Vestigial

by Catlyn Ladd

There have been many prophets before, speaking some version of truth. But I am a new thing.

I stand and lift my arms above my head. I know the spotlight catches on my cheekbones and shadows the hollows of my eyes. I know the lantern behind me diffuses through my gown, outlining my body in light. I know they find me beautiful. I am beautiful.

I cannot see them but I can hear them. I hear their indrawn breath. Then they are silent, waiting.

“You have been waiting for so long,” I say. I speak softly but the microphones hidden along the stage elevate my voice through the speakers secreted behind wall panels, filling the expanse with sound. The sound system had cost half a million dollars. We pay the most for the appearance of nothing at all. The face cream that makes my skin sparkle subtly in the light goes for more than a thousand dollars an ounce.

“I am here now.”

They sigh. I tilt my head back, closing my eyes. When I open them I know that they, too, spark in the lights, glowing violet. I’d had iris implants to achieve that color and the impact has been worth every penny. Gods have to be beautiful. Even Jesus had changed his image to the blond, blue eyed messiah played by only the most handsome actors on the silver screen. I will be much more important than Jesus. I will be the last prophet.

My image is being beamed out onto millions of screens worldwide. People across the world tune in, first for the novelty of me and then for the words I speak.

The lights glow on my closed eyelids and I wait, ready to receive. The gods come to me whenever I call.

I give my shoulders the tiniest shrug and the robe I wear falls to puddle at my feet. When my garments fall the audience knows that god has come. The eye in the center of my chest opens.

Our bodies intertwined in the womb. She recognized my power and attached to me, giving herself, my first devotee. My fluids sustain her. Her eye, the only part of her visible in the real, is white and blind but she was not made to see this world. She is my conduit, my vestigial.

The crowd surges. People push to see and the bouncers hold them back. I don’t provide seating because I want them on their feet, shoving. My eyes remain closed while hers is open but I lift my lids a tiny bit. Both to see and also because the lights catch my violet irises, sending out an unearthly glitter. Naked and shimmering, arms spread wide, breasts lifted, hair streaming, I am unearthly. No one can resist me.

“On Monday, March 23 the skyscraper in the west will fall,” I whisper. The crowd stills, even though the sound system is designed so that only the hearing impaired could possibly miss what I say. That’s why I have a sign-language interpreter and subtitles.

“The burning is coming. Many will die.” I lift my face into the lights shining down, careful to twist my body slightly to the left. I don’t want the cameras looking up my nose.

“The blond man will be blamed by some but he is innocent,” I say. “The guilty ones will be…” I pause. The amphitheater is completely silent. “The guilty ones will be on flight 1021 out of Boston.”

I feel her eye close and I collapse, unhinging my knees and falling back so that my red curls spread perfectly on the polished cherry of the stage. I keep my legs carefully together so that no one sees anything other than my pubic hair, the exact same shade as the hair on my head. Nudity titillates but the eye just above my breasts adds an element of strange that prevents me from being overly sexualized. My assistant is at my side, kneeling to drape me in a white velvet robe that I pull around myself, sitting up with her help. I look out over the crowd and they scream in response, calling questions, prayers, petitions, solicitations. The bouncers shove people back and I rise to my feet, holding onto my assistant as though weak. I look out over the crowd.

“Thank you for coming,” I whisper. I hold onto Terry’s arm until the wings hide me. Then I straighten and pull away. “Are we ready for the after show?” I ask her.

I like that she meets my eyes. She is always ready and always prepared. Of all of my helpers, she is the one who really gets what I am trying to do. She never wavers.

“Yes,” she says. “Twenty-one participants will be in the offering room in thirty minutes.” She hands me a coconut water. I live off of juices and elixirs to keep my body perfectly trim. I drink deep, tasting sweet and rot. Under my robe I can feel the eye open again. She is an involuntary reflex, an arrhythmia.

I walk to my dressing room and shut the door on the hubbub of people that are necessary to run an enterprise of this scale. The dressing room is blissfully silent and I drop the robe on the couch. Crossing to the mirror I examine myself carefully, looking for any flaw, anything out of place. I must be perfect at all times.

