I.

In times like these, in a city like ours, heroes are hard to come by. So, God, by virtue of circumstance, was forced to settle for Romel Rogers.

II.

On the day Romel received his powers, he awoke alone in his girlfriend’s bed a little after 11 AM. Though groggy from reading late the night before, he ventured to open his eyes and begin his day. With effort, he swung one foot off the bed, then, with equivalent effort, the other. It took him a minute of laying like this before he managed to sit up. He rubbed at his eyes with his palms, yawned, coughed when he smelled his breath, then got up.

The first thing he did on his feet was scratch, with conviction, at his right butt cheek. It itched. The next was to retrieve his girlfriend’s ear buds and old iPod from off her night table. The ear buds he slipped into his ears, the iPod he secured in the waistband of his boxers after setting it to a Queen playlist. The first song that came on was The Show Must Go On, one of his favorites. He particularly liked the line: “My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies.” Romel thought that if only the world’s soul were painted like the wings of butterflies, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in.

He listened to the song on his way to the kitchen, picking away at his air guitar (he did this only after insuring there was no one in the house). In the kitchen, he fixed himself a brunch of boiled spaghetti, one of the three things he knew how to cook, along with red sauce he heated in the microwave. After he was satisfied (which didn’t take long since he was gypsy thin) he scraped the remainder of his food into the garbage, and headed back to his girlfriend’s room.

There, he sat back on the bed, and picked up the book he’d been reading the night before. It was a science fiction anthology by Marc Uriah, a little known local author who Romel really liked. The story he was on depicted a war, a literal war, between an army representing the id and another army representing the superego, taking place within the psyche of a man under the influence of psychedelics. This was the sort of story Romel got into.

Firstly, there was the drug angle. Romel himself never did drugs; he was too scared of their effects. But the stories allowed him to feel edgy vicariously. Secondly, the conflict in the story was the only sort of conflict Romel enjoyed: the fictional kind. He could get immersed in it without feeling what he usually felt when immersed in a conflict, namely guilt, anxiety, and discomfort.

                

He finished the book within a couple of hours, sad that it had ended.

                

“Is this what the world in our head is really like?” he said to himself aloud, feeling all smart for having wondered such a thing. Narrowing his eyes like an intellectual pondering, he continued: “And do we have any say in the matter?”

                

He figured these questions could only be answered by further reading. The book he’d just finished, though, was the last of the books he’d checked out from the library. He’d have to go get more. Which meant he had to dress himself and go outside. To this he sighed. He enjoyed being at home, alone, in his undies. The world outside was an annoyance, a bombardment to the senses, a place of hostility.

These were the kinds of feelings his dad used to call “delicate,” back before Romel got out from under his tyranny. His dad did so while affecting a limp-wristed homosexual and often followed that up with a bout of yelling in which he decried his and his wife’s genes for having produced such a child. Thankfully, his dad’s opinions held no sway over him now. If he wanted to stay shut in all day, he could, except when he couldn’t, like now.

He threw on his black t-shirt bearing the face of Edgar Allan Poe and over that he slipped on a greyish, silvery sweater. He picked up a pair of black jeans he’d left on the floor the day before and pulled those up his legs. When he reached his waist he was forced to remove the iPod from the band of his boxers so he could button the pants. This was the first he noticed that the playlist had run out of music. Based on how long the playlist was, this must have occurred about an hour ago. He switched it over to a Beatles compilation (the drug years) and stuck the iPod into his pocket. Finally, he tucked his dreads, which he wore short and a bit unkempt, back, so he could pull the hoodie from his sweater over his head.

Then he was off, out on the pristine streets of Gemstone Key.

While he walked to the library, he talked in his head to what he thought was God. He did this often while alone and trying to puzzle through something.

“Let’s say it’s true that we are caught up in a war in our minds. One side is our impulses, the bad ones, like our anger, our cruelty, our wanting to control people, and then the other side, it’s all the things we know are good, like being nice and humble and not hurting anybody. And sometimes one side wins, and sometimes the other side wins, and in some people, one side wins more than the other. Is “ME” the part that gets to decide which side wins or is “ME” just an illusion produced by the battle? Are we in control of what we do or are we trapped in some destiny dictated by the chemicals inside us? Can we judge each other for what we do?”

This line of logic immediately brought up images of his dad reacting in some overemotional manner to one thing or the other. It didn’t really matter what since that’s how he reacted to everything.

“Can I judge my dad for what he does?”

He became split in two at the manifestation of this question.

One side of him, what felt like the more reasonable, logical side, actually wanted to pursue the idea that he could not judge his father. His father, like all others, was a product of this war, and for whatever reason (maybe upbringing, maybe not), it seemed the impulse side was the stronger of the two in him. His behaviors were then the natural outworking of forces beyond his father’s control. Maybe his dad was to be pitied rather than hated.

The other side of him, the side of him that desired justice, the side of him that, during moments of self-doubt, emerged to reassure him, to imbue him with a sense of self-righteousness, this side refused to accept this. There had to be people in the world considered “good” and people in the world considered “bad,” and “ME” had to be the distinction between the two. There were those who’s “ME” favored impulse, like his father, and those who’s “ME” favored good, like Romel.

