I AM THE NEW GOD
Nicole Cushing
First Edition
I Am the New God © 2014 by Nicole Cushing
All Rights Reserved.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Children of No One
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To my husband
Acknowledgements
It takes a village to publish a book.
I’d like to thank Allen Griffin and Elizabeth Dresser for their assistance as beta readers. Thanks to Shane Staley, Dave Thomas, and Zach McCain of DarkFuse for never bringing anything less than their A-game to their respective fields. Thanks to my acquaintances in the Codex Writers’ Group for their continued tolerance of a horror writer in their midst, and thanks to the Horror Belles of Louisville (Debbie Kuhn, Michele Lee, and Rhonda Wilson) for just being there to listen.
Thanks, most of all, to the readers who enjoyed my first novella, Children of No One, and shared that enjoyment with their friends. There’s no publicity like heartfelt word-of-mouth.
“As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may be.”
—Mormon leader Lorenzo Snow, 1837
“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”
—The Who
The Correspondence
The hierophant never made phone calls. He wrote letters. They were written in calligraphy on notebook paper. The first came about a week after orientation. I’d just transferred out of a community college in my tiny hometown and moved into Winchester Hall men’s dorm at St. Edward’s College (about three hours away).
In the first letter (postmarked September 9, 1989), he groveled in a manner I can only describe as obsequious. “I regret I couldn’t contact You sooner, but the ones You call ‘mother’ and ‘father’ would have intercepted these communications had I not waited until the appointed time. Please forgive Thy most humble servant for any delay in Your apotheosis.”
I didn’t write back to him, at first. Had St. Edward’s been a traditional college, I would have suspected the letters were fraternity pranks. But it was a “public honors college.” State-funded, but with a certain snooty affectation. The closest thing we had to a fraternity was the lacrosse team, and I don’t think they knew I existed. Besides, the letters had been postmarked in someplace called New Harmony, Indiana. St. Edward’s was nestled on an isolated peninsula in southern Maryland, along the Chesapeake Bay. Whoever wrote them couldn’t have known me. And yet, it seemed she (or, I suspected, more likely, he) did.
Each week (sometimes twice a week), the letters came. Sometimes, the envelopes arrived stained with coffee. Other times, the envelopes looked stained with blood. Sometimes, my name and address had been typed. Other times, they had been hastily scrawled in blue ink. Sometimes, the envelope was crisp and pristine. Other times, the envelope had been crinkled and folded and nearly torn apart before it had even gotten into my hands.
“I know You are to become a wrathful god, but also not a god without mercy. I beseech Thee to answer my pleas. I beg Thee not to tarry with indifference. If You watch the news, You already know how much the world needs You.”
I kept the letters. They entertained me, and I damn sure needed to be entertained. My roommate was a Japanese misfit named Arihiro Takahashi. His English was only so/so. Most of the time, he had his nose deep in a physics book. The rest of the time, he smoked weed. His favorite English phrase was: “That sucks.” His next favorite phrase was: “That sucks so bad.” He only managed to mutter these words after having a few hits off a joint, and he offered no clarification about exactly what sucked. In spite of the language barrier and mutual lack of interest in getting to know each other, we tried hanging out together. We sat among the cinder block walls, listening to Kitaro and smoking dope because we both knew that (as young men new to dorm life) we were obligated to indulge ourselves.
I took four classes that first semester—English Literature, Math 100, American History after the Civil War, and Psychology 101. St. Edward’s had a fine reputation, but I found most of the coursework easy. This wasn’t good news. I’d hoped to be able to wile away most of the time studying. I didn’t want to mix among my peers. The other guys in the dorm (besides Arihiro) only wanted to play video games or watch porn tapes. If anything, the girls were worse. They disgusted me with their overrevealing, late-summer outfits. Clumsy, fatty cleavage jostled about in ill-fitting tops. They wanted nothing more than for me to ogle them. By casting my eye to the ground whenever I passed them, I won. They weren’t going to snare me. They weren’t even going to snare a three-second glance from me.
The campus was lousy with hormones. Even though I, myself, was never aroused, I could sense the arousal among all the rest of them. I could smell it. The odor was like sweat and perfume and cum and snatch and it made me want to retch.
So I came up with a little trick to help me deal with walking everyday amidst a group of people who disgusted me. I nurtured the belief that I was above the fray and, somehow, out of time. I began to pretend that none of what I was experiencing was real. Like my body wasn’t really my body, and like I wasn’t really in it. That’s how I got through it all. I tried to imagine my life was just a book or a movie and I wasn’t in it. I tried to imagine I was on the outside of my life, looking in.
That made things easier.
The other thing that made things easier was mailing a letter back to the hierophant.
