnidarian minds into human bodies; or we will manipulate the whole lot to annihilate itself.

  I am part of a trinity meant to evaluate the sorrier examples of the species, the rationale being to fully plumb the depths of human depravity. See what it takes to drive them into a killing rage or suicidal depression. So, in addition to my host, the pedophile Father Joe, there is Sally Gumballs, host and crack whore extraordinaire; and Frankie the Wolf, host and freelance hit man. We meet once a week to compare notes and grouse about our raw deal.

  Sally Sue, the woman of the evening, looks as if she had lived inside the Chernobyl reactor: Crack and other narcotics have reduced her to a shell of a woman: toothless, acne-faced, emaciated and largely incoherent. She is infected with every known STD known to man and even before she was co-opted, thought nothing of passing those gifts along to her customers. Likewise, our third, Frankie, ranked exceptionally high on the psychopathy scale long before he was compromised, killing for money as well as killing for fun.

  In getting humans to kill themselves, the easiest way is to find an emotional sore spot and then remove their inhibitions. Just the other day at confession, I used my powers of mind to induce a woman to pull out her hairpin and stab her abusive husband some twenty times in the face with special emphasis on the eyes and throat.

  Frankie, for his part, likes to induce speeding thrill-seekers to drive off cliffs and overpasses. He claims there is an exact science to it, that moment when absolute acceleration meets the immoveable object, thus catapulting car and driver into a high arcing propeller spin.

  Sally’s forte is more passive aggressive: she hands-out contaminated needles to groups of junkies.

  Having the humans kill themselves makes perfect sense. After all, we are jellyfish safely ensconced beneath Europa’s icy surface. So, we are as physically and experientially limited as a sentient being can get. We Cnidarians have no technology; we have never seen a sky; we have never used a tool. Our big adaptation is the ability to wind our way past our perceptual and physical limitations by seeing through the eyes of others whose minds and bodies we co-opt.

  No tech means everything we know about the earth comes from hacking into the minds of its inhabitants. In fact, everything we know about the universe comes from this method. And no tech means that we have only our far-ranging minds to defend us.

  The big wheels figure that sooner or later the terrestrial meat-sacks who are blithely raping and poisoning their own world will probably turn their sights on Europa if only for its abundant water. And should that day come, we need to be as prepared as possible and ready to do anything to defend the sanctity of our home. After all, humans are exceedingly cruel to their native jellyfish. Nothing torques my jaw more than watching a bunch of human kids throwing sand and otherwise torturing a beached jelly. I can only imagine what they would do to us given the chance.

  Any decision we make about earth’s fate requires many virtual tentacles on the ground. If humans are benevolent at heart, then we merely operate as influence peddlers who steer them to worlds other than Europa. That’s the current protocol. Why else do you think everybody’s so hot for Mars, with its radiation, poisoned soil—perchlorates—Christ, that stuff is nasty, and freezing temperatures? The Martian with Matt Damon is pure Hollywood bullshit. Only a moron would believe anything could grow in that soil or survive the radiation for very long.

  If we find that humans are nothing but un-regenerate pricks, we get them to kill each other. That requires a bit more doing. We can’t be in these bodies if that all goes down. No, we need to aim the plane at the ground then eject from the cockpit before impact so to speak. We need to get inside their heads and whip them into such a frenzy that their complete destruction at their own hands is as certain and invariant as the speed of light, which coincidentally, is how fast I believe our minds move through space. Thought being as massless as a photon at rest.

  It just hit me that I am writing as if for an audience other than myself. So, is that a feature of the human mind? Or am I going around the bend? It’s like there’s more than one of me, but then again maybe because I’m sharing this body with another mind the brain defaults to operate as if someone else were listening?

  Whatever. It can’t be helped. I’m stuck walking around in their skin and seeing through their two eyes. And it’s a hot mess that I see.

  But I guess that’s the point: to see them, warts and all. That’s why they have me masquerading as a Catholic priest. I get to hear all their deep, dark secrets and see how far down the perversion hole they are willing to go. Humans believe confession is good for the soul. I’ve never seen a soul. I wouldn’t know what to look for.

  What I can say is that the human mind is a fragile thing full of fissures and cleavages, full of geysers spraying crazy thinking. Take my last confessor. First thing she says to me is, “Father, I want to bash my own brains in. It’s the voices in my head. They won’t shut up. They tell me to kill myself.” Not surprisingly, she’s a life coach.

  Not being one to stand in the way of spiritual progress, and most curious about my powers of suggestion, I tell her, “You should kill yourself. Who is anyone to say otherwise?”

  She asked me, “But, isn’t suicide a mortal sin?”

  I said, “That’s only true if you were fated to live forever. But you come with an expiration date. God doesn’t have to deal with the pain and decay of the body, the decline of the mind. He sits up in the clouds, fat dumb and happy. It’s your life, not his, and I say do with it as you will.

