Julia Elliott - The Wilds

“We didn’t do nothin’,” Brunell rasped, but Meemaw didn’t seem to hear her.

“Twelve generations,” she said. “Twelve generations brought over the sea. My daddy gave it to me and now it’s time to give it to Michael. I ain’t got long.”

“You ain’t go die,” said Brunell.

“Shush, child. Your flesh will melt like dirty snow.”

“But we didn’t do nothin’.” Brunell sat up in her sleeping bag and crossed her arms.

Meemaw groaned. She clutched her bosom and gazed up at the ceiling fan. A great shudder contorted her body. Her little feet kicked, sending one of her purple bedroom slippers flying.

“Aw crap,” said Brunell. “She’s got the Holy Ghost on her. We’ll never hear the end of it now.”

From the depths of Meemaw, a strange voice came bubbling up: the voice of a primordial masculine spirit, the voice of Darth Vader.

“Roboto bulch,” said Meemaw. “Booboo kakopygian bog.”

The TV light cast Meemaw in a ghoulish glow. Eyeballs rolled back, she swayed and twitched and vomited her guttural language, words scraped up from her ancient guts. Dark fumes spurted from her. She seemed to be summoning things. I glanced around the room, thought I saw bats flitting in corners. My sleeping bag was damp with sweat and I couldn’t move.

Meemaw stopped babbling on the stroke of one, just as the clock on the shelf above their space heater emitted a single moan. Her eyeballs resumed their customary position. She sat on the plaid couch panting, and then wiped a strand of brown dribble from her chin. She reached into her pocket, pulled forth a Tootsie Roll, opened the sweet, and set it on her tongue to melt.

Sucking her candy, Meemaw grunted softly. She smoothed her housecoat and patted her hairnet. She looked us over as though she’d forgotten we were there.

“Jezebels,” she mumbled.

Her voice sounded normal now, albeit scratchy and faint, worn down from whatever thing had rocked through her, scaly and slimy, born through her prehistoric throat.

“‘And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet,’” said Meemaw, “‘decked with gold and precious stones and pearls.’”

Meemaw ate another Tootsie Roll and told us about the Whore of Babylon, who laughed like a monkey and slurped fornications from a golden cup. The Whore rode a seven-headed dragon bareback and caressed the beast’s spine with her private parts.

Meemaw leaned into the TV light. She told us she had a secret that was about to bust her heart wide open. She grinned.

“I’m a prophet,” she whispered. “And every single night Jesus gives me dreams.”

She told us the Messiah would arrive this December in a spaceship so big its shadow would darken the entire state of South Carolina. He’d land in the Blue Ridge Mountains and set up his golden scales on top of Caesars Head. He’d take away the righteous, leave the sinners to wallow in the dung heap they’d made of planet Earth.

Meemaw leaned back on the couch, tucked her legs up under her bottom like a little girl.

“Covered in festering sores,” she said, “the sinners will suffer one thousand plagues.”

According to Meemaw, locusts would devour all crops. The seas would turn to blood, a trillion dead fish afloat. And the great Beast of the apocalypse, a kind of Tyrannosaurus rex with thirty-six heads and three hundred horns, would roam the earth, blasting fiery halitosis at every sinner he stumbled upon, scorching their bodies with third-degree burns. Flesh would fall from their bones. Skeleton people would run howling across the ashen fields.

“People will eat each other,” Meemaw said, “mothers will eat fathers and fathers will eat mothers. Children will gnaw upon the rancid hides of their parents. Parents will eat the sweet fat boiled from their babies’ bones.”

Meemaw teetered forward and her whiskers caught the light. Her eyes were bright, swimming with fever.

“Dragons,” she croaked, “will burrow in the poisoned seas.”

Meemaw went on and on, prophesying until she was hoarse. She filled the room with horrific visions that left us deeply freaked, though we didn’t want her to stop. Drunk on sweet terror, shivering in our sleeping bags, we followed her every word, delighting as the tales grew stranger.

She described the filthy, outsized lusts of the Beast, who had a member like an oak trunk and who copulated with his harem of stinking she-dragons. Though the dragons were vile reptiles, they possessed the fatty teats of sows. Their young sucked blood from their mothers. They smacked their lips and had incestuous intercourse with each other until the world was full of dragons, so many dragons that swarms of flying serpents blotted out the sun.

Eyes squinted in the dim light, we saw them — the pterodactyl flocks darkening the sky, the hordes of naked people running helter-skelter upon the barren earth, their scorched hides festering with open sores. We smelled the sad acrid scent of burnt hair, the turnip-green stench of unwashed bodies, the blunt black reek of smoldering tires, for there was no wood left upon the planet, and the sinners sat around fires of trash, roasting the radioactive carcasses of dogs.

“Meanwhile,” said Meemaw, “the chosen will walk in robes of flowing satin, rose petals strewn upon the pure diamond floor of Christ’s spaceship. Their beds will be stuffed with doves’ feathers and covered in satin quilts. Upon each bed, a snow-white baby lamb will rest, its eyes as blue as summer skies. And angels will bring the chosen little cakes to eat and nectar in golden cups.”

Meemaw smacked her lips. She could taste the nectar, she said. Sweeter than all the best drinks put together — Dr Pepper and Pepsi-Cola, Mello Yello and Mountain Dew, grape Kool-Aid with five cups of Dixie Crystals sugar. Each room on the spaceship would be equipped with a whirlpool Jacuzzi. And behold — when the aged and infirm dipped their withered limbs into these fragrant holy waters, washing them clean with the Lamb’s blood, they’d pull those limbs out, young and radiant again.

Meemaw retrieved a Hershey’s Kiss from the pocket of her robe and held the twinkling sweet up to the light of the television.

“Lovers will be reunited,” she said, peeling foil to reveal the fat droplet of chocolate. “They’ll revel in their rosy flesh. Amen.”

She popped the candy into her toothless mouth, closed her eyes in reverie as the morsel dissolved upon her aged tongue. Meemaw moaned and swayed, and then, in the faintest of whispers, just a scratch of voice that floated like a dandelion seed upon the air, Meemaw described heaven, a warm green planet wrapped up like a birthday present in white mist. The streams were clear and sweet as Sprite, with goldfish flapping in the bubbly waters. Lush trees grew, velvet-leaved and heavy with glowing fruit. A zillion colorful birds darted in the fragrant air. Soft fluffy animals tussled in dappled shade. The lion lay down with the lamb. And shining insects buzzed in the air, no mosquitoes among them, no wasps or hornets or other stinging pests. The bees had no poison in their bodies, freely offering their honey up to man. And the cows and nannies and mares gave suck, sweet flowing milk that tasted like melted ice cream.

Her mouth wrenched open in a beatific grin, Meemaw rocked on her haunches. She said Christ’s spaceship would land in a flowering field. The angelic bodies of the chosen would be personally escorted by Jesus to paradise, where there was no sickness, no aging or bodily wounds. If you cut yourself, the flesh mended in seconds, no scabs or scars left behind. You could chop off your head one hundred times with a machete and it would always grow back, more beautiful than before. There was no hunger, no thirst, no wrath, no jealousy. There was no lust, for each would have his perfect mate, a beautiful fair creature shining with celestial light. Meemaw’s husband would be there, of course, looking like he did at age nineteen, his hair thick as a stallion’s mane, his lips sweet as summer plums.