IGMS Issue 23 by IGMS

Author:IGMS [IGMS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hatrack River Enterprises
Published: 2011-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

There was a great crack in the dark of night and lo, the walls of our jail had fallen down around us, yet not one man in the cell was harmed.

"It's a miracle," I called out. "My Lord has freed me from this prison that I might go forth and clear his name from the marketplaces."

Outside, Jodie, a new convert, waited in a stolen pickup truck festooned with tinsel and manger hay. She was grinning like a criminal herself.

"It was just a little C4," she said. "Thirty grams."

That jailbreak became a watershed in the Fundie movement. With just a palmful of C4 that she'd conned out of an old Army boyfriend, Jodie turned us from peaceful zealots into the Middle East kind -- at least as far as the public eye could see. It wasn't long after that the government, a bully brigade of Keystone Kaisers at the best of times, began to take us more seriously.

They started the counter-harassment by putting the cross on Patriot cards and, being Fundies, we declined to take the mark; the cross had no more business as an implement of the state than it did as an open source brand. So they gave us the same cards as the Jews and Muslims and Mormons and Scientologists and Buddhists. Our Patriot cards were yellow, not red, white and blue like everyone else's.

And they watched us like jealous housewives. When they could find us.

Bombing things, and being shot at for our beliefs made us into a corps of wannabe martyrs; I nearly became a successful one when several of us were caught burning down the Schenectady plant that printed the Old Testament Prophets collectable-card game. Instead of dying for my beliefs, I was imprisoned again.

They sent Marian and her newly-minted law degree to serve as my defense.

"Hello, Gary." She spat my old name like an accusation. Her briefcase, a shiny leather affair, plunked down on the table in front of me.

I met her hazel eyes. "It's Drew. I changed my name when the Lord changed me. I stopped being Gary long before I ever met you."

"I didn't know He changed you into a monster."

I looked away.

"There were fourteen people in the building, Gary."

"Drew."

"Fourteen parents and sons and daughters and husbands and wives and significant others, just trying to make a living. And you Fundies nearly killed them all. For what? A kid's card game?"

"The Lord calls home whoever's place is ready," I said, hating the uncertainty in my own voice. "They were doing the devil's work."

She withdrew a clear plastic bottle of Holy Water (Now 50% more blessed!) and took a drink. I scowled.

"What are they offering?"

Marian still hadn't sat down, and now she leaned across the table so close I could smell her Anoint! perfume. "Fifteen years in medium security lockup, or confess and publicly renounce violence and you'll be out on parole in five with good behavior."

I whistled. "That's still a long time."

"Meanwhile, a lot of innocent people not getting burned or blown up on the job.

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