Plagues
First it was frogs, then locusts, then remote aerial drone strikes. Clearly God was punishing us. God was punishing us but we were happy because at least we knew that God existed.
All the liquid turned to blood. The water in our Brita filters and the fountain at the mall—all blood. The bartenders balked as the gin and vodka ran red through their shakers. The men wouldn’t stand for it. They blamed the women for the blood. The men blamed the women and the women blamed the horses and the horses blamed the babies and the babies cried for their milk which was blood, breast or bottle.
The frogs were getting out of hand. We dissected them in science class. The underserved communities were disproportionately affected by the frogs. If you were to kiss the frogs, they would not become princes. They’d chastise you for non-consensual touching. It was a disaster with PETA. Then the frogs started organizing. They formed an autonomous zone. They developed seasonal depression.
Everyone had a feeling that God had forsaken us. All the babies had colic. All the livestock had yeast infections. The rumor that God had forsaken us spread through our friends and neighbors and Priests. God’s forsaken us, pass it on. In God’s absence the girls rolled up their skirts. In God’s absence we pierced our ears and sullied the purity of our flesh and bought crypto and wrote autofiction. We played truth or dare. Never have we ever. Mary fuck kill: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We abolished homosexual marriage and then heterosexual marriage and then marriage in general. The nuns, who were of course married to God, filed for divorce. They hired Jewish lawyers.
Madeline brought the lice. That one wasn’t God. Madeline brought the lice from a boarding school in Vermont. Madeline passed the lice to Elijah who gave them to Anika who passed them to Jake Willner. Anika loved Jake Willner but Jake Willner could take it or leave it with Anika though Jake Willner would walk through hot coals for Katja who more or less hated Luca but loved Elijah who hung the moon for Abigail who passed the lice to Blake while giving him head in his parents’ basement so we all had lice—though Blake only had genital lice. “The future is uncertain,” said Elijah, “but we must keep on living so perhaps we should all make love in Blake’s parents’ basement.” So we took shots of blood and scratched our collective hair and had group sex in the basement while frogs pelted the roof.
One day the sun went down and did not come back up. We used our phone flashlights to open our doors and put on our makeup and file our taxes and read our newspapers though luckily the newspapers were on our phones/ flashlights. “Things have changed,” said my mother, “since I was a girl.” But we were happy. Because God existed. “Now sleep, sweet child, as we lie in wait for what horror tomorrow may bring.”
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