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Interlude II
"Sunday School (but Make It Vampires)”
(Actual) Author's Note
Hiya, bloodercups! This note is from Rose, not Katriona. I want to tell you up front that this chapter is darker and more serious than usual. After Kat’s usual sharp-tongued introduction, she retells what she was taught in Sunday School, equivalent to the real world Christian stories of the Resurrection and the early parts of Acts of the Apostles.
Kat's world has deep, complex theology that underlies a system of oppression. If you're a person of faith, especially if you're Catholic, you may find this interlude's gothed-up funhouse mirror religion upsetting. If you're a person who's suffered religious trauma, you should also tread carefully.
I'm both of those things. Horror like this is my way of exploring it.
Katriona, take your stand.
Thanks, girl who doesn't exist, has absolutely no way of knowing that this shit is happening because time travel is not a thing, and seems way too interested in the parts about my boobs.
The Good News
“Christ came to crucify the world.”
Father Conscience drilled that into me relentlessly as a kid. Or tried to while I was busier figuring out being a girl who likes girls who got viewed as a guy.
The Church of the Grail are fucking passionate about it. So sure that the world must be purified through pain of the body and heart, and eager patience for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
I don't think I've used the word Delinquent before. But that's my community. Sometimes.
We're the ones who question the True Faith because it's fucking fucked up our lives. When we're political, we're the Friends of Saint Thomas. But we're actually friends and frenemies with an alarmingly large proportion of killers for hire.
Doctrine is depressing, upsetting, and blatantly unhealthy. But it might be true.
Because it's a big, important topic, I'm going to tell it straight. Or at least tell it seriously. Enjoy that joke.
Joseph's Burden
The warlock knights of wretched Pontiff Pilate hung the Savior upon the Thrice-Damned Cross. His uncle, one Joseph of Arimathea, brought Him a bowl of wine as a snatch of comfort. Joseph dipped a sponge in the bowl and raised it to our Lord's mouth.
Joseph gave the Savior the drink three times. Each time, He drank. Each time, He coughed blood upon the sponge. And so as Joseph dipped the sponge again, the wine mixed with our Lord's red blood.
Upon the last offering of wine, the Savior expired. Joseph wept, and his tears, too, mixed with the wine. Joseph went back to his house, but neither the greeting of his wife nor his good food nor his sumptuous bed could console him.
All through the night, the smell of the bowl became more and more savory. Joseph, in his terrible grief, began to think that the red drink would console him, and so, near sunrise, he drank from the bowl.
He slept all through the next day. When he rose at sunset, his mourning had turned to anger. He went to the house of Pilate. He was denied an audience, but in his rage he ripped the guards and knights apart. Pilate cowered behind a curtain and in a quavering voice asked what Joseph wanted.
Joseph said, in a sweet tone, that he merely wished for the noble and gentle governor to give over his nephew for burial. Pilate hastily agreed, and Joseph spared his life.
Joseph went to the Savior's apostles in their place of hiding, but they were afraid and would not come to help him take the body. Only three women, led by the one who missed the Lord most of all, joined him.
They took the body to the tomb Joseph had prepared for himself, which was set in a garden of great beauty. After they rolled a stone in front of it, Joseph bade them quench their thirst from the bowl of wine and blood, and so they did, and became more than they were.
The Burned Tomb
The three women were Mary Lazarus, who aided the Savior when he first performed the rite of raising the dead, Mary Salome, who stole the head of John the Baptist after her sister beheaded him, and Mary Magdalene, who bound seven demons within herself and missed Him most of all.
As Joseph had done, they slept through the next day. At night, they gathered and Mary Magdalene said to them: "We have lost our teacher and our brother. It is right that we should bring spices to His tomb and bless Him on his way."
So they brought myrrh to the garden, but saw that the stone had been moved from the tomb. When they entered, they found scorch marks on the stone and the burial shroud torn and smoldering. And Mary Salome said "Pilate's knights have burned His body and taken His ashes."
But then they heard a voice from outside in the garden, calling their names in a voice that sounded like the tolling of bells. They went out from the tomb, and were astonished.
