Suddenly, all tears stopped. All whimpers and pleas for mercy were silenced, once and for all. A crescent moon hung at half mast, the sounds of cricket violins and birds, like a choir of angels, settled over the backyard. Smoke rose from the tip of the pistol. The same unused pistol that would have killed Judith. They call it a Saturday Night Special, but there‘s nothing too special about it. An inexpensive handgun, designed to be compact. Popular with holdup men. If you walk into an apartment where a murder and a suicide just took place, you’d be guaranteed to see one laying next to one of the corpses.
A Saturday Night Special. An inexpensive, cheaply made, handgun. The gun used to kill my parents. Even as much as I despised them, even as much as I had hated them for most of my life, I knew they deserved better than that.
That night, Manchester, Tennessee slept on an acre of bones. A sad sigh carried with the wind. My mother laid on a blanket of weeds. My father laid next to her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his last words still ringing in my ear. Before the bullet pierced his head, before the blood splattered on the tall grass behind him, before his body fell to the dirty ground, he said below his breath, his eyes transfixed on me, 'God is good.'
God is good…
We’re all growing old. We’re all preparing for death. We’re all on a downward spiral.
It’s when you realize this that you stop caring. You stop worrying about society’s perception of you. You stop caring about what your social ranking is. Upper class, middle class, trailer trash, you’re all destined for the grave.
Death is God’s way of getting the final laugh. The almighty ‘fuck you’ heard round the world. When you cut it all down to it’s most primitive form, everyone’s life follows the same exact routine: You live. You die. The end. Everything in between is trivial, meaningless, fodder. It’s the way you go, the way it all ends, that’s the interesting part. That’s the part that matters. That’s the only surprise anyone really needs to look forward to.
The foundation of every religion is what happens after you die. Everything on top of that is just a giant mass of confusion meant to bewilder and bemoan you. It’s funny when you think about all these people dying in holy wars and ending their own lives in the name of God. Maybe they’re not so insane. Maybe they’re just cutting the bullshit and quickening up the process. Maybe they realize their life is worthless and they're bringing on the inevitable.
But still. Even if life is worthless, even if life is trivial, even if it’s all just a flash in the fucking pan, if someone gave you the chance to live forever, wouldn’t you take it?
Wouldn’t you?
Cleveland, Ohio - Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, 9/25/07
The past few weeks had been a whirlwind of commotion and confusion. I’d begun living half my life on airplanes, cramped up in those tiny seats, staring through those tiny windows, and zigzagging from state to state. Life had become neon lights and big cities, stadiums and arenas where massive audiences spoke together like in holy tongues, screaming savage and primitive, demanding sweat and blood.
When you’re a gladiator, the den of lions is the least of your worries. It’s the audience that you should really fear. They’re the ones who can make you or break you. Entertain or die. So it goes.
City to city, town to town, day to day, moment to moment. Eventually, it all blends together. Eventually, this becomes as routine to you as your morning rituals.
Eventually, you’ll accept anything out of the norm.
Starbucks stunk of businessmen and jetlag. Shove a half-assed coffeehouse into an airport, serve up mocha lattes that are more like muddy water, make billions. Corporate America laughs its way to the bank while I grow even more cynical. But who am I to talk? I was the one sipping on my grande sized Espresso Macchiato in the back corner, staring out the window at all the airplanes taking off and landing.
My clothes smelled like smoke. Nicotine stained fingers, my cigarette tracing up to the ceiling. I could see the interstate from here. Cars and eighteen wheelers drove through the rain, their headlights piercing the infinite darkness that stretched out in front of them. The stars hid behind the clouds, the immaculate moon peeking out from time to time.
And then, His voice, thick with scorn and as raspy as a blues singer. “How are you this evening, Sean?”
Sneer. Roll my eyes. Take another sip of shitty coffee. Just ignore Him.
And then, something unexpected. A hand on my shoulder. Dirty fingers wrapping around, shaking my arm and making me spill my coffee on the table. I looked behind me, and there He stood, grinning with those yellow teeth, hair matted to his forehead, eyes bloodshot and cruel.
There was a moment of silence. My eyes were wide, my mouth gaping open in half-shock, half-awe. There He stood, in the goddamn flesh, grinning as always. And for once? I knew He was real. I knew He wasn’t just a hallucination. For once, he wasn’t just some an apparition or some sort of mental manifestation caused by my dwindling insanity. He wasn’t an imaginary friend. He wasn’t a mindfuck. He was there, living, breathing, and talking.
And what did He say? He said, with no tone of sarcasm in his voice, “How would you like to live forever, Sean?”
Once upon a time, there was a boy.
He was born in a backwoods town, full of backwards people, where being ignorant was the only way of life. His father was a preacher. His mother was a housewife. His only sibling died before he was born.