My examination complete, I pull on a pair of white velvet shorts that leave my long legs bare. Put drops in all three of my eyes to prevent redness and also to minimize the risk of infection. Her eye dirties easily and keeping it clean and moisturized ensures my continued health. I top the whole thing with a clinging shirt in the same soft fabric. It clearly shows the shape of my body, my nipples, my ribcage. For this next part, she needs to be seen.

Terry knocks on my door exactly twenty-eight minutes later. I’m sitting in lotus, my eyes at half mast. I always take offerings seriously. It’s important to be in the right head space.

She waits until I bid her enter. “The packages are in place,” she tells me. “And the offering is prepared.”

I pull the white robe back on, leaving it to flow open over my shirt and shorts. I go through an outfit a week; the velvet is too difficult to clean and makes a great souvenir for my devotees.

A decent size crowd has hung around, hoping to get another glimpse of me. The robe has a hood and I pull it up, leaving my red curls to stream down over my chest. Terry touches up my roots every ten days; she is the only one I trust to know that my hair is brown and that the color of my eyes had once been perfectly ordinary. Terry has been with me for a long time.

She follows me unobtrusively, letting my huge bodyguards handle the crowd. They have also been with me for years; I’d rescued them from a Mongolian orphanage as babies and raised the boys to serve me. I have a weakness for twins.

Hands reach for me and I allow some of them to brush my robe, flashing my violet eyes from beneath the hood. The crowd surges and whispers and sighs, calling my name: “Lisbet! Lisbet! We believe in you! We love you! We worship you! We’d die for you! Sacrifice me, Lisbet!”

The Mongolians clear a way to the offering room door and the ones outside shove one another for a glimpse inside. Someday maybe some of them will be allowed in. One day, they may even be brought to the dais.

As I step through the doors I push back the hood and the ones inside look up at me, their voices falling silent. They have all been brought in through a small entry on the far side but I enter through huge mahogany doors opening onto a balcony overlooking the rest of the room. As I appear the lights in the rest of the room subtly dim, leaving me spotlighted against the dark wood of the doors as they close behind me. Twenty-one pairs of eyes gaze up at me. I pause to let them look and then descend the marble stairs, one of the Mongolians taking a hand, Terry quickly sweeping the train of the robe out so that it drapes majestically behind me.

At the bottom, I drop my helper’s hand and make my way through the small crowd, looking into each face, pausing occasionally to touch a shoulder, brush a smooth cheek. They are a menagerie of human beauty. I do not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, color, weight, or age and they are a rainbow of human diversity. And they are all for me though only one will be chosen.

I always know immediately who she will pick. She’s decisive, my autosite. Today she chooses the youngest of the bunch, a girl who can’t be older than sixteen. With those blue eyes and dark skin she has to be mix. Model material if she hadn’t come to me.

I take her by the hand and the small crowd sighs. They want to be chosen but they also want to watch. It’s a combination of disappointment and relief.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Mara,” she says.

“Do you want to be mine, Mara?” I ask.

“Yes,” she consents. Her parents or guardians will have consented as well, in writing, assuming she is under age.

“Show me how you’re special.”

Her eyes fall away from mine but she turns so show me her back, dropping the loose dress she wears so that I can see the full expanse of her flesh. At the base of her spine a tiny tail sprouts. It is about four inches long and curls at the end, nestled against the top of her buttocks.

“You are special,” I say and she turns to face me again, meeting my eyes.

“People made fun,” she whispers.

“People are stupid,” I say, and she smiles a bit.

Taking her hand, I lead her to the far end of the room where there is a balcony matching the one by the doors. This one is set with a dining table and a platform without rails that hangs out over the room below. It is subtly slanted giving the audience a better view. I must be careful not to lose my footing on the uneven surface.

I walk up the stairs and invite Mara to sit at one end of the table. I sit at the other. The Mongolians open the doors and waiters stream in. There are platters of mac and cheese, egg rolls, pizza, cheeseburgers, potato fries, ranch flavored corn chips, chocolate pudding, ice cream, and lemon cake. There are pitchers of red Kool-Aid and Coke.