In the end, as with most things he thought about, he remained undecided. Fortunately, his savior, the library, lay ahead. He walked up the steps, under the influence of choice or chemicals in his brain or something else entirely,  gripped the door handle, drew the door toward him, and trod passed the threshold.

III.

Several years ago, at sundown on Easter Sunday, Holden Cross stood on a beach shore, ready to give God His final chance. Wisps of water had splashed up from the waves, stinging Holden’s face. This he felt, but nothing more. It was then that he committed himself to his cause.

He drove home in the dark, listening to ZEDA, the local rock station. It was halfway through a Black Sabbath song that Holden realized how commercialized, how innocuous, the supposed Satanism of rock bands was. There was no conviction there, no true submission to the Enemy. Deep down, they all still wanted to be thought of as good. Holden shook his head, disgusted, and turned the radio off.

At home, he went up into his attic. He sifted through old boxes, brushing away the cobwebs and swatting at spiders when necessary, until he came upon the one he’d been looking for. Written atop its crumpled cardboard flaps in black Sharpe ink was the name of his father: Wilton Cross. After a moment’s meditative reverence, he tore the flaps open. He burrowed passed old shirts, old slacks, sports jackets and ties (he remembered how sharp, how imposing and commanding and impressive, his father had looked in these), searching for the outfit he wished to now be his. Toward the bottom, he found it. It was his father’s old Minister’s attire.

He took it down the stairs with him, folded still and cradled in his arms. He went into the bathroom and laid it upon the lid of the toilet, then stripped from it the clerical collar. He moved over to the mirror where, confronted, he was forced to stare at his reflection. His every feature was haunted by his father’s genes, the sort of trick a sinister God would play. He bypassed his reverie by, with purposeful intention, swinging open the mirror and exposing the medicine cabinet. He drew from it some black fabric dye, which he set upon the sink counter, then filled the sink with water, as hot as he could get it. The water he subsumed with the dye, turning it dark as a Bible’s leather binding. He then plunged the collar, along with his own hands, deep into the concoction.

The scalding hurt only at first. Quickly, the nerve endings died and gave way to shock. With gritted teeth, Holden bore this process. It was almost pleasurable.

Eventually, he lifted his hands, dripping skin and fluids, back out of the water. He studied his palms, which were now red and raw, trembling like some smallish creature cornered by a carnivore, and marveled at how delicate, how weak, how poorly constructed, we as humans were. It was reason enough to drive one to Darwinism, but Holden knew better than that.

He waited then for the dye to do its work. For an hour he stood in his bathroom, quiet and patient, his hands cooling till they burned cold. Once the hour ended, he dug the collar out from the inky pool and held it up to the light. Black drizzled off it, spilling in beads, like a crisscross of veins, down Holden’s arm. Still, it seemed the treatment took.

He laid the now-black collar on the bathroom sink by the dye bottle and proceeded to strip down to his undergarments. He crumpled his old clothes into a heap, balled them up tight, and tossed them in a hamper, never to be worn again. Then, he turned his attention to his new clothes.

With care, he unfolded first the slacks, ignoring the irritation in his palms. The slacks he slipped passed his feet and up his legs. When he reached his waist, he was, to his embarrassment, forced to suck in his belly to get the pants to close. This was something he’d have to remedy. Next, he picked up the button-up and unfolded it as well. He tucked his arms into the sleeves, settling into their tight confines with some effort, then stretched the two ends of the shirt’s front over his chest and belly. After buttoning it, he pushed the shirt down into the pants, wanting the full, dignified look.

Now all that remained was the collar.

He went under his sink to retrieve a hair dryer. He hooked it to an electric socket and let it loose. Under the hum of the dryer’s heat, the collar dried quickly. Holden flicked off the dryer and laid it aside. Then, delight pulsating from his glowing cheeks, he took up the collar and slid it into his neck piece.

He closed the medicine cabinet so he could once more see himself in the mirror. This time, the resemblance to his father brought him joy. All the work his dad had done for God…it would now be undone by a man with his exact appearance. This sort of irony, even a sinister God had to appreciate.

IV.

Above Romel were three floors replete with books, more books than any human could ever hope to read in a lifetime. Reverence was the only word he could think of to describe the chill that passed through him each time he entered this building. He took in breath and smiled a satisfied smile.

                

Until he passed the “return” slot and realized he’d left his old books at home. “Dammit!” he said aloud, only to regret it instantly.

                

A kid passing by, hand in hand with his grandma, heard him, then repeated the word gleefully, and loud enough for Romel to hear above his music, over and over and over some more. “Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”

                

The grandma looked at Romel crookedly. Romel blushed and sped ahead.

                

He passed by the desk of the librarian on his way to the stairs. She, having just spent the last hour reading and rereading the same page of a James Fenimore Cooper novel she was supposed to like because she was a librarian, called to him desperately. “Sir, is there anything I can help you with? Would you like any recommendations? Do you need help navigating our library?” But she was not as loud as the cursing child. Romel never noticed her. This was nothing new for her. Nobody ever did. She forced a smile to no one and went back to her book.

