I saw God And it was Terrifying
I’m going to tell you a story about a cult, one located in the heart of Washington. It’ll be a story that I’ve never told another living soul. When I was twenty four, fresh out of college and staring at the beaming clouds of my future with ambitious eyes, I came across a group of late night writers while working for the tax department in Seattle. It always rained there, and a part of me both hated and loved it; the dense humidity sometimes agitated my asthma, but the sound of falling rain drops coating the roof of my tiny apartment never failed to put me to sleep at night. It was on one of those rainy days that a new co-worker, a twenty eight year old brunette named Amanda, invited me to write with her and a few friends that she’d made in the middle of the city.
We’d been talking about our passions, about careers that we’d be trying to pursue if we somehow lost the security of our jobs, and I told her that I always wanted to be a writer. The process of bringing entire worlds to life in another person’s mind always attracted me, and I was always talented at it. She was ecstatic to hear that, and soon enough I was writing with her posse in the back of a dark, smoky cafe that I’d never heard of before, called “Enfants de Dieu.” There was only one barista that I could see, a tall, bald, dark skinned man wearing black, square rimmed sunglasses, and a stout, silent jukebox that was the brightest thing in the whole cafe.
Amanda introduced me to her friends, who were all older, I guessed mid-fifties to early sixties. They welcomed me with warm smiles and offered their congratulations at my being accepted to work for the state. I smiled back, thankful for their kindness, but I was also…nervous. Uneasy. I noticed immediately that they were all bald, the kind of bald that makes the top of a person’s head shine. And their eyebrows, they were…they were shaved, each and every one. I don’t know why I didn’t think too much of it, why I didn’t ask them why they looked the way they did, but I just shrugged it off, not wanting to be rude, of course. I was simply ready to write, and so we commenced with what was their latest hour long writing session.
The prompt for that evening was “a god of your dreams,” and so I wrote about an abused orphan boy who, after crying and praying one night for anyone to take him away from his dreadful orphanage, looked up to see his deceased father standing in a ray of moonlight through his open window, wrapped in luminescent white cloths that hung down to his feet. There was an unconditional love in his father’s sunlight eyes, and, after extending his hand for the poor boy, disappeared with him into heaven.
At the end of the hour, everyone passed their stories around our table to be critiqued, and I was delighted to hear that my story was beloved. There were a few more disturbing stories from the bunch; one man wrote about a rotting dragon, one who swallowed its worshippers whole and gave birth to them again in steaming eggs, and another woman wrote about a crow in a nearby park that granted anyone their most fiendish desire, if they only fed it some bread. The main character in her story wished for the powers of a god, and tormented her ex-boyfriend by making him immortal, before commanding him to have sex with the running blade of a chainsaw over and over.
Nevertheless, everyone’s stories were written very well, and I was happy to be included in the gathering of such a skillful group of artists.
I was getting ready to leave the cafe after we’d finished discussing everyone’s writing, it was almost midnight by then. But Amanda stopped me by grabbing my arm. “Where are you going?” she asked with a laugh.
“Uh, home,” I replied. “I have too many numbers to crunch tomorrow. I have to go in early, too. Randall called in sick and I’m the one who has to work his files.”
“Oh no you’re not,” she said, laughing again. “Not before you participate in our final exercise of the night.”
“And…what’s that?” I asked, surprised but obviously intrigued. She hadn’t mentioned earlier that we’d be doing anything else but write. I turned back around to look at her friends and…I screamed. Their faces had disappeared. Their eyes, their noses, their mouths. They each wore a smooth, blemishless canvas of flesh.
“What…what the hell?” I asked, terrified.
I turned back to Amanda and watched her grin wickedly. She patted my shoulder, turned to nod at the barista across the cafe and eased me back down into my seat. I watched him grin knowingly and walk over to lock the front door. He turned a blinking “open” sign that hung behind a glass window over to its “closed” side, and then pulled a set of hefty black curtains tight to shut out the rest of the world.
‘What…what’s going on?” I asked. I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking. Her friends had stood from their seats and walked into the middle of the cafe, forming a circle while holding hands.
“You have no idea how relieved I was to meet you today,” Amanda said, slowly taking off her clothes. “Who would have thought that I’d meet a writer just when I needed one, and such a gifted one at that?”
Her friends began to chant, rhythmically using their voices to recite the phrases of what sounded like an old children’s song.
“Our stories tonight weren’t just for show,” she continued, standing naked before me. Her body was scarred so badly that it looked like she’d spent years in a dungeon being tortured by all kinds of malicious devices. “The name of this humble cafe, Enfants de Dieu…do you know what that means?”
“N-no,” I stammered. The barista laughed by the door. “No, I don’t. Listen, what’s going on? If this is a joke it’s not funny. Just let me go and-”
“It’s French,” she stated, interrupting me. “It means Children of God. Welcome to our cult,” she stated, opening her arms and gesturing around her. “And tonight, with the creative energies provided by every writer in this place, we’re going to summon our lord, who will lead us to salvation.”
I couldn’t believe it. My co-worker, a woman who looked about as inconspicuous as a #2 pencil, was literally trying to conjure up a god on earth. The chanting grew louder from her friends, and in the middle of their circle, on the polished floor of the cafe, appeared a divine glow. It hummed as it grew wider, wide enough to accommodate the size of a man, and from out of its depths, rising from out of the floor like some kind of assembling mist, appeared a genderless being covered in luminescent white cloths. The kind of fabrics that I wrote about in my story.
Amanda raised her eyebrows and clapped her hands. She gave me a smile of approval.
