by IGMS
"How are all these people supposed to get raptured?" NICK DAWG asked again. "Just fly up into the air like the Goodwill Blimp had soul magnets on it?"
My turn to laugh, but not too hard. I had to remember where I was. "When the Rapture comes, those that believe will go to live with the Lord," I said.
"You mean they die?" another one of my cellmates asked.
"Not their souls."
A dude in green flannel -- he'd said he was in for beating on his old lady -- cleared his throat. "So if no one knows when it happens, and people just die and shit, how you know it didn't already go down?"
"Who's to say it didn't? Or that it only happens once instead of as a process over time? God built the world in seven days and waited forty before he let it stop raining. Ever since then it's taken longer and longer for him to do anything miraculous down here."
NICK DAWG's jaw flopped open. "It says that crap in the Bible?"
"If you know how to read it."
"And how's that?"
"With Fundie eyes," I said. I grabbed the bars of the cell doors and prayed for all of them, that they might see as I did. There was a grumble of profanity and muttered astonishment in the cell, then it was quiet for a long while.
There was a great crack in the dark of night and lo, the walls of our jail had fallen down around us, yet not one man in the cell was harmed.
"It's a miracle," I called out. "My Lord has freed me from this prison that I might go forth and clear his name from the marketplaces."
Outside, Jodie, a new convert, waited in a stolen pickup truck festooned with tinsel and manger hay. She was grinning like a criminal herself.
"It was just a little C4," she said. "Thirty grams."
That jailbreak became a watershed in the Fundie movement. With just a palmful of C4 that she'd conned out of an old Army boyfriend, Jodie turned us from peaceful zealots into the Middle East kind -- at least as far as the public eye could see. It wasn't long after that the government, a bully brigade of Keystone Kaisers at the best of times, began to take us more seriously.
They started the counter-harassment by putting the cross on Patriot cards and, being Fundies, we declined to take the mark; the cross had no more business as an implement of the state than it did as an open source brand. So they gave us the same cards as the Jews and Muslims and Mormons and Scientologists and Buddhists. Our Patriot cards were yellow, not red, white and blue like everyone else's.
And they watched us like jealous housewives. When they could find us.
Bombing things, and being shot at for our beliefs made us into a corps of wannabe martyrs; I nearly became a successful one when several of us were caught burning down the Schenectady plant that printed the Old Testament Prophets collectable-card game. Instead of dying for my beliefs, I was imprisoned again.
They sent Marian and her newly-minted law degree to serve as my defense.
"Hello, Gary." She spat my old name like an accusation. Her briefcase, a shiny leather affair, plunked down on the table in front of me.
I met her hazel eyes. "It's Drew. I changed my name when the Lord changed me. I stopped being Gary long before I ever met you."
"I didn't know He changed you into a monster."
I looked away.
"There were fourteen people in the building, Gary."
"Drew."
"Fourteen parents and sons and daughters and husbands and wives and significant others, just trying to make a living. And you Fundies nearly killed them all. For what? A kid's card game?"
"The Lord calls home whoever's place is ready," I said, hating the uncertainty in my own voice. "They were doing the devil's work."
She withdrew a clear plastic bottle of Holy Water (Now 50% more blessed!) and took a drink. I scowled.
"What are they offering?"
Marian still hadn't sat down, and now she leaned across the table so close I could smell her Anoint! perfume. "Fifteen years in medium security lockup, or confess and publicly renounce violence and you'll be out on parole in five with good behavior."
I whistled. "That's still a long time."
"Meanwhile, a lot of innocent people not getting burned or blown up on the job."
"The tide may turn yet."
"Which tide?" she asked. "Because things are not looking good for Team Fundie. Jodie Mayler's singing hosannas that it was all your idea. So she'll walk free. Nick O'Donnell was crying like a baby when they offered him a year in exchange for testifying against you."
I took that onboard slowly, keeping my face still. Maybe Marian was right to hate me; maybe she'd been right about other things as well. I closed my eyes and prayed for guidance.
I was resolute in my belief that the Lord spoke to me that night in Providence. He wanted me to stem the tide of his church being used to peddle burgers and tampons on every commercial break and billboard across America. He wanted me to change the world, to cleanse it of Christian consumerism.
Yet in the end, I took the deal, telling myself it was what Jesus Himself would do. I'd be back on the street all the sooner, and besides: Christ's teachings were as much about non-violence as they were anti-materialism.
Of my time in jail I will say only this: I prayed much, I read much, I suffered much, I learned much. We really had lost our way, straying from His word to fight against marketeering when He wanted only our faith and repentance. The others in the movement were blind to how far we'd fallen from the path. I promised God and His Son that I would help the people understand.
When they finally released me, I found that Paul had spread the word throughout the Fundie network that I was no longer to be trusted; that I'd sold out. Few would speak to me, and my message of prayer and non-violence fell deaf on Fundie ears.
"Let the corporations and consumers have what is theirs," I said on street corner pulpits and in little prayer cliques all across the country. "It is the spirit, the Holy Spirit that they cannot take and cannot change -- that's what is important. That's what God wants us to serve."
