At 18, everyone receive a superpower. Your childhood friend got a power-absorption, your best friends got time control, and they quickly rise into top 100 most powerful superheroes. You got a mediocre superpower, but somehow got into the top 10. Today they visit you asking how you did it.
“Power absorption?” you ask him over your pasta, which you are currently absorbing powerfully. in the background, a tv is reading out what the Phoenix extremeist group has done recently. bodies, stacking.
tim nods, pushing his salad around. “it’s kind of annoying.” he’s gone vegan ever since he could talk to animals. his cheeks are sallow. “yesterday i absorbed static and i can’t stop shocking myself.”
“you don’t know what from,” shay is detangling her hair at the table, even though it’s not polite. about a second ago, her hair was perfect, which implies she’s been somewhere in the inbetween. “try millions of multiverses that your powers conflict with.”
“did we die in the last one?” you grin and she grins and tim grins but nobody answers the question.
now she has a cut over her left eye and her hair is shorter. she looks tired and tim looks tired and you look down at your 18-year-old hands, which are nothing.
they ship out tomorrow. they go out to the frontlines or wherever it is that superheroes go to fight supervillains; the cream of the crop. the starlight banner kids.
“you both are trying too hard,” you tell them, “couldn’t you have been, like, really good at surfing?”
“god,” shay groans, “what i’d give to only be in the olympics.”
xxx
in the night, tim is asleep. on the way home, he absorbed telekinesis, and hates it too.
shay looks at you. “i’m scared,” she says.
you must not have died recently, because she looks the same she did at dinner, cut healing slowly over her eye the way it’s supposed to, not the hyper-quickness of a timejump. just shay, living in the moment when the moment is something everyone lives in. her eyes are wide and dark the way brown eyes can be, that swelling fullness that feels so familiar and warm, that piercing darkness that feels like a stone at the back of your tongue.
“you should be,” you say.
her nose wrinkles, she opens her mouth, but you plow on.
“they’re going to take one look at you and be like, ‘gross, shay? no thanks. you’re too pretty. it’s bringing down like, morale, and things’. then they’ll kick you out and i’ll live with you in a box and we’ll sell stolen cans of ravioli.”
she’s grinning. “like chef boyardee or like store brand?”
“store brand but we print out chef boyardee labels and tape them over the can so we can mark up the price.”
“where do we get the tape?”
“we, uh,” you look into those endless dark eyes, so much like the night, so much like a good hot chocolate, so much like every sleepover you’ve had with the two of your best friends, and you say, “it’s actually just your hair. i tie your hair around the cans to keep the label on.”
she throws a pillow at you.
you both spend a night planning what you’ll do in the morning when shay is kicked out of Squadron 8, Division 1; top rankers that are all young. you’ll both run away to the beach and tim will be your intel and you’ll burn down the whole thing. you’re both going to open a bakery where you will do the baking and she’ll use her time abilities to just, like, speed things up so you don’t have to wake up at dawn. you’re both going to become wedding planners that only do really extreme weddings.
she falls asleep on your shoulder. you do not sleep at all.
in the morning, they are gone.
xxx
squadron 434678, Division 23467 is basically “civilian status.” you still have to know what to expect and all that stuff. you’re glad that you’re taking extra classes at college; you’re kind of bored re-learning the stuff you were already taught in high school. there are a lot of people who need help, and you’re good at that, so you help them.
tim and shay check in from time to time, but they’re busy saving the world, so you don’t fault them for it. in the meantime, you put your head down and work, and when your work is done, you help the people who can’t finish their work. and it kind of feels good. kind of.
xxx
at twenty, squadron 340067, division 2346 feels like a good fit. tim and you go out for ice cream in a new place that rebuilt after the Phoenix group burned it down. you’ve chosen nurse-practitioner as your civilian job, because it seems to fit, but you’re not released for full status as civilian until you’re thirty, so it’s been a lot of office work.
tim’s been on the fritz a lot lately, overloading. you’re worried they’ll try to force him out on the field. he’s so young to be like this.
“i feel,” he says, “like it all comes down to this puzzle. like i’m never my own. i steal from other people’s boxes.”
you wrap your hand around his. “sometimes,” you say, “we love a river because it is a reflection.”
he’s quiet a long time after that. a spurt of flame licks from under his eyes.
“i wish,” he says, “i could believe that.”
xxx
twenty three has you in squad 4637, division 18. really you’ve just gotten here because you’re good at making connections. you know someone who knows someone who knows you as a good kid. you helped a woman onto a bus and she told her neighbor who told his friend. you’re mostly in the filing department, but you like watching the real superheroes come in, get to know some of them. at this level, people have good powers but not dangerous ones. you learn how to help an 18 year old who is a loaded weapon by shifting him into a non-violent front. you get those with pstd home where they belong. you put your head down and work, which is what you’re good at.
long nights and long days and no vacations is fine until everyone is out of the office for candlenights eve. you’re the only one who didn’t mind staying, just in case someone showed up needing something.
the door blows open. when you look up, he’s bleeding. you jump to your feet.