* * *
For the first few weeks, the future god didn’t reply to my pleas. Some might claim I was too fervent at the start. I should’ve, perhaps, began with a timid request that He hear me out, to brace Himself to hear things He might find strange. He may have replied to me sooner if I’d taken the time to prepare Him for how unusual it all might sound. Instead, though, I plunged right in and just laid it all out for Him. I thought it pointless to beat around the bush.
The first letter He wrote back looked so official in nature that when I first dug it out of my mailbox, I assumed it was a bill. The envelope was crisp and clean and just so. The letter had been generated on a near-letter quality dot-matrix printer. No running ink. No misspellings. The signature at the bottom was, perhaps, not as legible as I’d expect from one who would soon be a deity. It was a tiny pictograph of loops and squiggles, hurriedly written, wrestling with one another like jumbled coat hangers.
Yet I felt certain He was the one. I’d spent thousands of dollars on fortune tellers, all of whom were in agreement the new god would be born in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. I’d spent a small fortune on road trips. I must have spent a full ten percent of my inheritance that way, driving from poky little town to sprawling suburb to major metropolis. When I couldn’t keep watch over Him, I hired private investigators to do it for me. I can’t say quite how I came to the determination that Greg Bryce was to become the new god. It wasn’t an intellectual p
rocess at all. It was a spiritual and intuitive one. I simply knew a new god when I saw one. I first spotted Him standing by the curb one morning while waiting for the school bus. He stood off to the side, by Himself—not having anything to do with the other children. He had a distant look in His eyes, as though it pained Him to breathe the same air as the others. This seemed quite congruent with the Being who had spoken to me in dreams (the god who announced His time was nigh).
The Being in Dreams was aloof, but rightly so. I kept that in mind when I waited for a reply to my letters. Who was I to dare communicate with one so exalted? Perhaps He felt my overtures too forward. Or perhaps it was more simple than that. Perhaps He already sensed, intuitively, that He was a god and checking the mailbox was beneath Him. Or perhaps He had already established a telepathic connection to other realms; planets more vibrant than the one He’d been plopped onto. Perhaps He silently communicated with an audience of creatures at a greater level of spiritual evolution. Creatures closer to godhood than humans were.
Whatever the reason for His distance, I knew He couldn’t be counted on to exist fully on this material plane. It was as though He lived with one foot on land, and another in heaven.
He existed in this incarnation as a man, but did not have the needs a man has. Greg Bryce did eat regularly. I know that from my observations, as well as those of the private investigator. I can only presume this was for the benefit of His so-called “mother” and “father.” If He’d attempted to go without food altogether, before His apotheosis, it would have seemed strange indeed. It would have led those close to Him to worry. In His graciousness, He did not want them to worry. So, He ate (even though human food must have tasted like excrement to a future god). I suspect He didn’t reveal any sign of His disgust. I suspect He didn’t vent His anger at the prospect of having to go through the charade of human existence. Make no mistake, the future god shall be a wrathful god, but also a god not without mercy.
Perhaps the most merciful thing the future god did was reply to my letters. Oh, you cannot imagine the celebration that commenced upon my receipt of the first! I was in the post office (I rented a box there, so the new god’s mail would not have to brush up against mail from those who are unclean). I even had a talk with the postal clerk to explain to her that my P.O. box was not to receive any junk mail. I didn’t tell her about the sacredness of the mail to be received in that box, but I’m sure she got the message after I smudged burnt sage over the insides. The postal clerk smiled and told me she could make an exception to the ordinary rule that everyone had to receive junk mail in their box, whether they wanted it or not.
That’s one of the reasons I love New Harmony. People understand me more here than they’ve ever understood me anywhere else. It is a town steeped in spirituality. But I digress.
The first communication I received from the new god was as simple as it was provocative. Just seven words. (Seven. Of course it would be seven. A signal, clear as day.)
WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT?
It was obvious to me they were exactly the sort of questions a soon-to-be god would ask one of His worshipers. Perhaps these were to become the very first questions in a new catechism in which adherents would become initiated into a new faith. Who was I, indeed? What, exactly, did I want?
I studied the paper. Right there in the post office, I smelled it, trying to get a whiff of Him. (But what, exactly, had I expected? Did I actually think my human nose could discern a particular odor indicative of godhood? What did a god smell like? Ozone? Ambrosia?)
I scurried home so I could pen my response. I endeavored to follow my god’s example. Keep things simple, clear. How difficult, however, to keep things simple when corresponding with someone on the verge of godhood! I didn’t want to answer His questions. I wanted to ask my own. (Why do we die? Who will fire the first missile, Bush or Gorbachev? Is it Thy will for the missiles to be fired? Would it be fitting, since the world was once destroyed by water in the great flood, to now have it destroyed by fire? Would that bring everything back into balance? Is there anything we can do to avoid this fate, or should we embrace it to create a clean slate?)
