The End is Her
Jessica Christ, Book 7
H. Claire Taylor
Copyright © 2020 by H. Claire Taylor
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Thank you!
About the Author
Books by H. Claire Taylor
The End is Her
Jessica Christ, Book 7
H. Claire Taylor
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
-André Gide
Chapter One
April 1, 22 AGC
Jesus rotated the ladle, allowing the tomato soup to dribble into the homeless man’s bowl. “Peace be with you, brother.”
The man shifted his shoulders absentmindedly, holding up the long line, and glared from the surface of the soup back up to the face of God’s only begotten son. “This smells like shit.”
“Be nice to him,” Jessica McCloud snapped from beside her half-brother. “It’s his birthday.”
The twitchy man turned unfocused eyes on her with a skepticism that, for a fleeting instant, caused her to doubt her own existence. “I ain’t no April fool.” He glared at Jesus. “But you look like one.”
Jesus threw his head back, the harsh fluorescent lights above them illuminating his features. “It is true, my brother! I am quite the fool!”
Not quite what the homeless man was expecting, and he gave one final involuntary shoulder jerk, took his tray, and left. Jesus turned to his sister. “See? Nothing so humbling as serving others.”
She wouldn’t debate with him on that since it was, after all, his birthday. Had it not been, she wouldn’t have even been there, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, hairnet on, subjected to the bubbling vat of soup that did, indeed, smell more like something to come out of a human rather than something to put inside one. If it hadn’t been Jesus’s birthday, she would have stayed on the couch and continued in vain to brainstorm ways to turn her Father into her second Mother.
“It’s your birthday?” the next person in line asked as Jessica handed her a small dinner roll.
Jesus grinned. “It is.”
“Not an April Fools’ joke?” the woman asked hesitantly. Her voice was both scratchy and mousy, and she was frighteningly thin from head to toe except for a soft ring of bulk around her middle. Jessica didn’t get the feeling she was a demon, though, despite the physical similarity to Randy McAllister in the Dallas Zoo so many years ago. In fact, she felt immensely sorry for the woman and couldn’t put her finger on why.
Well, other than the homelessness.
I should be homeless right now. I don’t deserve a home. I’ve done nothing to earn it.
“Not a joke!” Jesus declared. “I was born on this day, give or take a few due to the switch from Julian to Gregorian, two thousand and—”
“Twenty-nine years ago,” Jessica cut in.
“Ah yes. Twenty-nine years ago.”
While the woman’s pinched brows indicated that she knew she’d missed out on something, she nodded, forced a grin, and wished the man she knew as Joshua a proper happy birthday.
“I have to say,” he began once the line moved again, “it’s much better to celebrate in the spring. Nicer weather. And the fact that it is on the most joyous of modern holidays only makes it even more glorious!”
She forced a smile, but she hated April Fools’ Day almost as much as she hated her own birthday. That had been true even before Jesus came around and claimed it as his birthday.
“What day do you think my birthday will be celebrated on, centuries from now?” she asked.
Jesus whipped his head around, his lips slightly parted, eyes wide. “Are you telling me that you’re finally thinking about your legacy through the ages?”
“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” She grunted. “Don’t get all worked up about it. It was just a simple question.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Jesus greeted the next in line with a preoccupied smile, then said, “Since there’s no longer a pagan threat to crush, I suppose your birthday will be celebrated on whatever day is very important to the religious practices of the people your followers eventually want to overpower.”
She cringed. “Yeah, that’s about what I was thinking too. Anyway, I hope it’s in the fall. I like the fall.”
“Pride before the fall …” Jesus muttered.
Jessica leaned closer. “Say what?”
“Huh? Oh, nothing. Just something Jeremy and I were discussing. Austin Pride Week. I asked him when it happened, and he said it was sometime at the end of summer. I haven’t been, but it sounds like fantastic fun!”
She imagined Jesus riding a float in the Pride parade and had no trouble with it. Rainbow beads would be such a thrill for him. He would, no doubt, find the whole thing “joyous.”
“If you go this year, let me know.” Her life may make little sense, but she wasn’t completely numb to joy.
In fact, she would have preferred to be a little more numb. But instead, she was alert. Funny how having nowhere to be and no immediate goals other than not starving to death could awaken the senses.