“oh,” you say, because you recognize the burning bird insignia on his chest, “I think you have the wrong office.”
“i just need,” he spits onto the ground, sways, collapses.
well, okay. so, that’s, not, like. great. “uh,” you say, and you miss shay desperately, “okay.”
you find the source of the bleeding, stabilize him for when the shock sets in, get him set up on a desk, sew him shut. two hours later, you’ve gotten him a candlenights present and stabilized his vitals. you’ve also filed him into a separate folder (it’s good to be organized) and found him a home, far from the warfront.
when he wakes up, you give him hot chocolate (god, how you miss shay), and he doesn’t smile. he doesn’t smile at the gift you’ve gotten him (a better bulletproof vest, one without the Phoenix on it), or the stitches. that’s okay. you tell him to take the right medications, hand them over to him, suggest a doctor’s input. and then you hand over his folder with a new identity in it and a new house and civilian status. you take a deep breath.
he opens it and bursts into tears. he doesn’t say anything. he just leaves and you have to clean up the blood, which isn’t very nice of him. but it’s candlenights. so whatever. hopefully he’ll learn to like his gift.
xxx
squadron 3046, division 2356 is incredibly high for a person like you to fit. but still, you fit, because you’re good at organization and at hard work, and at knowing how to hold on when other people don’t see a handhold.
shay is home. you’re still close, the two of you, even though she feels like she exists on another planet. the more security you’re privy to, the more she can tell you.
you brush her hair as she speaks about the endless man who never dies, and how they had to split him up and hide him throughout the planet. she cries when she talks about how much pain he must be in.
“can you imagine?” she whispers, “i mean, i know he’s phoenix, but can you imagine?”
“one time i had to work retail on black friday,” you say.
she sniffles.
“one time my boss put his butt directly on my hand by accident and i couldn’t say anything so i spent a whole meeting with my hand directly up his ass,” you say.
her eyes are so brown, and filling, and there are scars on her you’ve never noticed that might be new or very, very, very old; and neither of you know exactly how much time she’s actually been alive for.
“i mean,” you say, “yeah that might hurt but one time i said goodbye to someone but they were walking in the same direction. i mean can you imagine.”
she laughs, finally, even though it’s weakly, and says, “one time even though i can manipulate time i slept in and forgot to go to work even though i was leading a presentation and i had to look them in the face later to tell them that.”
“you’re a compete animal,” you tell her, and look into those eyes, so sad and full of timelines you’ll never witness, “you should be kicked out completely.”
she wipes her face. “find me in a box,” she croaks, “selling discount ravioli.”
xxx
you don’t know how it happens. but you guess the word gets around. you don’t think you like being known to them as someone they can go to, but it’s not like they’ve got a lot of options. many of them just want to be out of it, so you get them out, you guess.
you explain to them multiple times you haven’t done a residency yet and you really only know what an emt would, but they still swing by. every time they show up at your office, you feel your heart in your chest: this is it, this is how you die, this is how it ends.
“so, like, this group” you say, trying to work the system’s loopholes to find her a way out of it, “from ashes come all things, or whatever?”
she shrugs. you can tell by looking at her that she’s dangerous. “it’s corny,” she says. another shrug. “i didn’t mean to wind up a criminal.”
you don’t tell her that you sort of don’t know how one accidentally becomes a criminal, since you kind-of-sort-of help criminals out, accidentally.
“i don’t believe any of that stuff,” she tells you, “none of that whole… burn it down to start it over.” she swallows. “stuff just happens. and happens. and you wake up and it’s still happening, even though you wish it wasn’t.”
you think about shay, and how she’s covered in scars, and her crying late at night because of things nobody else ever saw.
“yeah,” you say, and print out a form, “i get that.”
and you find a dangerous woman a normal home.
xxx
“you’re squadron 905?”
“division 34754,” you tell him. watch him look down at your ID and certification and read your superpower on the card and then look back up to you and then back down to the card and then back up at you, and so on. he licks his chapped lips and stands in the cold.
this happens a lot. but you smile. the gatekeeper is frowning, but then hanson walks by. “oh shit,” he says, “it’s you! come right on in!” he gives you a hug through your rolled-down window.
the gatekeeper is in a stiff salute now. gulping in terror. hanson is one of the strongest people in this sector, and he just hugged you.
the gate opens. hanson swaggers through. you shrug to the gatekeeper. “i helped him out one time.”
inside they’re debriefing. someone has shifted sides, someone powerful, someone wild. it’s not something you’re allowed to know about, but you know it’s bad. so you put your head down, and you work, because that’s what you’re good at, after all. you find out the gatekeeper’s name and send him a thank-you card and also handmade chapstick and some good earmuffs.
shay messages you that night. i have to go somewhere, she says, i can’t explain it, but there’s a mission and i might be gone a long time.
you stare at the screen for a long time. your fingers type out three words. you erase them. you instead write where could possibly better than stealing chef boyardee with me?
she doesn’t read it. you close the tab.
and you put your head down. and work.
xxx
it’s in a chili’s. like, you don’t even like chili’s? chili’s sucks, but the boss ordered it so you’re here to pick it up, wondering if he gave you enough money to cover. things have been bad recently. thousands dying. whoever switched sides is too powerful to stop. they destroy anyone and anything, no matter the cost.
the phoenix fire smells like pistachios, you realize. you feel at once part of yourself and very far. it happens so quickly, but you feel it slowly. you wonder if shay is involved, but know she is not.
the doors burst in. there’s screaming. those in the area try their powers to defend themselves, but everyone is civilian division. the smell of pistachios is cloying.
then they see you. and you see them. and you put your hands on your hips.
