Persecution: God's Other Children. Book 2

by Rob Mclean

  Although she really didn’t feel like a night out, Angela felt it would be best not to turn Chelsea down, especially when she was making such an effort to be nice, so she agreed.

  *

  Even though it was a Thursday night, her mother had no reason to object. Her attitude towards Chelsea, after hearing about her parent’s faltering faith, was now one of pity. She just wanted to know when Angela might be home, and gave them both the usual lecture about being careful. They quickly said their goodbyes before Clarice could get started about all the dangers a pair of young ladies might encounter in this now officially godless city.

  Chelsea had driven to Angela’s, but had asked Angela to be the designated driver.

  “I plan to get totally off my face,” Chelsea grinned as she took a bag of clothes from her car. “Or find me a man - or both, who knows?” She threw the bag into the back seat of Angela’s Suzuki and climbed into the passenger seat. After years of scaring away men with her Goth style and over-developed unapproachable expressions, the current rebellious attitude had Angela concerned. She resolved to keep an eye on her and to keep her friend safe, both from herself and others.

  They went to Christy’s place and after exchanging pleasantries with her parents, went straight to Christy’s room to get ready.

  Chelsea produced a little black dress that stretched the definition of little. In Angela’s opinion, it revealed more than it covered. She had to admit though, with the matching shoes and accessories, and with the heavy Goth-emo make-up toned right down, Chelsea looked seductively fabulous.

  Christy opted for a more demure look; tights under a short skirt with a singlet top and strappy heels. Angela decided to change her look to match Christy’s. They went through Christy’s wardrobe together to find something suitable.

  Chelsea produced a box of Vodka mixers and offered them around. Angela had a good reason to decline, but she took one to be polite. Christy also took one, but neither of them had more than a sip before Chelsea had finished her first one and opened a second.

  While fussing over shoes, hair and make-up, Chelsea gave them her advice. Angela borrowed some bracelets and bangles to end up looking like Christy’s Caucasian clone.

  *

  By the time they had followed Chelsea’s directions and found a car park, Chelsea was getting impatient. After checking her phone for what seemed like the hundredth time, Chelsea finished her drink and marched towards the night-club.

  “Come on, ladies,” she beckoned them impatiently. “Gotta pee.”

  They went in with Chelsea to the rest-room and waited while she went to the cubical.

  “What’s Aaron doing tonight?” Angela asked.

  “Just chillin’ at home, probably killing things on his X-box. How about John?”

  “Don’t know, some paperwork, I think.” She hoped it didn’t involve his boss. “I told him we’re out on a girl’s night. He was happy when I told him you would be there.”

  “I like him,” Christy whispered so Chelsea couldn’t hear. “I think he’s good for you.”

  Angela smiled in return, but she had her doubts. She still felt funny when she thought about his ex-girl-friend.

  From within the cubicle, Angela could hear Chelsea texting, and when she looked to Christy, she saw that she had heard it too. They both rolled their eyes, then Christy grinned as she took out her own phone and began texting.

  Moments later, the beep of Chelsea’s phone echoed. A few seconds later, Chelsea responded. “Ha ha, funny girl.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Christy said as Chelsea emerged from the cubicle.

  “Not if you’re my mother.” Chelsea frowned. “She’s worried about me. As if anything I could do would be worse than what they’ve already done.”

  Neither Angela nor Christy responded, except to give her a sympathetic look.

  “Forget them,” Chelsea said, putting on a party face. “Let’s go, girls.”

  *

  The night-club wasn’t crowded yet. It was relatively early in the night and the crowds were only starting to arrive. The night that the referendum results were declared had brought people out dancing in the streets of downtown L.A. That had been almost a week ago, but the buoyant mood persisted still. The rejection of religion hadn’t instantly brought about the ‘big one,’ the long anticipated San Andreas earthquake that was supposed to send the city of sinners into the sea, as promised by some evangelists.

