Episode 24: Beckoning
It had certainly been the sort of day that could shake your faith. Well, at least, the sort of five hours that could shake your faith. The rest of the day had been just fine. Those five hours, though, wow. That’s a well shaken faith. Like chocolate milk in a bottle shaken.
It had started out like any other summer day. Becky had woken up, thoughts of that awful Cody, and his inviting arms and welcoming lips, floating through her mind… She shook it away. She hated that she was so attracted to that atheistic creepy jerk. And he was probably gay, too, adding to the pile of sin. She hated him. And yet…
She took a shower. Cold; that was how she had been raised to like them. Her parents had never shown her the hot water valve, and it wasn’t until she was 15 that she found it herself. She couldn’t stand it; it burned her skin. She far preferred the internal warmth that she already had.
Her parents were in the kitchen, making coffee and breakfast. Neither of them, nor two of their three daughters, were bothered by the fact that, at the time, the coffee pot was buried under a heap of dirty clothes, or that the oven was full of dirty clothes and covered with dirty dishes. That was just the natural order of things for them. Living like this had introduced a large number of… impurities into their bodies. They had no idea, but they were no longer, exactly, human. Becky’s classmates didn’t have the heart to tell her, despite the fact that it was blatantly obvious. Thanks to her… unusual traits, a large number of them thought that her parents were cousins. Her sister looked just like her, except smaller, and with hair that many people thought-but didn’t have the heart to admit that they thought-was a wig. Her name was Rachel. The third sister was, miraculously, normal looking. In fact, a good number of people would honestly call her pretty. She was also the only member of the family who realized that there was something wrong with them. Her name was Sara.
Becky ate her breakfast, bringing her one meal closer to, simultaneously, death, jerky-like preservation, and a complete biological meltdown. She remained unaware of this, just as unaware as she was of, essentially, the entire world.
Following breakfast, she had her first daily prayer of the day. She prayed for her family; she prayed Sara would get prettier and finally discover just how great their family was; she prayed for Todd; she prayed for Dawn and Zach, who she didn’t realize were gay; she prayed for Waldo; she prayed for Elli, to stop being Mormon and see the true light of Christ; she prayed for many people, and she closed with a prayer for Cody, that he would become a good, Christian man, so that the two of them could get married and have a big family. And she knew that God would answer her prayer.
She then moved on to the computer. She spent fifteen minutes checking her email; there were numerous emails from "YoU Just On3 a FR3e WotCH!" and his friends, and to each one, she responded politely. When she first started getting them, she got only enough to take thirty seconds out of her day. Since then, her responses had taken it up to twelve minutes per day. After she found her way through the spam (she found both kinds delicious,) she came to a message from Cody. Entirely against her will, her heart fluttered throughout her body. It’s a serious medical condition. The subject line read "Zabam!" which meant about as much to anyone as all of his subject lines. She clicked on the message a little more eagerly than someone who actually did have a chance with Cody would have. All the body said was "Goodbye, Becky."
She stared at this for a moment, and continued to fail to comprehend it. So she wrote an email in reply.
To: Cody.Sky1@gmail.com
From: Christian.Hobbit.Freak@gmail.com
Subject: RE:Zabam!
Ookay… What do u mean? U’ll b at school next year, wont ya? I mean, u shouldn’t say goodbi unless ure going somewhere Are you going somewhere? Sorry if I’m prying.
Cody, there’s something I should tell u. but I’m not sure if I should. I dont know. E-mail me back, kay?
If you weep I will weep with you/ If you sing for joy the rest of us will lift our voices too/But no matter what you feel inside there's no need to pretend/ That's the way it is in this circle of friend/ In this circle of friends we have one father/ in this circle of friends we share this pray're/ that we'll gather together no matter how the highway bends/ I will not loose this circle of friends.
He’s waiting above.
She read it over 5 times, changing capitalization and punctuation. Then she clicked send.