“excuse me, tris,” you say, “what are you doing?”
there’s tears in her eyes. “i need the money,” she croaks.
“From a chili’s?” you want to know, “who in their right mind robs a chili’s? what are you going to do, steal their mozzarella sticks?”
“it’s connected to a bank on the east wall,” she explains, “but i thought it was stupid too.”
you shake your head. you pull out your personal checkbook. you ask her how much she needs, and you see her crying. you promise her the rest when you get your paycheck.
someone bursts into the room. shouts things. demands they start killing.
but you’re standing in the way, and none of them will kill you or hurt you, because they all know you, and you helped them at some point or another, or helped their friend, or helped their children.
tris takes the money, everyone leaves. by the time the heroes show up, you’ve gotten everyone out of the building.
the next time you see tris, she’s marrying a beautiful woman, and living happily, having sent her cancer running. you’re a bridesmaid at the wedding.
xxx
“you just,” the director wants to know now, “sent them running?”
hanson stands between her and you, although you don’t need the protection.
“no,” you say again, for the millionth time, “i just gave her the money she needed and told her to stop it.”
“the phoenix group,” the director of squadron 300 has a vein showing, “does not just stop it.”
you don’t mention the social issues which confound to make criminal activity a necessity for some people, or how certain stereotypes forced people into negative roles to begin with, or how an uneven balance of power punished those with any neurodivergence. instead you say, “yeah, they do.”
“i’m telling you,” hanson says, “we brought her out a few times. it happens every time. they won’t hurt her. we need her on our team.”
your spine is stiff. “i don’t do well as a weapon,” you say, voice low, knowing these two people could obliterate you if they wished. but you won’t use people’s trust against them, not for anything. besides, it’s not like trust is your superpower. you’re just a normal person.
hanson snorts. “no,” he says, “but i like that when you show up, the fighting just… stops. that’s pretty nice, kid.”
“do you know… what we are dealing with…. since agent 25… shifted….?” the director’s voice is thin.
“yeah,” hanson says, “that’s why i think she’d be useful, you know? add some peace to things.”
the director sits down. sighs. waves her hand. “whatever,” she croaks, “do what you want. reassign her.”
hanson leads you out. over your shoulder, you see her put her head in her hands. later, you get her a homemade spa kit, and make sure to help her out by making her a real dinner from time to time, something she’s too busy for, mostly.
at night, you write shay messages you don’t send. telling her things you cannot manage.
one morning you wake up to a terrible message: shay is gone. never to be seen again.
xxx
you’re eating ice cream when you find him.
behind you, the city is burning. hundreds dead, if not thousands.
he’s staring at the river. maybe half-crying. it’s hard to tell, his body is shifting, seemingly caught between all things and being nothing.
“ooh buddy,” you say, passing him a cone-in-a-cup, the way he likes it, “talk about a night on the town.”
the bench is burning beside him, so you put your jacket down and snuff it out. it’s hard sitting next to him. he emits so much.
“hey tim?” you say.
“yeah?” his voice is a million voices, a million powers, a terrible curse.
“can i help?” you ask.
he eats a spoonful of ice cream.
“yeah,” he says eventually. “i think i give up.”
xxx
later, when they praise you for defeating him, you won’t smile. they try to put you in the media; an all-time hero. you decline every interview and press conference. you attend his funeral with a veil over your head.
the box goes into the ground. you can’t stop crying.
you’re the only one left at the site. it’s dark now, the subtle night.
you feel her at your side and something in your heart stops hurting. a healing you didn’t know you needed. her hands find yours.
“they wanted me to kill him,” she says, “they thought i’d be the only one who could.” her hands are warm. you aren’t breathing.
“beat you to it,” you say.
“i see that,” she tells you.
you both stand there. crickets nestle the silence.
“you know,” she says eventually, “i have no idea which side is the good one.”
“i think that’s the point of a good metaphor about power and control,” you say, “it reflects the human spirit. no tool or talent is good or bad.”
“just useful,” she whispers. after a long time, she wonders, “so what does that make us?”
xxx
it’s a long trek up into the mountains. shay seems better every day. more solid. less like she’s on another plane.
“heard you’re a top ten,” she tells me, her breath coming out in a fog. you’ve reclassed her to civilian. it took calling in a few favors, but you’ve got a lot.
