The messenger

Do you believe in God? I didn’t believe until it presented itself to me in the body of seven year old girl.

“All you have seen is true,” it said, “all you have heard is true.”

“Why?” I asked it, “why do I have to see them?”

“Do you not love me?” it asked, “do you not want to please me?” I looked at it, squirming inside this frail, blonde headed girl. I could see it moving beneath her skin, trying so hard to contain itself inside her small body.

“No,” I replied. It laughed, it used the girl’s delicate vocal chords but the laugh was not hers.

“No?” it questioned, “then why do you pray? Why do you worship me?”

“I don’t anymore,” I said. I fumbled in my pocket for my packet of cigarettes, only two left, I placed one in my mouth.

“You sicken me,” it said, “You abuse what I gave you. Those lungs, that skin. It was I who made you.”

“You’re not fucking Father Christmas in his workshop, making us all one by one,” I spat at it, it didn’t react, “you don’t give a shit about us,”

“I suppose you are going to say that you are like ants to me. That I am a child with an ant farm,”

“I wouldn’t be that predictable,” I sneered, taking a long drag on my cigarette and blowing the smoke in its direction. It glared at me through the little girl’s eyes. I could see it behind her pupils. I knew that if it showed itself to me in its true form I would die. In its true form it was so powerful that just glancing at it would burn your eyes right out of your head, melt your brain.

“I could kill you,” it said, “right here, with her body. I could make this seven year old child strangle you to death,” it flexed the girl’s fingers as if to prove its point.

“Then you are more sadistic than I initially believed then,” I said. I stubbed the cigarette out on the floor, “where did you find her anyway?” I waved my hand at her small frame, “stole her?”

“I am simply borrowing Rebecca’s body, although she will not have it returned. Her story is a woeful one. She was abused by her father, sexually, who also abused her older sibling. He ran away and left her to fend to herself. She would sit every night, waiting for her father to enter her room. Her mother was beaten, abused, a coward. Too cowardly to take her children and leave, but she will not be punished. I convinced her to end her life before I took Rebecca. They will both move on to a better place. Rebecca’s father however, well, he is the reason I created my hunters.”

It told me this using her voice, her sweet childish voice and then it lifted one of her pyjama trousers to her knee to reveal a mass of bruises covering her leg. The skinny shin and calf were covered with an assortment of colours. The blue and purple fresh bruises stood out amongst the older yellowing marks. I shook my head in pity.

“But your hunters have moved on from people like Rebecca’s father,” I said.

“Yes, that is regrettable. They get restless, sometimes the plentiful supply of bad souls can leave them feeling bored, it stops sustaining them. They feed better from the innocent,” it said casually.

“And you don’t care?”

“It is the lesser of two evils,” it said, “a few hundred innocent people or no punishment for the wrong doers. My hunters must be satisfied or they will not obey,”

© Jade Tolley 2012