  When the alien emissary had heard of these dire predictions, he gave, via the web-portal, information gathered from tectonic studies of hundreds of planets to add to the human understanding. It did nothing to disabuse the prediction, but instead suggested that they, in fact, might be right, albeit for vastly different reasons.

  The three girls found a table overlooking most of the night-club. From their vantage point, they surveyed the crowd. Chelsea pointed out various guys, their nicer physical features, closely followed by all the reasons why they would be no good. Angela and Christy played along, if only to keep Chelsea happy.

  Suddenly Christy grabbed Angela’s arm. “Look, at the end of the bar. It’s Zeke.” He sat with a couple of other guys, who Angela didn’t know, at the bar with an almost empty beer bottle in front of him.

  Angela’s eyes narrowed as she looked firstly at Zeke, then at Chelsea. “What a surprise.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Chelsea replied with exaggerated innocence as she stood. “Shall we say hello?”

  “You knew he’d be here, didn’t you?”

  “Half chance.”

  Chelsea started to walk towards her brother, but Angela grabbed her arm and pulled her back to her seat. “I’m not talking to him.”

  “Oh, come on.” Chelsea shook off Angela’s hold. “It’s a public place.”

  “You didn’t see how he was last time.” Christy shook her head, “at Libby’s engagement.”

  “And you don’t know how gutted he is. How he doesn’t eat and doesn’t sleep. He just mopes around, like a zombie. He misses you.”

  “He misses parts of me,” Angela said, aware she was in danger of sounding like her mother.

  “Sure, but it’s more than just that.” Chelsea clasped her hands over Angela’s. “He loves you.”

  “Then why doesn’t he get over himself and do what he should?” Angela kept her eyes on Zeke, who still hadn’t seen them sitting across the room. She figured that if Chelsea and Zeke had set up this accidental meeting, then it followed that he would know she was here and would find her eventually. If that was what it took to save his delicate ego, then maybe she would hear him out. She had her car and she told herself that she would leave right away if things turned ugly.

  “I’m worried about him, Angie.” Chelsea followed her gaze. “He’s not himself.”

  At that moment a woman approached Zeke. She was in a slim-fitting, gold shimmering dress that highlighted her shampoo-commercial, big, blonde hair. From the body language, Angela watched as the woman asked if the seat next to Zeke was taken. Zeke shook his head and she sat herself down while he was looking the other way. He turned back to face her when she put her hand on his arm.

  A heady brew of strange feelings flooded through Angela’s mind; a mixture of curiosity as to what Zeke would do, indignation that the woman could be so brazen and surprisingly, a stab of possessive jealousy.

  She caught Chelsea studying her. “What?”

  “What yourself” Chelsea shot back before she went back to watching her brother. “You didn’t think other women wouldn’t want him?”

  Angela felt her eyes move back to Zeke. As the woman at the bar turned to sit facing Zeke, Angela conceded that Zeke did have the sort of looks that would motivate women to approach him. She felt a quickening in her stomach at the thought that she might lose him if she didn’t act now.

  Just as she was thinking that she should go over and intervene, Angela saw that, as the woman leaned in closer, Zeke shook his head and backed away. He then stood up and with what looked like
an apology, left her and walked away.

  “Wow,” Christy said.

  “Hmmm, you got lucky this time,” Chelsea grinned.

  Angela said nothing. She replayed the exchange in her mind, but it was as confused as her feelings. Did he brush off that woman because he was still in love with me?

  Angela longed to tell Chelsea and Christy all about her problems with John and how confused she felt, but she knew that it would eventually get back to Zeke. She didn’t want that, didn’t want to give him any sort of false hope. Instead, she said nothing.

  For all the rest of the evening, she expected Zeke to happen upon them unexpectedly, but after an evening waiting, nothing happened. When it was time to go home, Chelsea was entangled with some guy she had been dancing against all evening. She waved them away and Angela took Christy home feeling strangely disappointed that Zeke hadn’t approached her.