“yeah,” you say, “invulnerable.”
“oh, is that your superpower?” she laughs. she knows it’s not.
“that’s what they’re calling it,” you tell her, out of breath the way she is not, “it’s how they explain a person like me at the top.”
“if that means ‘nobody wants to kill me’, i think i’m the opposite.” but she’s laughing, in a light way, a way that’s been missing from her.
the cabin is around the corner. the lights are already on.
“somebody’s home,” i grin.
tim, just tim, tim who isn’t forced into war and a million reflections, opens the door. “come on in.”
xxx
squadron one, division three. a picture of shay in a wedding dress is on my desk. she looks radiant, even though she’s marrying little old me.
what do i do? just what i’m best at. what’s not a superpower. what anyone is capable of: just plain old helping.
Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention. Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.
As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities. This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.
When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.
Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace. Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on. In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.
For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you. It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass. All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.
*
“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”
“We’re getting to that.” He waved.
*
The First Incident in January when, due to a serious cock-up by the church, all the hosts Father Pat received were moldering and spoiled and probably would have killed someone if he’d actually fed anyone them. But it was the first mass of the year, when a peak number of people came in after vowing to got to church more for new year’s. He couldn’t NOT have communion.
“I’ll bake.” offered Maria, the parish secretary and probably the best baker in the county. “So we have hosts. Jesus will understand.”
Father Patrick, not one to pass up the chance at Maria’s cooking, immediately agreed.
A Host is supposed to be composed solely of unleavened wheat flour and water, which is why they taste terrible. It’s a theological point of some importance relating to Exodus or something but Maria had an important theological counterpoint: Jesus both divine and loves all his children, ergo, Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.
They were a SPECTACULAR hit. Many praises were heaped upon father patrick for the Much Better Wafers and that they’d be sure to show up next week as long as Maria kept making them. Father Patrick figuring that hey, anything that gets people in the doors is good and really, if it was turning into Jesus once inside the parishioner, did it really matter what the wafers were made of? So he continued to let Maria bake the Hosts, and encouraged her to try out new flavors, like nutmeg and cinnamon.
This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.
Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”
The matter went clean up to The Archbishop, who decided that while Pat was probably right to not feed spoiled hosts to his parish, he should attend some remedial classes to remember what Communion was all about, so that if it happened again, he’s come up with a more suitable substitute.
Father Patrick returned in late March, full of spite and some fascinating new ideas.
*
“Is this where the Cannibalism happens?” Six-year-old me asked, eager to get to the good parts.
*
At his remedial classes, the teacher had stressed the importance of transubstantiation, aka “That bit where the wafer and wine, Actually, Literally, become the flesh of Jesus Christ and we expect you to swallow.” Also on the syllabus was understanding the importance of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.
“So, I was thinking about Easter Service.” Said father Patrick one afternoon while dad was doing his computer science homework at the church because his dorm was a barely-standing fire hazard and the library was where you went to have sex.
“Well, we do re-enactments for christmas. Why not on easter? Why not re-enact the crucifixion of Christ right here? Make it real for everyone. Trauma’s great for bonding a community together.”
“Who’s playing Jesus?” asked Maria, always one for a good laugh.
“That’s the thing- A Host, it doesn’t look much like flesh, right? Doesn’t look like much of anything, really. Not great for reinforcing one’s belief.
What if, instead, we- and I mean you, Maria, I can’t cook to save my life- make a man-sized loaf of bread, maybe in the shape of a T, and we have some of the boys dress up as romans and whip the bread and we pour the wine on so it’s bleeding and them- then we make a big wooden cross and actually nail the bread to it with, I don’t know, railroad spikes, more wine all over. And we raise the cross, all while telling the story of the crucifixion.”
He paused to take a drink, Maria slowly crumpling onto the floor in horrified laughter and Dad now thoroughly distracted from his homework.
“Then we lower the cross, and invite everyone who wants to take communion up to tear a hunk of Jesus off. Just descend into his corpse like vultures. I think that’d really be a good bonding experience for the church.” he nodded thoughtfully. “The hard, part, I suppose, will be finding enough romans.”
“I WANNA BE LONGINUS.” bellowed my father, barreling into the room.
And so, the plan was hatched. Dad hit up every other guy in the Church and eventually rounded up four more romans, three of them from the Education Department of Cal Poly, and one guy from Chemistry, who just liked to watch things burn.
This, being a play, naturally meant that there was a rehearsal, and test Bread jesus. Maria had decided that if they were going to start being extra-literal, she needed to make the most lifelike Bread jesus possible, and made a distressingly buff and human-proportioned Jesus by Advanced bread-braiding, complete with plaited hair, quail’s-egg-and-raisin eyes, bready muscle groups, and an eight-pack because why not make the lord completely shredded?* She also made the important theological decision that since Jesus loves everyone and was happy to die in spite of all his suffering, he should be smiling, and had a toothy corn-kernel smile. He was Wonderful and Terrifying all at once.
