Catharine, or Cath as she preferred to be called, was a young Asian woman whose round face exuded such gentleness that Patrick hoped the baptisms wouldn’t grind her down like they had Bernie, even if they were all irrelevant in the end. This was only her second time; she had many more ahead. As the youngest candidate, she was lithe and attractive and very aware of it. In any other situation, the men in the room would have been excited to watch her slip off her cat paw patterned nightgown, but in this church only John seemed to care about her.
John was the newest candidate, here for the first time and thus made to go last, his usual jock swagger now gone, leg bouncing anxiously in an NFL branded robe. Cath clapped a hand on his leg, holding it down, and whispered something in his ear that seemed to calm him. He whispered something back, making her smile and peck him on the cheek with the comfortable affection of familiar lovers. She removed her hand and his leg started bouncing again, but neither of them noticed.
The congregation was now seated; incidental conversations created a white noise that made the place feel lively. Patrick was happy to see several back rows were empty. His church had room to grow. Soon, word would spread, those seats would fill, and they would have to find yet a larger venue, but for now their humble portable was enough.
Patrick stood from his corner seat and the conversations quieted. The familiar faces hushed themselves because they knew the service was about to start. The new faces were taken aback by the stunning man before them.
Patrick tried to hide his figure with jeans and a large formless polo shirt, but these left his arms exposed, and it was easy to extrapolate the lean swimmers body underneath from his smooth and muscled forearms. He walked to the head of the aisle, each step a dance, each movement flowing into the next with the grace of a practiced gymnast. He looked over his flock, all of them entranced by his deep blue eyes, glistening like sapphires in the morning light.
Beth and Sam came in from outside, closing the door but not locking it since some of the new faces were sure to run and Patrick didn’t want them feeling trapped. His wife and son moved down the aisle with the same grace as their pastor, and then stepped aside to flank the pool.
Beth didn’t hide her figure, showing off her chest in a tight tank top with no bra, and yoga pants that clung like a second skin. She was proud of what God had given her and reveled in the lustful stares from the new and familiar faces alike, exuding a glamour and glow that should have only been possible in fake photos.
Sam was fit beyond his age, stronger than most of the men in the room and more handsome too, even at just eight years old. His face expressed youthful innocence or wise maturity, depending on the light and angle. There were more girls in the audience today, and some older teens who probably didn’t know his true age, likely convinced to come by a friend who couldn’t stop talking about the cute boy at her church.
Some of the congregation were similarly beautiful, standing out like diamonds in dirt. Patrick knew some of his flock were only here to ogle—the weekly churchgoers who never asked to be baptized—and he was okay with that. His church needed the numbers and the new faces needed reasons to come back. Maybe there really was something holy about a poor church that could entice so many divinely attractive people.
“Welcome to our Church of the Holy Light,” Patrick began. “Our new Church of the Holy Light. Those of you who have been with us since the beginning might remember me telling you that we would grow like a hermit crab, shedding one shell for a larger one. Well, we’ve upgraded.”
He spread his arms wide, taking in the new space to scattered applause, then started his sermon.
He knew it by heart now. It was the same sermon he gave every week, for his was a simple message, one that didn’t need study or interpretation or discussion. Those were the sorts of things people did when their faith failed them, and they needed an excuse to continue believing. A simple faith was a stronger faith, so he kept things simple.
“God is a creator. An inventor. A tinkerer.” He stressed each word with a flourish of his hands, assigning each a divine grandiosity. “What He is not, is a manager.” He shrunk his hands to his chest, emphasizing God’s disdain for managerial duties. “That’s why He created us with the means to create more of ourselves.” A gesture towards his family. “The truth is, God does not care about you.”
Amens from the beautiful people.
“He doesn’t care about your troubles, and He will not answer your prayers. He doesn’t care about your faith, or your evangelism in His name. Those things have nothing to do with Him. They are all you, projecting yourself onto Him.”
A new face stood, scooted to the aisle, and walked out, lips twisted in offense.
“He doesn’t care what you do, but He cares what you are, for you are His creation, His invention. If you want to earn His love, you don’t go out and create new things that will only pale in comparison to what He has already made; you give Him the means to create more. Let Him create, let Him invent, let Him tinker, using the only medium worthy of His holy touch: You.”
Stronger applause, louder amens. Patrick walked back to his seat and grabbed a long stick from the floor. The new faces looked confused, whispering more questions, but the service was just getting started. Patrick was merely the introduction.
Using the stick, he reached up to the circle of stones on the ceiling and tapped the keystone into place. There wasn’t anything special about the keystone; it was a rock like all the others, just offset slightly from the circle, but Patrick liked calling it the keystone because it added to the religiosity of the proceedings. When he tapped it into place, the rocks created a single unbroken chain, each scorched stone touching another, and opened a seal into heaven.
A pillar of white shone down from the circle onto the pool. It appeared faster than light, faster than thought. It didn’t even really appear, it was just there, like it had always been there, a permanent fixture of the room no one had noticed before. Seconds passed, then gasps and squeaks of shock rang out as the new faces realized what they were seeing, realized that the room had changed, and laughter erupted from the familiar faces remembering their own dumbfounded awe once upon a time.
