The story so far…
Ten years ago, a gigantic, male, comatose form, two miles long and humanoid, appeared off the coast of Africa. The Vatican hired a supertanker to haul God’s body north and preserve it in an iceberg. Six years went by, and then an earthquake knocked the body loose, and so the Pope was forced to go public, after which the American Baptist Confederation bought the Corpus Dei for eighty million dollars and made it the centerpiece of their Orlando theme park. …
Once it became clear that God wasn’t brain-dead, a Pennsylvania judge names Martin Candle convinced the World Court to impound the body and try it for crimes against humanity. …
Candle lost his case, went berserk, and destroyed the body’s life-support system. So now God was completely dead, but the Baptists wanted Him back anyway—He would probably still draw crowds—which meant another towing operation, west across the North Sea, through the English Channel, and over the Atlantic. …
The mission ended abruptly. No sooner had the flotilla passed through the Strait of Dover than something extraordinary occurred.
That extraordinary happening turns out to be the piece by piece magical disembowelment of the Corpus Dei, which gives up its organs one by one, leaving nothing but bones.
“Ultimate reliquary? I don’t get it What’re they putting in there, the bones of God?”
“The bones of God.”
“What?”
“God’s bones.”
“What?”
“He’s dead.”
“I know. Nietzsche told me.”
“This isn’t philosophy, Gerard. It’s life. God died. Only the bones remain.”
It gets weirder and darker from there on in, as the skull of the erstwhile deity presides, in geosynchronous orbit, over a plague of death-awareness. Share and enjoy!
