Worship Me

by Craig Stewart

  “Do you have a name?” Don asked, while maintaining his distance.

  The man didn't even acknowledge Don’s question, let alone his presence.

  An eruption of clarity broke out inside of Angela like the sudden failure of a dam. She stood. “Rick!” she shouted.

  The man turned to face her and, in that moment, Angela knew she was right. This brutalized stranger standing before her was her long-lost husband, the father of her child. The realization sent her mouth trembling.

  “Angela...” Rick replied with a rasp borne of dry dirt and exhaustion. His expression showed signs of uncertainty, as if she were the one caked in mud.

  “Holy shit!” Chris let slip out.

  Suddenly, Angela’s cheeks were covered in wet droplets. To her, the change was instant. There was no bridge between the two states: her cheeks were dry, her cheeks were wet. Rick was gone, Rick was back. Her hand clasped to her mouth to stop it from trying to form words she knew weren't there.

  The congregation waited in shock for them to reunite with an amorous embrace, but Rick just stood there. Then, Angela pushed herself past Matthew and Flora into the freedom of the aisle. However, instead of joining with Rick, she charged out of the sanctuary.

  Her actions left the room stunned. No one spoke.

  Bruce returned from the back office with a glass of water and handed it off like a baton to Don.

  Don approached Rick with the refreshing crystal glass. Rick’s roaming eyes found the sparkle of the water irresistible, like there wasn't water anywhere else in the world.

  As Don edged closer, he noticed Rick’s bloody feet soaking into the carpet. Luckily, he thought, they had chosen red.

  He offered the glass and Rick accepted.

  “Rick, here, drink,” Don said, as Rick poured the water down his throat. His gulps were deep and his thirst too impatient to keep from spilling. Streams of water cascaded down the tufts of his beard, but he didn't seem to notice.

  “Our prayers are answered,” Emily said to herself. “You returned him to us.” She smiled sweetly and reached for her husband’s arm. Her hands groped the girth of Michael’s bicep almost obscenely and she began to nod in agreement with her own statement. God had heard them on this blessed day.

  “Come, let’s get you cleaned up.” Don put his arm around Rick and gently led him toward the modest minister’s office at the back of the sanctuary.

  Rick’s limp made the journey a long one, but people watched patiently for the entire duration until the two men were out of sight.

  CHAPTER 10

  Once news of Rick’s miraculous return finally reached Clara in the basement, she embarked on a mission to find her friend no one had seen since the sanctuary. Guided by her uncanny internal beacon, Clara’s hunt proved short and uneventful. When she passed by the kitchen, she heard weeping in the dark. Clara, who loved blindly trusting her instincts, immediately flipped the light on.

  The room suddenly appeared and in the back corner, sandwiched between the puke-yellow walls, was Angela. She was sitting on the ground with her knees up to her chin. Her stare was aimed at the floor, but reached far past the confines of the room.

  “Here you are,” Clara said affectionately. “My mom just told me.” She walked over with caution, as if scared she might frighten her away. “Angela, sweetie, what are you doing down here? Don’t you want to be with Rick?”

  Angela didn't acknowledge her, but something about what Clara had said reawakened the tears looming behind her eyes, and a second wave of weeping washed through. It was the kind of outburst that could be either joy or sorrow, indivisible.

  “What’s wrong? This is good, right? Rick’s back! He’s back!” she consoled her friend, though she was not exactly sure for what. Truth be told, Clara had mixed feelings about the news herself. She had grown accustomed to the intimacy in her life that came with Angela and Alex, and she was going to miss it.

  “I don’t know why I still come here. Old habits, I guess.” Angela finally spoke. Despite her tears, her voice came out clear and strong. She lifted her head and used her sleeve to dry her face.

  “Angela, what’s wrong?”

  Before Angela answered, she considered whether or not her secret should remain her own. It was a tempting offer, to keep what she had inside hidden, but this was Clara she was talking to, her Clara, so out it came.

  “I’ll never be free,” she began bluntly, with a seriousness Clara didn't recognize. “Rick and I, we weren’t like how everyone thinks. It all seemed so great when it began. People always said we were a perfect couple. Well... except for you, Clara. I think people were only seeing what they wanted to see.

  “I can’t tell you when everything went to hell, but...it did. That’s exactly where it went. A week before he went missing, we fought. We fought a lot. Only this time, he bruised two of my ribs with his boot, split my lip and... I didn’t leave the house for five days. I had a black eye the size of an orange. He threw me, like I was trash. He just picked me up and threw me. And I was ashamed. He had been getting worse and worse, and I was terrified for myself and for Alex. Clara, Rick going missing was the best thing that ever happened to me. When you were all asking God for him to return, I was praying he would stay lost. I matched every prayer. We were almost free. Just one more day and we’d be free. So, you think this is a good thing? You think God brought him back to me? This is a curse.”

  “Angela, I...” Clara’s inability to form any sentence of value infuriated her. She wanted to say the thing, the one thing that would relieve some of Angela’s grief, even momentarily. But she was powerless.

