Bodies Are Disgusting by S. Gates

flashes in the blank area
for the message body, a steady and inviting pulse. Without
thinking, your fingers find the home keys on your laptop's keyboard
and you start typing.
    All you include is your screen name on the
message board's associated chat service and the note, "If you're
awake, I'd like to talk."
    The reply is swift, as if SilentHarper had
been lying in wait for your message or something like it. The new
instant message notification pops up in the corner of your screen,
SilentHarper's name highlighted in it.
    "I don't sleep anymore. Alena says that chosen
ones don't need sleep, but I think she is just trying to break me.
It won't work. What did you want?"
    You consider your response for a moment. What do you want? After a moment, you send, "I can't sleep
either. Maybe she isn't lying. I don't know. Things have gotten
weird. I keep seeing weird things, nightmares. Last night I swear
this kid made me tear out their spleen with my bare hands and I
think they wanted me to eat it. I fed it to the strays."
    Their response takes a little more time, but
it arrives within minutes. "You aren't going crazy. This is real.
Alena says that you belong to Ori, right?"
    Seeing Ori's name printed in SilentHarper's
chat window makes your diaphragm seize. Your fingers skitter over
the keys. "I don't belong to anybody," you want to say, but the
message that sends is a simple, "yeah."
    "My condolences," SilentHarper responds. A few
moments later, "Alena tells me that Ori is an erratic player at
best. It's very old. Possibly senile."
    "How can it be old enough to be senile? Ori
looks like they're fourteen."
    "They take forms they think you'll like. Alena
has the face of an angel. She looks just like a girl I knew in high
school who died in a wreck junior year." The stream of text pauses.
"You could just be a pedophile in denial."
    "Oh my fucking god," you growl aloud as you
type the same into your chat window. "I am not a fucking
pedo."
    "Like I said, Ori is old and
senile."
    "Must be," you respond. After you press enter
and send the message, your cursor blinks in the chat window. Your
fingers are still, your mind devoid of anything else to say.
Predawn light filters through the blinds because you never bothered
to close your curtains. Everything is so still that you wonder if
maybe you can't hear the sound of Simon's heart beating in the
other bedroom across the hall.
    SilentHarper sends another message. "You're
not the first person to message me, you know. I've heard from a few
others. People who've been chosen, I mean. If we all die, they
lose. If we get ourselves killed, the god that chose us is done
this round. They can't choose another."
    "You're talking about that kid from Virginia."
It's not a question you type, but a stated fact.
     
    "I'm talking about all of us. Don't you wonder
why all of these weird things are happening? The tsunami, the
earthquakes in India, fish kills and hive collapses everywhere, the
freak snowstorm in Australia?"
    You dash off another quick, "yeah," followed
by, "And I guess you're going to tell me?"
    "It's demonstrations of power. Probably not
ALL of them, I mean we've still gone a long way toward totally
fucking up the environment and all that, but a lot of them...
Someone doesn't believe the godhead that's visiting them, and they
just sort of knock all the birds outta the sky. Or drown some
coastal burghs that happen to include L-fucking-A. It's just
piddling parlor tricks to these things."
    "Parlor tricks?" you scoff. "What are you,
80?"
    "Not quite, but I'm probably older than you,"
SilentHarper replies. "Had a wife. Got a kid. Kid spends most of
her time with the ex, and I can't blame her. I'm not exactly in the
running for any father-of-the-year or perfect-husband competitions,
here. But you're missing the point. It's literally nothing for
these things to just reach out and destroy whatever they want. It's
like swatting flies to them. They don't care about us, or this
planet, and they never