It was Sunday at Our Deity of the Waters. Thoom, dum, doom went the church bell, sonorous and fat. Thoom, doom, duuum. Its clapper hung loose, its cord swung wildly in the sweaty skinny grasp of Jerry, who always rang it thirty seconds late and panicked every second of it. Thoom, dum, doooooom.
Luckily for him nobody had ever noticed or cared, unluckily for him he’d never realized it and never would in a million years; they were too busy chatting and gossiping and lying and mingling amidst the pews and he was too busy filling himself with horror and despair. Thoom, dum, doooom. Thoom, boom, dooooooooooooooooom.
Done.
Jerry finished panicking and settled back into his normal abyss of desperate self-loathing, while beyond him in the sanctuary – open to the wind and the reeds and the sky – the people shut up and the choir assembled and the organist rolled up her sleeves and the song got cooking, and it went like this:
Oh my God, my gosh, my God
That sure is a lot of God, my gosh, my God.
That’s a hell of a big God, my God, my gosh
Holy shit, holy God, holy fuck
The organist flailed her arms with a last flourish and veryone bowed their heads very solemnly and bubbled ‘amen.’ The minister stood up and adjusted his speedo-robes and cleared his throat of the blockage induced by the ceremonial Coors and spoke, and this is what he spoke:
“AGH!” he spoke. “Argh, aiee, ow, ow ow, nrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUhhhhh, uhr hur hur hur hur hur, aaaaaaaaaaagh. Aaaaaaamen.”
“Amen,” bubbled the congregation.
“Friends,” said the minister, “it is good to see you all here once again, on this most joyous occasion, to celebrate the day of death and rebirth and redeath of our once-lord and once-saviour, whose name must not be spoken. Shush that name now and forever hold your piece!”
“Amen,” they bubbled, and raising their left hands, made a simple zipping motion across their firmly-shut lips.
“My friends, it has been a long and harrowing year,” intoned the minister, face now graven in graveness and gravity. “We have seen the deaths of several of our flock – some by illness, some by accident, several by acts of God. Death is a normal part of life, but it is always a pity to see it come so soon and to some so beloved. Any money placed in the offering plate today will go towards the provision of comfort and succor to the bereaved, and any money they refuse will go directly to our lamb carcass fund so that God’s maw will be stayed from any further wrathful judgments upon our band of fellows. Amen!”
“Amen,” they bubbled, one hand raised apiece in helpless cowering defense, wobbling irresolutely between fending off wrath from above or teeth from below and settling on neither.
“For community announcements: Brother Marley has suffered the loss of additional mobility after her stroke last week. We ask that you gift unto her your thoughts and your prayers and also and more importantly your meat. Please give brother Marley your meat as she is currently unable to procure her own and will suffer horribly and unspeakably unless assistance is rendered with stark promptness. Please do it right now, before I finish this service or this sentence – for the love and apathy of God, do it now, now – NOW!”
“Amen,” they bubbled, slimy red tissue grasped in trembling palms over collection vats. And for good measure, they said it again. “Amen,” they bubbled, tremendous fear in their hearts.
“Secondly and less urgently, Brother Tim and Brother Hasham’s child we baptised last week is with us today during this service! In respect for this, please keep the happy family at the rear of the crowd and do NOT encourage them to approach the God-sump, because we don’t want an accident and we all remember what happened to Brother Wooster’s infant back in ’93, don’t we?”
“Amen,” they bubbled, cringing to an individual, shoulders hunched and faces puckered.
“Excellent, excellent, excellent,” murmured the minister, baritone and soothing, like someone talking to an injured dog. “You know, every year this season brings me to joyous contemplation. It’s a time for righting wrongs, a time for the retrieval of hope from the greatest pits of despair, and a time to clearly illuminate the path that lies before you and find true purpose And accordingly it’s also a time for learning which wrongs are immutable facts, which hopes are idle foolishness, and discovering which paths are loops that lead back unto true realities. We speak at a time of rebirth and redeath, of promises made and failed and kept. My fellow congregants,” he enunciated most solemnly, casting back his robes to reveal his fingerless hands and missing leg, “none is more humble of their position than I, whose mortality is most stark and heavy, whose position is closest to God, as was my father, as was his father whose noble unknowing sacrifice during the Holy Riverside Enlightenment sermon of the Easter of ‘72 did reveal unto us the necessities of this world and the greater cosmos surrounding and enfolding it. Is it not right that on the day when we are most grateful to Him that God would reveal His presence and our purpose in it? Was it not right that this purpose be revealed to us most viscerally and with much viscera? And was it not right that the man who spoke for him should speak loudest and truest of all as he departed from this mortal coil on a day when he lied of rebirth and was corrected into a most appropriate and irreversible death? I beg of you all to ask of God to forgive my grandfather, for in his foolishness he granted us all a great and powerful insight into the world and all its beauty. Amen.”
“Amen,” they bubbled, eyes and feet scuttling in place like trapped rats.
“And now, forthwith, without further ado, with all the joyousness and rapture that is His right, the Lord God Omnipotent! And yeah, he reigneth as the king of kings, the lord of lords-“
“Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, halleluuuuuuuuuuu-jah” screamed the choir rhapsodically.
“-And he shall reign forever and ever!”
And so speaking, mouth yet agape with the force of his exhalations, the minister was seized abruptly from behind by the great scaled snout of god, who dragged him back with eye-blinking speed into the watery and palm-shrouded pit of the godsump where he was whirled about rapidly into shreds and devoured in spine-shudderingly vast gulps that dyed the ripples violent red.
“Amen?” bubbled the congregation.
***
The meat offerings were unwanted that day thanks to the minister, so they took them home instead for an Easter supper. It was most pleasant and filling and really reminded them of what the season was about and what it all really meant, deep down, right in the marrow and the bone and the flesh and the teeth and the teeth and the teeth and the teeth and the teeth. For many of them, it reminded them about 2 AM with sudden sweats and screams.
And wasn’t that just right and proper?