  “Me, I think about ending it all the time. Growing old is a miserable experience. So, quit playing the waiting game, seize control of your destiny, say goodbye as painlessly as possible. And remember, death is just the jumping off point to eternity.”

  She thanked me profusely for my insight. A few days later, I heard from a reliable source that she had hanged herself. That I felt pleasure in her suicide troubled me. Not because of guilt. Rather, I wasn’t sure whether she had done it solely by my power of suggestion or the wisdom implicit in my prescription.

  So, confession was now a test of my power to influence people, driving them to do whatever evil task I set out for them. My next victim came in totally off the rails. For a moment, I thought it might be a fellow Cnidarian having a bit of fun in the driver’s seat, but as we proceeded, I realized this guy was nuttier than a fruitcake. So, like any good experimenter I decided to bend his mind as far as it would go and see if it snapped back.

  “I hear voices. They tell me to kill everybody. How can they expect me to do that? There’s 9 billion people on this planet?”

  I said, “Everybody seems a bit much. Why not start with a baker’s dozen? Assault rifles are readily available. You could shoot up a mall and be back before lunch.”

  He said, “God said, thou shalt not kill.”

  I said, “God is dead; you’re just nose-blind to the rot.”

  He said, “But Father, I want to b
e good not evil.”

  I said, “Son, you’re beyond good and evil. Otherwise you would not be so calm and gentle. To be sure, the voices sound strange and otherworldly, but really, they are you, and they are the part of you that wants what’s best for you. And that is to be the King of yourself, not a slave to the morality of those who oppress you. The same people who tell you not to kill on your own behalf think nothing of having you kill on theirs.

  “They want to keep the power to kill all to themselves; they want to be wolves and you to remain their sheep. So long as you refuse to rise and fight them, you will always hear the rebel voices, you will always feel frustrated, and you will always feel like less than a man. A mass killing is your ticket to fame and validation. People will remember you more than the victims.

  “The Bible teaches that one day the wolf will become the shepherd. Go now and be that wolf.”

  He didn’t say a word, but simply got up and left. An hour or later, I went for a walk, and just around the corner a crowd had gathered. Inside that throng lay the body of my troubled confessor. It seems he had jumped from a height and died on impact. If I were given to pity, the torment of that gentle soul would have cut me to the core. But I am part of the fifth column, sent here to probe for weakness and set the table for whatever decision my superiors make for the disposition of this world.

  You might think that my story would just be a continuous sequence of homicidal mischief. But things took an abrupt turn when one of my charges misconstrued my advice and shot up the church. Father Joe took four in the chest and one in the head. So now I am back on Europa. And if you’re wondering how I can still be writing, then you have a few things to learn about jellyfish.

  THE END

  BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL

  By Sheldon Woodbury

  They came for him at the darkest hour of night on the holiest of days, when he was slumbering in his musty room in the Parish House behind the Church. He’d always feared this would happen, so when the gnarled hands grabbed him, he was only faintly surprised and didn’t fight back. He had a saggy face and wispy gray hair, dressed in a faded long nightgown.

  The three hulking figures wore black coats and low wool caps, even though it was Easter Friday and the night air didn’t call for that kind of heavy covering. He only saw them by the sparse moonlight streaking through the window, but he already knew who they were.

  The Occultus, the Hidden Ones...

  Or rather, that’s what the whisper croaked in his head.

  When they dragged him from the bed, his frail frame fell to the floor like a bag of bones. He was still half drunk from the night before, red wine smeared on his face like a bloody tattoo. The hulking figures grabbed him again and yanked him back up like a wobbly puppet. He caught a whiff in the air, the wafting smell of smoke and ash, but that had to be his imagination playing tricks again, like the croaking voice in his head.

  “Please,” he muttered. “At least grant me the courtesy of wearing my holy attire. I beg you to honor this simple request...”

  He stumbled for a moment, waiting for an answer. One of the hulking figures spewed out a grunt that smelled more sharply of fire and smoke, another sign of his delirious state.

  After a lifetime of soaring debauchery, his grip on reality had almost completely slipped away, so now his delusions had become a lingering part of his everyday life. When he saw a cleaved hoof poke out from beneath one of the long dark coats, he knew this was just more proof of his mental decay.

  He stumbled to his closet and creaked open the door. With trembling hands, he withdrew his holy vestments and laid them neatly down on the bed. He tugged off his nightgown, feeling no shame at being unclothed, because he never did. He put on his priestly attire with meticulous care, a private ritual he never grew tired of. He’d always marveled at the power such a simple act had, dressing in garments that magically made him a figure most people would invariably obey. The holy wardrobe didn’t change who he was, but it kept it miraculously hidden in plain view.

