The Beginning (Jessica Christ Book 1) Page 10

Destinee grabbed Jess and made her sit, since most everyone else was by now. “I couldn’t tell you,” she whispered, “but I’d bet we’ll find out.”

  Jimmy adjusted his headset minutely before beginning. “Welcome.” He outstretched his arms to his congregation and let the word resonate through the large space until a small echo repeated his welcome from the opposite side of the room.

  “I am so pleased that each and every one of you could make it on this very special day. As some of you may be aware, today is White Light Church’s tenth anniversary!” He motioned with a wafting of his hands for the audience to cheer, and cheer they did.

  Although she’d never been to church, she’d naturally assumed there would be less cheering in it. She let her eyes wash over the heads of the congregation until she spotted four familiar heads just a few rows forward and to the left. The Wursts.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t expected to see them here, but that didn’t make her any happier about it. A small part of her had held out hope that this would be the Sunday they all got the stomach flu and had to stay home.

  “Yes, ten years ago, we held our first service to worship the Deus Aper, as some like to think of Him—myself included.” He chuckled and smiled, and the audience returned the favor.

  “Why are they laughing?” Jess whispered to her mother.

  One of Destinee’s eyebrows was hitched up slightly, and she almost looked amused. “It’s called kissing ass.”

  Jimmy’s posture softened as he clasped his hands humbly in front of him and walked over to the stairs leading down from the tall stage. “It was eleven-and-a-half years ago that God came to me.” He took a seat on the top stair and looked out over the crowd. “He said that there was something important for me to do for Him.”

  None of this was news to Jess, so it still didn’t fill in the blanks on why Jimmy had started White Light Church.

  “Many of you know the basics, but today, I’m going to tell you the whole story, the Hog’s honest truth.” He let that sink in, and if there was a noise level quieter than silence, the congregation had achieved it. “You see, I was a sinner. A dirty, filthy sinner. I was fleeing those sins when God came to me on the open road. I was desperate, my car had crashed into a ditch, I had no money, no friends. And when I say Deus Aper, when I say that we are all pigs, but God is Hog, I mean it.” His honey-smooth voice cracked before he placed a hand over his heart and bit his lip like he might be about to cry. “He created us in His image, sure. But look what we’ve amounted to. So when God spoke to me”—he stood up and stared the fourth wall right in the eyes—“He chose the most deplorable animal in this state—the scourge on our environment that does nothing but eat, mate, and fight—as the vessel for His Word. Why? Because He knew that’s what I’d become—what we’ve all become! And in His infinite mercy and grace, He was willing to degrade Himself to this lowly form to ensure that we heard and understood His message.” His voice had grown louder, and Jess felt like she was being scolded, but she didn’t know what she’d done.

  “And I heard Him, all right. Blood of the Hog, how I heard Him!” His voice shook. Was he about to cry? Why was he about to cry? None of this made much sense. “We are a bunch of pigs. He didn’t tell me this—no. He showed me this. In His infinite wisdom, He navigated me to the home of Destiny herself. And when I say Destiny, I mean exactly what you think. Inside that house I could hear blasphemy spewing from the mouth of a sow birthing her piglet.”

  “What the fuck?” Destinee whispered sharply.

  “And when I knocked on the door, you know what greeted me?” He paused for dramatic effect, allowing each member to imagine what swine-related horror could have possibly loomed.

  “A shotgun barrel to the chest.” He mimed lowering a shotgun at the audience, lining up the sights, finger on the trigger. Then he lowered the imaginary gun, frowned, and shook his head. “This was how the messenger of God was greeted by one of His creations. This is what we’ve come to.”

  WHAT’D I MISS?

  I’m not honestly sure. Wait, why are you asking me? You’re God.

  OF COURSE I AM. IT’S CALLED MANNERS. NO ONE LIKES A KNOW-IT-ALL.

  Hush. I’m trying to listen!

  WHOA.

  What?

  THAT’S MY HEAD UP THERE. OR, IT WAS FOR AN EVENING. DIDN’T KNOW HE’D DECIDED TO MOUNT IT LIKE A HUNTING TROPHY.

  How did you not know that? Aren’t you supposed to be everywhere at once?

  THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU JUST SAID. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE.

  But how do you manage everything all over the world at once?