“Maria,” asked Father Patrick after a few minutes of delighted and horrified cooing over Jesus’ toothy grin and abdominals. “Why is he wearing a tea-towel?
“Well, he’s the Son of God. A Man. With all that entails.” She said, pointedly staring at Father Patrick while everyone stared at the suspiciously lumpy tea-towel. “And he might have… burnt, slightly.”
Everyone nodded and agreed that the tea-towel was the best course of action. The rehearsal goes splendidly and everyone agrees that this is the most delicious Jesus they’ve ever had.
*
Easter Sunday arrives and the Church is PACKED, from the more lapsed Catholics showing up for a high holiday, parents visiting for spring break and a whole horde of newcomers who had gotten wind that something was up and they ought to come.
Dad is a lanky as hell 21-year old composed mostly of technical jargon and acne but he is STOKED to be playing Longinus, the roman that speared Jesus on the cross, because he gets to do the BEST technical effect in the whole parade. Since he came in at the end me missed a good portion of the sermon, but did hear the “oooh” from the crowd as the massive cross was dragged in by the other Romans, followed by horrified gasps and high screams and a discernible “What the FUCK” as they brought in Bread Jesus 2.0, whipping him enthusiastically, and hammering him into the cross, the sound of wine splashing onto the floor loud in the terrified silence of that Parishioners.
Finally Father Patrick gets to the part about Longinus, and Dad comes sprinting down the aisle as hard as he can, because in order for Bread Jesus to be seen by everyone, his middle had to be about 10 feet off the ground, so Dad had to run, shrieking latin curses, down the length of the church, with a big honking spear and take a flying leap at Jesus in order to spear him in the gut.
Please take moment to imagine you are some normal god-fearing catholic who has decided to visit little bobby or maybe patricia at college and you’re all going to church together like a nice family and this Fucking madman has decided to go all Silence of the Lambs on mass and now there’s some sort of underfed translucently pale man in ill-fitting Roman armor and cape flying at a horrifying glutinous effigy of your lord and savior, with an actual fucking spear, screaming like a madman. Don’t you feel yourself drawing closer to God already? Defensively, perhaps, like an octopus trying to ooze itself into a crevice against the horrors of the ocean.
However, two things happen that were not planned on
1. Dad misses. In his defense, Bread Jesus is close to but not quite the size of a man- more like the size of a doughy teenager, and his middle is a small target 10 feet up in the air and dad is has a computer science minor, not an athletics scholarship. He misses by about 8 inches and instead very solidly stabs Bread Jesus right through the groin, leaving a big hole in Maria’s tea-towel and the spear jutting out at a decidedly… attentive angle, as Bread Jesus’s Bread Dick drops to the floor with a splat. Nobody notices this, however because
2. In rehearsal, Dad had managed to get the spear right in jesus’s navel but neither Father Patrick nor the other romans could get the wine up there to make his middle appropriately bloodied.
Maria come up with the Genius solution that since wine is made of grapes and Jam is made of grapes, she could make a jelly-filled Jesus for Dad to stab. There was a normal-sized test loaf and when dad stabbed it on the table, it had a nicely gooey dribbling effect.
However, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.
There was a hot, sticky minute of complete silence in the church after that.
Then, Father Patrick indicated it was time for the cross to be lowered, and continued on with the normal preparations of the Host, he himself covered in hot smuckers, as though nothing particularly ordinary was occuring, quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar. At the end of it all, Father Patrick and invited everyone up with the Last Oration:
“Thou, O God, has kindly allowed us to have a part in this Holy Sacrifice; for this we give Thee thanks. Accept it now to Thy glory and be ever mindful of our weakness. Amen.”
…And everybody came up, shuffling like terrified zombies, pinching off tiny bits at first but then the madness took them and they began tearing apart bread jesus by the handful, weeping as they partook, scattered prayers and begging for forgiveness. The whole congregation was kneeling about the altar, tearful and united in their guilt and their need for God.
*
“IS CHURCH ALWAYS LIKE THAT?” six-year-old me asked, absolutely stoked. I’d convert on the spot if I got a show like that.
“No, it’s normally bland wafers and lots of chanting in latin.”
“Well that’s boring as hell.” I remember muttering and Dad snorting the coffee he was drinking out of his nose.
*
As people filed silently out of the Church to a gloriously sunny California afternoon, faces wan and smeared with wine and jam, Father patrick turned to Maria and asked “You don’t think that was too much, do you?”
“No.” Said Maria with a sarcastic deadpan so intense it was hard to tell from sincerity.
It was the exact same tone she used when the Archbishop and Six other high clergy showed up, clutching a letter someone had written, Livid and almost foaming at the mouth, demanding to know if such blasphemy had transpired.
“No. That’s crazy.” She said, staring down the archbishop like he was an idiot.
“Such imaginations some people have!” Said Father Patrick, much less convincingly.
“And you- you didn’t… Spear an effigy of our lord and savior?” the archbishop demanded of my father.