The pillar wasn’t light; it didn’t fill the room and blind its audience. Its glow was entirely contained within straight edges. It looked solid, but Patrick lowered the stick behind it—a subtle move, but practiced and planned like a magician’s show—to prove that it was actually transparent.
“That is why we are here today, to honor God by offering ourselves as clay for His molding. Felix, you have the honor of starting us.”
Felix stood and pulled his gown over his head, revealing a hairy and tired body, worn down by years of physical labor, once dense muscles now oozing into fat. He stepped before the pillar, and Patrick clapped his hands on the candidate’s shoulders, speaking into his ear loud enough for the rest of the room to hear.
“Now remember, our baptism is a process. Do not be dissuaded. Endure these tribulations.” Patrick could sense the apprehension rising from the new faces, unsure what they were about to see, minds racing with possibilities and conjuring worst-case scenarios.
Felix stepped into the pool, into the pillar, and was lifted into the air. There were no gasps of surprise at this. After seeing the pillar appear, the new faces were at their most skeptical and this was an easy magic trick. They watched and waited, skepticism growing because they could only see Felix’s back. They couldn’t see the cut that opened on his sternum, couldn’t see it draw down to his stomach, couldn’t see his ribs distend from invisible hands, but they saw the bloody chunk that fell into the pool, sliding around the smooth plastic like a water balloon.
People stood, trying to get a better view of the chunk, confused and curious. Felix was lowered, and as God let him go, Beth and Sam were there to catch him, pulling him forwards, out of the pool to the back of the room.
The pain came fast. Felix fell to his knees, clutching the gash in his chest, moaning and h
eaving blood, struggling to breathe through one lung. He rolled over, leaned against the wall, facing the light and the congregation, and tried to smile but just sputtered all over himself.
This finally elicited cries of fear. New faces leapt to their feet while friends and family tried to calm them. Some stumbled into the aisle and moved towards Felix, so well intentioned, but Patrick blocked them, hands up like a traffic cop, meeting each of their eyes.
“All will be okay,” he said. An absurd claim as Felix bled out directly behind him, but he was so handsome everyone wanted to believe him. So they hesitated.
Suzanne was already in the white. She had stripped her gown in the panic, taking advantage of the distraction to hide her naked body, embarrassed by her sagging and mottled skin but showing no such fear of the pillar. Her weightless limbs began to twist, arms and legs bent and contorted at impossible angles, her joints turned to rubber, head snapped backwards as her God tinkered away. Then her limbs straightened out and she fell.
Beth and Sam were ready, so practiced at this by now, and caught the woman, hooking their palms under her arms and tossing her forwards onto Felix, who sputtered more upon impact. Suzanne’s head was still backwards, her paralyzed body flopping like a dead fish, eyes wide and fluttering with excitement, gurgling either screams or praise from shredded vocal cords. It was all incoherent at this point.
As Patrick expected, some new faces ran for the exit, bashing into the door, clearly expecting it to be locked or blocked. He smirked as they fell on top of each other, scrambling to escape the crazy killer cultists. He had seen all this before; the new faces were so predicable. Upon realizing they weren’t being chased, their panic would wane, and they would tiptoe back, desperate for another glimpse of the supernatural.
Bernie was no longer embarrassed of his overweight body, waiting for calm before stripping. As he rose in the white, his skin rippled, muscles pulsing, bulging, bloating like a waterlogged corpse. Then the molding began: his flesh pounded with invisible chisels, each dent shaping him, little craters carving dimension into his body; his gut pushed in and folded upon itself, valleys of abs etched into it like knife wounds; his penis throbbed and thickened and grew; his jaw broke then reset, stronger, squarer; all of him violently beaten into dense muscle no human could ever achieve. When done, he was gently placed into the pool and immediately fell to his knees, praising his Lord for his new physique.
The congregation erupted in applause. Even some new faces joined in after seeing the true love of God and realizing this was no cult of masochists.
Beth had to tap Bernie’s shoulder to break him from his beatitude and shoo him away. He stepped from the pool, standing beside it as a new parishioner, still naked and reveling in the respect and lust of his peers.
Cath stood and slipped off her nightgown slowly for she had nothing to be embarrassed about, eyeing Bernie up and down as he ignored her. Felix might have ogled but he was dead now, corpse bone-pale, gallons of his blood pooling on the plastic sheeting.
Cath winked at John and skipped into—and out of—the white.
It happened in a single, smooth motion. She was in, then she was out, curling into a fetal position, clutching what was left of her head. Long strips of her face and scalp, including most of her nose and part of an eye, hung in the air behind her before dropping into the pool. Bernie led the congregation in a polite applause while Cath screamed. The Good Lord was always so rough with the newbies.
Last and least was John. Patrick watched closely, intrigued what would happen to the first-timer. God was at His most inventive with those He hated.
John looked up into the white, clearly expecting to rise, but God only held those He respected, so John’s feet remained locked to the floor of the pool. His arms jerked outwards, like Jesus on the cross, and were then divinely flayed: his skin sliced into ribbons and sheared away, muscle fibers frayed apart like withered rope, bones shattered over and over until their dust surrounded him—a fog of his own making. He had not yet earned any holy anesthesia, so he felt every rip, peel, and break, suffering in silence, his every scream interrupted by some new burst of pain, killing his breath.