  IT’S CALLED MULTITASKING.

  Is that not the same?

  OF COURSE NOT.

  Jess shook her head to regain control so that she could continue focusing on Jimmy.

  “When I finally told the old woman with the gun that I came in the name of the Lord, she could see the power that emanated from my person, and even a sinful, slop-eating pig like her could tell that she was no match for me when I had His Word behind me.”

  That doesn’t sound like granny. Well, the gun does.

  DON’T WORRY, HE’S COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT. EXCEPT FOR THE GUN. THAT PART IS TRUE.

  “The old hag let me through, and that’s when I saw the truth of God’s message. Before me was a woman on all fours—an unwed mother—grunting and cursing, bringing another sinner into this world, and it became so clear to me just how far we haven’t come since God put us on this earth. We’re still such vile beasts. Maybe we didn’t used to be, but now, in this age of science and technology and philosophy, we’re no better than pigs. Sumus omnes porcos—we are all pigs. Sed Deus est Aper—but God is the Hog.”

  WELL ME DAMN IT.

  Is that really how it went the night I was born?

  I MEAN, IT BASICALLY IS, BUT HE HAS THE MEANING WRONG.

  Why did you come to him as a hog?

  BECAUSE NO ONE SWERVES FOR DEER.

  While she wasn’t quite sure how swerving played into it, she now understood that Jimmy was a two-faced liar. Either that or Ice Cream Jimmy really did have a brother who looked just like him and pretended to be a reverend.

  Jimmy lifted his arms toward the congregation. “And as we rolleth in our own filth, let us not forget who it was that maketh this same filth.”

  And in unison the congregation replied. “It was us who maketh this filth that we now rolleth in like good little piggies but sinners all.”

  Jess’s head jerked around to look at the older woman sitting next to her who had just spoken along with the rest of the room. How did they all know what to say? What did any of that even mean?

  And then Jimmy responded with, “And as we are pigs, God is a Hog.”

  And then the congregation replied, “Lord I offer my heart as Your slop bucket if it so pleaseth You to fill.”

  UH. HARD PASS ON THAT.

  Jimmy waited until the echo from the crowd’s incomprehensible words faded, and then he nodded solemnly and steepled his fingers over his mouth for a moment before speaking again. “Now, the child that was born that night, the embodiment of our original sin, was a little baby girl.” As an aside behind his hand he added, “Naturally,” and winked at the crowd, who laughed.

  Why are they laughing?

  THERE WAS SOME SLOPPY TRANSLATION WORK A WHILE BACK, AND … DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.

  What’s original sin?

  IT WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA IS WHAT IT WAS. I WAS BORED. IT’S HARD NOT TO BE WHEN YOU CONTROL EVERYTHING.

  Uh, this doesn’t sound good …

  IT’S REALLY NOT. I THOUGHT I’D SPICE THINGS UP WITH SOME CONFLICT. SO I GAVE UP A LITTLE CONTROL AND CREATED IMPERFECTION. THINGS HAVE BEEN SPIRALING DOWNWARD EVER SINCE.

  So that’s what original sin is? Imperfection?

  BASICALLY. BUT IT’S MORE LIKE ORIGINAL MISTAKE, AND ONE I’VE BEEN TRYING TO FIX FOR, OH, EVER.

  Is that why there are so many earthquakes in Asia?

  BINGO.

  And am I the e
mbodiment of original mistake?

  NO. WELL KIND OF, BUT EVERYONE IS.

  “Our all-powerful God had given me all the signs I needed to understand Him, because He knows that our poor, animalistic, hubristic brains will only listen to wisdom if we feel like we’ve thought of it ourselves.”

  Are you really all-powerful?

  SEE? TRANSLATION. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE “POWERFUL AND ALL THAT” NOT “ALL POWERFUL.”

  “To mark this joyous day in our church’s history, I have two special guests. They’ve refused the call for years, but God has brought them to us now as a gift to me for my unwavering service to Him.”

  A knot formed in Jess’s stomach. This wasn’t fair. Jimmy had just spent the past ten minutes making her and her mother out to be hardly more than animals, and now he was going to draw attention to them? It was cruel. All she wanted was to be able to continue liking Jimmy Dean, but he was making that extremely difficult.

  “Destinee and Jessica, would you please stand?”

