Chosen
Later, reflecting back on the words of the prophecy, Gabriella had to admit that it was technically correct in parts: she was wearing purple and scarlet, even if the scarlet consisted of a ratty pair of red underwear, and she supposed that the pearl earrings and her gold crucifix with one tiny diamond chip might be counted as precious stones and pearls. She wished that she had been
called at a less awkward time, though. She wondered whether the Virgin Mother had been doing some equally awkward or embarassing chore, some Biblical equivalent of crawling around under her desk, trying to use a half-dead penlight to find an empty USB port on her computer.
Which is exactly what Gabi was doing when she was
called. She banged her head, swore and crawled out from under her desk. The first thing she noticed was that the room seemed to much colder, with a faint, chill breeze that crawled right up her legs and froze her to the skin. The second was that the lights seemed to have dimmed - much more than if there had been yet another brownout, or “power saving opportunity”, as her supervisor liked to characterize it; but that didn’t fit with the sudden overdrive in the air conditioning. A power outage in a government building in D.C. in high summer meant sweltering heat, not teeth-chattering cold.
Then she saw
the devil standing in her office.
Gabi was not a screamer. Even if she had been, her throat felt swollen, as if she were in a nightmare where the loudest sound she could make was a hoarse croak. For lack of anything more rational to do, she grabbed the container of hot coffee from her desk and threw it at the devil. It - or he - swatted it aside.
She blinked, and the devil was replaced by a man. A gorgeous man who looked as if he’d stepped right out of a magazine shoot cooked up by GQ Europe and a Renaissance painter. Gabi backed behind her desk and hoped the pepper spray in her purse was still good. The devil she could put down to some kind of weird office prank, but no way could any of her co-workers could be responsible for this
this, a man so beautiful it hurt her heart just to look at him.
Some part of her mind, some old memory, sounded a warning note. He was familiar, and not in a nice way. Like a beautiful ex-boyfriend who’d ended up cleaning out her bank account and running off with her best friend. Only worse. She pushed it aside; she’d never met this man in her life, and he was so, so easy on the eyes.
“Gabriella,” he said, in the sexiest voice she’d ever heard. He had some kind of accent fluttering behind the word, nothing she could place, maybe not even European.
“What?” she croaked, and her chest tightened at the ugliness of the sound, so out of place in a room with this beautiful man. Or devil. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.
“Fear not,” he said, and his lips curved in an enticing smile. “You, Gabriella, have found...not grace. But you have been chosen in service to humanity and to the Lord. Will you take this burden?”
Gabi cleared her throat. It took a few tries. “Grace? Is this....look, I’m not a virgin, I’m not bethrothed. My name isn’t even Mary. If you mean – “
The man chuckled. “No, no, no,” he said. “That is done. This is the....second part of the story? And here, too, a woman must be chosen.”
“Oh,” she said. “Now I’m confused. Does the second Messiah need to be born of woman? I’m sorry, catechism was a long time ago.” She was aware that she was talking too fast, talking with her hands - a habit she’d tried to break herself of, but that came back whenever she was nervous.
He caught her hands in his and drew them to his chest, pulling her closer. Even wearing her heels, she was shorter. He smelled like bitter cinnamon.
I can’t believe this is happening, she thought, as he kissed her, she stopped thinking about anything at all.
It was only after he tore off her skirt that she realized the cold in the room was pouring from his body, and shortly after that she learned that the stories of Hell as a place of endless fire were exactly backwards.
#
The dawn of the End Times was sullen and cold, unusual for the time of year, especially in San Diego. Gabi barely noticed. She was still drunk from the night before, her stomach sour from too much wine and too little food. Thinking vaguely back, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Somewhere in the long string of debauchery she must have eaten; there had been decadent feasts, and sometimes rich food to go with the wine, and exquisite little hookahs full of expensive tobacco.
And the sex. She’d never thought of herself as a prude, not even when she was a girl in Catholic school, she’d certainly dated enough, but she felt sick and overwhelmed; her new friend, who refused to tell her his name, knew all the right people and parties. Her memories were stream of pleasure smeared by wine; she remembered some of the men, and even a few of the women, were famous, and she’d done things she’d never even thought about before, and all of them had applauded, and watched, and joined her. Some of them joined only because she told them to.
Always, he was there, waiting, and no matter how late it was or how long the party or how many lovers she’d had, he took her. Because she could not turn away from him or his ice-cold body. By now neither of them even pretended he was human.
They stood on the edge of the marina, watching the sea.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It will find you, and bend its neck for you to ride.”
“I know,” she said, listlessly.
She watched as ice crawled up from the seawater, covering the rails of the boats, chunks of ice pushing them up out of the water. “Everything’s freezing. That means it’s the end, for me. For everyone, I guess.”
“Yes,” he said. “But after that?
The righteous, blinded by the glory of God, will ascend to heaven. The Messiah will defeat you and bring about Paradise. That is why you were chosen, to work at God’s left hand, as his servant in the greater destiny.”
“Like Judas,” she said. “Only with better parties.”
He patted her on the shoulder, not unkindly.“Exactly so,” he said.
The Whore of Babylon and the Morning Star waited as the first of the Beast’s seven heads broke the water.
