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Rumors of Glory

By elle`attend

This is something that I never thought I would try to post. It's something that until recently I would never have believed I could even have imagined, let alone written. But I did; and I have; and now I think I want to. This is an entirely true story; should you be inclined, like Jeffrey, to dismiss it, I will simply say that in the intervening eight months since I wrote it, my worst fears have only been confirmed. God, damn the hand of glory.

I wonder if I'll know the precise moment when MY madness overtakes me, she mused, her eyes riveted with a kind of horrified fascination on the speaker. Comes and throws me to the ground, and has its way with me forever, and for keeps. And I wonder if I'll still look as sane as HE does, afterwards ...

She was struck yet again by what a handsome man her husband's uncle was. Even at nearly eighty he was fit and trim, carrying himself with the confident, easy assurance of one of those men who strides through the world with the unshakable belief that his cause is just, and his body more than equal to the tasks which his spirit will set it. He was confident of accomplishing his aims, regardless of any obstacles life might put in his path. His large, strong- featured face positively radiated ruddy good health and his sparse, snow white hair fairly shone, an incongruously glittering halo shimmering above his broad, intelligent brow. Above his clear, pale-blue eyes.

His eyes.

That was the problem, all right, she had almost reluctantly concluded. Set in that florid, beamingly avuncular face they were a watery, faded-denim blue, and blazed with the fervor of the True Believer, and the unsettling fire of righteousness.

Or insanity, she thought to herself uneasily, and not for the first time.

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, feeling the plastic strapping peeling stickily away from the backs of her sweaty thighs. Everywhere they had gone so far on this trip they had been greeted by record temperatures, as the entire west coast sweltered in the grip of an enormous heatwave. The mercury had soared into triple digits even here in the higher elevations of the southern Cascade mountain range. She tugged self-consciously at her too-tight, too-short shorts, wishing she had dressed more conservatively in spite of the blistering heat. She'd forgotten how disapproving her husband's relations could be about such things.

She had also not remembered her husband's uncle being quite so.so formal, was the word that came to her mind, but it somehow failed to capture her feeling adequately. Too soft a word, too warm, for the chill that was being conveyed by his seemingly mild, oh-so-reasonable sounding voice. This was something colder, and harsher; something much more masculine, and implacable. She shivered a little, in spite of the heat, and raised her drink to her lips, wrapping them around the straw. She sucked the iced tea into her mouth, concentrating on the sensation of the cool liquid on her tongue, trying to distract herself from those eyes, even as her brain recoiled from his soft, cultured voice, and the words that it sent winging toward her mind like poisoned darts.

" ...I'm not afraid of anything anymore, Evangeline," he was saying, so calmly, so reasonably that they might have been discussing how the heat was playing hob with the kale in his garden this spring. Eve marveled again at the nearly impossible coincidence of sharing her rather quaint, old fashioned name with her husband's aunt. Tros called his own wife Van, but insisted on addressing his nephew's by her full Christian name, rather than "Eve." She had long since given up trying to get him to call her that, or wondering why he so steadfastly refused to do so. She thought she might be beginning to understand his avoidance of the sobriquet associated with humanity's first First Lady now, though. She was beginning to think it might have something to do with sin.

This thought made her shiver involuntarily again.

"There is evil in this world, Evangeline, real, palpable evil," he went on. "It exists as surely and as concretely as that glass you're holding, or this table," he reached out, touching the glass surface of the patio table with a huge, gnarled fist. "But God has promised to deliver all who believe in Him from this evil, if they only put their trust in Him, and accept His Son as their Saviour." He paused, contemplating Eve with the sweet, endlessly patient expression that one used when explaining to a charming but simple- minded child why she should not accept rides from strangers.

"And that's why I am fearing nothing any longer."

Eve carefully placed her frosted glass on the table, lowering her eyes and folding her hands demurely in her lap like a schoolgirl. She had only half-unconsciously done this, hoping to cover herself a bit more with her hands, but instantly realized that this little-girl gesture had only served to draw Tros's eyes toward them, and her legs as well. She shifted uncomfortably, as if her body itself was aware of his gaze, and the disapproval implicit in it.

"But Tros," she said, trying to take her mind off her sudden and disconcerting awareness of her bare legs. "You can't really believe that ALL Muslims are evil, that the religion of Islam itself is evil ..."

"But the Bible tells us, Evangeline," he interrupted mildly. "It speaks quite clearly on this point, on false Prophets, and false religions. 'The devil hath power to assume a pleasing form,' don't forget, Evangeline dear. And the Koran is quite specific in its satanic injunctions to its followers to kill all of the 'infidels,' and in its fiendish design to entrap and enslave all mankind in its devilish snare." He folded his own huge hands placidly on the table before him. "Islam is the tool of Satan, Evangeline, and it will be eradicated from the face of this earth. God has promised us this."

Eve blinked, completely nonplussed for the moment, unable to quite believe the evidence of her own ears. Trostel Van Dienst was an educated, intelligent man, a former teacher and school administrator of great standing in his community. He possessed several advanced degrees and a wall full of professional and humanitarian awards, and devoted much of his time now in his retirement to good works, particularly his and his wife's efforts on behalf of men and women in prison. They conducted Bible study groups and outreach workshops several times a week in correctional institutions throughout the state. They gathered toys at Christmas and birthdays to give to the children of the female inmates in their mother's names. They were kind, caring, and devoted parents and grandparents. They lived exemplary lives, as though the least of their actions were observed and judged by their God.