Mara’s eyes are wide. “These are my favorites,” she says.

I hand her a plate. “Have as much as you want,” I tell her and begin heaping my own plate. This is the only time I eat solid food.

She takes a bite of pizza and wipes her chin as grease from the cheese runs down. “Did people make fun of you, too?” she asks.

“For…?” She nods at my chest.

“Only until they realized that she allows me to speak with the gods.” I tuck into my own plate, starting with the mac and cheese, a favorite since childhood.

“When I was born my tail was just a little nub. But I grew with me.”

“Did you ever think of having it removed?”

She looks at me shyly. “I hide it. But it makes me special.”

I smile at her. “I know exactly how you feel.”

A waiter refills her glass of soda and she takes another long swallow. “But your eye isn’t scary.” Her face fills with reverence. “It’s god.”

I push the rest of the pasta aside and reach for an eggroll. “She’s not god,” I correct. “But she speaks with the gods.”

“And that’s what allows you to hear them.”

I tilt my head back, closing my eyes, blotting out Mara and the rest of the room. “Yes,” I breathe. “I can hear them.” I feel her eye open.

We had intertwined in the womb, our juices mingling. My body had consumed hers and she fed me, my first offering. I had ingested her blood and bones, my body growing strong from hers. But she had not been subsumed. She persisted, her eye peering across the void and into other worlds.

I will be the last prophet. But to end the world I must feed. I finish the egg roll and reach for the cake.

Below, the twenty who did not get chosen are eating their fill as well, gorging on the comfort food. The waiters make sure they all have plenty to drink. I only drink water.

I can see it when it hits, the glassiness to Mara’s eyes, the way her mouth gapes open in a smile. She has gotten a much stronger dose than the ones below. It will keep her docile. They consent but most of them lose their courage in the final moments.

I finish eating and gesture for more water. Terry brings me a glass with a splash of mint to cut the grease and oils of the fattening meal.

I wait until the wait staff whisk the last of the food away and the stand, waiting for the room to quiet. The lights slowly dim again, leaving me standing in a dazzling spot. A hush falls.

When I take Mara’s hand she stands obediently and follows me to the platform. I position her facing the people below. I bask in all those eyes on me. They see me for what I truly am: a god. And all gods are monstrous.

I push the loose dress off Mara’s shoulders and it falls to the floor, leaving her naked. The crowd sighs.

I spin her around to face me and the people below look at the tail curled at the base of her spine. They all have something that makes them special, too: extra toes, missing bones, different colored eyes. My only requirement is that they have to have been born different; no accidents, surgeries, or cosmetics allowed.

“Hinduism is the only tradition that recognizes birth anomalies for what they are: gods breaking through into our world,” I tell those gathered below. “The rest of the world see difference as abomination and uses surgery to banish the divine. I know that this world was once the home of the gods. Then humans multiplied and drove them out. But I have come again. I am Ebeji, the divine twins, the Changing Woman. What is my name?”

“Lisbet,” the crowd moans. They have gotten a lighter dose of GHB to keep them alert but compliant.

“I am Lisbet, the last. What is my purpose?”

“To end the world,” they say. “To restore heaven on earth.”

“And how will heaven come again?”

“We will inherit the earth.”

“What is required?”

“Sacrifice.”

I look deep into Mara’s eyes. She looks back, her gaze sleepy and stoned. She smiles at me and I caress her cheek.

“What is the only worthy sacrifice?”

“A god.” The crowd sways, arms lifting. In the gloom I can only sense movement but I can feel their adoration.

I reach up and wrap my hand through Mara’s hair, pulling her head back as the knife hidden in my hand slices across her throat. I pull her forward, into the knife, putting all of the pressure I can into the cut. The goal is to sever both carotid arteries in a single smooth slice. I am getting better at it.

Blood geysers up, splattering my face and the white velvet. I love how it shines on the rich fabric, turning from frosty to scarlet in an instant. I open my mouth and drink in that blood, the coppery taste of it shocking against the mint.

