Chuck Palahniuk - Doomed

Festus smiles at me with the same condescending sad-eyed expression my mom uses when she addresses the United Nations General Assembly. A flood of pitying tears, barely contained.

Undeterred, I say, “Yeah, Heaven is tons better than I figured it would be….”

Festus silently continues to regard me, his lips trembling with compassion.

Defensive now, provocatively I ask, “Hey, when the combine machinery tore you to shreds, did it hurt? I mean, did it rip off your hands first? How did that work?”

At this, Festus settles his angelic self on the bed beside me. “Do not be ashamed, Miss Madison,” he says. “For I know you’ve been discarded by creation to spend forever in the scalding anus of Hades.” His placid face says this without a hint of malice. “I know that you suffer constant starvation with nothing to slake your hunger and thirst save a mighty banquet of fresh urine and excrement….”

Ye gods. Gentle Tweeter, I am speechless. I haven’t a clue where Festus gets his information, but Hell is not that bad. I do not eat caca-doodie or drink pee. Don’t you believe a word of this.

Charles Darwin I am not!

“I know also,” he says, casting a look of ultimate pity upon me, “I know that you’re forced to copulate endlessly with leprous demons and subsequently bring forth their filthy progeny in circumstances of utter degradation.”

Hey, CanuckAIDSemily, back me up, here. Nobody is forced to get down with demons, right? As a virgo intacta , I have solid proof to the contrary, but there’s no way to submit such evidence for Festus’s inspection. Meaning: If I even try to show him my maidenhead, the gesture is going to look somewhat slutty.

“I know you exist despised by all worthy beings.” Festus blinks his blue cow eyes at me. “That every sentient creature considers you beneath respect. That in your present state you are more vile than—”

“Shut up!” I interrupt, lying rigid on the bed’s coverlet. My chest is heaving. My temper seething. I’d rather spend infinity snacking on putrid poo than be talked down to by some self-righteous angel. Possible boyfriend or not, I’m leaving. I stand. I straighten my glasses. I smooth my skort. “If you’ll excuse me,” I say. “I’m sure I’m supposed to be fornicating with some diseased corrupt gargoyle or something right now.”

“Wait,” Festus entreats.

I wait. There it is, my greatest weakness: hope.

“God cast you down unto the Pit not because you are vile, but because God knows you are strong,” says Festus. “God knows you are brilliant and courageous and that you are not weak and would not be debased by the torments which destroy weaker souls….” Festus rises and hovers, fluttering in the air near my face. “Since the beginning of time God has intended for you to be His emissary into perdition.”

God, Festus explains, knows that I’m pure-hearted.

God recognizes that I’m exceptional. He believes me to be sweet and smart and kind. God does not think I’m fat. He wants me to be his supersecret double agent.

Like nothing so much as a celestial version of Darwin’s annoying little finches, Festus jets and darts in his golden fairy excitement, finally taking up a perch on my shoulder. Standing parrot-style beside my ear, he says, “God beseeches you to prevent a grave impending catastrophe.”

Gentle Tweeter,

Even now storm clouds gather in the sky above the Pangaea Crusader . Clouds the color of blue lead, the color my mouth sees when I chew on a graphite pencil, these race toward Madlantis from every horizon, a dark canopy so low that the yacht feels sandwiched between this, this oppressive black ceiling and the gleaming, cotton-colored, plumped-polymer dreamscape. And, no, it is not lost on me that my situation is so like the seafaring Beagle adventures of Mr. Darwin. The both of us: boldly cast upon the cruel Pacific to seek our destinies. Being Mr. Darwin’s supernaturalist successor, I steel myself to bear witness even as Mr. K paces the passageway outside my locked stateroom door. Even while my upstate squire reveals his divine truths unto me.

“Fear not, Miss Madison,” says he. In my sealed stateroom full of stuffed animals and shed cat hair and dead fleas, the angel Festus says, “God has decreed your existence and God dictates your every perfect thought and action.”

Angel Festus glows with a soft pink light, like a Park Avenue lamp shade lined with cerise silk, and his light flatters everything upon which it shines: the unread copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves on my bedside table, obviously a gift, the spine unbroken… a dog-eared copy of The Joy of French Cooking , my own favorite bedtime reading… a silver-framed photograph of my parents grinning naked on an eco-resort beach in Cambodia. Weensy Festus, his angelic features, his fingers as well as his nose and cleft chin, look to have been piped from a pastry bag filled with butter-cream frosting.

As he speaks, his open expression suggests the delicious invitation of a pastry cart, a bakery window, a box of chocolates. “God has gifted you with travails—not to test you, but to prove to you your own innate strength.” His voice is as soft yet as robust as the ocean swells; his words sound as faint as thunder rolling from some great distance.

“God brings all spirits into mortal bodies so they might test themselves and more fully comprehend their own power,” explains this pint-size beau, the upstate cow manure still clinging to his booted appendages.

From beyond the locked stateroom door, another voice shouts, “Angel Madison! Where are you?” A sputtering barrage of flatulence follows, the so-called “Hail, Maddy” of a devoted Boorist. That voice, the quavering vibrato of Mr. K, continues, “I’m really needing to talk to you!”

As Festus explains it, the rapid growth of Hell in recent history is beginning to unnerve God. At current earthly levels of rudeness and uncouth behavior, nearly all souls are damned. “Precious souls as young as three or four, raised on the misplaced multicultural priorities of Sesame Street ,” he claims, “are doomed before they even enter the godless morass of the public school system.” In comparison, he says, the flow through the Pearly Gates has slowed to a trickle, and God worries that soon Heaven will be rendered irrelevant, nothing more than a quaint ghetto populated by a few squeaky-clean products of homeschooling. If some global cataclysm were to wipe out humanity at this moment in history, all souls would go to Hell. No one would be left to breed on Earth. Satan would win, and God would be humiliated.

Therefore, God had used me to infiltrate Hell. Meaning: I am God’s secret agent, and even I didn’t know my own strategic undercover purpose.

In the burdened silence that follows, I ask, “Why doesn’t God like Sesame Street ?”

“Yours, Miss Madison, is a singular perfection like the flame of a candle,” insists Festus. “This is the reason God cast you into the inferno. And why God set you in battle against the worst souls in human history, and why in all of these trials were you victorious.” So passionately does Festus deliver this speech. So vehemently. His corn-fed frame fairly dances within his Sunday-school clothing.

Simultaneously, heavy seas lift Madlantis and drop us. Stuttering flashes of lightning flash blazing Morse code in the portholes. Ye gods. All is turmoil without.

“God almighty does not labor to create souls simply for Satan to steal them away,” says Festus, his eyes bright with reflected lightning.