                

Romel went up to the second floor. Moving up and down the stairs were other patrons, a man in a red shirt, a couple, an obviously homeless man who smiled at Romel. He walked passed them cordially, not paying them much mind. After all, he had a cause to attend to.

The upstairs is where the library housed their Psychology section. He made his way through the aisles, stopping frequently, under the compulsion of his desires, to scan through the shelves, taking pleasure in just reading book titles, bumping into the occasional other and exchanging a courteous apology, until, finally, after a long while, he made it to where he was going. Once there, he scanned through books about consciousness. He got lost in this process and might have been there all day, if not for an abrupt noise at his back (his playlist had once more ended without him noticing) startling him from his trance.

              

“Paranormal…paranormal…yes…yes…here it is…” said a voice, a comically high voice, all bumbling and Canadian.

                

Romel thought he recognized the voice. But it couldn’t be.

                

He turned to look and a little gasp escaped him. Usually, Romel wasn’t the type to be impressed by celebrities, at least, this is what he believed about himself. But the person before him, as has been stated already, held a special place in his heart. In addition, it was a little shocking to have come to the library all jumbled up with questions and to meet there the person that put them there in the first place.

                

With trepidation, he tried to get the man’s attention: “Hey man…aren’t you…uh…Marc Uriah?”

                

The man turned to face his questioner, exposing Romel to the kindest set of eyes, all downturned at their edges, to ever meet his gaze. They instantly put Romel at ease, encouraging him to speak some more.

                

“I’m…uh…a fan of yours, sir…and…uh…I was just reading one of your books earlier…Pathways of Purpose…and I had some questions about it that I was hoping maybe you could help me…”

                

Marc Uriah interrupted him. “You know me?”

                

“Uh…yeah,” Romel said nodding, confused since he thought all he’d said made this obvious.

                

“This can’t be,” said Marc Uriah, to himself. “It can’t.”

                

Romel stood there awkwardly not knowing what to say.

                

Finally, when the silence between the two became uncomfortably long, he ventured to ask, “What do you…uh…what do you mean?”

                

Kind eyes dazzling, Marc Uriah responded in an awed little whisper, “I was sitting, writing, alone, cordoned off from my family, thinking up worlds different from ours, beings different from us. A normal day for me. But then I saw, not in my imagination, but with my eyes, a man, made of fire. He spoke to me, you see, and he told me, ‘You’ll meet someone today, someone you don’t know but who’ll know you, and you’re to give him this, ‘The Calling.’ Then he handed me a box, a small one, and in it was a coal, burning like the man. The vision passed, then, but the box…the box remained. I have it here, in my pocket, right now, and I’ll show it to you, if it’s you I’m supposed to give it to.”

                

Romel again was left speechless.

                

“Look, kid, I know what you’re thinking. How could I not? It’s what I thought myself after it had happened. We live in a world of matter (right?) and nothing, and no one, exists outside it. Science has proven it, dammit. Visions like mine, they’re psychosomatic, tricks of an effervescent brain. They’re relics of our ancestral past, memes, archetypes, from back when we stared at stars and imagined they were gods. But, kid,” Marc Uriah said this last sentence as though it were the tortured confession of a guilty man, “the box…the box remained!”

                

It was at this point that Romel started questioning whether or not he should have left his questions well enough alone and stayed, comfortable, at home. His heart pounded painfully in his chest, itch erupted across his hairline, his forearms, his upper back, his breath became short and quick. He swallowed, trying to rid himself of his nerves.

                

“Look…uh…sir…I’m not sure what you expect me to…uh…say to all this…” he said.

                

A ragged Spirit seemed to possess the author in response to Romel’s words. “Just tell me, kid,” he said, nearly begging, “are you the one?”

                

“I…” Romel began, intending to say something that would extricate him from this conversation, get him back to his blissful reality. But then, surprising the conscious parts of himself and betraying his every instinct, instead he said, “show it to me.”

                

He couldn’t believe that had come from him. Maybe it hadn’t, and what was he to make of that? Regardless, he realized, after just a moment’s introspection, that despite his trepidations, despite his desires to escape, a curiosity from nowhere had surged up in him and gripped him, urging him to say what he said.

                

It was very out of character, but there it was, done.

                

“Yes, yes!” said Marc Uriah, “I will.”

                

The author darted his hand into his pocket and from it he produced a little box, the sort engagement rings came in, only this box, it was made of some form of ancient stone, white and smooth and beautiful. Though the light in the library was dim, the box seemed to glitter, as if whatever little light there was, it was drawn direct to the box.

                

“Here it is,” said Marc Uriah, his voice hushed.

                

Romel wasn’t sure what to do now. Indeed, there it was.

                

“You see it too, right?” said Marc Uriah. “Please say you do.”

                

“I…” Romel said, nodding, “I do.”

                

“Then it is real…”

                

“Yes, yes it is…”

                

“Can I open it for you?”

