A Bungalow in Vidalia — Ava Walden
short story ☆
short story ☆
God’s house was a little green bungalow on the very outskirts of town.
I watched Him all day: making His breakfast, tying His shoes, and putting nectar in His hummingbird feeder. No bird was stupid enough to come here. Why would they endure the rot-sweet scent of death when they had miles and miles of nearly-ripe Vidalia onions to graze in the plantations just a couple of miles west. Nevertheless, He changed the nectar regularly. He never looked my way and that, more than anything, told me that He knew I was there.
I couldn’t help but giggle, revelling in the warmth which spread through my chest as pieces of the windshield dislodged from my skin and fell to the dry, golden grass underfoot.
God was clever and perceptive and He had noticed me. This was one of His tests. God does not abandon His faithful in their hour of need, and there was no one more faithful than I.
Hours passed changelessly. The only time God had left the house was to dispose of His breakfast in the backyard. I eyed that carcass hungrily. There would be no blood left, I was well aware; but I just wanted to see if His scent lingered on its skin. I was starving, did God know how much I did for Him?
My new teeth ached in my gums. I spat out the blood that the foreign invaders produced. On the ground, the blood lay as cold and congealed as the rest of my wretched body was. I should have been a bloated corpse by now – joints stiff with disuse. But instead, God blessed me; and so I sat there, my soul and skin burning under the hellfire of the south Georgian heat.
When His wife finally came home, the sun was little more than a smouldering cigarette butt – simmering low behind the towering trees with its faint orange rays of light peeking through distant kudzu. She was unsurprised to find me haunting the edge of their property. A profound disappointment permeated her almost as much as the scent of that other man on her skin. Her tired eyes flashed to the front door behind me and I knew then that God was watching.
“I need to come in. Please.” Thick, clotted blood sloughed slowly from my split throat – my most earnest proof of devotion. My blood was all I had left.
God glared at me, omniscient eyes contemptuous and hateful. They were red, like I knew mine now were, though with none of the blood which crusted my own eyelashes together. He was me, the whole and healthy version.
“You said you would stop.” God’s wife rasped, her pretty sunset eyes filling with tears.
“Help. You must help me.”
“You made me. You cannot leave me here.”
“My Father. My God. You did this to me.”
“And now, I’m hungry.”
He is unmoved by my tears, my pleas. He is disgusted even, but I can’t stop. My fists clutched the front of His shirt, trying to latch at some of the warmth of His chest – but He is as cold as I am. My sobs are empty, the blood in my decayed veins too thick to show my sorrow anymore.
Flickering behind my red-clouded eyes were fractured memories of His face seen through the shattered windshield of my car. If I tried hard enough, I could still feel His teeth in my neck; and with them, the agony that ripped through me when He forced His tainted essence past my lips. I was an abomination, an unworthy abortion, not made in His image. Where blood nourished Him and abated His humanity, it only poured out of my orifices and wrecked me. I was starving and nothing had slaked my thirst. My bones ached under the weight of wasted sins that couldn’t even keep me alive.
“It can’t be true. Adam, tell me you didn’t.” His wife was warm, passionate, “You promised me you would stop!” I could still see the blood rushing beneath her cheeks. She was like I had been before He’d sullied me. I do wonder what God saw in us. What made me worthy of defiling and not her?
“Please, Ava, this woman is clearly mad.”
“Don’t lie to me. I know one of your victims when I see them.”
My vision swam, knees weakening. My grip on His shirt was all I had left of Him. God did not care about me, and this apathy of His wouldn’t feed my hunger. Whether or not He’d cared, I still needed. My stomach spasmed painfully as the heady scent of His skin – the tender meat it hid – dilated my pupils.
“Please.” I offered one last time, “Help me. I’m hungry.”
“If you won’t help me, I’ll die.”
He sneered, the edges blurring in technicolor as I tried to keep myself upright and not succumb to vertigo. I had mere minutes.
“By all means, die.”
I didn’t know where gods went when they’d died, but I was honored to let mine find out. He hated me, but He was still my God – the one who cursed me with this unlife. And so, I gave Him an unlife in return.
I could feel the stolen blood flowing through my veins – enriched from its time in God’s body. His flesh was soft and rich and disgusting; stained with centuries of smoky sin, but it still smelled so sweet. I was starving.
His wife watched as the last ray of sunlight glinted off the small, stained-glass hummingbird which was pinned above her breast – its glittering light refracting onto the swaying hummingbird feeder, hanging low from the porch, full with nectar.
Her God was dead too.
Growing up a horror fan and book lover in the Deep South, Ava nurtured the macabre, the dark, and the comforting as a means of connecting to the world. A love of stories and fascination with the human experience led to a BA in creative writing and the pursuance of higher education with a MFA in the same subject. Apart from writing, Ava can be found creating and indulging in all manner of art or playing Wizard101.