I feel the eye in my chest open wide. She blinks as the blood rains down. I’m always impressed with the force of that initial gush. Mara’s eyes roll up and then close. Her dark skin turns ashy as her blood continues to pump out. It pools on the platform, caught in the gutter that runs around the edge. There is a drain that captures the blood in a vat to save for later.

She sags against me and I lower her down, kneeling beside her, washing my hands in the life-force that flows from her. I wash my face in all that red and lick my fingers. Like Kali, I am a bloodthirsty goddess. Together, we feed.

She is gone and I stand, stepping to the edge of the platform. The crowd surges forward, their arms raised. I drip blood from my hands into their upturned faces and they open their mouths like baby birds to drink.

---

I watch the building fall. It releases a tremendous cloud of dust and a plume of black. The camera jiggles upward and focuses in on the cloudless sky before panning down to find the rising smoke. The reporter’s voice, trembling with excitement, exclaims, “The West, a condominium complex in Hell’s Kitchen, caught fire this morning in an apparent explosion. Firefighters and law enforcement are on the scene but have yet to release a cause.” The camera widens its angle to show a gaping hole in the façade, bricks and detritus tumbling down, burning scraps floating in the updraft. “As you can see, there is tremendous damage, including a portion of the building that has entirely collapsed.”

Terry appears beside me and hands me a glass of juice, red from cranberries and Mara’s blood. It is sweet and cold and metallic.

“Only half of the building fell,” I say.

“It looks like the charges under the southeast side did not detonate properly,” Terry replies.

“It’s still a lot of destruction,” I say. “It’s enough.”

I am disappointed but any human endeavor involves human error. Even when doing god’s work.

“You have the interview at 11,” Terry reminds me and I turn from the television reluctantly.

“A dress? Or pants?” Terry asks.

“I’ll do the new silk pantsuit,” I decide.

---

I tilt my head back and look up into the glittering lights. I love how being on a stage obscures the rest of the world. When I am in front of the lights it’s just me, my vision, my reality. I am wearing the new silk suit, my red curls unbound and flowing over the silvery white fabric. The neck line plunges, showing her eye in my chest. She is sleeping, her dark eyelashes resting against my skin.

The host, a blonde whose name I struggle to remember, steps onto the dais and comes to take a seat across from me. The set is made up to look like a living room, complete with a coffee table and a window that’s actually a screen showing a backyard. A robin sits preening on a branch. Every now and then I hear faint birdsong, the sound piped in to add realism to the idea that we’re conversing organically in the host’s home.

“Lisbet, I’m so glad you agreed to join me this morning,” the blonde says.

Katie. Her name is Katie. I wonder why she chose such an ordinary name.

“It’s my pleasure to be here,” I reply. A tech comes to adjust the microphone hidden in my décolletage.

“I’m impressed that your contract doesn’t limit the topics we can discuss,” Katie says.

I smile at her. “I am an open book.” I see hardness glitter in her eyes and prepare for battle. This is yet another test. I am confident in my ability to pass.

The director steps into the light where we can see him. “In three, ladies.”

Assistants scramble with the final preparations. The cameras zoom in. I close my eyes, centering myself. In my chest, the eye opens. Katie smiles into the camera. “This morning I am joined by Lisbet, founder of Glory Times, the new religion catching the world by storm. Started just three years ago, Glory Times has expanded from a small church in a storefront in Kansas to a multimillion dollar enterprise with centers the world over and a weekly broadcast that reaches across the globe. The popularity of this religion is largely driven by the prophecies of Lisbet, proclamations made every week that have all come true. The most recent is from earlier this week, when Lisbet foretold the explosion that mostly destroyed The West apartments in Hell’s Kitchen. An explosion that unfortunately killed 123 people, thirty-one of them children.”

Katie turned from the camera to face me. I angle my head so that the lights sparkle in my violet eyes.

“Tell me, Lisbet, how do you know what you know?”

I give a Mona Lisa smile. “Well Katie, I have had visions for as long as I can remember. The gods tell me things and one of the things they do is share the future.”