Everyone knew it was over when blood began squirting from his shoulders. Sam was sprayed in the face, crying out like a kid tagged “It” on the playground. Beth and Bernie grabbed the walking torso, holding it straight so it wouldn’t turn and spray the audience, leading it into a corner.
The baptisms were almost done. Patrick walked up and down the aisle clapping, commanding everyone to give the candidates their respect for showing such bravery. He noted the new faces hovering in the doorway, having returned from their initial retreat, still terrified but intrigued. Was this a show or a sacrifice?
“Bernie, would you help my wonderful wife? And Sam, we’ve got some towels in the car,” Patrick said as he jangled a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to his son. Sam ran outside, wiping his face and flicking his hands at the new faces in the doorway as he passed. They leapt away in terror and the boy laughed at them.
Bernie stood up straighter like a soldier called to attention and nodded, proud to be of service. Working together, he and Beth dragged Suzanne off Felix, then dragged Felix back into the white and held him there while Patrick collected the robes and gowns from the floor.
Almost immediately, the gash in Felix’s chest mended itself and the color returned to his skin. He came alive, gulping air into new lungs, legs kicking like a newborn, almost squishing his old lung slipping around the pool.
Patrick stepped before the candidate, arms full of discarded clothes, his mere presence enough to calm any confused wild animal.
“All will be okay,” he said, handing Felix back his gown, still clean and dry, so unlike the man himself.
Felix muttered some holy praises, choking on the words, not used to his new lungs, and took his seat.
By the time he sat down, Suzanne was already in the white, her head cracking around into its proper place, spine and vocal cords and esophagus all mended. She shouted her holy praises, voice hoarse, then dressed quickly before sitting down.
Cath could still move on her own, so Beth and Bernie made no motion to help her. She crawled back slowly, swaying on weak arms, partly blind and oh so confused by the pain. She reminded Patrick of his own baptism, when he had set the stones in a circle in his backyard, thinking it a pleasant decoration, only to be hit in the face with God’s judgment, flesh and bone and brain all burnt away, left flailing by himself in the hurtful dark, unable to scream for Beth, who had been inside, flailing about until accidentally flailing himself back into the white. Cath had it easy.
Her scalp and face were knitted back together, luscious hair sprouting up like a waterfall before falling around her, recreating the Birth of Venus. She didn’t say anything as she took her robe and seat.
John was dead, and his lack of arms made him tough to carry. After some fumbling, Bernie grabbed his feet and Beth grabbed his neck, lifting with an inhuman chokehold.
Once in the white, John’s arms reformed from thin air. There were probably bits of his bones still floating above the pool, but Patrick knew none of that would be used in this recreation. That’s what made the baptisms so special: They weren’t just being remolded into better versions of themselves, they were being reforged.
Each resurrection was met with gentle applause from the familiar faces, the new faces too dumbstruck to do anything. When all the candidates were alive again, the applause became a standing ovation, a celebration of God—His wrath, His power, His grace—and those brave enough to endure each.
Eventually, the candidates stood and made their way out: a procession of God’s anointed, led by a still-naked Bernie, his whole body a beautiful baptismal scar.
The rest of the congregation soon met them in the parking lot, lavishing them with attention and love no celebrity could ever hope to match. Patrick and Beth remained behind in the portable, air thick with gore seeping into their clothes but not their s
kin. The stench couldn’t touch their skin. Then they embraced, Patrick kissed his wife and she kissed him back, long and deep. Today had been a good day, a good service. There had been more new faces this week than last, and there were sure to be more new faces next week. Their church would grow; it was too incredible not to grow.
Patrick broke from his wife and, still holding her hand, picked up the long stick and tapped the keystone out of place. The pillar vanished instantly, gone as if it had never really been there. Patrick dreamed of a day when the keystone would be unnecessary, when he would have a line of baptismal candidates out the door, so long he could open the ramshackle Gate of Heaven and let its white shine through all day, every day, remaking all of humanity.
But he was getting ahead of himself.
Sam returned with his arms full of towels.
Now, the portable needed cleaning.
Later, they would remake the world.
THE END
AND SATAN CAME WITH THEM
By Michael Martin Garrett
“I think a great deal about the Book of Job,” announced Father Henry McCullers.
The priest stood before a workbench in the corner of a rotting shed, eyeing a selection of rusty implements. Pliers. Hacksaw. Screwdrivers. He ran his hand from item to item. A smile split his face like a wound.
“Compared to the Gospel of Matthew, for instance; but, of course, that’s the New Testament...”
Drill. Nail gun. Arbor press.
“But even compared to Psalms, Isaiah, or Exodus…”
Angle grinder. Handsaw. Soldering iron.
“Job—the book, that is, not the man—teaches us values not explored so fully elsewhere in the Scripture…”
Hammers. Bleach. Assorted cleaners.
“Ask yourself: Where were we, pitiful creatures, when He laid the foundations of the earth?” He chuckled to himself. “Where were you?”
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