Imitation of Christ
by David Flynn
I can't describe to you how I felt, walking through that forbidden door
at the army base and seeing Christ.
For decades while I fought my way up as a priest then bishop then
cardinal I had been praying to pictures and statues. Each Sunday we had
performed the miracle of making a chalice of wine and a circle of wheat
into the sacred blood and body, then enacted the holy cannibalism of
drinking Christ's inexhaustible blood and eating into Christ's endless
body.
And there before my eyes in an arm chair, wearing an orange jump suit,
slouched the object of my worship.
"As promised, you have ten minutes," the security chief ordered.
"Not," was the Messiah's first word.
He mumbled in an agonizing way because He was not used to speaking. His
creator, Jason Buckner, did not speak to Him once in a month, and alone
in His basement cell on Buckner's farm He did not see another human in
His 32 years.
Christ's flesh was ghostly pale, yet the Semitic features were more
Middle Eastern than I expected. He was six feet tall, bony, wrapped in
a bath robe. I stared at that divine face, the face I had seen
reproduced a million times on holy cards. The long, rectangular skull.
The large nose, large piercing black eyes, small lips. Tangled black
hair to his shoulders. Christ stared back with the look of an imbecile.
"I don't know what to say," I began. "My name is Cardinal John Clancy.
I am here to baptize you."
Baptize Christ. The words made my heart shrivel.
Christ did not respond. It, as I quickly thought of this creature, did
not know what baptism was. An emotion I had fought since I was a young
man in a tough, New York neighborhood rose inside me. Hatred. Sudden
intense hatred of this thing.
"You may not comprehend me now," I began, sitting across from the
image, "but you do have a soul and I am here to save that soul."
Its mouth drew back, spoiling the solemnity. The teeth were rotted and
uneven. Jesus could not read or write or even think.
An army major had been dispatched that morning to my cathedral office
with the horror, one I immediately phoned to the Vatican. Pope Matthew
himself approved my mission. The soldier briefed me on the apocalypse.
Buckner had been one of those biological engineers that the church had
fought for half a century. He worked for an American company with a
laboratory in Rome, perfecting a method to design children in the womb.
A customer could choose sex, hair color, and body type. This monstrous
notion, an insult to God, apparently was not enough for the little man.
I understood Buckner, because my family was much like his. He was born
in my New York neighborhood. Highly religious parents had not let the
only child dance or even attend a high school basketball game. They
beat the boy to make him pray, forcing him to kneel for hours on
hardwood floors saying the rosary. My parents did the same.
As an adult Buckner despised all things spiritual, while I defended the
Church with all my heart. He was famous for launching into diatribes
whenever a co-worker mentioned God or Mary or Jesus.
The major, in full uniform, laid on my desk a copy of a newspaper story
from some 35 years ago: the desecration of the Shroud of Turin at the
Cathedral in Italy. Someone broke into the Guarini Chapel where the
Shroud was stored in a silver reliquary inside a glass case. The Shroud
was the holiest of relics, a burial cloth wrapped around the Christ
after His crucifixion. The image of the Savior's face and body were
fused into the threads by miracle.
Someone, the report read, broke the glass case with a bronze cross,
removed the Shroud, and harmed the image of Our Lord. Buckner. With no
alarm system and no guard, for who would dare attack the Son of God?,
the madman scraped bits of the Holy Image of Jesus from the cloth, then
threw the Shroud on the floor like a rag.
Italian police speculated about a mad man or a teenage vandal, because
nothing of value was taken. But something of infinite value was, DNA
from the Messiah.
I rose from behind my desk, enraged at the blasphemy. The major looked
shocked that a Cardinal could curse.
After the theft, Buckner quit his job, and bought an isolated farm in
upstate New York. From that scraping of DNA he cloned a baby Christ
Child, using technology already 20 years old. The DNA was inserted into
the egg of a homeless woman, who apparently had no idea who the 'donor'
was. She then carried the Child to birth at the farm, and was
slaughtered and buried in the woods. Buckner hid the Baby in a basement
room, soon losing interest in his experiment, barely keeping the Thing
alive, for 32 years.
Then the inevitable happened. A workman fixing the plumbing went where
he had been warned not to go, and found Jesus Christ in his cold cell,
naked and near starvation.
When police arrived, Buckner set fire to the house. The slave of Satan
died in the flames, screaming obscenities against God, the Holy Mother
and the Catholic Church. A fireman, however, saved the Being in the
basement.
And I wondered how two men with so similar upbringings, Buckner and
myself, could have taken such opposite paths.
DNA. I doubted if this Christ knew the letters. From the pocket of my
chasuble I removed the vial of holy water. The holy face with such deep
black eyes looked at me without curiosity. Though I felt pity, my
hatred was vastly stronger. I shuddered, but began my sacred duty.
"I must get you wet," I said.
"Wet," It repeated. It squirmed in the chair; otherwise It did not move
unless moved.
So I took a little of the water on my fingertips, and splashed a few
drops on the 'man.' Christ jerked back as if hit. I had to splash some
on my face to show Him there was no danger. Like with a child.
"Good," I said, and felt eternal damnation. I wanted to get out of that
animal presence quickly.
"I baptize thee in the name of the father [one spray of the water and
one gurgle from Him], the Son [Himself, but He giggled], and the Holy
Ghost [He reached for the drops, as if baptizing His immortal soul was
a game]."
The idiot growled. His hands, hairy and thick, wiped the soul-saving
water from His face, and He backed into the chair with a snarl of
enjoyment. I felt the hatred grow beyond my control. The overpowering
emotion that He was Anti-Christ, an attack on everything I loved and
believed and fought for my whole life, gained mastery of me. He was
Buckner's victory, though the engineer burned in hell. Christ sat in a
state of grace, His soul pure and clean for maybe the only few seconds
in His life before He would contaminate His purity with animal sin. I
couldn't help myself. Thought went away and the rage forced me to his
throat.
He was weak, from the years in His cell. Though I was old, my hands
tightened on His thin throat with strength that wasn't mine. And oh how
Christ struggled. The body twisted mightily. The holy face gnarled in
terror. The holy eyes stared wide at me. Even the guards, after they
heard His animal screams, tried to pry me loose, but they could not.
I let go only when I was through with that sickly flesh. Arms in khaki
held me back, but I gloated at the sight. Jesus folded in the chair,
dead.
I had condemned my immortal soul to hell with history's greatest murder.
THE END
© 2017 David Flynn
Bio: David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of
Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor
and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright
Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist with a recent grant in
Indonesia. His literary publications total more than two hundred. David
Flynn’s web site is at http://www.davidflynnbooks.com . He currently
lives in Nashville, TN.
E-mail: David Flynn
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