“Your prophecies have involved explosions, ships sinking, public scandals involving political figures, the solutions to murders, lost treasures found. You even solved the mystery of where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. Tell me, why do the gods not share more useful information? Information that could cure diseases or end wars?” Her eyes glitter at me. She thinks this is a difficult question.

“I have told people how to solve these bigger problems,” I reply. “In fact, most prophets have. The religions of the world agree: to live is to suffer and the only solution to suffering is devotion and love. The gods send suffering to test us. And so often, we fail that test.” She goes to speak but I smoothly plow over her. “Disease and natural disasters are a part of this world. They teach us humility and grace. But the evil that humans perpetuate against one another, that is a solvable problem. We continue to disappoint the gods when we commit violence against one another. We prevent heaven from returning to earth.”

“So your solution to human violence is to simply stop?”

I look into the camera, pausing, my lips parting. “Yes,” I whisper. “Just stop. Violence is caused when people attach to petty feuds, when they are greedy, when they are fanatics. None of that means anything. It just perpetuates suffering and prevents this world from being the best it can be.”

She pounces. “What do you say to allegations that your organization participates in violence?”

I look at her calmly. “Specifically?”

“There are rumors of human sacrifice.”

I smile. The eye in my chest blinks slowly. “Sacrifice has a long history in human ritual behavior. We sacrifice to atone, to return to a state of oneness with the divine. When the sacred is lost, we need a ritual to restore our connection with the divine.”

“Are you admitting it, then?”

She thinks she has me.

“The object of sacrifice must have value. We offer money, treasures, and yes, at points in history when things are especially dire, we spill blood. The animals or even humans who are sacrificed are understood to embody the gods because what is more important, more worthy of sacrifice, than a deity? Isn’t that the whole premise of Christianity?”

Katie leans toward me. “Does Glory Times practice human sacrifice?”

Time to plant the final seed. “We are ready to sacrifice ourselves if that is what is necessary to bring about heaven on earth.”

She leans back appraising me coolly. She’s realizing that she won’t get what she wants from me easily, that I am in control. She switches tactics.

“In your sermons and publications you refer to gods from lots of different cultures. You’ve referenced deities from African and American tribes, eastern religions, Zoroastrianism, lots of cultures not your own.”

I nod, waiting to see where she’s going.

“What do you say to charges of cultural appropriation?”

I laugh. I can’t help it. “Humans are a single species and we share lots of experiences based on our similarities. We all experience birth, fear, happiness, loneliness, a need to understand and feel safe, the death of loved ones, the knowledge of our own death. I cannot ‘appropriate’ anything. It’s not there to be taken, beliefs and traditions are not ‘things.’ Gods cannot be possessed by anyone.”

“There are lots of scholars who disagree with you.”

I shrug. “As is their right.”

She changes course again. “That eye in your chest, is it a parasitic twin?”

I nod. “Yes. It’s also called an autosite.”

“It’s very rare, isn’t it?”

I smile. “Only about forty cases similar to mine have been documented. I was born looking normal. In childhood I developed a lump on my chest that I hid from my caregivers because it scared me. The skin grew rough and then peeled away, revealing the eye.”

“Did it hurt?”

“More like a deep itching.”

“Have you had internal imaging to see what’s going on?”

I nod again. “I have. The eye is attached to part of a cranium and there is some other matter as well: a couple of teeth, some stuff that looks kind of like hair. My body has surrounded it with what is basically scar tissue. It’s all benign and not growing any more.”

“But this is when you claim the visions started. When the eye appeared.”

“Yes. In Eastern traditions the third eye is the one that sees beyond the world of physicality to the deeper, divine, reality.”

“You say that you see the gods.” Katie is grilling me but I can also tell that she’s interested.

“All gods are is thought forms, manifestations of different aspects of reality. They didn’t create us, we created them.”

Katie’s brow furrows. “But you claim to be able to see them?”

I laugh. “Oh, thought forms are absolutely real. Just because we created them doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. They do. And they have power. A lot of power, some of them.”

“Can you give me an example?”

I pick the one most likely to ruffle feathers in a western audience. “Jesus is a thought form.”

Her eyes widen and she sits forward. “What do you mean?”