                

Romel was now down deep in this rabbit hole. His curiosity had led him this far. Was there an option to turn back?

“Yes, you can,” Romel said.

A burning unbridled erupted from the faintest opening of the lid. As Marc Uriah drew the lid back further, the heat was joined by a glow that could have only been compared by the pair gathered to a star coming into being. It was dazzling and blinding, and, should this section of the library have been more occupied, it would have surely drawn the attention of all nearby. As it were, it was only them there, witnessing the miracle.

“It’s incredible,” Romel said.

“It is…” said Marc Uriah. “And disconcerting in its implications.”

“Why?” Romel said.

“Because, don’t you understand what this means?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“If all this is real, I’m under imposition to…do as the vision demanded.”

Romel, transfixed by the coal, said dreamily, “Haven’t you already?”

“Not everything, aye. Not yet.” With that, Marc Uriah picked up the coal with his fingertips and, to Romel’s great surprise, forced the fiery thing passed Romel’s lips.

“The vision…told me you were meant to swallow the coal…”

Romel had done just that. Without intending to, he’d allowed the searing thing to slip into his gullet. The burning in him was torturous and brought him to his knees. His fist pounded ground as the scorching stone did its work in him. A cataclysm went off in his chest, splintering, it seemed, his innards, and swallowing them in flame. Every fiber of him hurt. To see stung, to breath burned, to feel, well, there was nothing to feel but pain. Eventually, Romel could take no more and his body gave out. He collapsed face first to the floor, only barely twitching.

V.

“I’ve killed him,” said Marc Uriah with a gasp.

His eyes scanned the aisle to see if anyone was watching. No one was. For a moment, he stood panicked, looking at the boy. Then, a decision came, firm and gripping. He bent down near Romel and whispered in a rush, “I’m sorry for doing this to you but I can’t be caught here. I have a family, and they need me. You understand, I’m sure. You must. You must!”

Then, with determination, he stood up and ran away.

Outside, he went in search of a church. To what end, he didn’t know.

He’d been raised in a nominally Presbyterian home. When he was thirteen, he’d had a science teacher, an elfish looking man who wore green tinted glasses and combed the patch of hair he had left on his head all twirled up like an ice cream swirl, who’d helped rid him completely of the few religious ideas he carried in his head. It was all very straightforward, the teacher had taught him: in the beginning was a primordial earth, bathed in chemicals and water, and from there emerged the first amino acid strain. Life proceeded from here by purely mathematic means, amino acids bound together until a single celled organism came to be, and this organism replicated and mutated, in response to its changing environment, until history spawned human beings in all our self-perceived complexity. What need was there for religious interpretation of these events when reason more than sufficed?

Marc Uriah had agreed with this. He spent his life living very happily and comfortably under the governance of these ideas. But now, he was panicked. He’d encountered something that could not be explained by reason and he’d perhaps thrown his whole life away in obedience to it. He may even have killed someone, for God’s sake!

He saw an old parish coming up on him. It wasn’t Presbyterian, it was Catholic, but he figured they were all the same. He walked into their parking lot, hot, sweating, itching, feeling very desperate. He approached the steps leading up to the narthex of the church and was about to climb up when a voice called to him from his side.

“Are you looking for someone, sir?”

Marc Uriah turned to see a priest sitting on the lower steps, a younger man, maybe in his thirties, smoking a cigarette.

The priest repeated: “Are you looking for someone, sir?”

“I…” Marc Uriah began, realizing only then that he wasn’t sure. He tried to answer the question posed to him but instead all that came out was, “Should you be doing that?”

“Doing what?” said the priest.

“Smoking?” said Marc Uriah.

“Where does it say I can’t?” the priest said back.

Marc Uriah was again left with no response. He walked over by the priest and said, “I guess I’m trying to figure something out and this was where I was lead to find answers.”

The priest laughed, bitingly.

“Lead to find answers, huh? Well, sit down, I’ve got some answers for you.”

Marc Uriah obeyed.

“I’ve been doing this now,” the priest began, expelling smoke as he spoke, “for going on five years. I started off all darling-eyed, thinking I was serving some higher good. I tried to help people, addicts, couples in bad marriages, ‘the poor’ (whatever that means in our culture), and it was funny, because, see, all these people, it felt like I cared more about their problems than they did. I’d spill myself into their lives trying to fix them but it’s like they were happy being broken.” The priest here paused to take another drag, a deep one, as though the cigarette were his source of life. With a furious exhale, he hissed the smoke from his nose like a dragon. Then he went on, “You know what made all this worse? I’d turn to my superiors, the bishops, the archbishop, and ask them for support. Instead, they’d answer me with accusations, tell me to focus on what matters, growing the fellowship, insuring the building costs are covered, making friends with important people.”

Marc Uriah was all thrown off. He didn’t understand where any of this was going.

“Aren’t you,” he questioned, “supposed to…you know, have God available to you?” He said “God” in a whisper as though he were uttering a curse word in uptight company.

The priest responded to the author’s question with a shake of his head. He drained his cigarette down to a nub, then chained a fresh one using the dying embers from the first. The nub he flicked away while whistling out a trail of smoke, the other he slipped between his lips and started smoking.

