Souls - XLV

I don’t know where we are, but I feel comfortable here. It is dark, it is quiet, it is home. Mary is no longer a pure ball of light, but she is a translucent source of illumination. I can see her souls swimming under the skin, hers and Jesus’s. One is darker than the other but they swim together in unity, one taking up just as much space as the other.

Her Yin and Yang.

Her eyes seem warm and calm, no room for any resentment or anger.

“They told you then? Who I am?”

I nod, trying not to cry. I don’t want the world to end for the simple fact I want the ability to hug her to be an existential possibility.

“Don’t cry.”

“You can’t…you can’t destroy everything hun…”

Mary smiles like a mother who’s child just asked an especially silly and adorable question.

“Is that what they told you? And you listened? You believed the God who pretended to be Satan and the Christ that shot people from his trailer? I am not destroying anything. I may be the antichrist but I’m not a monster.”

“What is all of this then? The trumpets?”

“They were right about one thing, humanity's need for order and balance. And a sacrifice. They expect these trumpets, they expect this rapture. They expect the antichrist. They expect a sacrifice.”

I feel shame and pride at the same time. I underestimated my own daughter and I couldn’t have been prouder in her surprisal.

I lower my head, “I am so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, it never was.”

I look back up and realize she isn't really Mary anymore, the Mary I met was unsure and timid. This Mary is confident, calm, understanding. I realize something.

“You’re not the antichrist.”

She stares hard at me, nearly through me. Then she sees it too.

“Huh.. I guess I’m not. Not anymore.”

When she jabbed herself in the eye, when she became equal parts satanic heir and Jesus, she stopped being what she was born as. She was something new, something evolved, something beyond our bloodline. She is what she's pretending to be. 

She is a diety.

Equal parts demonic and holy. She is humanity’s balance incarnate.

Mary stands, the light within this darkness moves with her.

“How did I not see this?”

“You didn’t want to. Because it means I’m the antichrist. It means I have to do this.”

She looks down to me, her turn to let melancholy sneak into her eyes.

“Mom, you don’t have to. We can let this finish, the rapture, we can let it all disappear."

“No. I owe you this, I owe humanity this.”

She lifts me up and embraces me.

“I love you mom.”

I never knew what wholeness felt like, what true happiness was, until I heard those words from my daughter.

“I love you too baby.”

Light grows from within her, filling all of the darkness until we are both floating in piercing light.

Then it’s gone. 

—

I am back on Earth. I am back in Kansas City. 

The ground is still quivering from a freshly ended earthquake, the world is still on fire. I stand up, finding myself at the center of a crowd. The crowd is still looking to the blackness of the heavens. 

I gather I just appeared with the seventh trumpet. 

They look back down to me in silence. They know. They understand.

A voice in the crowd screams, “Get her!”

They rush to me, they push me to the ground and tear at me. I hear random voices screaming.

“Deceiver!”

“Antichrist!”

“King of Lies!”

I close my eyes, I don’t fight.

I think of my daughter, of this world’s new God and their new Devil, and I smile. They drag me through the streets, throwing objects at me, ripping at my limbs. I feel myself stabbed repeatedly. My blood lubricates the path beneath me, making the dragging strangely smooth. 

I look up and see the skyscraper where the old God and his son stand, I feel them watching me. I wonder what will happen to them. I realize I don’t care. Their time has ended.

My battered body is hoisted up, it feels like they’ve attached me to some primitive pulley system as they lurch my body up onto a light pole.

A chorus of “Die!” rings through the crowd. I lower my head.

I feel the heat rise within me, but it’s different this time. There is no fear, there is no wrath in it, it is comfort. It is home. I feel it rising. 

I feel a warmth on my head, at first I assume it’s my inner heat escaping. But I am wrong. I raise my face, my eyes fluttering open for the very last time and I see the damnedest thing.

The Clouds. 

The Sky. 

The Sun.

Our world in complete balance.