A Gentle Hell Read Online Free PDF Page B

your goddess claims she is all-powerful and yet allows girls to be murdered and their bodies hidden in faery graves? Can you explain to me why a goddess who exists inside of everything breaks the spines of our children, why she separates us from those who could truly love us so that she may gain power through our love, without loving us in return?”
    Gregory trembled. He began to pray with eyes half-closed. He said, “Oh goddess, please protect your faithful servant from your enemies. Please protect me from the world, for the world hates those who love you.”
    “You got that right, Gregory,” I said.
    Thatch walked up the steps. “Bill,” he said, “what the hell are you doing?”
    “Just having a chat with the prophet of the Triple Goddess here,” I said.
    “Come on, Bill,” Thatch said, “these murders. This is big. This is real big. We're going to get the state police out here to investigate.”
    “I'll be seeing you again, Gregory,” I said. The prophet said nothing and closed and locked the door. I turned around and walked with Thatch out back to the field.
    They got the state police down there soon enough. They dragged the bodies out while the feral green-eyed children watched and Mimi smoked cigarette after cigarette and the boyfriend paced around the trailer drinking a scotch and coke from a tall glass. They took pictures of the crime scene. They did tedious and expensive DNA testing to try to figure out who murdered this poor white woman’s sick and small-backed children. They found the prophet of the Triple Goddess’ spit in their mouths and his fingerprints on their wrists and throats. Big scandal. Thatch said he knew that man was a crazy, but everyone knew that.
    Mimi said she knew it too, because he used to handcuff her to the bed and choke her during sex when they were living together.
    “Don’t be dumb, Mimi,” the boyfriend said, “plenty of people do that and they aren’t serial killers.”
    “What do you think of all this?” Thatch asked me.
    “She knew she was going to die,” I said, “and there wasn’t anything any one of us could have done. There's been an insidious force in this universe from the beginning, trying to keep us apart from each other.”
    “Maybe you should go home and rest for a while there, Bill,” Thatch said.
    “No,” I said, “I've rested enough.”
    **********
    When the police went into arrest the prophet they found him kneeling on the floor in his kitchen, praying underneath his breath. When they hauled him up and put him into handcuffs, then led him away, he started to scream, “ The goddess will deliver me! The goddess will deliver me!” all the way out to the police cruiser.
    A limousine pulled up at Mimi’s trailer. The Triple Goddess came out of the car, her bodies wearing Chanel perfume and hip-tight black.
    “Well, I’ll be damned,” Mimi said.
    We were all standing outside of the trailer in ninety-five degree heat, Mimi, Thatch, the boyfriend, the police, the Triple Goddess, the prophet in handcuffs, and me.
    “So he wasn’t lying,” I said, “he really was their prophet.”
    One of the bodies turned toward me through the crowd. Her eyes were gray. She wavered in the heat.
    “Yes,” she said to me, “this is an unfortunate incident.”
    “But you’re a goddess,” I said. “Shouldn’t you have known this would have happened?”
    The three bodies of the Triple Goddess rose like arches above the crowd in their tall heels, their veins hard like shock rods against their necks and hands.
    “Unless you knew he was a murderer, and you just didn't care,” I said, “unless you knew and you did nothing.”
    “We value all human life,” the Triple Goddess said.
    “If you valued life, you wouldn't have let your prophet live and Tuesday die. See him in the back of that car there? He's still praying for his protection. He wants to be saved so he can continue to kill children.”
    “This was an unfortunate accident,” she