“What do you do?” the priest said.

“I’m an author,” Marc Uriah said.

“I bet when you were young, you’d read for pleasure, right?”

“Yes,” Marc Uriah said, nodding.

“But then what happens is, you start studying writing. All the technical aspects, the grammar, the punctuation first, then characterization, plotting, story beats, all that. You start to see the formula. The mechanics of it all. Suddenly, stories aren’t fun anymore. The magic is gone. You’ve seen behind the curtain and all that’s there is a little man, plugging in numbers where they go.”

Marc Uriah furrowed his brow. This was not his experience at all, in fact, the opposite. He’d marveled at the grandeur of effort and discipline it took to write. It’d humbled him, inspired him to sacrifice, made him a better man. He couldn’t relate at all to what the priest was saying. He didn’t interrupt him, though, and so the man went on.

“That’s the sort of thing that happens to us religious professional types. We come in in love with this so-called God, all fiery to do His bidding, and then, we’re taught in our classes about the history of man, about his philosophies and his politics and his religions, and just like for you writers, the formula begins to emerge. You realize God, and gods for that matter, they’re all part of the mechanics. We invent Him, or them, or what have you, because we need them. But they’re not there. They don’t speak when we call for them, they don’t help when we’re truly struggling, they’re not there when children suffer or die. They’re just illusions, like your stories.”

The priest here pinched his cigarette between two fingers to take it from his mouth. He gazed up into the sky, staring at it like an enemy, and spit out a long, steady stream of smoke, as if it brought him purpose to, in some small way, bring damage to creation. Afterward, he turned his face to the author, and with a cynical and hateful glare, he asked, “Got your answers yet?”

                

“No,” said Marc Uriah pensively, for he was unsure of what he was about to say, “no, but I think I may have some answers for you. Up until very recently I believed just like you, about God that is. But then I…saw something that made it very difficult to persist in such thinking. I had an experience with the supernatural, an encounter that, for reasons I’ll leave unstated, robbed me of my ability to doubt its veracity. And now I’ve been lead here, to you, and maybe…” here the man began to pick up steam, to become excited, as though he were a scientist speaking of some new discovery, “…it’s to say to you that you’re wrong. But not just that, also that you’ve been wronged, by your teachers, your institution, even those you tried to aid. And that if this is true, that bleakness in you can pass, and your initial passion can be restored. You can be…”

                

“What?” the priest asked. “Saved?”

                

“Yes, saved, that is the word I was about to say. Saved from your malaise, aye!”

                

Again, the priest laughed bitingly, only now it lasted long. His face turned red and hot, smoke swirled about him like an aura; he took on the appearance of a devil enraptured in amusement at the suffering of man. And just as suddenly as the laughter started, it stopped, signaled by a spit, all black and tarred, at the feet of Marc Uriah.

                

“Who the hell do you think you are? Some kind of prophet? I suppose that’s what you writers purport to be…or is that, pretend to be? But here’s news for you, old man. You’re not a prophet, you’re not important. You’re manure that by some dumb stroke of luck became somehow self-aware, and in so many years you’ll be doing what you’re made to do: compost the earth. Now get out of here, off my property, before I call the cops.”

                

The author stood so quick it made his knees crack. Backpedaling, with arms stretched out, he tried to assuage the priest. “Look, father, I’m not sure what’s happened here, but I never meant you harm.”

               

“You haven’t harmed me,” the priest retorted, besetting Marc Uriah as he spoke. “No, you’ve harmed only yourself, tricking your mind into believing in ghosts. You’re broken, more broken than all those others, and there’s no place for you here.”

                

After reinserting his cigarette in his mouth, he rushed at Marc Uriah, and grabbed him roughly by the arms. He shoved the old man backward, turning him around. All the while the priest was shouting, “You hear me, writer? You hear me, prophet? There’s no place for you here! You’re a blasphemer! A blasphemer, dammit! A blasphemer against reality!”

                

Marc Uriah nodded, his hands up in surrender, already walking off. He was soon passed the parking lot and back on the streets he’d been on before. He walked them, sullen, wondering what had just gone on.

                

Was he to take some meaning from this? Was he to take meaning from anything? In the past, he’d never looked for any. All of life was an arbitrary set of happenstances, random events, and coincidences dictated by the whim of chemicals moving about the human system, causing us all to do this or that thing, all in the interest of our own self-perpetuation and survival. But then the vision, it had changed all that. Now, he wondered if there was a purpose to things. But if there was, why was the purpose so unclear?

                

He stood before a window. He saw his reflection, ragged and disheveled. It disturbed him. Before today, he’d always been so neat, so prim, so well put together. The sight of himself like this angered him. It caused his blood pressure to rise, like the crescendo of an orchestral piece. It’s funny, he used to be such a calm guy. But now…his rage, it threatened to rule him. This realization only made things worse. Without thinking, he thrust out his fist toward the glass, striking it with all his force.

                

“Ahhhhhhh!” he screamed, letting out all his frustrations. It felt nice. It felt good.