Her brain ran laps around the same scenery of anxieties day in and day out, but there was one particular thing she still couldn’t confront head on, one disastrous series of events, the consequences and complicated emotions of which stalked her every move. When would they strike? When would the events of last Thanksgiving be finished with her?
The betrayal.
The smiting.
No, she wouldn’t think about that right now. She had hours and hours of time alone in her condo that she’d done nothing to deserve when she could let those fears catch up with her.
“I’m glad you wanted to do this,” she said, trying desperately to sound like she meant it.
Jesus met her eyes with his own watery ones, and she
prayed—figuratively—that he wasn’t going to cry in the middle of the homeless soup kitchen. “I knew that if you just came with me, you would understand why I have been working so hard on my mission.”
She looked around the room where four or five dozen homeless sat at cafeteria tables, eating their bread, soup, and chicken.
Jessica had, of course, miracled each of the rolls ahead of time just in case any of the recipients needed that, but during her months off, she’d mastered the ability to minimize the size of her face on them to hardly more than a small burn mark. Not only was the skill handy for keeping a bunch of strangers from ogling her image, but it also served a practical purpose. Last she’d checked with Wendy, Dolores owned the rights to Jessica’s miracle brand. And neither of the lawyers Wendy was tirelessly dating had yet found a loophole to get those rights back.
And yes, she felt guilty for Wendy’s long hours. She’d even gone so far as to say that she would help bear the burden of sleeping with lawyers if God would let that happen. But, of course, He wouldn’t.
That was a shame. She could really use some action. Her dreams had been so bland lately. Without Chris and Jesus crashing them, all she had to look forward to was the occasional run-in with Moses, who usually looked surprised to see her and had nothing useful to offer insofar as guidance. The last time this had happened, she’d just turned a corner in the halls of Mooremont High, where she was running late for a test she’d forgotten to study for, when she collided with the guy. He was reading intently from a stone tablet, which she sent straight into his chest upon impact.
“Why are you in my high school?” she’d asked.
“Why are you in your high school?” he’d replied.
“I’m dreaming.”
Moses looked around, taking in the lockers and blur of students passing. “Ah. Yes. Yes, you are.”
“Did you want to tell me something?” she prompted, hoping the test didn’t start without her.
He looked down at his tablet then back up at her. “Nope. Just got caught up in my reading. Welp. Retirement calls.”
And then he’d left. And only after she was already seated in her classroom with the gibberish test on the desk in front of her did the teacher start to take off his clothes and the sexy part of the dream began.
She was shaken from her daydreaming by a gruff voice. “Don’t I get a roll?”
“Huh?” She hadn’t noticed the newcomer in line.
“You stupid?”
“Huh?” she said, not helping her case.
“I said, are you stupid? Give me my damn roll!”
She tossed one at him like it had scalded her, and he grunted a few more obscenities about her and moved on down the line.
“Blessed day to you!” Jesus said enthusiastically.
Once the man was gone, Jessica waited patiently for Jesus to catch her eye so she could properly scowl at him.
“What?” he said. “Are you unhappy?”
“Did you not hear what he said?” All her sour emotions came flooding back. This was a mistake. She didn’t have to put herself though this just because it was Jesus’s birthday. He’d had plenty of those already. “I told you they weren’t pleasant.”
“I never said they were especially pleasant, sister. But that doesn’t mean they’re unworthy of love. The way I see it, if you can love those who treat you poorly, you can love anyone.”
“But why would I want to love people who treat me poorly? I loved Dolores and she turned out to be the Devil. That’s worked out great for me.” She grabbed one of the rolls and took a large bite from it. It was nearly rock solid from sitting out so long.
“It would not kill you to show love for—”
“Don’t you say it.”
“Fine. I’ll admit that it’s different when it’s Satan. But none of these people are Satan. They’re just people who are hurting.”
Movement caught Jessica’s eyes, and she watched as one man got another in a headlock and the pair started thrashing around. “Hurting each other.”
Jesus sighed. “You don’t have to understand yet. But someday you will.”
She turned to him. “Didn’t one of them beat you up recently?”
“Many of them all at once, yes. But it was due to my mistake.”
“I thought you were perfect.”
“You mean like you are?”