“Do I look like I can jump that high?” Dad asked, having in the interim been drafted for 51 days then nearly died of pneumonia from it, and therefore no longer afraid of the Church, the Law or God.
Somewhat relieved that he’d only received the extremely detailed ramblings of a doddering parishioner, the Archbishop sat down and complemented Maria on her most excellent Mexican Wedding Cookies, may he please have another plate for his nerves? Perhaps the ones with sprinkles?
Dad went on to help build the internet, Father Patrick converted to Buddhism and Maria became a Nun.
*For those of you wondering, Jesus was made of Challah.
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A Volunteer Avocado is when you mom was raised in Cleveland by people with only a passing relationship with fruit but a tremendous interest in both urban agriculture and not paying for things, so she can’t stand to get rid of a perfectly good avocado seed, so she gets it to germinate in a mason jar on the kitchen counter, then plants it in the front yard to see if it’ll actually grow but your house is on what used to be a chicken farm so it’s got stupid good soil and the little avocado grows hell-for-breakfast in the CA sun and chicken-shit dirt and in three years it’s as tall as the house and your mom leaves the front door open at night so the wolfdog can get outside in short order because your neighbors love avocados too and come into your yard at 3AM with a ladder to steal them and you wake up in the middle of the night to your parents yelling at Mrs. Mcgurkey about what the FUCK do you think you’re doing, and you use that word the next day on your Demon of a fourth-grade teacher and she actually hits you because she’s a piece of shit but one of your classmates throws his chair at her first and you become best friends and spend the rest of the year giving her hell culminating in the Mantisocalypse.
I might have gone off-topic.
………….
I swear to God you’re the OC of some vengeful writer who keeps putting you shit for ‘character growth’
Like it’s the only explanation I can’t think of, other than you were cursed as a child to have an ‘exciting’ life.
…mantis-WHAT now?
TW: death, cancer, abuse, excessive religiosity, blood, mental illness, sexual assault and bugs.
1999 was a bad fucking year for me, though ultimately, it’s a hopeful sotry. Mind the content warnings.
There is only one animal I’ve ever really earned the wrath of- The Praying Mantis- probably because in fourth grade I used about 50,000 of their children to fight evil.
Fourth grade started promisingly enough- had just had an excellent third grade with Mr. Jay, who was probably ADHD himself and therefore got me on a truly spiritual level. I’d starred in the school play was reading at a freaking collegiate level and had a tremendous interest in marine science. I’d been assigned to Mrs. Ruth’s class, the other teacher that regularly did theater with kids, and had any certification to deal with special ed kids like me.
When I arrived on the first day, she was smaller than I remembered, nearly bent double, skin like old rice paper. But she was still kind and sharp with a vivacity that I wouldn’t see again for years to come. Her hands shook too much to write I had her for three really great weeks before she gathered the class around her, and in a very gentle tone, told us we were going to be having a new teacher on Monday because she was sick, and couldn’t give us the classroom we deserved.
Two weeks later she was dead from the malignant breast cancer that had gotten into her spine and lungs.
I was still reeling from the sudden demise of my grandfather the year before, and mourning the disappearance of Hale-Bopp, who had come to me like a guardian angel in that dark time. I went into what I’d later recognize as regular dissociative states, which was probably good because the rest of the class went insane as well.
The large boys, the ones who had hit puberty early, took out their anxiety by forming a gang that went around terrorizing anyone physically smaller than them. By fall break, they’s started targeting the smaller girls, cornering them behind the school and tearing clothes off. Since I was the second-smallest human in class and didn’t have a protective clique, I was a favored target. Mason who was aged 11 due to being held back, took to flashing his dick at anyone during class, up to and including our string of wholly unprepared substitute teachers.
Erica, the girl I was head over heels for, started a campaign of violence as well, though it was just as likely to be directed at herself as anyone in her immediate proximity. Another girl, Sabrina, became convinced the world was ending on January 1st of 2000, and spent all of ‘99 telling us to repent. Another girl cut her arm in the middle of a math lecture with a sharpened protractor.
All of this was accelerated by the fact that the administration had crammed 35 “problem” children into Mrs. Reith’s class because she was the only teacher who had even a basic handle on classroom management, then refused to shell out the money for a long-term substitute, so we literally had a new teacher every week for a few months there. Parents complained that this was bullshit, and my principal, former Procter & Gamble rep, suggested that we were at fault for behaving so poorly and that all 35 of us needed to be on Ritalin.
Yes, really.
By October, my parents were looking to get me the hell out of there, but School Choice had not come to that part of CA yet, and my parents were both working full-time and couldn’t afford to home-school me. So they looked up truancy laws, and determined that I could “pass” as long as I didn’t miss more than 2 weeks of school.
So they struck a deal with me. As long as I went to school every day until April 15th, I didn’t have to attend the last fortnight of school, and could go anywhere I wanted for summer break. I chose Humboldt State Park, and didn’t tell them about being beaten up at school so they wouldn’t take back the offer. Armed with the promise of being able to flee to the woods come April, I was determined to survive the year, and took measure to do so.
