No One Can Know! (Revelation: Murderess)

See the love of Jesus in her heart!

Karen slipped nude between the soft silken sheets, retreating in her final resting place safely ensconced in a million-plus, neo-insulated condo. She stared with emptied eyes at the slatted neon lights on the wall as she slid across the universe into a bottomless black hole cut off from eternity, the fate of every successful liar in the world. She wrestled with her desire to be free ("The Enemy"), for she understood well living a lie in a world based on a lie was the conservative right thing to do.

Over the years her life had slowly and relentlessly been consumed to "maintain appearance." At some point there'd be nothing left. Knowing this fed her rage with heart, and keeping rage alive would "save" her - and being saved means never having to look in the mirror. Her caged love bore no fruit for all the world to see, thus her declaring "war" on the "Democrats, liberals, and homeless" she blamed for ruining her life. But time is running out.

"No one can know I'm a fraud. No one must ever know. No one can know..."

She repeats this mantra over and over, as if it would manifest into reality simply by speaking. That was her hope anyway - her last hope.

Her shovel was dirty and bloody, burying her dreams for worldly bribes. She'd been running ever since, putting time if not distance between her and her entitled criminality.

"I am not the person my children know."

"I am not the person my parents know."

"I am not the person my church knows."

"I am not the person my husband knows."

"I am not the person my anyone knows."

I hope I die before I get known.

When she spoke glowing and gratefully of "God", of her mask did she speak. "God can do anything. God makes everything right. Praise be to God!" Many were impressed by the earnestness in her voice.

I narc'd on you to God!

But in these thought-revoked moments, isolated and entrenched, she seethed against the universe that threatens her earthly empire. "I'm entitled to what I have!", of this she could not be dispossessed.

It's true the luxury lifestyle she held she needed to survive. But the demon in the night insisted she need never have deceived to get it; that, in fact, she'd have many multiples over if for having led an honest life; if she'd invested in herself instead.

What will be said of this eternal fool when this comes to light? she wondered, not knowing she was already known.

Looming on the horizon, a hazy figure she cannot make out. Was it him, of the original dream, unburied and undead come to pull her back to reality? A vision of herself clinging to the edges of a tunnel with inward wind, sucking her into its destiny, that she could not hold out forever, and once entered she'd never be the same. This she resisted with all her fury and might. "The Enemy" wanted her to give up, give in, and give way. But she would hold fast to her "faith" in darkness.

Mired in moral poverty, "that damn protester girl" on TV speaking honest words for the world to hear replayed in her ears once more. Just beyond infuriating! Why do they even have to speak to those people? She couldn't remember her words at this point but the feeling - the burning, exploding, out-of-control feeling - this she could not get out of her head. And no matter how many times she entombed the girl she sprang back to life.

"That girl will ruin everything!"

The impulse to murder was overwhelming and irresistible. "Just shut her up! Shut her up now, before it's too late!"

Had she'd seen the red rage in her face in that moment, her political self would have piously claimed, "That's not the real me."

Oh, to come clean and step into the light! To escape the well where screams are never heard as asps slither in for the kill, injecting ugly venom into her veins.

Then an unexpected doorbell echoed through the condo.

"It's him!" she hissed. "I know it! Back after all these years to finally expose me!"

In her closet, she grabbed the revolver with the world as her justification. Time to kill that haunting bastard once and for all, daring to uproot the foundation of murdered feelings upon which she'd constructed an empire.

As she approached the reckoning of the front door examination, her footsteps rumbled in Heaven as boots of lead. No more tortured wondering of who she is! She'll shoot this demon once and for all: possession correction. To prove herself as one of "objectivity" she first spied through the peephole. Sure enough, she saw the outline of a predatory male.

It is him. Let him feel my fury at last! I'm sick of it, SICK OF IT!

She threw open the door in high accusation, standing in a pool of disdain.

"No! No! Never! Never! I've got a good act going and you're not going to ruin it!" Then she shot him six times dead.

"I'm always a victim!"

Epilogue: "WOMAN SHOOTS UTILITY WORKER WARNING OF GAS HAZARD IN BUILDING"

Post Script:

"Is it true God cannot see what we do in the dark?"

"Yes," replied the angel, "that is true."