"My sisters in God, those whose courage saved my body, I have come back to you." He was the teacher they knew, but made perfect; His skin showed neither blemish nor scar, His hands were no longer rough from the work of woodcarving, and His eyes twinkled like the moon.
"My beloveds, through my blood, you have taken your first steps into the night that shall become your haven and my kingdom. Pilate and his warlocks will bedevil you, yet you shall outlast them.
"Begin your ministry as good shepherds, guarding your flock and taking from them to sustain yourselves. In time, I will raise you up as queens of the night, and, in due time, I shall return and perfect you in body and soul.
"Now take my Word back to your brethren in hiding. Tell them that they may bind demons in my name and cure venom with my blood. Teach them to resist the temptations of the Eye Below, and to cure the diseases he sends."
They went to Joseph and told them of the meeting, and together they gathered the hiding followers and initiated them.
"Blessed are we who have learned at our teacher's feet and tasted His blood," said Mary Magdalene. "But we must bring His guidance and love to both shepherds and flocks. This, our great work, will last until He returns in glory."
The Holy Spirit descended upon the gathering, and the Lord's sheltering shadow spread over them.
The First Ministry
The students of the Lord became teachers themselves, bringing both faith and mystery to the kingdoms of Pilate and his fellow false lords who worshipped in the sun.
The traitor Judas came to one such teaching and asked Mary Magdalene, "I am wretched and unworthy, but you have taught that the unworthy may be purified when the Lord comes again. How long must I wait for His shadow to fall upon me?"
And the Beloved Apostle said to him, "You must wait as all of us must, for there is no way to hurry the coming of God. But I shall offer you a comfort: when you pass on, you shall forget yourself and wait not in guilt."
Judas heard these words and felt both comfort and despair. He went back to his lodgings and wept bitterly, for he knew that he must wait many years to forget his awful deed. But, in her mercy, Mary came to the house, and, coming upon him suddenly, hung him from the rafters.
The Apostles worked many such mercies.
Yet they made enemies too. There was a young man named Simon who became enamored of the Lord and joined Mary Salome's flock. He was filled with the glory of new love, and ached to drink deeper of His blood and join the Good Shepherds himself.
When Mary refused him, he offered her coin. She bridled at the insult, all the worse because the coins were silver, as were those given to Judas for his atrocity. She revealed herself in her true, terrible beauty and cast him out.
In rage, Simon sought one of Pilate's warlock knights and learned their teachings. Over long years, he learned both sorcery and alchemy and then to gather followers of his own. He taught that, through sacred mysteries and secret initiations, mere sheep could become the betters of the Shepherds.
One night, he was preaching his methods in the town square, and Mary came in the guise of a beggar. She asked to be anointed as one of his students, and he refused her, for no mere beggar could afford the prices he asked for blessings.
She revealed herself and declared "I am richer than any of your students, for I am blessed in the blood of the Savior. You offered me coin for the blessings of God, and so I give you the death of the Blessed."
So saying, she drew a wooden stake from her rags and hurled it toward his heart. He raised his arm to block it, but only deflected into his eye. In pain and blindness, he ran from the square.
"Let your lost eye teach you wisdom, blasphemer," Mary Salome shouted. The astonished crowd began crying out, but she calmed them and began to speak the true words. Each and all of them were baptized into her flock before the sun rose.
In time, through the working of miracles and the sacrifice of martyrs, the subjects of Pilate were converted in great numbers. Joseph and Mary Magdalene chose to take the word of the Lord to new lands.
They traveled to the country of lions, raising up the people of those lands, then across the sea, first as teachers and then as hermits. They carried the holy cup with them on this retreat, and neither were heard from for a great age.
🩸🩸🩸
I believed this.
I believed life was about pain and sober guilt.
But now I believe in us.
Don't tell me I shouldn't.
NEXT
Mom sends me to work the streets of the Ascension Independent Metropolis.
Just so happens that's where Cindel is.
Join me in needing to find her while trying avoid her in...