This started, as all good rebellions do, with an alliance.
Dashell was the only child in class smaller than I was, but he was approximately 39lbs of pure, unadulterated psychotic mania. He could bend himself into a pretzel, small enough to fit in a backpack, ate nothing but slim jims and Hi-C brand punch and apparently didn’t feel pain. He was not good with words- there were too many ideas trying to get out at once to finish individual words, let alone whole sentences, but I was unnaturally precocious with absolutely no fear of adults or respect for administrative consequences.
Hence, every recess he’d follow me about as I hunted for the small lizards that lived on campus, and would beat the tar out of Bobby and Mason when they came for me, despite the fact they had a collective 150 lbs on him. And during class, I’d engage any adult in verbal battle so that they wouldn’t call on him and he could hork down slim-jims in peace.
And for a time, things were good.
Eventually, the complaining had gotten bad enough that the administration shelled out for a long-term sub, though apparently not enough to get someone without major disciplinary issues.
And thus, we got stuck with Mrs. Linden.
Mrs. Linden was one of those “Old-Fashioned” teachers who started her introduction to the class by giving a rambling lecture lamenting that “Paddlin’ and Jesus” were now banned. She then asked about all our families, including where we went to church. I was attending a school that was roughly equal parts White, Black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Asian. Literally only 40% of the class attended Christian Church, and most of them were Catholic and Orthodox. I was in the back row next to Saari and Parja, and by the time Mrs. Linden had finished lecturing them on The Dangers of False Prophets, they were in tears and I’d made up my mind about her.
“[FLAGRANTLY IRISH SURNAME REDACTED].” She glared over her eternally filthy horn-rimmed glasses at me. “Catholic as well, I assume.”
“I’m agnostic Ma’am.” I corrected her.
“Do you believe in The Lord?” she asked, glaring at me like a particularly vindictive turkey. Her face was comprised mostly of disappointment and wattles, as I recall.
“I believe in Hell.” I offered.
She looked like she was about to approve.
“I mean, you had to come from somewhere.” I explained.
At that point, the bell for recess rang, and Dashell kicked it off by letting out a truly demonic shriek and throwing his chair through the window. Twenty minutes of broken glass and bedlam later, she’d forgotten she was going to beat me for that. Saari and Parja decided to start hanging out with me at recess, which discouraged the budding rapists, for a while.
And so it went, Dashell and I playing a game of alternating Uproars, one directing rage away from the other based on ability to handle that particular bully. I’d correct Linden on her teaching material in the most condescending manner a ten-year-old could pull off, which wasn’t difficult- it’s hard to teach geology curriculum when you think the world is 6000 years old and flat.
Things died down for a bit during winter- the continuous California monsoons and Linden’s propensity for grounding the entire class for one person’s offense meant we spent most recesses indoors, where the Boys would have to leave the girls alone now that an Adult was watching, and Saari would let Dashell braid her hair while I re-explained multiplication to Parja.
In March though, things began to heat up. We were let outside again and Bobby and Mason had quite a bit of pent-up ragelust to let out, and were now being commanded by Erica, who thought making me suffer for her affections was Great Fun. I don’t quite remember what happened with the three of them and me behind the computer building, but I know I can’t stand the sound of and old apple computer starting up anymore.
Furthermore, Linden had figured out the disciplinary loophole, that while she wasn’t actually allowed to beat us, she could slam her ruler on our desks, and if your hands or faces happened to be caught in the blow, well, we should have moved faster. Not this is not actually legal, but she was banking on us not having the legal wherewithal to take her to court.
Dashell was growing tired of the constant stress of school and had taken to leaving early when he felt like it, leaving me to fend for myself in the afternoon. My sole consolation for those long afternoons was that we were having a bumper crop of praying mantises that year, and I had found no less than four nests in the backyard, and was keeping them in a large jar in my room.
If you’ve never seen praying mantis nests, they look like someone fucked up and globbed insulation foam on a stick. They sorta sit there, looking stupid, until it gets hot enough, then the day they’re going to hatch, they develop a large, ominous crack, and over the course of a couple hours, a Couple Hundred itty-bitty, very sharp flying rage insects will drip out, covered in ooze like some kind of alien, and once they are all dried out/carapaced up they fly off in a fit of barbarian rage, ready to slice up anything remotely edible or potentially predatory. Like children’s eyeballs.
So imagine my joy that on April fifteenth, the last day I had to attend class, all four nests had developed their large cracks, and tiny little baby ragebugs were slowly dripping out of them.
My initial thoughts were not of malice, but of showing Saari and Parja my cool insect friends, the latter having gotten into entomology of late. But after I arrived at school with the jar, I realized that Thursday’s usual show-and-tell had been replaced with Mrs. Linden’s Semi-weekly Rant About How We’re All Going To Hell. So I kept them in my backpack, with the intent of showing Dashell and Parja at recess.
