Likeness

The Devil can quote scripture to suit his own purposes, but not after Disney released their Bible movie.
“You can’t copyright the Bible!” howled The Devil.
“You’re quoting the characters in our movie,” said the lawyers. “And that getup with the horns and the tail… that’s a close likeness to the Mr. Scratch character.”
“OF COURSE IT IS! IT’S MY LOOK!”
Despite his best efforts and the assistance of Daniel Webster, The Devil lost.
He grumbled, and then realized… searching… searching…
He tore up his contract with Michael Eisner.
“Suck it!” he laughed, turning on CNBC to watch the carnage.

Dark Arts

Unlike the psychics that the police would hire to find missing people, Morgaine Darkstone made people’s heads explode and fire to rain down from the sky.
So, the police hired anti-psychics, psi-resistant specialists who weren’t affected by Morgaine’s dark arts.
Once they had her trapped in the old abandoned Church Of Pain, department sniper-warlocks took her out with a meteor storm.
Her soul bled into the altar, so if you’re looking for the best unholy water, you’ve come to the right place
Ever seen what happens to a wedding where the champagne flutes have been washed with this stuff?
Priceless.

The Hypocrite

They showed me the activist’s profile.
“Professional protester. Trust fund baby. San Francisco.”
They let that out slowly: “San Francisco.”
Photos of a Pride parade, love and peace.
I saw him in a Gaza City cafe, sat down, and said “If I shouted Gay and you shouted Jew, who would they kill first?”
“Don’t,” he begged.
Where’s your pride now?
Coward.
That night, in bed, I told my boyfriend.
“Fucking faggots,” he said, and he held me as we laughed.
When I heard he was dying, I wrote him.
Wished there was a cure for his condition: hypocrisy and hate.

Testimony

Afraid.
Humiliated.
Bleeding.
No more!
Tablet after tablet, Cain marked every detail of Abel’s constant harassment, ridicule, cruelty, and torture.
And the abuse.. The awful touching… He felt disgusted, swam in the river until the wretched feeling passed, and then went back to the tablets with renewed fury.
When Cain was finished, he stacked the tablets and sought out his brother.
Many years later, Seth showed the tablets to Father Adam.
Adam wept, thought of his two lost sons, and smashed the tablets.
He then looked at Seth.
Would he stay silent?
Seth swore to, so Adam let him live.

Pagan

A stranger among us?
We board our canoes and row out to The Island of The Great Statue.
She is The Goddess Of The Golden Door, and she watches over we survivors of The Last War.
Her book, brand, and crown held high above us all.
“Look upon her, stranger!” we say. “Pray she accepts you!”
Once ashore, we drag him to the altar and sing:
“O, Lady Colossus, lift your lamp, and accept this wretched refuse to your Golden Door!”
Then, the Judge thrusts his knife into the stranger’s heart.
We board the canoes again, and row for home.

The Lion And The Lamb

Eve listened to the serpent, ate from Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and Adam joined her.
When God found out, He cursed the serpent, Eve, and Adam.
As for the rest of the plants and animals, what a raw deal!
After all, it wasn’t the emu or platypus’ fault that the serpent was a prick, right?
Oak trees and mangroves weren’t involved at all. The fig was just an innocent bystander, an unwilling hostage providing cover.
The worst of it was all the bugs and mold swarming The Tree Of Life.
Damn things are impossible to kill now.

For Ants

When people say to spray for ants
I’d rather that they pray for ants
I think ants are really neat
So I kneel down and bless their feet
I tell the ants to bow their heads
And then my mom gives me my meds
They make the voices go away
Which tell me when I ought to pray
I sleep and dream of Lord Apshai
Who rules all ants from upon high
He then demands a sacrifice
I look around for something nice
And that’s why I burned all my pants
Burnt offerings to the god of the ants.

Amen.

The Evening Hunt

I used to have trouble sleeping.
Yeah, I tried everything. Mattresses, high thread count sheets, pills, diets, exercise, music…
And pillows. So many different pillows. Piles and piles of pillows.
Different shapes, different materials.
What the hell is Space-Age memory foam? Smells like tar, feels like a marshmallow.
Awful.
That’s when I prayed.
All day, all night.
Days. Weeks. Months.
And then, my prayers were answered.
Standing there, an angel said “How can I help you get to sleep?”
I whacked him with a rock, plucked the feathers from his wings, and stuffed them into a pillow.
Never slept better.

If I had a hammer…

If I had a hammer, I wouldn’t hammer in the morning, evening, or all over this land.
Instead, I’d rent that hammer out to laborers who don’t have their own tools.
With the profit, I’d buy some more tools, like saws and wood planes and socket wrench sets, English and metric.
Then, if someone wants to hammer out danger or warning, they can do it with my hammer, as long as they put down a deposit first.
As for hammering out love between my brothers and my sisters, forget it. My whole family’s nuts.
And they never return my tools.

Multiplying

Long ago, my Christian friends tried to teach me about Jesus.
So, I sat there and listened while they regurgitated everything they’d learned in Sunday School.
I agreed that the guy sounded like a really cool dude and did some amazing things, but I never understood the whole “multiplying the loaves and the fishes” miracle.
Sure, I was good at Math, but I never figured out how someone could multiply bread by a fish.
“What’s pumpernickel times trout?” I asked them. “Or whole wheat times salmon?”
In the end, they thought me a heretic.
Whatever. Their math is still fishy.