And people drank their bad coffee and ate their stale pastries and listened. We prayed for an end to the bombings and the persecution and the Christian antiquities market. We prayed to a personal savior on behalf of the world, but we remained primarily concerned with the purity of our own souls.
The Jesus bubble showed no sign of bursting, even when the looming recession was finally acknowledged mid-decade. Salvation King announced massive layoffs and an embargo on genetically modified Potato Nails in the same week. The Christian Patriots League denounced Business Week for profiling a hot young Neo-Gnostic space tours exec who claimed his company's overnight success was just the tip of the iceberg. "Outer Space is the next Inner Peace," read the caption under his smiling face. Behind, a starry blackness and seventy-two orbiting spacecruisers. He had one for each of the names of God and refused to expand beyond that as a matter of principle.
I got my ticket from the line for Presumed Patriots, people with yellow Patriot cards like mine. It was a shorter line, but it took longer to process through, and it led to a more stringent security check.
"One for the Shekinah, please," I told the Korean girl behind the counter.
She took my Patriot card and my debit card and laid them on the counter. Her eyes widened as she picked them up again, staring at me. "Are you really him? I mean, the one who bombed that factory and left the Fundies?"
I ducked my head a little, feeling suddenly bashful. "That's me," I admitted. Somewhere behind me in line, someone's phone or tablet alarm went off. It sounded a little like a rooster crowing.
"It must be Fundie day in space or something. They're going up in droves. Hope that won't make you uncomfortable?"
"I should be okay." I finished filling out the statement of intent and all the other questionnaires, then looked up. "What ship are they on?"
She looked puzzled for a second, then shrugged. "Pretty much all of them."
"I'm surprised the system is letting so many of them up at one time."
&
nbsp; She tapped her touchscreen and grinned ruefully. "You know the government. This isn't about keeping people safe, it's about knowing who they can point the finger at, after."
The Roosterphone went off behind me again and a bull-necked man in uniform went over to "provide assistance."
I looked at the longer, faster line. "As long as they keep the Inherent Patriots happy, I guess." I checked my bag and filed through security's yellow-roped rat maze into the terminal, looking around for familiar faces.
I remember talking to Nick (formerly NICK DAWG) one time, after he'd had his tattoos removed and joined the movement, but before he squealed on me about Schenectady so he could go free and drop out of sight. He asked me if I still thought the Rapture was about dying and not going up bodily to Heaven. I told him then it was silly to adhere to the word choice and fickle translations of what had been written twenty-one hundred years ago. No one in their right mind would believe that nowadays. It was an analogy, I explained, poetic language using images that conveyed the message better then than they do now.
Kind of like how He referred to His followers as sheep back then, and today that docile species has been sheared and gene-burned into extinction.
I look across the crowded shuttle at Nick, who has seen me but refuses to meet my gaze. Elsewhere on the shuttle, and perhaps already aboard the Shekinah, the dwelling place of God, there are others.
I begin to understand now. Paul and his zealots would surely see this fleet of pleasure vessels with the long and unpronounceable names of God as an offense worthy of the ultimate sacrifice.
I smile at Nick and the rest as an attendant straps me in at the heart and all four points, explaining about weightlessness. I listen, but not closely. I'm wondering how they plan to do it.
I won't stop them. I've realized that the Fundies are no more open to peaceful, personal Christianity than mainstream America was to the non-materialism of His teachings. I won't stop them because I hear the Lord's voice again, saying Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own.
They have made their announcements and crossed off their lists and now the world is clawing at my body, trying to anchor my bones with its gravity. Even the forced air tastes leaden. What Paul and the Fundies do today, they do without me and without God's love. Will they be forgiven the spectacular burning sacrifices they plan to offer?
I do not know.
But the weight is leaving my body and my body is rising to the heavens at what I now know to be the end of my days. Perhaps Nick was on to something about the Rapture. I turn my cheek toward him when I'm able. "God loves you," I say. "I forgive you."
The shuttle approaches the spacecruiser dock and people crane their heads to see the gigantic name of God painted on its side. But not me. I am content to wait until I can see Shekinah from the inside. I close my eyes, thinking about the room that's been prepared for me within.
Somewhere on the shuttle, I hear a rooster crowing.
The Hanged Poet
by Jeffrey Lyman
Artwork by Nicole Cardiff
* * *
General Veritas sat on his horse, alone on the vast, snow-covered plains of north Madalan. Before him, in a hollow between low hills, stood a half-dozen winter-bare cottonwood trees and a tumbled pile of stones.
Three wild dogs jumped and nipped at something hanging from a tree, and he recognized it as a body from the heavy way it swung and spun. He had seen many men hanged in his long career.
The copse of trees lay days out from the last village, so it was an odd place to come upon a hanging. He supposed he should be cautious, but instead he watched absently, his mind far away in the capital city of Inrenae.
It had been a blow to leave, but the young Lord Emperor, in his infinite kindness, had retired General Veritas after four decades of service. The Lord Emperor had awarded him an estate in the land of Veritas' youth - a place he barely remembered. He had been dismissed with a nod of thanks.