All of this only served to accentuate the unreality of the conversation she was having with this man now.

"But Tros, my God ...you're talking about every member of another religion ... men, women, children ... almost a billion human beings! What possible justification could there be for such a thing? And what would the world look like after that sort of a ...a ...that sort of a ..." Eve stammered, her tongue dancing around the word, but unable to enunciate it.

A holocaust. That sort of a holocaust ...

He shrugged, that placid, self-assured smile back in place again. "They will all be put to the sword, Evangeline" he pronounced mildly, as if stating that the midterm scores would be posted on Tuesday.

"And let God sort them out ..."

Heat rose through the air in rippling, transparent waves, like a shimmering, invisible tide receding grudgingly from the baking ball of the earth. The stench of decomposing human flesh and entrails was so overwhelming as to make the simple act of breathing a decidely mixed blessing. Somewhere near her, a carrion eater lazily flapped its huge wings, stirring the scorching air briefly, and sending a fleeting pulse of superheated breeze wafting tantalizingly across her naked, blistering body.

Other sounds intruded on her silent world of agony now, loud guffaws, and coarse epithets in a foreign tongue. She knew a little Kurdish; just enough to know that what was being said was neither polite, nor boded very well for her future well- being. She watched the tan-and-black khaki-clad soldiers moving deliberately from corpse to corpse, prodding with a booted toe here, jabbing with the barrel of an M16 there, firing at the slightest of movements into the bodies. She averted her eyes as a deafening burst of automatic weapons fire tore open another corpse, filling the air with a pinkish-red mist the consistency of fine, wet sawdust.

So much blood there is in a man, she thought dreamily.

She sucked at the gauzy black niqab that still covered the lower portion of her face, drawing it into her parched mouth, hoping to suck a few drops of blessed moisture from the condensation of her breath on the damp cloth. They had left her her veil and shayla, her head covering. It had been a source of great amusement to the soldiers to leave her her "modesty," as they had stripped and bound her naked to this pole jabbed into the baking sand of the northeastern Badiyat ash Sham desert.

So much blood ...

She had stubbornly resisted the fanatical young ulema when they had come to her tiny village, preaching their gospel of hatred of the infidel, and issuing their fatwas calling for "Death Workmanship," and the expulsion or extinction of every Christian and westerner from the cradle of Islam. God has made us all, she reasoned to herself. They are people like us; mothers, like me, with children like my own sweet little ones, who are dear to them, and for whom they want only peace and the blessings of Allah. She had refused to believe in an evil so vast and black that it could encompass the death of innocents simply because of the name that their parents gave to the God that they worshipped.

'God, keep my babies close to You, and shelter them from harm, wherever they may be, bis'm'Allah,' she muttered fervently to herself, over and over.

She closed her eyes tightly, but she could not drive from her throbbing brain the images of tiny bodies lifted on cruel knives, like spitted lambs. She opened her eyes again, and then lifted them to heaven as the nearest of the soldiers began to approach her, his tongue licking dry chapped lips, his fingers twitching almost unconciously as he neared the stake to which she was lashed. Hands reached out, grabbing her roughly, hurting her burnt, sunblistered flesh, and sending waves of nauseating pain racing along the outraged nerve endings of her skin.

Allah'ahkbar, she prayed silently, as the first of the endless rank of soldiers shamed her body ...

"Jesus Christ, wake up, Eve!"

Her husband had her shoulders gripped firmly, and he was shaking her rather violently. "Wake up, babe, it's just a dream, your dreaming, that's all ..."

Eve shivered beneath his soft banker's hands, though her skin was slicked with perspiration, and her nightie was plastered transparently to her shaking body. She gasped for breath convulsively, like a drowning swimmer being revived, her eyes blinking wide and sightlessly, still fixed on that interior landscape of unutterable horror from which she was only slowly awakening.

"Jeez, I thought you were gonna wake the whole damn' neighborhood for a minute there." Her husband breathed a heavy sigh of relief. " It'll be a miracle if my aunt and uncle haven't called the national guard. No more wild mountain blackberry pie for you so close to bedtime, sweetheart."

He relaxed his grip on her shoulders a little.

"God, Jeff, I ..." she shuddered again, so hard that he nearly lost his grip on her slippery shoulders. "Oh, God, I can't believe ... what is WRONG with your uncle, Jeffrey? What's wrong with this WORLD ...?"

Jeff laughed, a faintly condescending, dismissive sound. "Shit, Evie ...don't pay any attention to him. Don't let him rattle your cage like that. Tros's just a little bit too tightly wound when it comes to his religion, that's all. Nobody takes that shit seriously, anyway ...."

Eve twisted her shoulders angrily, loosening his grip on them and pulling violently away from her husband. She rose unsteadily from the bed, and took several wobbly steps toward the night-light illumined bathroom door across the room. Suddenly she whirled on him in a fury, silhouetted in the ghostly light from the doorway.

"Oh, but they should, Jeffrey," she hissed at him in the darkness, her voice choked with scarcely suppressed rage, and horror.

'Oh, but they should ..."