  Destinee’s hand flew over to Jess’s thigh and gripped it hard to keep her sitting. Taking the lead from her mother, Jess played dumb as well.

  “Come now,” Jimmy prompted, smiling in a way that didn’t make any sense in Jess’s mind. “Stand! Don’t be shy!” He gestured in their direction, and all those around them started to look left, right, behind to see who he could mean. So Destinee did the same, and Jessica followed suit.

  “That one! The one in the red shirt!” It wasn’t Jimmy who called her out, but Trent Wurst. Jess felt like smiting the boy, but didn’t think that would help convince people she wasn’t the embodiment of sin.

  DO YOU WANT ME TO SMITE HIM?

  No! They’ll think it’s me! I have to face him and his stupid sister in school tomorrow!

  TRUE. AND A GOOD, SOLID SMITING CAN GET PRETTY MESSY.

  Finally, once everyone in their vicinity was locked onto Jessica and Destinee, there was no real choice left but to stand. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “Wonderful! Let’s all give them a round of applause for embracing their filthy, sloppy sin.”

  Or maybe it would be.

  “I don’t—” Destinee started to protest, but she was drowned out by the applause.

  “Come up here!” Jimmy said, waving them toward him animatedly. “Come! Come!”

  Destinee’s eyes were locked onto him, and Jess was fairly certain that if her mother had the power to smite, Jimmy would already be a mess of blood, guts, and white fabric on the stage.

  As she followed a step behind her mother down the aisle between the pews, Jess could feel hundreds of eyes glued to her. She didn’t like it one bit.

  Destinee turned back to Jess. “Stay behind me,” she murmured. “And don’t let him get to you. We’ll get through this, baby.”

  The walk up to the altar seemed longer than the track Jess had to run in PE every day. Eyes followed them, and Jess kept hers glued to the back of her mother’s shirt.

  I changed my mind. Smite them all.

  IT’S TEMPTING, BUT I HAVE A BETTER IDEA. I NEED YOU TO PAY ATTENTION.

  Images began flashing through her mind with the same vivid detail as when she’d first seen Mr. Wurst and Ms. Rickles naked-wrestling in kindergarten. The images flowed slowly at first, then more rapidly, but she was somehow able to recall each and every one like a memory stored in her mind. The first image didn’t quite make sense to her—it showed Jimmy and a teenaged girl talking close and in low tones—then there was Jimmy in a barn with teenage girls huddled nearby, then God was a hog, then there was her house, then there was her mother giving birth …

  The images started to create a cohesive narrative as she finally reached the steps to the stage. Not only was Jimmy a liar, he was a big, fat liar, and she felt the betrayal of their ice cream dates acutely.

  Jimmy grabbed a handheld microphone from the lectern and emphatically motioned Destinee and Jessica closer to him.

  Murmuring had begun to rise up from the congregation, but he put a swift end to it as soon as he raised a finger to his lips. “I see some of you think it wise to gossip and judge these two, but do not! While they may represent the worst of our kind, there is a little bit of them in all of us.”

  JUST LIKE THERE’S BEEN A LITTLE BIT OF JIMMY IN MOST OF THE WOMEN IN THIS CHURCH …

  Huh?

  “Instead of judging them, we should be thanking them. If it weren’t for Destinee and her swinelike but fully human daughter, none of us would be here in this church today, trying so very hard to wash ourselves clean, while admitting that the task is impossible for us. We are all pigs, and we know that now, thanks to these two. Through their filth, we are able to seek purification.” He snorted loudly. “Praise God!” The rest of the church snorted back.

  Then Jimmy bowed his head, and Jess wondered if he was thinking or if God had finally decided to give him a stroke. She hoped for the latter.

  Suddenly his head shot up, and he yelled, “Praise God! For He has just spoken to me!”

  NOT TRUE. OOO … SO NOT TRUE.

  “And He told me that these two have been brought here to be cleansed! For if they can be cleansed, then anyone can be cleansed.”

  Jess felt the bones in her hand grind together under her mother’s crushing grip.

  “Come forth, you human sows, and tell us your sins! Confess and you shall be cleansed.” Jimmy extended out the handheld microphone toward Destinee. Destinee’s nostrils flared and her lips thinned, the crevice between them shortening, the skin around them turning white, and as she reached for the mic, Jess squeezed her hand hard before intercepting it. She looked up at her mother and tried to give a meaningful glance. There wasn’t much other way she could communicate that she might actually know what she was doing. Destinee raised her eyebrows inquisitively and Jess nodded subtly.