  With the stiff white collar fastened around his wrinkled old neck, and the silver cassock draping down to the floor, he reached for his favorite cross and slipped it over his head. When he turned and faced the three hulking figures again, he wasn’t the woozy old man anymore. He was something much greater, or at least that’s how his holy dress always made him feel.

  But the brutish figures didn’t seem affected at all. They grabbed him again, covered his head with a heavy black hood, then dragged him out of the room like the worst kind of criminal. His dangling feet scraped down the wood hallway, then outside in the last dark hours of night.

  “It’s Judgment Day...” he heard the voice croak in his head.

  He felt the trio of gnarled hands grab his arms even tighter, then a sudden flapping sound erupted around him with a gusty, whooshing power. He knew it was just another one of his delusions, because it actually felt like he was being yanked up into the yawning night sky. He struggled with all his might to fight this delusion, because he knew the truth had to be much more real.

  He was the worst kind of priest; that he accepted without contention. This brutal night raid had to be from the Church he’d profoundly disgraced. So now he was being taken to a secret sanctuary where his misdeeds would be addressed in the strictest way. The brutish figures were clearly part of the anointed order dispatched from the Vatican to abduct aberrant priests. He was probably in the back of a car rumbling away down the dirt road in front of his small country church, and everything else was a guilt-ridden fantasy concocted out his hidden shame.

  What was truly unfathomable was how he was able to separate the two warring parts of his life. To do so had to be the evidence of some kind of insanity, or some other perverse mental disease. What else could explain the dark travesty of his life as a priest?

  When it suited his mood, he’d fulfilled his holy duties in a manner that was not inadequate. His Sunday sermons addressed the various moral ills the Church had always stood firm against, and he attended to his flock, praying with the sick, consoling the grieving, and giving religious guidance to those who wandered off the holy path.

  But there was also his dark side.

  In the beginning, his indiscretions were private and discreet, hidden away from any judgmental eyes. His cravings were satiated in modest ways, with magazines and movies always obtained with the utmost secrecy. But the sordid urges grew more desperate with each passing year, until it was more like an unchained beast lusting inside him, not caring any more about holy conventions or moral restraints.

  When he’d moved from the private and personal to the realm of real flesh was a distant memory from long ago. His first molestation was a clumsy affair, but there were others after that, then so many more, and it only got worse.

  That’s when alcohol and drugs became a necessary part of his predatory ritual, then a daily part of everything else. It was like whatever sleazy force was hiding inside him had finally taken complete control. Even then, he couldn’t stop marveling at the power of his holy vestments, which seemed to magically shield him from exposure and harm.

  Until now...

  The thunderous, flapping sound was still bellowing in his ears with a windy turbulence. His mysterious trip might have lasted for hours until the last final moments before dawn, but the heavy black hood and the uncertainty of his mental state left him with no way to be sure.

  Then it felt like his feet suddenly thudded hard on the ground, and he collapsed without any strength left at all. Again, the gnarled hands pulled him back up, and the blinding black hood was yanked from his head.

  “What have we here...” the whispery voice croaked.

  It was that hazy time when the blackness of night was finally giving way to the creeping light of the following day. If this was still one of his guilt-ridden delusions, it appeared more real than any before, even in the shadows swirling around him like ghosts.

  The three hulking figures were clustered nearby, but the long black coats
and low caps were gone, revealing what they really were in their uncloaked glory.

  The source of the flapping was giant wings that were smoky and black, fluttering and strong. Their eyes were on fire; two burning orbs glowing out from giant carcasses that looked like they’d had been roasted in hell.

  Looking around, he saw there were dozens more like them, and more priests too, all staggering towards a black church looming ahead on a desolate field scorched by fire.

  The church was as hellish looking as the creatures, as if it had been possessed by an evil that had maimed and corrupted its previous form. The walls and windows were the blackest kind of black, and the towering steeple was made of writhing snakes with whip-like tongues.

  “This can’t be real...” he muttered to another priest stumbling in front of him.

  The priest turned around, and he immediately saw a look he recognized, because it was just like his. It was a haunted gaze of darkness and loathing from a life filled with perversity and abuse. He could smell the cheap whiskey on his breath, and see the debauched trembling in his hands. He didn’t speak, just stared, and then turned back around.

  “It’s Judgment Day,” the voice croaked in his head again.

  The scorned and shadowy line of priests staggered across the scorched ground into the vile looking church ahead.

  When he got to the gaping door, he felt a sudden churning inside him, like the two forces that had always been warring were now engaged in an even more vicious and brutal fight. But now he was inside the church, and his attention was seized by what loomed ahead. In the putrid half-darkness, it took a few moments to make it out, but when he did, his old heart almost stopped beating from shock.