She’d heard the lectures a thousand times and didn’t need to hear it again.
“There’s a steak house next door that I quite like,” said Erika.
Steak.
How long had it been? Chris couldn’t say. She just nodded.
During lunch, Erika talked about things going on in the world and in Aynsville. It was like she wanted to bounce future sermon ideas off Chris. They talked about the weather and sports and local politics.
What they never talked about was Chris’s lifestyle.
At the end of lunch, they went their separate ways.
Two weeks later, Chris went home with Erika to have a home-cooked dinner. Chili. It was breathtakingly good. Chris couldn’t recall ever eating a better meal. For that matter, she couldn’t recall the last time she had a home-cooked meal of any kind. She didn’t like thinking about that.
At one point, Erika left her alone for ten minutes, while she changed clothes.
Chris couldn’t help but snoop around Erika’s apartment and she found a stash of cash in a drawer. She quickly fanned it and guessed there was more than $500. Chris held it and was so close to pocketing the entire amount, but she resisted and put it all back.
She sat in the living room and prayed for strength. It was the first time she’d ever prayed on her own.
When Erika returned, she had a bag full of clothes.
“Here, you can try these on. I hope they fit. But before you do, would you like to take a shower?”
Chris could only nod.
She left that day wearing a new pair of jeans and a light pink T-shirt with a logo from Adidas.
They hugged before Chris left. As she was leaving, she turned and said, “I wanted to steal the money from your drawer. It’s what I do.”
“Did you steal it?”
“No.”
Erika smiled. “Thank you.”
Another two weeks passed, and Chris asked if she could help out on Sunday mornings. She started looking after the coffee urns, making sure there was always enough for anyone who wanted some while they waited for the service to start.
Soon enough, Chris became Erika’s third disciple. She broke free of the drugs, because she was addicted to something else now. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. Not to Erika, but to Chris.
Erika smiled every time they saw each other, and Chris still believed every sermon was written especially for her.
Every other person listening on Sunday mornings felt the same thing.
As time went on, Erika gathered other people who she knew were completely loyal to her. By the time I met her, she had nine disciples.
Jesus would have had twelve, had he survived.
Chapter 22
Last night I stopped after I finished writing the last chapter, I re-read everything put down so far, all the good and especially the bad. It was hard to read the bit about smashing in Jesus’s head.
I’m not proud of that.
This is supposed to be an account of my crimes, but just as much an insight into why I’ve done the things I have. I’m trying to be as honest as possible, not trying to sugar-coat my actions.
So, let me spend a few minutes in a digression.
I’m in prison. The author’s note at the beginning of the book mentions my gratitude to the warden, but really, is there anybody on the planet who doesn’t know what I’ve done and what happened to me? Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.
My mail is screened, but I get dozens of actual letter mail every day. I’m limited in my use of email and my address isn’t public, which is good, because I’m sure I’d drown in notes from total strangers.
Some think I did the right thing, but most think I’m a horrible person who really should have received the death sentence.
I haven’t spoken to any reporters since I’ve been incarcerated.
I haven’t had any visitors, either. Well, that’s not quite true. Karen Anderson comes to visit me. As much as I hated doing it, I once told her to never come back. I’ve done her enough damage, and I didn’t want her to feel obligated to visit me once a month. However, she’s continued to ignore my request, and I’m grateful when she shows up. She’s a good person.
Besides… well, that’s a later part of my story.
Reporters never stop trying to interview me, but I don’t want to favor one media outlet over another. Instead, this book is my attempt to answer the questions they want to ask. And all proceeds from the book go to the Founding Church of Saboism.
So, about me.
I’m a photographer, specializing in science pictures. I love my job, because, well really, there’s nothing better than photography and science. Those are my two favorite topics, and magazines paid me a lot of money to go have fun.
How lucky am I for that?
I was never one for religion. It never came together for me, because it felt like science and religion were on opposite sides of a long-fought battle, and there was no way I was going to abandon my science. I trust science. It all works. So, if science says that the universe came into being from a unbelievably catastrophic explosion, and that expansion took place over a few micro-seconds, and once that was all set in motion, there’s really nothing more to the universe. It’s all explainable.
I chose that over believing some wizard in the sky snapped His fingers one day and imagined the universe into existence.
Science wins. Always.
At least that’s what I thought most of my life.
But stubborn old beliefs can be changed. It just takes the right catalyst.
I arrived in Aynsville in the evening and headed to my hotel. I unpacked and set up my laptop, checking the latest headlines from CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Another stubborn old habit.
Nothing new since I’d left Minneapolis earlier in the day.
Part of me still thought this was a wasted trip. I was here to photograph a nineteen-year-old girl who told people she was God’s daughter.
Maybe that should be capitalized: God’s Daughter.
Either way, I wanted the damned thing to be over with. Carrie Hargrave was doing the interview, and it seemed like a ridiculous waste of my time to photograph it.
But, Time magazine, in the form of John Questore, could be quite convincing. I grabbed a can of Coors Light from the minibar and popped it open. Without really thinking about it, I went to Google Images and typed in Erika Sabo.
“Hello there,” I whispered.
The first photo I saw grabbed my attention. She was clearly a young woman, but her expression was one of solid confidence. She was smiling broadly, and there was no way around it: she was absolutely beautiful.
Would God have created a beautiful black girl to be the Messiah?
Jesus was in his thirties when he started his ministry. Well, he would have been if I hadn’t murdered him.
I was puzzling over the question without even realizing at the time how silly it would sound if somebody spoke the same question out loud to me. God didn’t do any such thing, because there was no such thing as God.
There were hundreds of photos of Sabo online, but they all showed the same powerful face. The face that launched a new religion.
After flipping back to CNN on the laptop, I found I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Part of that was professional curiosity. How would I photograph her to really bring out her inner self? What angle would work best, and what background? I thought about lighting and F-stops, my mind wandering off to layout and design and focus and maybe spiritualism. After all, I needed to present her in a way she was comfortable with.
“Lady God.”
I laughed a bit when I said that, as if it were the funniest thing I’d heard in ages.