She spent the next three hours reading fanfic and visiting message boards for fandoms. Primarily, she was a Lord of the Rings fangirl. She also had a soft spot for anything with Orlando Bloom. Becky had read some pretty bizarre fics in her two year tenure as a fangirl, and anyone who knows fanfic knows just what bizarre means. The even more bizarre thing was that Becky had never meant to read that sort of thing. In fact, she still didn’t know that she had read that sort of thing. She managed to be completely oblivious to all the sex.
On that particular day, she read ten "normal" fanfics and three bizarre ones. One of those three was extremely unnecessarily explicit; in it, Gimli, Pippin, and Legolas end up in Hogsmeade, while Snape and Harry Potter are visiting. All more you need to know of it is that the most common word was "8-inch". Becky did, in fact, remain oblivious, leaving a comment saying just how well done it was. Of course, it wasn’t well done at all, but Becky thought it was. You have to remember that she also thought that there was no sex occurring.
When she was done reading fanfic, it was about two in the afternoon. She made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. The bread was moldy, the peanut butter was oily, and nobody knows what the deal with the jelly was. She had no idea that the bread and jelly were messing her insides up. The peanut butter is only a problem because oily peanut butter is really gross, but that’s just a matter of opinion. This did what all of her meals did to her. She had eaten so many meals that many doctors and biologists would have fainted if they had seen a full work-up of Becky’s health. It wasn’t caused entirely by her home conditions; she also ate cafeteria food and used public toilets freely.
After her body-wrenching lunch, Becky returned to the computer for another hour. She was writing a movie, which she intended to direct. The problem with this idea was that she was an angry coward with no directorial skills, and couldn’t write a quality movie to save her life. She could have been the next Ed Wood, if she had had access to stock footage. She even wore men’s clothing.
The movie she was writing was all about pirates and friendship. Not only was it clearly "inspired" by Pirates of the Caribbean, but it was also a poorly crafted "coming-of-age" story in which a bully tries to steal a girl away, leading the hero to embark on a quest to find some sort of key to unlock some ancient city. Now, at its root, it could have been salvageable. However, the dialogue was flat, the characterization unoriginal, and she wanted to use a song from a Christian television show about vegetables for the credits music.
After this, her family had another daily prayer hour. Most days they only had the morning one and ten minutes before bed. On holidays, however, especially during wartime, they added in one or two. It really made them feel that they were doing something tangible to help. The fact that any effect it may have had was entirely intangible did not change this feeling at all.
Becky prayed for the exact same things that she had last time. Ritual was a very important part of her life. In fact, it was, generally, the only part of her life. Until about half an hour later.
When the prayer hour ended, it was 4:30. And so, it being the Fourth of July, they went out for Independence Day Dinner, just like real Americans. They went to a steak house that was, coincidentally, very near to the homes of Todd and Cody.
They arrived at the steak house at about 5. The restaurant was booked for the night, but the host was terrified by their appearance into giving them a table, for fear that the shambling dead would consume him. The shambling dead did actually consume him nine hours later, in a bout of irony that is very interesting externally, but didn’t even strike him as the shambling dead were consuming him. A moment after they were seated, a horrible screeching noise that only they could hear broke out. Their ears had bizarrely mutated to pick up frequencies that usually only dogs, bats, and their ilk can hear. Sara was unfazed, and was significantly weirded out by their writhing in minor agony. She ate her dinner quickly, and then wished the rest of them would do the same. It’s fairly difficult to eat your dinner effectively when a vibrational frequency that is coming very close to vaporizing your internal organs is barraging you.
Fortunately, the sound did not have any large effects. Immediately.
They finished dinner at about 6:30; the pain they were experiencing was getting worse, but still wasn’t world shattering. Until they drove by the graveyard at 6:35, where the sound was at exactly the right frequency and amplitude to cause Becky’s father to explode.
Screams erupted. Flesh and fat splattered throughout the car. Sara screamed, opened her door, and bailed from the car, which was still doing 20 miles per hour. She skinned her knees, but got up and started running very quickly.