I restrained myself, and focused only on answering His questions. I thought long and hard about my answers. I spent an entire day fixated on them. I did not shower or bathe. I did not turn on the television or listen to the radio. I paced. I chewed my nails. I retrieved my calligraphy pen and my paper and would start a response, only to rethink my answer halfway through and toss it into the wastebasket.
In the end, I sent Him a one-page letter that read, simply (in seven holy words):
I’M YOUR SERVANT. I WANT TO SERVE.
* * *
The hierophant didn’t say much in that first reply (at least, nothing surprising). He just said something about being a servant. I considered going to the post office and telling them about it, because this guy who I’d never met seemed like he was borderline-queer over me. I might have felt disgust at the way the college girls strutted like whores, but I wasn’t a faggot, either. If this guy was a faggot, I might retch; I mean, really retch. I considered going back to ignoring the letters again, but I didn’t think that was possible.
I’d crossed an invisible line and now couldn’t go back. I’d made a decision to talk to this guy in Indiana. He’d mailed a letter back. When I didn’t answer him, he mailed another, and another. I thought about changing my address to another P.O box. I thought about burning the letters as they came in and mailing the ashes back to the hierophant, with a note explaining they were the ashes of his letters.
I couldn’t decide how to deal with this uninvited intrusion in my life, but I had no one to confide in. No one to help me think all of this through.
I thought about trying to tell Arihiro, but he’d probably just shake his head and say: “That sucks. That sucks so bad.” Then he’d put on his headphones and listen to Kitaro on his boom box.
Never once, though, did I even consider bringing this to the attention of Mom and Dad. I was born in 1970, which means most of the kids I grew up with had hippie parents. Not me. Mom and Dad were old enough to be Grandmom and Granddad. Mom had me when she was 36 and she had my younger brother, Daniel, when she was 40. I don’t think kids should have parents that old. It creates problems. Problems like Daniel.
He was all messed up. “Profoundly mentally retarded,” was the label a doctor had given him. That meant he wasn’t like the cute, Cabbage-Patch-Doll-looking retarded kid you’d see in the Special Olympics. He wasn’t like that Corky kid from TV. He was the glassy-eyed, grunting, scratching, helmet-wearing, shit-smelling kind of retarded kid. He was the kind of retarded kid who had to be shipped off and prayed for. I don’t remember my parents being all into praying until Daniel was born. After that, it seems like all they did was church stuff, which was bad news for me.
They watched Pat Robertson on the 700 Club. They thought Dungeons & Dragons was a tool of the devil, and forbade me from playing it. They didn’t want me to move away from home. They thought I wasn’t ready. They said I’d had a rough time in high school and needed to stay close to home.
I did have a rough time in high school. That much is true. But I’d gone to community college and straightened up my act. Got all “A”s. Did it while only going to one doctor’s appointment every three months, too. I think it was because there was less stress. The great thing about community college was that lots of people were there getting their degree in their thirties and forties. I didn’t have to deal with all the social-ladder bullshit like I did in high school.
All of this is just a long, roundabout way of saying my parents weren’t good folks to consult in this matter. They had their own problems, with praying for Daniel and everything. If I’d told them any of this, they would have made me a shrink’s appointment. They would have had me going there every week again. Even if I showed them the letters, they would have twisted things around and insisted I needed to go to the doctor. So, I didn’t tell them. I went to a college th
ree hours away from home for a reason. Why invite them into my life so they could meddle?
I decided I didn’t need to have an immediate plan for how to handle the letters. I decided it wouldn’t hurt anything at all to wait a week. I continued to attend classes. I continued to smoke pot with Arihiro. I continued to read my assignments. But I also started to make regular visits to the Chesapeake Bay, so I could think about all of this. The waves breaking against the shore calmed my mind.
There was a place on the bay, about forty-five minutes away from campus, called Calvert Cliffs State Park. They said Miocene-era shark teeth were embedded in the tall bluffs overlooking the water. After storms, some of them washed down to the beach. There was a nuclear power plant there, too. From the state park beach, you could see the cooling towers. This struck me as being something like a bad joke (especially considering what had happened in Chernobyl).
I owned a blue two-door Honda Civic I’d bought for a song from this girl Lydia, back home, who gets a new car every year on account of the fact her family’s well-off. I can see why they got rid of it. It was stuffy in a way I could only imagine a coffin being stuffy. The air inside always seemed airless. Like maybe it was fake air. It had plastic upholstery, which added to the ambiance of fakery. One time, driving up to Calvert Cliffs after smoking with Arihiro, I began to ponder if I was fake. Maybe, I thought, I was a fake me sitting on a fake seat in a fake car, driving down a fake road towards a fake beach-and-cooling-tower landscape, to mull over the fake adulation of a fake man in a fake town who thought I was a god.
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