"Ha!" she scoffed in justification. Then it hit her.

"So what exactly, then, does God know?"

"God knows you're not in the light."

The Burn (Looking for God in a godless world)

A crime of passion. A crime of deep disease, of heinous rot, of apocalyptic fear. An 11 year old boy mutilated, strangled, raped, and slaughtered. This criminal soul lost to darkness must be found and brought into the light before it strikes again. And this beast will surely strike again - and again, and again, until it is stopped...

Nikolai was a revered man in his rural Russian burb. A giving soul of whom no one spoke an ill word yet he was a man of passionate conviction who railed against the injustices he saw, including those perpetrated by The Judge, newly arrived in the territory. The Judge was an ambitious man who never met a truth he wouldn't crucify. Injustice was his lifeblood and like a vampire he needed constant injections to stay alive. To him, a man like Nikolai was a threat to his doomed lifestyle he dare not admit. Thus Nikolai was arrested on the bidding of blind goons who'd lost reason to live.

Privately, no pretense was made of guilt or innocence: The Judge just wanted Nikolai disgraced and dead. "I don't give a damn what you say or what you do. I don't give a damn what your people say either. I'm going to put twelve people on a jury who are going to find your goddamn ass guilty." Aiding The Judge's crime were many who'd judged themselves to be good, which in turn made any dastardly deeds they committed equally good, no questions allowed. The evangelically self-pardoned gleefully convicted Nikolai for the sins they'd executed, thus ensuring their entry to Heaven having successfully deceived God. Tied to a stake, ready for The Burn, Nikolai made his peace.

"Dear Lord in Heaven, have You no ears to hear this slander upon Your name? Have You no eyes to see the dying of the light? I am but a simple man, I cannot right this world, only myself. But there's no future for anyone without the truth. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was good and Word was God, and it was Love. Let us rejoice in the truth. How else to have hope for the present?"

The Judge was furious, as all who betray themselves are. "You dare speak of the truth! Only I know the truth! You do not! You blaspheme on top of your other outrages, for God is ours and ours alone. Only what is just is permitted by God therefore what we do is godly!"

The Judge was correct in one thing: only he knew the complete truth. For he was the beast killer and this trial his masterpiece of injustice, to feed off of for years. He tearfully orated on his devotion to victim's rights (while victimizing Nikolai), that monsters (like himself) cannot be allowed to roam freely, and that he, The Judge, was the one to make their community (un)safe! As Nikolai's ashes smoldered to the empty sky, The Judge was carried out on the shoulders of the townspeople.

For his zeal, The Judge received national plaudits from the country he betrayed; so many that he even began to believe it. He was finally the moral pillar he longed to be, handing down cruelty in the name of God, a conservative star giving safe haven to the unprincipled and unwell. And well he knew the axiom: 'Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall', thus ever vigilant he to never let virtue in any form, shape, or fashion through the door.

The extreme righteous indignation of The Judge with his God-hating religious fervor had made news even in Moscow, where it caught the eye of The Creature who ruled the land. Recognizing one of his own kind, The Creature quietly sent investigators to seek the truth. When informed it was, in fact, The Judge who'd killed the boy, the Creature spake, "We can use a worm like this!"

At The Creature's behest, The Judge moved to Moscow to destroy life after life on a national scale with the viciousness of a revenge-filled snake never saved. Drowning in power, scorning his Maker, he reveled in his mountain of rot, reaching the limits of space to avoid noticing his face, declaring himself a victim of cruel Nature and critics of love. What soul of ugliness can let a mirror stand whole?

Back in the burb, the mists of an unholy spirit infiltrated tweak-minded ears whispering of a vast and grand conspiracy of unspeakably evil elites secretly ruling the world. This secret cabal was working against the righteous endeavors of The Creature and The Judge, their holy protectors and saviors. In a toxic brew of fear and unreality came forlorn masses to drink from this cup of death.

The movement named itself BooAnon ("We's scared of everything!") "We are the honest ones who know the real truth! We speak no lie we do not believe and woe to those who do. Feel the burn we suffer upon ourselves! Angry with you, we are, for what we've become! Elect us, or we'll Start The Steal! Pray ye to God our glorious lies never end! Our will be done."