The car began to spin a bit. Becky’s mother and sister, as well as Becky herself, were all too horrified to do anything about it. It went careening through the gates of the cemetery, and flung itself into a ditch.
That was when Becky’s mother exploded.
The horror worsened; Becky and her sisters were now orphans, and they had no idea why, except that they were in pain themselves. Becky scrambled out of the car in a panic, and turned around on top of it to reach back into the car to pull Rachel out.
That was when Rachel exploded.
Flesh and fat and blood flew, striking Becky in the face, and causing her to scream in even more horror, which brought her to a level of horrified screaming that can only be exceeded by those who have looked upon C’thulhu and his kin. She began running, scrambling randomly, deeper into the cemetery.
She came upon a circle of robed and hooded figures; on a subconscious level, she now knew that the sound that had killed her family was coming from these people. She turned to look at them instinctually, causing her to trip and smack her head on a tombstone, finally silencing her screams.
Becky awoke three hours and 18 minutes later. She stood up slowly and dizzily, trying to get her bearings. A deepened sound, distinctly like H, echoed through her skull. She turned for the source, and finally determined it to be the mysterious black robed figures gathered in the center of the grave yard. After getting herself straightened up, and half remembering the horrible fates of her family, she ran fiercely to the nearest figure. She tried to attract his attention with a "pardon me", then some shouting, then some nudging, and finally she got in front of him and, reaching up the foot taller that the figure was than her, pushed his hood back.
Astonishment crossed Becky’s face, as "Oh, shit," crossed Cody’s face he didn’t let it interrupt his singing, however. The song ended; a green, white, and red light filled the sky, and the robed figures vanished, along with Cody. A powerful force knocked Becky back down to the ground, and just as she hit it another force wrenched part of the soil covering the graves upwards, forcing her to bounce painfully. Horrified and in incredible pain, she sat up carefully.
In front of her was floating a white faced, white robed, brown bearded, glowing man in sandals with a kind, serene expression.
"Hello, Becky," Jesus said. "You have twenty minutes left in your life!"
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It had started out like any other summer day. Becky had woken up, thoughts of that awful Cody, and his inviting arms and welcoming lips, floating through her mind… She shook it away. She hated that she was so attracted to that atheistic creepy jerk. And he was probably gay, too, adding to the pile of sin. She hated him. And yet…
She took a shower. Cold; that was how she had been raised to like them. Her parents had never shown her the hot water valve, and it wasn’t until she was 15 that she found it herself. She couldn’t stand it; it burned her skin. She far preferred the internal warmth that she already had.
Her parents were in the kitchen, making coffee and breakfast. Neither of them, nor two of their three daughters, were bothered by the fact that, at the time, the coffee pot was buried under a heap of dirty clothes, or that the oven was full of dirty clothes and covered with dirty dishes. That was just the natural order of things for them. Living like this had introduced a large number of… impurities into their bodies. They had no idea, but they were no longer, exactly, human. Becky’s classmates didn’t have the heart to tell her, despite the fact that it was blatantly obvious. Thanks to her… unusual traits, a large number of them thought that her parents were cousins. Her sister looked just like her, except smaller, and with hair that many people thought-but didn’t have the heart to admit that they thought-was a wig. Her name was Rachel. The third sister was, miraculously, normal looking. In fact, a good number of people would honestly call her pretty. She was also the only member of the family who realized that there was something wrong with them. Her name was Sara.
Becky ate her breakfast, bringing her one meal closer to, simultaneously, death, jerky-like preservation, and a complete biological meltdown. She remained unaware of this, just as unaware as she was of, essentially, the entire world.
Following breakfast, she had her first daily prayer of the day. She prayed for her family; she prayed Sara would get prettier and finally discover just how great their family was; she prayed for Todd; she prayed for Dawn and Zach, who she didn’t realize were gay; she prayed for Waldo; she prayed for Elli, to stop being Mormon and see the true light of Christ; she prayed for many people, and she closed with a prayer for Cody, that he would become a good, Christian man, so that the two of them could get married and have a big family. And she knew that God would answer her prayer.
