God the Killer

by Donna L. Greenwood

We are planet. We are star. We are gas. We are dust.

Float.

Out of habit, he crosses his heart in front of the silver cross with the dead man nailed to it. The house is dirty. There is a housekeeper, but she only works Monday to Friday. Not Sundays. This makes the priest even more angry. He kicks the wall and makes the dead-man-Jesus tremble. ‘Your father is a monster,’ he tells the quivering idol, ‘A provoker of violence, a captain of chaos, an inciter of infanticide — so don’t you dare hang there in judgment of me.’

He rips off his collar and goes to the drink’s cabinet. It’s such a cliché — whisky and Catholicism, but he is beyond caring today. His rage has exhausted him, and his hand is throbbing. He pours the whisky and slumps onto a floral sofa imbued with his housekeeper’s perfume and sweat. She’s been sitting down on the job again. He rests his head on the back of the malodorous sofa and thinks about the boy.

We are many. We are one. We are sheaf. We are scythe.

Float.

When he was younger, it was so much easier. He was handsome and fun. He used to be able to tell a good joke, but now he’s grey and wrinkled and forgets the punchline: the boys don’t fall for his charms as easily as they once had. Lately, the only technique that seems to work is putting the fear of God into them. But still, he’d been a little rougher than he’d wanted to be with the boy.

It was a mistake. He can see that now. Whether the boy will tell his mother remains to be seen. The priest isn’t worried, he’s weathered worse scandals, and it is he who will be believed; the boy — a nobody from the local council estate — will be ridiculed and then forgotten.

It’s not the tittle-tattling that concerns him though. It’s the bite. He brings his hand to his face and looks at the damage. The little bastard has torn through the padding between his forefinger and thumb. It looks ragged and raw. He needs to clean it.

We are nothing. We are all. We are nebulae. We are hole.

Float.

After his whisky, the priest draws a bath and pours some perfumed oil into the hot water. A good soak will make him feel better. Praying is useless. The priest has uttered thousands of prayers over the years and has only ever been met with silence. He’s pushed the boundaries — dared his God to strike him down. He’s lied and gambled and broken the emotional spines of more boys than he can remember. There has never been a response from this God he tells others to worship with such conviction. No retribution. No punishment. In fact, the opposite is true. He has been rewarded. He is wealthy enough to afford a very comfortable life, and he has enough friends in high places to make his many indiscretions go away.

He sinks his body into the water and sighs. He feels the tension subside. He lowers his bitten hand into the water and falls asleep, unaware there is a dirty miracle about to happen.

We are light. We are star. We are cosmos. We are mote.

Float.

As the priest sleeps, infinitesimal angels will enter his epidermis at the site of the boy’s bite. They will shriek through his veins, singing their filthy paean and they will clot the blood vessels in his brain and heart.

When the priest wakes, he will dry his body with his swollen hand, and he will put on his ironically modest pyjamas. By the time he lays his head on his pillow, the infection will have taken hold. 

We are atom. We are microbe. We are the beginning. We are the end.

Float.