  She fell asleep that night more confused about Zeke and John as she had ever been.

  In her dreams that night, she was riding a white horse that turned into a scaly, black dragon between her legs as she rode it.

  A knight appeared and confronted the dragon. From afar, she watched as they fought, but the knight’s armour fell away and she could see that underneath, he was dead. His body was rotten, falling off in worm infested chunks.

  As she watched, what she thought was her dragon morphed before her eyes into a winged horse, a Pegasus. It whinnied terribly and reared up on its hind legs as the undead zombie hacked at its wings.

  In her dream, she knew that with a word, she could stop the battle, but the words wouldn’t come. Her voice was gone, and as the two creatures battled, their forms shifted, changing back and forth; one moment a decaying zombie, then from a different angle, a noble warrior. The other vacillated from a winged horse back to a slithering lizard.

  As she watched, their blood pooled about her while she screamed silently for them both to stop.

  Chapter 27

  Angela awoke feeling drained.

  Her worries had plagued her all through the night and her dreams had been no escape. She knew that both John and Zeke had their good points and she loved them both, but in very different ways.

  John’s loyalty was both his strength and a fault. He had so far proved trustworthy, but his honesty was blunt and brutal. Still she preferred that to Zeke’s evasiveness. She didn’t call Zeke a liar, but she knew that he would avoid the entire truth if it suited him.

  Then again, Zeke had faith, which John lacked and their history was something Angela could look back on with a guilty fondness. John’s past, on the other hand, was something to be ashamed of.

  Despite that she could still see herself married to either, but she knew that the relationships and the children they brought up in their families would be vastly different. Would John be happy for her to bring up their children as Christians? She smiled at herself as she realised that she was thinking like her mother.

  She normally would have spoken to her mother about her problems, but she already knew what she would say on this topic. Her father was also set in his opposite opinion, as he could see no wrong in John. Somehow the fact that John wasn’t a Christian didn’t seem to overly worry him. Was that because he could relate to someone having no faith?

  Chelsea and Christy were also both set in their contrasting opinions, so she resolved to see Pastor Greg. He always listened and if he didn’t offer an opinion, at least he could be relied upon for a more objective view.

  It was mid-morning when Angela knocked on his front door. She had brought a tray of take-away coffees, partly to assuage her guilt for imposing, but also because it was morning tea time and she didn’t like arriving empty handed.

  Long after the second knock, and just as Angela was about to give up and turn away, she heard muffled sounds from within. Moments later, a bleary eyed Pastor Greg opened his door. He blinked at the mid-morning light as he put on his glasses and smoothed down his ruffled bed hair.

  “Angela, come in child,” he said as he hastily tied up his dressing gown. A puzzled look creased his brow as he eyed the tray of coffees. “I’m sorry, did I forget that you were coming?”

  Angela cringed. She had clearly woken him and spoiled his Saturday morning sleep in and he was too polite to say so.

  “No, I was just wanting to chat and, well… I brought coffee,” she smiled, “but I can leave them with you if it’s not a good time.”

  “No, not at all.” He took the tray from her with one hand and ushered her inside with the other. “It’s long past the time that I should have been up and sloth is one of those sins.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled.

  “Oh, look. It’s Angela.” Marilyn, the Pastor’s wife emerged from the bedroom and stood behind her husband in the hallway. She greeted Angela with a tired smile and a warm hug that smelt of bed and sleep. Angela wasn’t sure the weary smile was from being woken, but she hoped it wasn’t from the seemingly endless demands that parishioners, like herself, put on her husband.

  Dressed in a knee-length, off the shoulder, black, silk nightie, she hung her arm around her husband’s shoulders as she took a coffee from the tray. “Just what I need,” she said in a flat tone that told Angela that she wasn’t talking about the coffee.