Her mouth fell open. Had Jesus just sassed her?
By the time their shift was done, she was more than ready to get the hell out of there. They had one more place to be, so she had to herd him out of the dining hall where he was blissfully surveying the homeless while they ate. They seemed to like him well enough. Or at least they tolerated him. Huh.
As she loaded into the driver’s side of her car and shut the door, a waft of stank hit her. She gagged and rolled down the window. “I’ll never get this stink out of my nose. It’s like BO and old socks just screwed in a Dumpster.”
Jesus casually adjusted the air vents to get more direct flow. “It is valuable to acknowledge it. And even more valuable to acknowledge that you can leave it behind.”
She was all full up on his wisdom for the day. “Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. I’m saying it’ll be nice to not have to smell that.” She wished she could take a shower before they met up with the others, but there was no time. She hadn’t anticipated this part of his birthday plans. “You ready?”
Jesus swallowed hard, grabbed the oh-shit handle above his window and used his other hand to brace on the dash before shutting his eyes in prayer. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was trying to cast demons out of her engine. But she did know better. Jesus still wasn’t used to motor vehicles.
“It’s not a long drive,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Chapter Two
Jessica had initially thought reserving one of the party rooms was overkill, but now that she realized how loud the music in the main gym of Sir Jumpsalot was, she was glad the manager had upsold her on it. It wasn’t her money anyway, because she didn’t have money. She just had benefactors, and every dollar she spent was an invisible layer of social debt added to the pile that no one would openly admit existed.
“I should probably get out there,” said Jeremy Archer, squinting through the large window separating their fifteen-foot-by-fifteen-foot party room from the massive trampoline zone. He was the unofficial sponsor of this event, having insisted that his best friend and roommate deserved to properly celebrate on his real birthday.
“Up to you,” said Destinee. “Looks like Jesus is havin’ plenty of fun without us.”
Jessica followed Jeremy’s gaze through the observation window. Jesus, it appeared, had made a couple of new adolescent friends, and the three of them were seeing who could do the best backflip.
It was a shame, really, that probably every parent who saw him would assume he was just your run-of-the-mill pedophile. Jessica hadn’t seen joy so pure in a very long time. Maybe not since her high school football days.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “Maybe you should go out there.” What she didn’t say was that Jeremy’s presence would likely tip the assumption scales from pedophile to just overly friendly gay. Or maybe the parents would simply layer the assumptions, one of top of the other. “I’ll join y’all in a little bit,” she said. Maybe that would help.
NOTHING WILL HELP.
Ah, there you are. I was wondering if you’d miss your own son’s birthday.
I HAVE NOT FORSAKEN HIM.
Must be nice for him.
YOU CONTINUE TO HOLD A GRUDGE.
Yes, yes, I do.
IF I HAD TOLD YOU WHO THE DEVIL WAS, YOU WOULD HAVE AVOIDED THE CONFRONTATION YOUR WHOLE LIFE.
You’re not wrong. Gee, I wonder how a person can get through life without confronting the literal devil. Oh right, everyone does that. Everyone but me.
AND YOUR BROTHER.
She watched Jeremy approach the trampolines an
d slip off his shoes. It didn’t take long for him to climb on and start bouncing. Jesus’s eyes lit up and he guffawed with glee when he saw his best friend joining in.
How did Jesus do it? God had hung him up to dry in the most horrifically literal sense, and Jesus could still manage to come to a trampoline park and act like he was the luckiest boy who ever lived.
“So, I guess we gotta wait on this cake?” Rex asked from beside Destinee. Jessica turned her attention away from the mayhem and back to Destinee and Rex, the only two people left in the party room now. Some party.
The cake was compliments of her mother, who’d baked and decorated it in Jesus’s favorite colors: all of them. Across it, it said, Happy 2018th birthday Joshua!! And below that was a shape that roughly resembled a unicorn’s head. When Jessica had first glimpsed the icing design, she would have believed it was a narwhal or a rhino just as easily as she would have believed unicorn. But Jesus had known right away, and he’d become teary-eyed and hugged Destinee tightly and bestowed so many blessings on her that it wasn’t long before she’d had to push him away. “It don’t feel right, you giving me all those tingles.” But then she’d leaned close again and murmured, “At least not in front of Rex.”
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