  “What should I do now?” Angela’s frustration boiled through the sorrow. “Shall I go greet my husband with open arms? Welcome him back like everyone else? That’s what they want to see, that’s what everyone expects. But I can’t. I won’t let him back in. He can’t come back to us, not now. Not ever again.”

  “No. No, Angela,” Clara grabbed both of her arms. “You’ve known me a long time and you know my stance on profanity. But if he did that to you, then fuck that piece of shit. You hear me? Miracle or no, he’s not coming near you or Alex again.”

  She froze there, holding Angela’s arms in support. Angela was thankful to get a taste of strength, and Clara was relieved, if only modestly, that no one’s life was as perfect as it seemed.

  Clara helped Angela to her feet. She watched her like a proud parent observing a child’s first step.

  “Clara, how will we keep him away?”

  “We’ll think of something.” Her optimism was invigorating, but, Angela worried, a bit naïve. But then again, what did naivety matter when desperation came knocking?

  In the dirty confines of that excuse for a kitchen, the two women discussed, mapped and plotted things to come.

  CHAPTER 11

  The cramped minister’s office, which was eaten up mostly by an oversized desk, now had to make room for both Don and Bruce. They waited, staring at the closed bathroom door at the other end of the slender room.

  “How long has he been in there?” Don demanded. He hated keeping people waiting and knew the entire congregation was holding their breath to hear more about the miracle.

  “About ten minutes,” came Bruce’s timid reply.

  Don paced the length of the room. He could get in only four strides before he ran out of space and had to turn back around. Bruce, who, like most of the congregation, was never allowed in the office, took the opportunity to peek behind the curtain. He observed with reverence the strictness of the décor: the clean, sturdy desk with polished gloss, the organized antique cabinet filled with old robes, the perfectly-spaced portraits of the ministers of yesteryear that adorned the walls—it was all exactly as he had envisioned.

  Teasing sounds seeped out from the gap under the bathroom door, suggesting it may open soon, but the promises proved hollow. A man needs time to clean up, Don had thought, but there were so many nagging questions building pressure in the front of his skull. It was
all terribly exciting; he had never been a witness to an actual miracle, let alone be the key instrument through which God’s grace had worked. His whole life was a struggle with faith; not only his own, but the faith of those around him. What would the doubters have to say now that his belief had been so undeniably legitimized? And the key to that ultimate triumph was just behind the bathroom door, probably applying shampoo. This maddening tedium of waiting for Rick’s simple grooming to conclude was too much to bear. Don had to do something, anything.

  “Okay, well there’s no sense in both of us standing around in this room. You wait for him to come out. When he does, give him some fresh clothes, whatever he was wearing before smells awful, just awful. I have to get back to the congregation. They’re waiting.” Don gave the instructions like a true commander.

  “Should we call the hospital or something?”

  “We’ll drive him there ourselves after he cleans up. No sense in calling an ambulance all the way out here. It’s not an emergency.”

  “What if it is? Maybe he’s sick. We don't know where he's been.”

  “We can drive into town faster than they can drive out here and back again. In fact, we can do it in exactly half the time. Right?”

  “Yeah.” Bruce’s eyes hid in his shoes.

  “Right. Okay then! Let us know as soon as he’s out, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Bruce.”

  Don exited the room with a regal gait. Bruce remained leaning against the desk and allowed his eyes to once again search through the space.

  The golden tint of the window glass created the illusion of a restful setting sun, suggesting to Bruce that it was later than it was. That’s when he noticed there were no clocks in the room. Although it was really only a minor inconvenience, there was also something eerie about this fact. He couldn't remember ever seeing a watch on Don’s wrist, so, when Don was in his office, how did he know what time it was?

  Just then, the sound of water stopped. Bruce began thinking again of the miracle behind the door. What was he doing now, or, more interestingly, what had he been doing for the past three months?

  Inside the seclusion of the meticulously tiled bathroom, hot water had sent billowing pockets of steam to crowd the air. A dampness clung to everything and peeled at the floral wallpaper trim that traced around the ceiling.

  The clouds themselves parted for Rick as he stepped forward toward the mirror. The steam settled as if obeying a silent order, giving him an unobstructed view of his own body.

  His skin had been washed clean and he stared at himself, admiring for the first time the scars that adorned his flesh. The three deepest and longest marks started at the center of his neck, almost originating from his Adam’s apple. The middle one bisected his torso perfectly. It cut between his pectorals, down his abdomen where it had ravaged his belly button. It continued to trace a thick line through his flourishing pubic hair and down the shaft of his penis until it practically split the head. As the scar was a mere suggestion of the brutality itself, one could only imagine it as a failed evisceration. The other two most prominent scars stemmed from the same point as the bisecting one, but persisted on each side at an angle that sliced through his considerable chest and nipples. Those cuts continued down the sides of his body until reaching his feet. The rest of the tally marks grew like a spider’s web from these three anchor points.

  With his steady index finger, he traced some of his subtler markings. While he was in the woods, there were no mirrors, no large bodies of water to catch his reflection, so to see the fruits of his misery presented thusly, was almost titillating.

