(novel excerpt)
Chris Millis
Back in The Halo, Elton signed in as the administrator of his web site’s message board. What’s this? thought Elton. As he read the new post, he could feel the heat creeping up his neck like the Devil’s walking fingers. It read:
I think this web site is essentially a good thing, but you always take everything too far. I find your stalker-like approach and your extreme dogma to be at best, boring, and at worst, creepy. It comes off as holier than thou. You God-nuts, you think you’re right about everything. Well here’s a flash: you don’t have to be an inflexible asshole to be a moral person. Whoever hosts this web site is a fucking kook. Are you ever wrong about anything?
Elton was hot.
He cracked his knuckles, zipped three times around The Halo (for the Holy Trinity) and settled himself in front of the keyboard. His slender fingers pumped like pistons atop the clacking keys. It was as though his digits were unconscious conduits for the Divine.
What a strange question. What a strange, pagan question. I am right—all the time—because I have accepted Jesus Christ, who died for our sins at Cavalry, as my Lord and Savior. What a strange, silly question, posed by an obvious fornicator and protector of meanies.
From where I sit at the right hand of the Father, you strike me as someone who worships false idols. “Do not turn to idols, nor make for yourself molded gods: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:4). “Woe unto him that calls evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).
I am right because I live by the One True Law, God’s law: The Ten Commandments. “Those who disobey God’s laws hate him and those who hate God love death” (Proverbs 8:36). Just as Jesus said in John 7:19, “Did not Moses give you the law, yet none of you keeps the law.”
Maybe you believe you are right because you direct your faith into the puny contrivances of man, things like the Constitution and science. But in First John 2:15, God said, “Do not love the world, or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
I could spend all night highlighting the tragic errors in your secular thinking, setting you on the One True Path to righteousness. But my mother has my supper waiting and it would be a sin to let it get cold.
Elton powered off his computer, rose from his zippy chair, and performed the Stations of the Cross. He exited The Halo to the other side of his mother’s basement where a long, red, leather, Everlast heavy training bag hung from a floor joist by a thick steel chain and swivel. Elton stood before the bag for a long moment, motionless and silent. He snapped up the wooden baseball bat leaning against the cinder block wall. He twisted his hands methodically into the smooth handle. With all his strength, Elton swung the bat against the side of the bag. With excellent form, Elton stepped into each swing, always remembering to shift his weight from his back foot to his front. Pop! Pop! Pop! The barrel reported against the stiff leather. Elton swung and swung and swung until his shoulders burned and his hair was soaked with sweat.
When he was finished, he dropped the bat. It echoed through the basement as it bounced atop the concrete floor. Elton bent forward, resting his weight on his palms, just above his kneecaps. He took forty deep, heavy, satisfying breaths for Moses, who, in Exodus 34:28, “was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, The Ten Commandments.”
Elton noticed that his Haggar performance-blend, wrinkle-free, pleated chinos were wet and red. He stared at his trembling, outstretched palms, slick with blood from the blisters he had broken.
Upstairs, at the kitchen table, Elton’s mother pressed her cupped hands hard against her ears. She concentrated all her focus on Elton’s cold plate of supper. She had not touched her own. Hearing Elton climb the stairs, she leapt from her chair and transferred his plate into the microwave.