“Jesus isn’t real,” I explain. “He probably wasn’t even a real person. And he’s certainly not the son, whatever that even means, of some tribal war god. He’s a thought form called into existence by billions of people over the course of two thousand years. And he has plenty of power: just look at how much he influences individual belief, politics, economics, foreign policy.” I make an expansive gesture. “He’s everywhere. And absolutely real. Just not in the way people think.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Of course. Lots of times.”

“What does he look like?”

I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s a funny question, though she doesn't know why. “What he looks like depends on the day. Sometimes he’s a short brown man in sandals. Other times he’s blond in white robes. There are lots of Jesuses.”

“Why is that?”

“Because people see him in different ways. So he changes.”

“If we created these thought forms, what do they want?” I shrug. “It depends. Some gods are gods of destruction and chaos. Others seek to support us in finding our highest and best selves.”

“What do you want?”

I look past her into the camera. “I want to restore heaven on earth so that humans can become the divine beings we are meant to be. I want a world with no war, with no hate or greed.” I blink my eyes slowly, letting the moisture build up into a glitter of tears. “I want us to fulfill our full potential.”

“And how can that happen, Lisbet?”

I let a droplet fall down my cheek. “Some of us are going to have to give up an awful lot.” I shift my eyes back to hers. “I’m ready to give up everything.”

---

Terry runs the bath, building up the bubbles that turn pink as she pours in the blood. Saving the world is hard work. But the offerings of the faithful revive me and keep me strong. Their sacrifice will be rewarded.

“The police arrested Ishmael and Isaac this afternoon as they deplaned from flight 1021.”

“From Boston,” I remember, stepping into the bath. It is scaldingly hot and perfect. The pink foams up.

“That’s right. At first they targeted Eric Wheeler, the white supremacist, who we sent to the area to be seen just before the bombing.”

“But the blond man didn’t do it,” I smile. “At least not this time.” I lean back in the tub, closing my eyes. The prophecy had been fulfilled. Even more people will convert now.

“It’s time for the final step,” Terry says, kneeling next to the tub. She draws a cloth across my chest, gently washing the eye. It closes and she carefully rinses the long lashes, the corners where grit accumulates. “Are you ready?”

I smile. “I’m ready.”

---

The timing has to be perfect, down to the second. Today Terry is not waiting in the wings, she’s down on the floor wearing a headset. The lighting has been subtly altered so that I can clearly see the first several rows of the audience. And she has a Mongolian on either side so she’s easy to spot.

The crowd erupts as I walk onto the stage. Today I am not wearing white for the first time ever. I wear red.

As does the entire audience. They’d been instructed to wear red and anyone unable to comply had been issued a red robe upon entry. I look out on a sea of blood.

They chant my name, their voices throbbing, hands reaching for me. I step to the edge of the stage and look out over them. Three thousand surging bodies just here in this room. Across the world there are hundreds of thousands more.

“I have been foretold,” I say and my voice booms through the space. Today is not a day for whispering. “The eschatologies of the world’s religions speak of endings, judgments, dissolution, a period of sacrifice and reckoning. But what comes next?”

In the pause all I can hear is the breath of the crowd; they are still and silent, their faces upturned. “A new world,” I say and the crowd sways. “A new world, Eden renewed, the Earth restored as a habitat for the divine. And who will be those gods?”

“We will!” the crowd cries.

“Are you ready to become gods?”

“Yes!” They ripple and rush. I see Terry get pushed forward but one of the Mongolians steadies her.

“And what is necessary for you to become gods?”

“Sacrifice!” they scream.

I have taught them well.

I keep my eyes on Terry. She looks up at me and gives a small nod. I lift my hands over my head and bring them down sharply. It’s the sign.

Overhead, the sprinklers turn on and blood rains down on the crowd. All that blood saved from all the offered. It’s mixed with food coloring and Karo syrup as well, to increase the volume. And it make it taste sweet.

It’s also mixed with hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide, the exact mixture used in gas chambers. It had been obtained by devoted followers working in animal kill shelters and it vaporizes in the blood soaked air. The crowd writhes, rubbing the blood into their skin, convinced that they can become like me. It only takes seconds for them to begin to choke.