He glanced at the sun at the horizon. The winds of the plains whined and mumbled, gnawing at his cheeks, making him pull his cloak tighter around his throat. He needed fire.
After all these years, he still had not grown accustomed to winter. He had been born in a land of dark skin, brightly-colored birds, and most of all, a hot sun all year round. He wondered if he would miss winter while growing old and fat on his estate. Probably not. There were too many other things to miss.
"Hey!" he shouted at the dogs, his voice a jagged break through the wind's constant moan. The dogs jerked their heads up, growling, protective of their corpse. They were thin, but not starving. Veritas shouted again and they edged back, keeping their eyes on him. He was disappointed they didn't attack. He wanted to fight them bare handed, as he had once done in his youth.
They turned and trotted to the crest of a nearby hill where they stood in profile against the setting sun, watching. Their shadows stretched long toward him. They might still attack during the night.
He swung to the ground and led his horse into the hollow, then looped the reins around a branch. Up close, the pile of stones became a ruined hut, bound in dead vines. A long-abandoned hermit's home? A forgotten hunter's shelter?
The crusted snow crunched below his boots as he strode past the hut to the frozen corpse.
She was a young woman, small, pale-skinned as all northlanders were, and long dead. A weathered shift of gray wool hung down from her shoulders. Her hands had been bound behind her back, and her bare feet dangled at the height of his chest. The toes the dogs had not worried over were black with frost.
Veritas looked up to her swollen face and the dry rope, taut under her jaw. He had ordered many men hanged during the wars of the empire's expansion, and he had seen many women raped and slain on the ground. He had only seen two women hanged, and they were both high born. Hanging a peasant girl was senseless.
She swung slowly after the dogs' last attentions, and her rope creaked. He would cut her down to keep the noise from bothering him while he slept.
"May I share your tree tonight?" he said, then joked, "Maybe later I'll hang myself beside you."
Her eyes snapped open, eyes washed-out blue like the winter sky. Veritas leapt back, stumbling on a branch beneath the snow.
"I wouldn't mind some company," she said in a dry voice, like leaves skirling across cobblestones. "But I don't think you want to rest up here. It's going to get cold when the sun sets."
Veritas drew his sword swiftly and rose slowly, facing her. There was no shame in jumping back from an unknown threat, but he was furious at himself for having fallen. His feet were not as nimble as they once were.
"You're dead," Veritas said, steadying his sword.
"And you are not."
"What I meant is how are you speaking? You are dead, aren't you?"
"Of course. What is your name?"
He hesitated. He had seen the dead walk a few times in his life, and they always moved with some terrible purpose. They were dangerous to body and soul. Giving life to the lifeless was a divine form of magic, terrible and rare.
But he shrugged; he was retired now and it didn't matter anymore. He sheathed his sword. "I am the great General Veritas."
"Should I know you?"
"Of course you should know me, girl," he snapped. Was it possible that some small corner of the world had not heard of him? "I have been the right hand of three Lord Emperors. I am the High Commander of the Imperial Legions. The Conqueror of Bralick and Rhadikan. I am General Veritas."
"It's a nice name, but it's not yours. You have dark skin, and that is a northern name."
He glared. No one spoke to him with such familiarity. Even the Lord Emperor had been formal when sending him south. "I serve the empire, so I am known by my northern name. When I lived in the south, my name was Prince Keal."
"A mighty general and a prince. I am honored. Why do you stand beneath my tree all alone?"
"I do not require traveling companions. I have retired from the Lord Emperor's service, an
d I'm going home to my estates. It will feel good to shake winter from my old bones."
"Winter's grip fails with spring. It always does. Which name should I call you now that your service is ended?"
"My service to the empire is never done."
"Then welcome to my home, General Veritas."
He squinted at her. "What were you called?"
"I am Theseda Ys."
"Greetings, Theseda Ys," he said. "What did you do to be hanged?"
"I wrote a poem for the Emperor."
He was startled. He didn't expect a peasant girl to be able to write poetry, let alone have contact with such an illustrious person. "Call him the Lord Emperor, and writing him a poem was unwise. Poems can be powerful."
"Poems change things."
Veritas crossed his arms over his chest, interested. He loved poems and their magical potential, and someone had gone to a lot of trouble to hang her here. Her poem might be useful. It might take him back to the capital. He had a collection of powerful poems that had changed him at different times in his life. "Did you tell the truth in your poem, or lie?"
"I meant to speak a poem about nothing; the truth arrived unrequested and unwanted."
"It does that sometimes to all of us. I will take you down." He reached for his belt-knife.
"Please don't. The wild dogs would tear at me. You could bury me, but I think that would be intolerable. It's not so bad up here. It's pretty in the summer, and the dogs keep me company." They both looked at the waiting dogs on the hill. A gust of wind shook the trees and Theseda Ys' body jerked.
"Tell me your poem," he said.
"You are presumptuous. I must know you first."
He shook his head, unused to being denied. "I told you who I am."
"Do you think titles tell a story? General, prince, leader, conqueror. My poem might break you."