His house was decorated with Christian symbols and Southern pride. It was a big house on a large plot of land. The front yard was mowed to perfection, with flamingos lining the gravel driveway and a dogwood tree towering by the side of the road, casting a shadow across the lawn every morning. The backyard stretched to what seemed like oblivion, with tall grass reaching for the sky and a small pond in the center of it all, with a ramshackle dock where the boy would fish his childhood days away.
When it rained, he would go outside and jump into every puddle he came across.
His father was a loving man. His mother was a loving woman. As a child, he was a loving son. But with age came change, and with change came trouble. By his teenage years, the boy had grown to forsake the way he was raised. Now, his father called him a hellion and his mother cried herself to sleep at night. All the while, the boy simply grinned and laughed at their distress. He was their mistake and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Time passed and the boy grew worse. He was hated by the his backwoods towns and all the backwards people held his family guilty by association. His father’s congregation had dwindled down to a few fair-weather faithfuls. His mother? Well, his mother had fallen into a fit of depression that she couldn’t shake off for the life of her. The boy relished in all of this. He wanted to be hated. He wanted to be different. He wanted to break the mold and be more, more, more than just another imbecile in a field of idiots. And oh, he was.
But all the same. He loved his parents, in his way. Despite what he would say. Despite what he would do. He loved them, regardless.
When he was born, they named him Sean.
His father once said he wished they hadn’t named him anything at all.
Immortality. Eternal life. To live forever, without having to worry about death. These are the things that had been promised to me. Not by Jesus and not by God, but by a man who had plagued me for months now. A man who claimed that he was me, from the future. A man who was responsible for the death of Judith, the only person who really mattered to me.
When I asked Him why he killed her, He simply laughed and ruffled my hair. He told me that He had to get my eyes on the prize somehow. He told me that she was just a distraction. He told me that I’d understand eventually.
I still don’t understand.
To say I hated Him would be an understatement, but what else did I have to believe in? Life had become water circling the drain, waiting to go down the pipes. What else did I have to do with myself? Besides. Maybe this would make Him leave me alone. Maybe, just maybe, after this, I could be at peace. Perhaps, if I did what He wanted, perhaps I could get my shit sorted out. Maybe I could start rebuilding my life. Maybe I could fix things.
I didn’t want immortality.
I didn’t want eternal life.
I didn’t want to live forever.
You know, honestly, I don’t know what I wanted.
He told me that I would be a god by the end of the night. He kept telling me that immortality wasn’t that hard to achieve, non-emotionally speaking. Emotionally, apparently, it was one of the hardest things you could have yourself do.
The idea was, to achieve eternal life, all you had to do was be without beginning and without end. All you had to do was have a means to go back in time. All you had to do was kill your parents before you were born. And instead of fading into nothing? Instead of disappearing out of thin air? He told me I would become a god.
He told me he was my means to go back in time.
He told me I was His means of achieving immortality.
He told me together, we’d be gods among men.
And I just nodded my head.
Manchester, TN - 9/26/07
It was raining.
Flamingos and puddles lined the gravel driveway. I stepped into every single puddle I saw, even though He remained austere. The lawn was mowed to perfection, every single blade of grass the exact same measure.
He told me, tonight was practice.
He told me, tonight was just a game.
And I just nodded my head.
He bought two tickets to Nashville and we flew there overnight. We caught a cab to Manchester and now, in the wee hours of the morning, we walked down the long driveway that led to my childhood home, with the light in the kitchen shining bright, like a lighthouse or a guiding star.
Every now and then, I would look over and catch Him grinning sickly.
When we arrived at the doorstep, with the Home Sweet Home house mat placed in front of the door, He looked to me and whispered, “Go around back, wait for me back there.”
I just nodded and did what he said.
I walked around the corner of my childhood home, into the backyard, where the tall grass stretched as far as the eye could see. Where a vast wilderness painted a contrast against the calm of the frontyard. Within a minute, I heard my mother scream from inside the house. The next thing I knew, I saw my father and my mother being led outside by gunpoint, my father holding her close as she cried against his shoulder.
I’ll never forget the way his eyes pierced into me when he saw me standing there, rainswept and jetlagged, hands wringling inside my pockets.
Behind them, there He stood, his sick grin growing even wider as he screamed commands and waved the gun in frantic abandon. He was putting on a show. Making things worse than they really were. As He led them into the tall grass, I followed without a word.
He said, “This is the beginning of it all.”
He said, “Soon, we’ll live forever.
He said, “Soon, we’ll be gods among men.”
And I just nodded my head.
He made them sit on their knees while He ranted and raved, waving the gun in the air as my mother wept and my father remained still. And with two loud bangs, everything was silenced. Everything stopped. Everything ended.
But still, my fathers last words weighed heavy in my ears.
He said, “God is good.”
God is good…