Say Hello To The Angels
Maximillian Guzman
Naked and happy. With our knees bleeding and the spring sun on our heads we crawled towards the Redeemer. We pray in the name of God. – For only God exists – and we owe ourselves in sacrifice. Servants of the Lord, devotees of Pain. We crawl along the summit feeling the thorns and the stones. – Happy the martyrs – exclaims Papa, accompanying Master Aquar on his prophetic walk.
For years, I believed that God was a mystery. In the community, I learn every day after prayer that no, God is mortal, and his miracles are conceptions of the Flesh. God is substantive and Mariana cries out in exhaustion. Her mother, avoiding getting up, drags her towards her and pushes her back in line. Mariana cries, but continues. Her little body is glorious, but it belongs to the Master. We all belong to the master, as long as he requires it.
If it weren’t for him we would be in hell.
Mom thinks we’re already in hell.
“We have to get out of here” he told me one night before we went to bed. I wish I could have answered him with more than a yawn.
Dad is the Master’s best assistant. Besides being his personal secretary, he is also the one who decides the sacrifices on the appointed days. There are no names for our religion and no name for our people. We are the inhabitants of God. We dwell in God.
“He is the earth, we its fertilizer. He is the Element, we its passion. He is…”
Mariana screams again. She screams and tells her mother that she can’t hold on a second longer.
The caravan does not stop, but Mariana passes into Papa’s arms.
Her crestfallen mother understands that her time has come.
Mariana is a closed bowl, a rebellious diamond that enchanted becomes a souvenir and a future.
Dragging her from her feet, Dad prays for the proximity of the Sacrifice.
“Forgive him,” Mom says to me, coming closer.
There is nothing and no one to forgive. God is waiting for us on the way to the Redeemer.
For Mariana, it will be a glorious afternoon. An afternoon she will remember and we will remember
I wish I could disobey. Aquar knows perfectly well that rebels are special beings, beings to be discovered. And it is God who discovers them, who transforms them.
To gain or lose wings. Wings that transform bodies and shine on the luckiest backs. Always on our knees going blindly to the sky. A sky that is in our encounter. There was a time when the Rebels were escaping. Aquar with his assistants and parishioners began the hunt. Nobody wants to escape anymore. The town was walled in by the neighbors. Those who enter no longer leave. No one escapes and we all serve God.
The procession culminates at the House of the Redeemer.
At another time it could be said that it was a hardware store shed. Today it is the house where God lives and is presence and wonder. So fat and sublime, in Dad’s words. To me he’s a lucky man, covered in fat and blood. – He was born with the universe – Dad says when the subject of divinity incarnate is broached. – God is Substance.
He, “The Great Creator” lives with the living and the dead. He is father of the Angels and mother of the beasts. – “Here where we all unite in his Being” – says The Master. Dad separates Mariana from the group and takes her into the shed. She is the first to enter. Aquar invites us to enter. Always on our knees.
The nauseating stench makes me retch. Others vomit. It takes some getting used to, but sooner or later we will be part of God’s company.
Fallen angels hang with their leathery wings on butcher’s tethers.
“Today God wants us to see” comments a skinny, bony woman with no breasts.
Happiness reigns over us all. We will see the transformation, but Mom takes my hand.
– Let’s go,” she says. I don’t understand her.
The lights suddenly come on and the fumes of putrefaction intensify.
God appears, naked and happy with a series of knives, Dad and Aquar walk behind.
Mariana cries.
A prayer in dead tongues while Aquar incites the girl to gobble his erect member.
Mariana opens her mouth and swallows it.
“Let’s go,” mom repeats and I know it’s useless. The ways of the Lord are sacred, I tell myself, and I think to myself that Mom is the one who doesn’t understand the situation. She doesn’t realize what we are. Mariana escupe y Dios aplaude.
Daddy places her on her back to God.
He, almighty, caresses her buttocks with his member, his hands squeeze her shoulders, kisses and magnifies the wills inside her, penetrating her, tearing her anus.
Mariana shakes and breaks her mind to survive the onslaught and draw to her the powers of Eternal Love.
With a knife in each hand they begin to cut her open.
From her back gushes a stream of blood that bathes God.
They laugh and celebrate. We copy the grimaces and laugh with mom too.
From the back, the blackish skin and bones protruding.
“The wings,” says a man, pointing at himself with the Six Patronus sign.
The other Angels are present at the ceremony.
Black and bleeding wings. Wings of the miracle, as real as the bitterness in our mouths, as the perfume of the Redeemer’s great work.
Mariana faints. The wings take a long time to appear, delaying the celebration.
They cut to pieces.
God sweats and licks the corner of his lips.
The taste of eternity. Of the secret miracle.
Penetrates melting into it.
Mom sighs, it hurts her not to be special, it hurts her to be normal.
I want to know that world of suns and darkness, of fright and veneration – I once told Berenice. She hangs behind me now, she has lost The Kingdom.
The Angels watch. They who know not death like the fallen, angels filthy with sin. Their wings spread wide and converse in hushed voices.
The beasts roar within their cages.
Little fires gush from their maw. Beasts that were brothers, cousins, uncles. Involutions of God’s love.
“We have been waiting weeks for this moment, this Discovery,” confesses a man with a mutilated arm.
The daggers tear the sternum and the girl agonizes in a sepulchral silence. Dad excitedly puts his hands deep into Mariana’s back.
– God bless! – the ladies exclaim in chorus.
Mom closes her eyes.
God shouts angrily at Aquar. The Master enters accompanying dad in the search that slowly makes us despair.
“Have Faith!” says a little winged woman. A prodigy of the community.
“What if they were wrong?”. They all watch me and God who decides in his wisdom to split Mariana in two, letting out her guts, filling herself with the warmth of a soul torn from her body. She is not an angel.
Mom tries to hide me. So many hungry eyes, so many gazes of incalculable beauty.
Dad points at the irresponsible one with reddened eyes.
And the ritual repeats itself.
This time it’s me.
It is me…
And I will be.