                
But just as he was coming off the high of his outburst, just as his dopamine transmitters had begun to do their duty, the store owner came crazily up to the glass, yelling, in a rabid Hispanic accent, that he was going to kill him and call the police. Marc Uriah, nervous and Canadian, said back, “No, no need, aye, I’m heading out now!” Then, with fumbling feet nearly tripping over each other, he went running off.

VI.

It was about two years before this that Holden Cross had his first convert. She’d been a police woman, a fighter, a wife, and a mother of two. When Holden met her, she was no longer any of these.

She lay in a hospital bed, her skin all but burnt away. He came in, in his dark minister’s outfit, posing as a family friend. She looked at him through the swell of flesh that surrounded her eyes, wondering whether or not she knew him. She didn’t. But the spirit in him, it she’d grown well acquainted with.

“Hello, Officer Kayne. May I tell you a Bible story?” asked Holden.

She wasn’t in a position to refuse. So, she didn’t.

“It’s fairly known. It’s my understanding it’s even read in Literature classes at University. I wouldn’t know, I’d never set foot in one of those places. Too many useless ideas floating about. But I’m digressing. The story in question is about a guy named Job. He was a righteous man, a generous man, a man wholly devoted to God. He’d offer sacrifices, as God demanded, not just for himself, but for his family as well just in case any of them had done something wrong. And it’s this man that God chooses to use to make a point.”

Holden here paused to pull up a chair. He dragged the heavy white thing up near her bed then sat down upon it, sidling up to her like he was a loved one.

“Satan, the great enemy, comes up to heaven one day, bragging that all of us are within his grip. We are, of course, all except for the one guy, Job. God points out to Satan that there is this one man, untainted. Satan scoffs, saying ‘Of course he follows you, look at how you spoil him. You’ve given him riches, a happy, hearty family, health even into his old age. Why, with all that going for him, would he ever be tempted, like the rest of man, to do whatever he needs to do, be it evil or not, to survive? I say, if you take all this from him, he’ll curse you right to your face and prove he’s mine just like all the rest.’ God, stoic and sure of Himself, tells Satan to go on ahead and take away from Job all the things He’d given him.”

Holden paused again, this time to pick up her hand. She couldn’t feel this, wouldn’t, in fact, feel anything for the remainder of her life. She could see his ministrations though, his massaging of her fingers, the care he paid them, in spite of the futility of his act. It would have moved her to tears, had she any tears in her left to shed.

“It’s this part of the story,” Holden said, staring directly at her eyes, “that many people have a problem with. I don’t. You see, all of that, to me, it’s realistic. The idea that God’s Spirit goes forth from Him, searching about through the earth for good people, and then, for purposes known only to Him, makes them suffer, strips them down past the point that they can bear, well, when I inspect the world around me, that seems to line up with what I see. It’s what happened to me…it’s what happened to you.

“So, I don’t get hung up on that. It’s the end of the story that...really just…grates on me. I’ll tell it to you quick. God appears to Job and tells Job that he’s incapable of understanding all the intricacies of running a universe, therefore, Job needs to let go of all his questions and accept what’s happened to him. Job does. So far, I’m tracking. But then, here comes the part I hate, there’s this sappy, tacked on epilogue, where Job gets back everything that was taken from him. Can you believe that?”

Holden’s eyes grew incensed here, fiery as the flames that took the life of her family.

“Irene (I hope you don’t mind me using your first name), look at you. Robbed of your prime, mangled, destitute, and alone. Do you really think there’s a sappy, tacked on epilogue in store for you? No,” Holden shook his head, his teeth gritting, his eyebrows arched downward in fury, “no, there isn’t. The reality is, what’s in store for you, is unceasing torment, genuine, literal hell. You’re a victim, and, I’m brave enough to tell you the truth, your victimhood will never end. What then, is an ending like that, supposed to do for people like you?”

Holden swallowed heavy, choking back some emotion threatening to overwhelm him.

“But here’s what we’re going to do, Irene. We’re going to give up on false hope. We’re going to face reality head on and accept that God, He lies to us. There’s no epilogue for people like us. And we, we’re going to get pissed about this, we’re going to grab firm our resentment, let it swallow us, and then, we’re going to take our anger out on that Heavenly Liar and His creation. Yes, that’s what we’re going to do. Because otherwise, what else would we do?”

Ex-officer Irene Kayne had stayed silent through all this, digesting. It was an odd thing to be visited by such a strange character. And yet, it felt somehow providential. Like it’d been orchestrated by some power beyond them both. She, before Holden had even thought to come to her, had already been in the throes of such thoughts. 

All her life had been dedicated to the good of others. She, when young, decided, despite other opportunities, to go into law enforcement. She figured that, at times, what was necessary when dealing with criminals, was a woman’s touch. She would offer them a compassion men could not. Not that this meant she ever allowed herself to be weak. On the contrary, she built her body, put it through training, strengthened it, so that, should the need arise, she’d be capable of defending those who couldn’t defend themselves. In the midst of all this, she met a man, a broken man, who’d at times give himself over to drink. Still, she loved him and married him and birthed his kids. Even this was a sacrifice. It set her career back years. 