“Our lord has chosen you,” she said, overjoyed. “It has chosen to take the appearance of the god in your story.”
Her friends and the barista all bowed their heads and sank to their knees, chanting what sounded like praises to the being as it lifted its androgynous head and slowly looked around the cafe. It had incredibly long, raven black hair, and the complexion of a marble slab. Its eyes were like a cat’s, angular and sunlight yellow, and its lips, as thin as a piece of paper, didn’t move as it spoke.
“Who has summoned me?’ the being asked. It’s voice echoed throughout the cafe. “Who has seen fit to bring me into this world?”
Amanda stepped forward, her flat face a proud mask of appreciation. “It was I, lord,” she sang, opening her arms, as if to embrace the bright being. “It was I who gathered us all here tonight. We came for you, to welcome you into your new kingdom, and to walk with you after you transform it into paradise.”
The being, who stared at everything around it without a shred of interest, frowned and then lifted one of its arms, pointing straight at Amanda. The skin on its limb hung from off the bone.
“You have brought me from my world into one of little substance. You have abducted me from paradise, and now you kneel before me as if to worship me. How foolish you are, you frail, hopeless people.” The being lifted its sharp chin. “Your world is a stain on the universe. Not one among you will ever walk with me in my hallowed fields of perfection.”
Amanda looked both confused, disappointed and incredibly sad, but before she could say anything more to the being, its index finger glowed and from it, a beam of blinding white light shot out and pierced Amanda’s forehead, flying straight through. Her eyes went blank, her body turned as stiff as a wooden board, and she fell back to the floor of the cafe with a sickening thunk, deadly silent.
Her friends all lifted their heads and turned to stare at her body, and one of the women, a round, rose cheeked blond, began to whimper. One by one they turned back to the being, who glared down at them and lifted its other arm. It spread its fingers, and from the tip of each one shot out rays of lights, each piercing the worshippers at its feet through their chests and heads. I could only look on with a tear running down my face. I was afraid, and convinced that my life was at an end. I could see the barista out of the corner of my vision, struggling to open the front door of the cafe so that he could make his escape, but after dealing with all of its worshippers the being disappeared and instantly materialized behind him.
The barista, who’d taken off his sunglasses and turned to stare at the being with wide, bloodshot eyes, screamed before a hand was laid on one of his cheeks. His face ballooned into a size that made his skin so thin that I could see right through it, and with a gruesome pop, his head exploded into hundreds of gory bits of brain and bone. Not a single fragment touched the being, they sizzled into nothingness in the air before reaching it. The barista’s body slumped to the floor, soon to marinate in a puddle of his own blood.
I was alone then, left to await whatever fate the omnipotent one deemed fit for me. I trembled as it floated through the cafe, its cloths and glossy hair flowing through the air before it stopped to tower above me. I think, aside from its godly appearance, I remember most that I couldn’t smell it. The being had no scent whatsoever.
“And you,” it said, lifting one of its arms to point at me. “You were not chanting with the others.”
I shook my head, as slowly as I could. I didn’t want it to think me a threat.
“N-no,” I stammered.
“Were you among them?” it asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. I couldn’t stop the plea that rose from out of my throat. “Please…please, I…I just want to go home.” I hung my head and began to cry, hoping that everything that took place that evening was a figment of my imagination, a ghastly dream.
The being watched me with a pathetic glint in its eye before it lowered its arm. It reached up and grabbed the bottom of its chin, as if, for a moment, it was lost deep in thought.
“You will go,” it finally said, causing my face to drop in disbelief. “You will go, and you will never tell another living soul of what transpired here this evening.”
I could only fiercely nod my head, my bottom lip quivering in gratitude.
“Go, and keep your oath,” it boomed, “or suffer a punishment worse than those who died here in this place.”
Those were the being’s last words, and I wasted no time in jumping out of my seat to dash out of the cafe. I tripped over the body of the barista and fell into some of his blood before I unlocked the front door and shoved it open, completely welcoming the humid Seattle air. But before I left, I turned around to look one last time into the cafe, and a chill went down my spine as I observed the androgynous god. It stood with its shoulders rolled back in the middle of Amanda’s circle of friends, with Amanda’s dismembered head in one of its hands. I didn’t watch it disappear back through its portal on the floor.
I only closed my eyes, left the cafe behind and ran all the way home, ignoring the blood on my clothing and curious stares from late night strangers. I prayed the entire way back to my apartment, the “lord’s prayer,” the first devotion that I ever learned as a child. I didn’t stop as I entered, stripped my clothing, showered and crawled into bed naked, hugging myself as I replayed the night’s events in my mind. Eventually I fell asleep, with my head glued to the only window that I’d bolted shut in my room, along with every door.
***
Not a single word of the incident appeared on the local news, not a call reached my phone from the police, and no one mentioned anything of Amanda at work, the woman who was there one day and gone the next. Her cubicle was filled by a new employee, a man much like myself, who said that he was so excited to start the first day of the rest of his life at my side. I asked him if he’d heard of the woman who worked at his desk before him, and he said that he didn’t know anyone had. The cafe, which I passed every so often for some god-awful reason, never closed down, and in fact seemed to have more customers than before in the evenings.
I kept my promise to that other dimensional being, having never told another living soul about what happened to me on that strange, rainy evening. And I don’t plan on breaking it. If anyone besides myself reads this journal entry and thinks of sharing my ordeal, please…don’t. I don’t know what will happen to me if my secret is revealed, even after I’ve passed and moved on into the void, and I don’t ever want to find out. I will always pray desperately before I drift off to sleep every night, reciting the lord’s prayer.
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