  Suddenly Angela had an image of the Pastor and his wife in bed as husband and wife. She momentarily worried that she may have interrupted their intimacy, but she quickly dismissed the idea. People don’t still do those kind things of things at their age, do they? They already had two children who were almost her age, and besides, the thought of someone as spiritual as her Pastor having a sex life was somehow just not right.

  “Is there something on your mind?” the Pastor asked, oblivious to his wife’s sarcasm.

  “Look, it’s nothing. I just wanted to chat to someone…” Angela sipped her lukewarm coffee as she cast a glance at Marilyn, who had already turned away and was heading back to the bedroom.

  “Don’t mind me,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m going to have a shower.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you or…”

  “No, we overslept, but don’t you worry about waking us,” the Pastor said as he pulled out a chair for her at the kitchen table before sitting himself across from her. An apologetic smile flashed across his face. “We didn’t get to bed ‘til late.”

  “Someone else wanting a talk and just expecting you to be free at any hour?” Angela drew another mouthful of her coffee.

  “No, but that does happen quite often.” He nodded into his cup thoughtfully. “Especially lately with all the things happening now. But that’s all part of the job. That’s what I’m here for; to be a spiritual guide, a light in the darkness, to tend to my flock and keep them from harm.” One side of his face lifted with a rueful grin as he shook his head.

  “I heard about the Campbell’s.” Angela wondered if he saw their fall as somehow his fault. “Chelsea was pretty gutted about that.”

  “Them and many more besides…”

  “More?”

  The Pastor put down his coffee and pushed himself back in his chair. He took a big breath and frowned. His chin wobbled and, to Angela, it looked as though he might even cry.

  She reached over and put her hand on his. “Is everything okay?”

  His lips pressed tightly together and his frown deepened. “No,” he said as he shook his head. “No, it’s not.” He withdrew his hand and stood.

  Angela watched him pace to the far side of the kitchen and back again, not knowing what to say. It was supposed to be the other way around, not like this.

  “How can so many just give up their faith?” He asked and snapped his fingers. “Just like that!”

  Angela shrugged, wide-eyed. She didn’t know what to say, so she sipped at what was left of her drink.

  “After all these years. All the time and effort I’ve put into them. All those sermons…”

  “It does say that, in the last days that few are saved…” Angela bega
n to say.

  “Yes, yes.” A brittle, sad grin turned his lips and soured his face. “All part of God’s plan.”

  Angela nodded.

  “Whatever that is.” The scorn in his voice was hard to miss, even though he seemed to be talking mostly to himself. “You could go mad thinking about it.”

  “You just have to trust in God,” she hoped she sounded more sincere than she felt. She certainly didn’t feel brave. The thought of what was supposed to come for the faithful was truly scary, but all the same, it felt weird to be the one offering spiritual advice for a change. Angela wondered if maybe that was the real reason she was here this morning.

  He gave her a searching look. “Yes, you’re right of course.” She saw his features soften as confusion give way to guilt. “It’s so easy to lose sight of that at times.”

  “Besides,” she smiled, “our family is still with you.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, how is you father?” the pastor asked effusively, as if suddenly remembering his manners.

  “He’s not any better.”

  “No,” the Pastor bowed his head. “He’ll soon be with God.”

  “I know,” Angela took the lid off her coffee and swirled the dregs around.

  “But that isn’t why you’re here, is it?”

  “No,” she said looking up from her cup. “It’s John… and Zeke.”

  The Pastor said nothing. He just gave her a questioning look that prompted her to continue.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she shrugged. Her fingers began to worry at the rim of her paper cup. “Which one I’m supposed to choose?”

  “Are they your only choices?” he asked with a quiet voice.

  Angela blinked a few times as she thought through what he had just said. Did she have to choose either? She wanted family, to be a good mother, but who says it has to be Zeke or John? She was only twenty-two. She had loads of time, or at least she normally would, but these may be the last days and who knows how much time anyone really had? For all she knew, she may well be called to God before her father.