And yet, after all that good she’d done, here she lay, a charred husk, a mind who knew only pain incarcerated in a body without sensation. In the face of this, was there any alternative to, as Holden had put it, taking hold of resentment and letting it swallow her whole?

With difficulty, using his arm for support, she sat up in her bed. He looked at her as though he were witnessing a miracle. Once she was upright, feeling, for the first time in weeks, like she had purpose, she nodded to him and croaked out a feeble, garbled, “Yes.” In response, Holden smiled, like a parent beaming at some feat their child performed.

The two’s accord would be the start of great pains for us all.

VII.

Irene Kayne no longer went by that name. She’d ceased being daughter of James and Ellen Addison, partner to Russel Kayne. She was now in the service of Holden Cross, the Low Priest, and she was his Leper.

                

He called her this for a series of reasons. Her skin, like a leper’s, was pale, delicate, and appeared unnatural. Parts had not grown back fully and these, just as a leper would, she had to wrap up in gauze. Her hair came in in patches, giving her the look of one falling apart. But chiefly, it was because, like the leprous in biblical times, she was now an outcast, loved by no one, looked upon with condescending pity or outright disgust by mainstream society.

                

She presently sat watching as Marc Uriah ran through the doors of the library, laughing at his gangly movements. She’d taken to doing this, laughing at the shortcomings of others. It made her feel superior and fed that hole left inside her by all that had been done to her.

                

Another thing she’d grown to enjoy was disturbing others with her appearance. She made her way over to the librarians desk and interrupted the woman’s reading. “Hello, I’m looking for the Children’s Section.”

                

The librarian, eager to help, looked up from her book. What she found staring at her caught her off guard. Her eyes darted everywhere but dead ahead. With a fumbling gesture, she pointed toward a rear corner of the library and said, “Over there, m-m-ma’am.”

                

“I need a specific book,” said the Leper, only to prolong the other woman’s discomfort. “But I can’t remember the title.”

                

“D-do you know the author’s name?” the librarian asked, her eyes already fixed on her computer.

                

“Oh…you know, I don’t,” said the Leper with a smile, “It’s about a young boy who goes into the woods and builds himself a campfire that ends up spreading beyond his control. The whole forest goes up in flames, with him inside. Do you know which book I’m talking about?”

                

“I…” the librarian said, determined not to look back at her patron, “…I’m not sure that I do.”

                

“Oh, that can’t be true. You’re a librarian after all. You’re just not thinking hard enough. Here, I’ll just stand here and wait while you do.”

                

And the Leper did, though she knew no such book existed.

                

The librarian did finally relent and look straight into the Leper’s eyes. A sweat had broken out along her hairline. She was fidgeting in her chair and her fingers were doing some sort of nervous dance upon her palms. “I really don’t know which book you mean, m-m-ma’am.”

                

“That’s a shame,” the Leper replied. “I guess I’ll just have to go and look for myself. Thanks though for your help.”

                

The librarian gave her a series of quick nods, then gulped.

The leper finally let her be. Still smiling, she walked over in the direction she’d been directed. The Children’s Section, though it didn’t and couldn’t contain the book she described, would, however, serve as the perfect place to do what she came to the library to do. Most kids were in school at this time. This section would be the most likely to be empty.

She entered and found it as secluded as expected. There was only a singular person there, another librarian walking around with her cart, shelving books. This was easy to remedy. The Leper walked over to her and did to this librarian what she’d done to the first. Soon enough, this librarian had abandoned her work and gone off to a different section.

Now the Leper was alone to do her work. Gleefully, she got to it. From the folds of her robe, she pulled out a tin of kerosene. She uncapped the lid and began splashing the substance against the spines of the books. Up and down the aisles she walked, first the first, then the second, absorbed in her task. The stink of the kerosene rose and spread, metal-sweet, dangerously detectable. Fortunately, no one but the Leper was near enough to detect it. 

A smile spread when she came to the end of her task. The thought of reenacting what’d been done to her, of having others experience what she’d experienced, there was something about this thought that brought her satisfaction. Why, after all, should she be alone in her suffering? Why shouldn’t others partake? That’s justice done right, or so the Leper thought, at least.

She put the kerosene tin back in her robes, its remains swishing tink tink tink. She then pushed her hand further into her folds and extracted from there a clock. It was an old-style clock, the kind used in decades past, with the wind-up mechanism and the bell on top and the hammer to make it ring. Within the space between the hammer and bell were two glass capsules, which, when broken, would mix to spark a flame. She carried the clock over to the corner and bent down to set it on the ground.

But when she did, when she was on her knees readying herself to set the timer on the clock, her eye went level with one of the bookshelves, and she saw something there that took her totally off guard. It was a book, wet with kerosene, mangled and old, read thousands of times by hundreds of kids, just like every other book on that shelf. Only this book, it stood out, because, it was a book she had read with her son. It was his favorite book, in fact, and the sight of it brought memories of him flooding back.