She then moved on to the computer. She spent fifteen minutes checking her email; there were numerous emails from "YoU Just On3 a FR3e WotCH!" and his friends, and to each one, she responded politely. When she first started getting them, she got only enough to take thirty seconds out of her day. Since then, her responses had taken it up to twelve minutes per day. After she found her way through the spam (she found both kinds delicious,) she came to a message from Cody. Entirely against her will, her heart fluttered throughout her body. It’s a serious medical condition. The subject line read "Zabam!" which meant about as much to anyone as all of his subject lines. She clicked on the message a little more eagerly than someone who actually did have a chance with Cody would have. All the body said was "Goodbye, Becky."
She stared at this for a moment, and continued to fail to comprehend it. So she wrote an email in reply.
To: Cody.Sky1@gmail.com
From: Christian.Hobbit.Freak@gmail.com
Subject: RE:Zabam!
Ookay… What do u mean? U’ll b at school next year, wont ya? I mean, u shouldn’t say goodbi unless ure going somewhere Are you going somewhere? Sorry if I’m prying.
Cody, there’s something I should tell u. but I’m not sure if I should. I dont know. E-mail me back, kay?
If you weep I will weep with you/ If you sing for joy the rest of us will lift our voices too/But no matter what you feel inside there's no need to pretend/ That's the way it is in this circle of friend/ In this circle of friends we have one father/ in this circle of friends we share this pray're/ that we'll gather together no matter how the highway bends/ I will not loose this circle of friends.
He’s waiting above.
She read it over 5 times, changing capitalization and punctuation. Then she clicked send.
She spent the next three hours reading fanfic and visiting message boards for fandoms. Primarily, she was a Lord of the Rings fangirl. She also had a soft spot for anything with Orlando Bloom. Becky had read some pretty bizarre fics in her two year tenure as a fangirl, and anyone who knows fanfic knows just what bizarre means. The even more bizarre thing was that Becky had never meant to read that sort of thing. In fact, she still didn’t know that she had read that sort of thing. She managed to be completely oblivious to all the sex.
On that particular day, she read ten "normal" fanfics and three bizarre ones. One of those three was extremely unnecessarily explicit; in it, Gimli, Pippin, and Legolas end up in Hogsmeade, while Snape and Harry Potter are visiting. All more you need to know of it is that the most common word was "8-inch". Becky did, in fact, remain oblivious, leaving a comment saying just how well done it was. Of course, it wasn’t well done at all, but Becky thought it was. You have to remember that she also thought that there was no sex occurring.
When she was done reading fanfic, it was about two in the afternoon. She made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. The bread was moldy, the peanut butter was oily, and nobody knows what the deal with the jelly was. She had no idea that the bread and jelly were messing her insides up. The peanut butter is only a problem because oily peanut butter is really gross, but that’s just a matter of opinion. This did what all of her meals did to her. She had eaten so many meals that many doctors and biologists would have fainted if they had seen a full work-up of Becky’s health. It wasn’t caused entirely by her home conditions; she also ate cafeteria food and used public toilets freely.
After her body-wrenching lunch, Becky returned to the computer for another hour. She was writing a movie, which she intended to direct. The problem with this idea was that she was an angry coward with no directorial skills, and couldn’t write a quality movie to save her life. She could have been the next Ed Wood, if she had had access to stock footage. She even wore men’s clothing.
The movie she was writing was all about pirates and friendship. Not only was it clearly "inspired" by Pirates of the Caribbean, but it was also a poorly crafted "coming-of-age" story in which a bully tries to steal a girl away, leading the hero to embark on a quest to find some sort of key to unlock some ancient city. Now, at its root, it could have been salvageable. However, the dialogue was flat, the characterization unoriginal, and she wanted to use a song from a Christian television show about vegetables for the credits music.
