It read:
Department of Social Services has received a significant amount of reports involving incorrect status involving disabilities and illness. In order to better serve you, we are asking that you answer the following question truthfully. Please check one (1) of the following boxes that best describes you.
[ ] My illness/reason for disability has dramatically improved in recent days, and not returned.
[ ] My illness/reason for disability dramatically improved, but symptoms have returned.
[ ] I experienced no change in my physical/mental disability.
Once inside, Jake checked the third box, cut his tongue licking the return envelope, and then smashed a second hole in the wall.
On the drive to the church, Jake kept rubbing his eyes as if to pull himself out of a very deep sleep. He winced every time he hit a bump. There were two reasons. The first was the pain that flared up and down his leg from his bad knee. The second was that the lid to the shoe box next to him kept coming dangerously close to slipping off.
He turned his radio to a Christian music station, hoping to find a hymn or something to calm himself down. Instead he heard vaguely sanitized rock with love of women replaced with love of God. He felt the stone in his stomach turn. Turning into the parking lot of the church, he kept running insane thoughts through his head, hearing Reuben berating him again and again, calling him a weak pussy, cowardly and afraid of everything. In his mind, he could offer no rebuttal.
Inside the church there was room to breathe, and the jovial atmosphere of elation and celebration was gone. A dark cloud settled over the hallways, and worry leapt from the red carpet like fleas. He found a spot in the back and stood, eyes closed and hands open at his side. One time, for a brief moment, he had been touched by God, but it was too brief a touch. He had not grabbed on, had lost the opportunity to be led, and within the church he prayed for another chance, another touch, to be clutched in a hand wiser than his own and led down a path far better than the dismal, dark loneliness he feared.
Somber songs. A band leader that told everyone to keep faith with a smile on her face that did not match her voice. The preacher was soaked with sweat, and he held the bible aloft like a lightning rod. And then they sang Amazing Grace. Jake’s heart leapt. The song began, and he hoped for a regression to the way things were. He even prayed for his knee to be healed, for that glimmer of hope to be restored in his chest.
But the song did not move him as it once did. He heard the human voices, heard their worry, their sorrow, their desperation and exhaustion. Where was the joy in defeat? Where was the worship to the heavens as the lions consumed them in arenas? He opened his eyes. Where the Hell was he? A brief whisper, something intimate yet foreign, brushed against his heart. When the pain flared in his knee, and his prayer remained denied, he dismissed the feeling, hardened his heart, and limped for the door. As he did the choir began another song, one that seemed sickly perverse given all their circumstances.
“He touched me,” they sang. “Oh, he touched me, and I’ve never been the same.”
Lie, he thought. Damn lie. They were the same, everyone the same, and that was the fucking problem.
He turned the key in the ignition with a shaking hand. The radio flared up with the engine, and breathing heavily, Jake stared into nowhere, his hands on the steering wheel, the car still in park. Going home meant giving in. It meant accepting a long, painful life. It meant living on the aid of others, of constant awareness of his loneliness and lack of friends. Could he endure that? So many times he had thought no, and only a sliver of hope kept him from opening that shoebox.
But what hope was left? God had touched the entire world, and in less than a week things were back to normal. All the sorrow, the heartache, the good and the bad and the rich and the poor and the weak and the strong, all living in loveless discord. The same. How could he believe things would get better when that very prayer had given him nothing?
The words of a song on the radio slowed, and the sudden tempo change plucked him out of his mental coffin.
“Good won’t show its ugly face,” the verse began.
Jake turned the volume up, imagining the church he just left filled with such vile, ugly good.
“Evil won’t you take your place?”
Was that the reason for the return of pain? A callous reminder that the world wasn’t perfect?
“Nothing ever changes…nothing ever changes…”
The devil’s inertia was too strong, and who was Jake to fight against it? What if…what if…
“…by itself!”
Jake turned off the car and removed the lid from the shoe box.
The clip had thirteen bullets. A sudden inspiration hitting him, he ejected the clip, removed one bullet, and then shoved the clip back in. He got out of the car. Gun in hand, he limped back into the House of God.
He would be an inspiration. He would be a source for change. Their arthritis, sores, and bad coughs would return, but his wounds, his bullets…they would remain. They would remain throughout the lives of every man, woman, and child in that small white building. Forget pathetic wounds like sight, breath, and touch. He would show them God’s true power. Sorrow. Death. Horror. Loss.
Let God heal those wounds.
Then all would see.
Twelve disciples.
Twelve bullets.
One Judas.
David Dalglish lives in Missouri with a wife that is way out of his league and a daughter who was obviously conceived of better stock than he offers. He is the author of nine books, all blatant ripoffs of World of Warcraft and Dragonlance. His dream is to one day be an accountant for a Vegas prostitution ring.
Of all his books, his most popular to date are the three novels in the Shadowdance series—A Dance of Cloaks, A Dance of Blades, and A Dance of Death. His other series include the tremendous Paladins series, possibly the best writing he’s ever presented and The Half-Orcs. He also compiled and edited—as well as wrote many of the tales included within—the anthology A Land of Ash. To read more about David and how overrated he is, feel free to visit http://ddalglish.com.
CHORUS
Bonus Story by Robert J. Duperre
The howling began at sundown.
Abigail Browning sat up in bed and drew her legs to her chest. Her entire body ached from the day’s hard labor, muscles and joints groaning each time she moved. She cocked her head and listened as a tingling sensation crept from feet to knees to chest to head. These noises weren’t exactly unexpected—Mort Hollis, the gruff old man who’d sold her the farm earlier that day for thirty gold coins, had warned her about the ramshackle town of Westworth’s savage nightly visitors and told her to make sure her doors were locked tight—but there was no way she could have anticipated the alarming rawness of the sound.
It started as a rumbling, drawn-out mewl that drifted through the cabin like the hum of a distant motor. Soon higher-pitched screeches joined in, echoing in the audible space above and below the originator. The sound wavered in tone, scaling up and down, creating an abstract, primal melody. The window shutters rattled with each variation in timbre. It almost seemed as if they were shaking in fear. Abigail felt the same way.