All over the world sacrifices are being made. It’s happening all at once.

The lights come up stronger and I walk quickly to the wings where I have hidden a gas mask. The nozzles are over the crowd, not the stage, but the gas will reach me soon. I pull the rubber over my face and feel the suction against my skin. I don’t want to die. I want to watch.

One of the Mongolians has fallen across Terry and the two of them writhe like lovers on the blood smeared floor. The other twin lies on his back, convulsing, a thin foam of saliva running from his mouth. All around people fall, shaking, and then begin to still.

The man working the valves appears on stairs near the back of the room; he’d released the gas and now he joins the sacrifice. He barely makes it halfway down before his feet slip out from under him and he tumbles the rest of the way.

The cameras are trained away from me, on the crowds. When I appear alive in the midst of the slaughter it will be my final miracle, the one that will allow me to transcend and become what I have always been meant to be: the world’s most important prophet.

I walk to the back of the stage and pull the lever that raises the curtain hiding huge loading doors. The doors swing wide when I press the button and clean air washes into the space. I step outside, pulling the gas mask off, dropping it into a bin left for just this purpose. I’ll collect and dispose of it later. In a few minutes, when the air is clean, I’ll make my way across the killing floor and let the world see my miraculous survival. And the next phase will begin. I lean back against the side of the building and look up. It’s dark in the back lot behind my church and stars blaze across the sky. It’s beautiful and quiet. I draw the air deep into my lungs, smelling clean dirt and vegetation and rain.

I had started this quest alone and it feels good to be alone again, just me and my autosite and the gods.

“Lisbet!”

The voice is so sudden and unexpected that I jump, badly startled, and spin around, almost losing my footing.

Terry stands in the open doorway. She is covered head to toe in gore, blood matted in her hair and streaking her cheeks. I have never been so surprised by anything in my life. Even when the eye had burst from my chest it had felt ordained, part of my calling. This though, this is inconceivable and I blink stupidly.

“What…?” I gasp. “How…? How are you here?”

She points an accusing finger at me and I flinch. “You were supposed to die, too. This isn’t part of the plan.” Her voice is hoarse from inhaling the gas and she bends over, coughing.

“How are you here?” I ask again.

“I saw you pull on the gas mask,” she says, straightening. “I pulled blood soaked cloth over my face and managed to follow you out.” She drops a dripping handkerchief on the ground.

If I had only waited a moment longer before opening the doors. She wouldn’t have been able to survive much longer breathing though a sodden rag.

She reaches into the pocket of her red jacket. Terry always has pockets to carry anything and everything that I might need. Greatly resourceful, that one. That’s how she’d become so integral to my success.

She pulls out a gun.

I gape at it; it is the last thing I expect. I’d never seen Terry with a gun, never even imagined her with such a thing. It feels like seeing a baby with a bazooka.

She points the gun at me.

It is a stubby, black thing with a barrel like the eye of death. I take an uncertain step back. This is absolutely not part of the plan. “You’re supposed to die,” she tells me. Her voice wavers but the gun is rock solid in her hand. “You are the most important sacrifice.”

“No,” I reply, keeping my voice modulated and soft. “Don’t you see, Terry? I have to live. I have to usher in Heaven on Earth.”

She shakes her head, her hair sticking in the blood smeared on her cheeks. “But you’re the divine sacrifice. It won’t work unless you die.”

I hold my hands out toward her. “It won’t work unless I live,” I say. I have to convince her. “I have to be the god who lives.”

“But hundreds of thousands of people just died for you,” she cries. A tear runs down her cheek, a streak of clean. “How can you betray us like this?” I see the gun wobble, just a little.

I hold my hands out toward her. “This is not a betrayal, Terry. This has always been the plan. Yours is the important sacrifice, not mine. I must be here to lead the next stages.”

“Liar!” she screams at me and the gun steadies. “You always told me that we all had to die. That we’ll be reborn perfected. How can you be reborn if you don’t die?”

“You don’t understand.” I hold out my hand toward that gaping, black eye.

“You’re a fraud,” she says and pulls the trigger.