After this, her family had another daily prayer hour. Most days they only had the morning one and ten minutes before bed. On holidays, however, especially during wartime, they added in one or two. It really made them feel that they were doing something tangible to help. The fact that any effect it may have had was entirely intangible did not change this feeling at all.
Becky prayed for the exact same things that she had last time. Ritual was a very important part of her life. In fact, it was, generally, the only part of her life. Until about half an hour later.
When the prayer hour ended, it was 4:30. And so, it being the Fourth of July, they went out for Independence Day Dinner, just like real Americans. They went to a steak house that was, coincidentally, very near to the homes of Todd and Cody.
They arrived at the steak house at about 5. The restaurant was booked for the night, but the host was terrified by their appearance into giving them a table, for fear that the shambling dead would consume him. The shambling dead did actually consume him nine hours later, in a bout of irony that is very interesting externally, but didn’t even strike him as the shambling dead were consuming him. A moment after they were seated, a horrible screeching noise that only they could hear broke out. Their ears had bizarrely mutated to pick up frequencies that usually only dogs, bats, and their ilk can hear. Sara was unfazed, and was significantly weirded out by their writhing in minor agony. She ate her dinner quickly, and then wished the rest of them would do the same. It’s fairly difficult to eat your dinner effectively when a vibrational frequency that is coming very close to vaporizing your internal organs is barraging you.
Fortunately, the sound did not have any large effects. Immediately.
They finished dinner at about 6:30; the pain they were experiencing was getting worse, but still wasn’t world shattering. Until they drove by the graveyard at 6:35, where the sound was at exactly the right frequency and amplitude to cause Becky’s father to explode.
Screams erupted. Flesh and fat splattered throughout the car. Sara screamed, opened her door, and bailed from the car, which was still doing 20 miles per hour. She skinned her knees, but got up and started running very quickly.
The car began to spin a bit. Becky’s mother and sister, as well as Becky herself, were all too horrified to do anything about it. It went careening through the gates of the cemetery, and flung itself into a ditch.
That was when Becky’s mother exploded.
The horror worsened; Becky and her sisters were now orphans, and they had no idea why, except that they were in pain themselves. Becky scrambled out of the car in a panic, and turned around on top of it to reach back into the car to pull Rachel out.
That was when Rachel exploded.
Flesh and fat and blood flew, striking Becky in the face, and causing her to scream in even more horror, which brought her to a level of horrified screaming that can only be exceeded by those who have looked upon C’thulhu and his kin. She began running, scrambling randomly, deeper into the cemetery.
She came upon a circle of robed and hooded figures; on a subconscious level, she now knew that the sound that had killed her family was coming from these people. She turned to look at them instinctually, causing her to trip and smack her head on a tombstone, finally silencing her screams.
Becky awoke three hours and 18 minutes later. She stood up slowly and dizzily, trying to get her bearings. A deepened sound, distinctly like H, echoed through her skull. She turned for the source, and finally determined it to be the mysterious black robed figures gathered in the center of the grave yard. After getting herself straightened up, and half remembering the horrible fates of her family, she ran fiercely to the nearest figure. She tried to attract his attention with a "pardon me", then some shouting, then some nudging, and finally she got in front of him and, reaching up the foot taller that the figure was than her, pushed his hood back.
Astonishment crossed Becky’s face, as "Oh, shit," crossed Cody’s face he didn’t let it interrupt his singing, however. The song ended; a green, white, and red light filled the sky, and the robed figures vanished, along with Cody. A powerful force knocked Becky back down to the ground, and just as she hit it another force wrenched part of the soil covering the graves upwards, forcing her to bounce painfully. Horrified and in incredible pain, she sat up carefully.
In front of her was floating a white faced, white robed, brown bearded, glowing man in sandals with a kind, serene expression.
"Hello, Becky," Jesus said. "You have twenty minutes left in your life!"
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posted by Pope Richard Corey at 12:36 AM
1 Comments:
Creative!
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