  Once he was finished with his thorough exploration, he opened up the mirror cabinet in front of him. Inside, he found an old-fashioned straight razor.

  As he opened it, the rusted metal joints ground together like bones when the cartilage has worn away. The blade, protected inside the ornate handle, gleamed its sharpness without a single rusted blemish, as though it was used once, then forgotten.

  Rick grabbed handfuls of his beard and started cutting. He tossed the disowned clumps of hair into the sink, letting some tumble onto the floor.

  What he wanted was a clean face to match his body. More than that, he wanted to emerge to the congregation as physically transformed as he was spiritually. The devastation, the rebirth, the ascension, all of these things that consumed him in the Burward forest he needed to show them – he was commanded to.

  The cutting continued and just outside the door, Bruce waited.

  CHAPTER 12

  Although every congregation member had leapt up from their seats, squawking like a flock of agitated birds, it was Emily Rosenthal who solitarily displayed a sense of serenity. She withstood the contagious excitement and focused on the ever-imposing stained-glass window proudly proclaiming Heaven on high.

  With her head upturned toward the tranquil angels populating the top of the window, she was overcome with a feeling of boundless wonder. This was the Heaven she was promised all her life; the one that gave her the strength to carry on through the horrors of the day. God, who had been suspiciously silent when her mother passed two years ago, had, at long last, given her the sign she begged for. She knew it was not proper to ask Him for proof – that’s what faith was for – but after bearing witness to the slow deterioration of her mother’s health and the agony that spread like a virus through her family because of it, she was desperate. But God was good, merciful; she had no more doubts of that. Her mother had not just suffered, then disappeared forever; she had escaped, just as the window depicted, and had reached Saint Peter’s welcoming gates. One day, Emily would make the same journey, only her prize would not be the angelic trumpets or the glorious temple of rolling clouds. All those astonishments would be secondary to feeling her mother’s embrace, and seeing her smile once again. Thinking of her mother awakened a familiar ache within her bones, a kind of pain so deep it had become part of her; but this time she had reason to rejoice, for it was only an hour ago that Emily Rosenthal had witnessed proof that by God’s grace, her eternal ache would one day be soothed.

  Michael had come up behind her and rested his bulky hands on her shoulders. The dead weight of them would have been enough to tip many people over, but Emily had strengthened over the years to support their load.

  “Looks like it could use a cleaning.” Michael pointed out this dull observation with a flat tone, as he did with all his dull observations.

  “Yes, Michael, I suppose it could,” she replied, though her thoughts were still elsewhere.

  Dorothy had returned to the sanctuary and pushed her way to the front of the room, eager to play an important part in the coming events. Though she attached herself to every social club, church gathering, and charity group she could find, she still longed to be needed. It was like a drug to her and the chance to play a crucial part in Rick’s return was too great a fix to pass up. This was the most important event in the history of the church... this was life and death!

  When Don emerged from the office, Dorothy was the first to notice.

  “Don!” she exclaimed.

  “Mrs. Muller,” Don graciously acknowledged her presence. “How are things out here?”

  “Chaos. Forget about here, what about in there?” she tossed back.

  “Don, is it true, is it Rick?!” Emily yelled from across the room. Her zeal gathered the congregation together and everyone halted to hear Don’s response.

  “I believe it is, yes.”

  “Praise God!” Emily celebrated.

  The room absorbed her enthusiasm and soon everyone was proclaiming similar exclamations, some even raised their hands to the sky. Tina and Gary stepped forth toward the pulpit where Don had situated himself.

  “Did he say anything? What happened to him?” Tina asked with her well-manicured concern.

  “Is he alright?” Gary followed up more honestly.

  “He’s fine, now. He’s just in no state to answer these questions, yet. It’s ev
ident he’s been through some hard times, but he’s back. That’s the important thing. What he needs is space and rest. And I believe, some food.” Don’s eyes locked with Dorothy and she burst into action.

  “Of course! Let’s hop to it ladies! The picnic is upon us.” She physically gathered people and ushered them out of the room. “You two as well!” she demanded of Matthew and Chris who both seemed disinterested, standing rather unobtrusively to the side.

  Dorothy, having been fueled by her proliferating to-do list, charged full steam ahead. This picnic was to be the best the congregation had seen. To call it a mere picnic would be a disservice; after all, you do not serve a picnic to a starving man who was lost in the wilderness. To him you serve a feast with enough food to fill his belly ten times over.

  “Thank you, Dorothy,” Don said, before it was too late.

  “My pleasure, Don,” she replied, just before she and her small marching band tromped out the door.

  “Does this all seem a little, like, surreal?” Matthew asked Chris as the two of them followed suit behind the other troops.

  “It’s fucked. What was he surviving on for three months? Berries?” Chris whispered back.

  “No, I mean, why are we having a picnic?” Matthew pressed.

  “What?”

  “If I had been lost, I wouldn’t give a shit about a church picnic. Where’s the guy’s wife? Where’s their kid? Why aren’t they with him?”

  “She’s probably getting ready for her steamy reunion with her hot husband. Did you see those eyes?”

  “Is your mind capable of a thought without sex?”

  “Not while you’re around.”