But, after dealing with Mason trying to flash me his dick all through math, I had grown a mickle furious, and was contemplating flouncing from my Final required Day Of Class In Grand Style. But what?
Then Mrs. Linden started ranting about the Plagues Of Egypt.
She’d construed that the plagues were about Pharaoh Not Respecting God as We Students Weren’t Respecting Her, and hence he Needed To be Punished.
But from my perspective, I was rather heavily identifying with the slaves and would really like to call down the wrath of some higher being on Mrs. Linden and Mason. Then I realized that the mantises had been sitting on my bag on top of the radiator for the past three hours, and were probably all hatched and furious by now.
And for the first time, I truly understood “The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways.”
I signaled to Dashell that I was about to start shit, then quietly went back to the coat room to retrieve the jar. Sure enough, they had all hatched and dried, and were now clawing furiously at the glass, little scratches audible through the holes in the lid. I waited back there for a good minute, lightly shaking the jar to enrage the mantises, while I waited for Linden to get to the Locusts.
She really went overboard, claiming that entirely vegetarian grasshoppers could eat a cow to the bone in minutes, like aerial piranhas, and that they’d crawl under your skin and eat your eyeballs, because You Disrespected God So You Deserve It.
Unbeknownst to me, Dashell had gotten up during her rant and had pulled the loose plate off the lightswitch and had been tampering with the wiring, and just as she got to Darkness, he shorted out the lights.
I took this as my signal, and stepped out of the coatroom, and chucked the jar straight at the back of Mason’s head, shattering it, sending blood and glass everywhere, along with releasing approximately six fucktillion rage-filled insects into the room.
I cannot explain how deeply, soul-satisfying the chaos was.
Screaming children, screaming Linden, screaming insects, Mason screaming about the pain, Sabrina screaming that it was the End Of The World, and Dashell laughing demonically, wriggling the wire to make the lights flash like a literal Panic at the disco. There was glass everywhere, Insects landing on and attacking children as they tried to escape, people running into each other, someone pulling the fire alarm, creating MORE noise and setting the sprinklers off.
After a few minutes standing and watching, feeling the satisfaction of releasing hell settling in my soul, I quietly packed up my backpack and left, walked home and ate six ice cream sandwiches before mom got home from work.
“I’m done with school!” I told mom happily, sitting on the couch and watching animal planet with the dog.
“Did you show your class the mantises?’ She asked.
“Yes. I don’t think they liked them.” I said, watching Steve Irwin juggle snakes.
“Aw, that’s too bad. Are you ready to go camping?”
“Yes. Yes I am.”
And so the next morning, we left for the wilds of the redwood forest, so my mom didn’t hear anything about the incident until we came back a fortnight later. It never got pinned on me or Dashell, probably because Mrs. Linden left the classroom shortly after I did and was last seen in Arizona two days later. The district never actually managed to Fire her, because they never found her.
And that’s the most Chaotic Evil thing I’ve ever done.
That may be the best thing I’ve ever read.
Soccer rant incoming.
Prepare for some profanity here, because I’m very upset and need to express it as best a teenager can.
As an American, soccer fan, and fan of American soccer, this was the most embarrassing night in our history. We had everything to play for. Everything. Trinidad had nothing, dead last, bottom of the group.
And we couldn’t. Fucking. Beat them.
The only player on the field who played like we had something to play for was Pulisic. A 19 year old kid we discovered, what, a year ago? Two? And HE made the greatest contribution compared to other more-or-less veterans on the field.
A team that goes out and plays like utter shit against Trinidad and Tobago, a country with less population than Philadelphia, does not deserve to qualify. But I am still LIVID.
We changed up tactics. Got a new coach. Brought in talent. And we just plunged ourselves right back into the dark ages that Arena took us out of over a decade ago.
And in the back of my mind, the women’s side of the game comes into play. Again, women’s team has qualified for every world cup, won 3 times, placed in the top 3 of every tournament. The men’s team can’t beat an island nation. And guess who gets the big bucks?
And I want to note that I blame everyone involved here sans Pulisic for the whole mess. It’s not just Klinsmann, not just Arena, everyone should be held accountable for not playing to the level they absolutely should be able to play and leaving it all on the line until now, especially with all the money invested over the years.
I shouldn’t have to say that I’m rooting for Serbia and Argentina more than any of the countries in the cup, yet here I am.
I will always stand by this team, don’t get me wrong. But by God, this was utterly disgraceful. They better figure their shit out by 2022.
Mallory and Mark Kensington were two star struck lovers who had been married for 12 years. Mallory was a commercial airline pilot and Mark was the captain of a nuclear submarine. They were both very responsible with their money, lived simply, had no children, and no vices. The only exception to their frugality was their dog Max whom they doted on at every possible occasion. Unfortunately for Max, fate had terrible plans in store for him. One dark August day, Mallory and Mark were both at their respective jobs and in a cruel twist of fate suffered major mechanical failures at the same time. In a million to one oddity, they both perished in the astonishing first-of-its-kind airplane/submarine accident.
CaptainBubblebath 