  “’Bout time he showed up,” Destinee mumbled.

  “Oh!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Looks like this little lady is eager to be cleansed! Go on then, Jessica. Tell us your sins.”

  He folded his hands in front of him, smiling at her encouragingly, almost warmly. It was clear he thought he’d won, that she’d be too embarrassed to disagree with him and too eager to be liked and accepted to speak the truth that they both knew. She looked him in the eyes and returned the smile. He took a step back to give her the stage.

  That step back was a mistake, old man.

  Then she turned to the large congregation. Oh holy cow there were a lot of people. Her heart leapt into her throat at the sight of so many faces turned toward her, waiting patiently for her to speak. They were looking to her for hope, hope that their sins could be washed away.

  I can’t do this.

  OF COURSE YOU CAN. IT’S GOING TO BE AWESOME. TRUST ME. I KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT AWE.

  She looked back over her shoulder again where Jimmy appeared more confident than ever that she was about to do his bidding. Why was he doing this to her? Why couldn’t he just stay her friend? Maybe she could just go along with it for now and then talk with him after to convince him he should change his mind. Maybe telling this crowd of nine hundred and sixty people that she was who Jimmy said she was wouldn’t be so bad.

  But when her eyes shifted over to land on her mother, there was really no decision to be made. She knew what she needed to do next. She turned back to the crowd.

  “My name is Jessica McCloud. Jimmy Dean showed up at my house the night I was born, and yes, he was sent by God Himself.” That pleased the congregation, and a handful of the members nodded in approval. Then her eyes landed on the Wursts. It looked like Christmas had come early for Courtney and Trent, and even from this distance, she could tell they were holding their breath for what came next, expecting this to be the best week of school ever.

  CHRISTMAS HAS COME EARLY, BITCHES, BUT NOT LIKE YOU—

  Get out of my thoughts!

  “But the message he was sent to deliver is that I’m the daughter of God.”

  The room was still silen
t. Did no one hear what she’d just said? A handful of seconds passed before she spotted the first signs of confusion.

  THEY THINK YOU’RE BEING METAPHORICAL.

  She wasn’t completely sure what that meant, but she clarified anyway, “I’m not being metaphorical.”

  YOU’RE LITERALLY MY DAUGHTER.

  “I’m literally God’s daughter.”

  Murmuring rose up from the crowd, but God wasn’t yet satisfied.

  I MADE SWEET, GRITTY LOVE TO DESTINEE, AND THEN NINE MONTHS LATER YOU WERE BORN.

  “God made sweet, gritty love to Destinee and then …” but she could tell from the shouts of outrage that whatever “sweet, gritty love” was, it was something that people didn’t talk about in church.

  She had to shout above the noisy crowd to continue making her point. “Your reverend is a complete fraud.” A hand grabbed hers on the mic, and she looked up to see Jimmy bearing down on her as he struggled to wrest it from her grip. She fought against him. “He’s twisted the message of God and—”

  When she felt sharp nails dig into the back of her hand, cutting through the persistent tingling in her skin, she yelped and the mic popped free. He stepped in front of her to regain control of the masses. “Ha! What lies! Your sin knows no end! If you really are the daughter of God, prove it.”

  “But you didn’t have to prove anything,” she said, though no one except Jimmy, Destinee, and perhaps the front row could hear her without amplification.

  “Be my guest!” He bowed demonstratively, his arm outstretched toward the crowd. “Prove to us that you’re the daughter of God Himself, rather than an abomination, the physical manifestation of our original sin, a reminder to all that we are nothing more than pigs on this earth.”

  “I—I don’t know how to prove it. It just is.” The only thing she knew to do that wasn’t perfectly human was smiting, but she doubted making a human explode at that point in time would do much to help bring people over to her side of things.

  These people will believe whatever they want to believe. I can’t prove anything to them, other than the fact that I’m bad.

  NOW YOU’RE GETTING IT. BUT DON’T WORRY, THE SEED HAS BEEN PLANTED.

  “I see. Nothing to back up your claim.” He shook his head slowly and sadly.