Without thought, she drew the book from the shelf. Carefully, earnestly, she opened the book. One by one, she turned its pages, remembering her little boy sounding out the words. “The…crazy…ca-ca-cater…” he always had trouble with this word, but, after several tries, “caterpillar!” he’d get it with a shout. “crawled…on…the…back…” “Mhm, keep going, honey,” his mom would say, “of…the…of…the…” and this was always her favorite, “Hippyotomus!”

A tear, unheralded, unexpected, rolled down the Leper’s cheek. And for a moment, she was no longer the Leper. She was once more Irene Kayne, daughter of James and Ellen Addison, partner to Russel Kayne. She was not an arsonist, a terrorist, she was a mother, reading to her child.

But the moment couldn’t last. The moment was only a moment, a memory of times taken away. With resolve, she wiped away her tears. The book she cast away, sent it flying down the aisle. She turned back to the clock, intending to wind it up. To wind it up and set in motion pain to match her own. Her hand touched the device, her fingers without feeling moved toward the crank at the rear. They touched it, the rounded, steel switch. Except, just as she went to turn it…

The push-cart librarian asked from behind her, “What’s going on over here?”

VIII.

Romel came awake with a gasp.

The first thing he became aware of was the swarm of voices. They were not intelligible voices, in fact, they may not have been voices at all. They came across like voices, but they were more like…emotions, a mass of emotions, spilling in from everywhere, threatening to overwhelm his brain.

He sat up, holding his head. He scooted back against a bookshelf, desperate to lean on something. In a daze, for his head felt like it was splintering, he looked over toward his right. In the distance, on the other side of the library, he made out the figure of a man, the homeless man who’d smiled at him earlier. Then, with reverberating intensity, he felt what he knew were the man’s feelings. The man was angry, angry at his situation, and wanting drugs and drink. He came to the library to escape himself and this was what he was trying oh so hard to do, sitting and reading a book.

Why did Romel know this?  He turned away from the man, hoping the link would break. It didn’t. And neither did his link with every other patron in the library. He felt all their feelings: youthful exuberance, boredom, frustration, fear, joy, resentment. They were all there, all at once, too many for him to bear.

And then, just as he thought he might go mad, drowning as he was in this sea of sensation, something within him parted the sea.

It was a voice. Yes, an actual voice this time. But, it was a whisper of a voice, barely discernable above the noise. And yet, it came through clear, if only Romel listened close.

“Romel?” it asked.

“Who…who are you?” replied Romel aloud.

“I’m ‘the Calling’ placed inside you,” it said and then turned on the glow. Romel’s chest lit a bright and burning gold, radiant as the coal. “I’ll be with you now, forever. Though not always this loud.”

“What the hell?” said Romel, his hands darting to his chest. He tried concealing the light but no amount of covering could. It shone right through the gaps between his fingers, like sunrays through the figures in a stained glass window.

“You shouldn’t use language like that around me,” the voice said, dimming the light. “Now, I need you to concentrate.”

Romel, though relieved to have his chest no longer blazing like a star, wasn’t about to just hand over control of his actions to this damned, cryptic voice. “Concentrate? No, I’m not going to concentrate. I need to know what’s going on. What’s ‘the Calling,’ why are you in me, why am I feeling what everyone else feels?”

“We don’t have time for all that now, Romel. There’s a woman here, I’m sure you feel her already, who is looking to do something for which she won’t be forgiven. I want you to find her using your powers and stop her.”

“Stop her?”

“Yes, stop her. You should be forewarned, though, she is a fighter, very skilled, and she feels no pain. It will not be an easy task. But, for the occasion, I will grant you this…”

An undulation, like a small earthquake beneath his skin, suddenly swept through him. It flowed out from his chest, passed through his arms, warbled down his legs, strengthening him, swelling his musculature, making him firm. When it was done, he was a new man. He was still slim, but now, he was toned as an athlete. On instinct, he flexed his biceps, his chest, his forearms. They filled with blood, hardened, tightened, felt good. He looked down at himself in shock.

The voice said then, “Are you ready?”

Romel, who was still somewhat dumbfounded, took a minute to respond, “Ready? Ready for what?”

“Have you not been listening, Romel? To find and stop the woman.”

“Find and stop the woman?” Romel asked as though he were only now understanding what was being asked of him. “No. No, I’m not ready.”

“But, Romel, you have to be. It’s about to happen soon!”

“I’m…” Romel started, shaking his head to try and clear away the fog of feelings in his head, “I’m not doing that. I don’t want to use these powers to find anyone, or do anything else, and I definitely don’t want to fight anyone. I don’t like fighting.”

“But the fight may save her and others.”

“Yeah, I’m not interested in that. All I want,” Romel here stood, “is to go back home and be left alone.”

“What?!” the voice exclaimed. “How can you…?” It tried to ask. The words were futile. Romel had already committed himself to his choice.

He took off running, faster now than ever because of his new strength, through the aisles, to the stairs, down the stairs, through the lobby, through the foyer, and through the door, leaving behind, them and their feelings, all the people he’d encountered before, all the while the voice inside him yelling as loud as it was allowed, and all the while it went ignored.