beyond recognition. Christopher began to drag her to the street.
“NO! NO!” she screamed.
The street came alive like a hot skillet. The man in the Girl Scout uniform pulled himself into the bushes at a frenzied pace. The couple kissed harder and harder until they began to eat each other. The frogs couldn’t get out of the pot. The pavement was as hot as one hundred billion suns. One hundred billion sons. Burning.
“STOP HELPING HIM!” she begged.
Christopher looked down and saw a reflection in her eye. She was running through the woods, desperately searching. She found David Olson buried under the earth. She dug him out with her bare hands and held him in her arms. David was terrified. She kept him safe. She gave him food. She showed him where to hide. Where to sleep. Where to bathe. For fifty years, they were always together. She was his guardian. In here, David was her son.
“Who are you?” Christopher asked.
“YOU’RE OFF THE STREET!” she screamed.
“Please, tell me who you are,” he begged.
“STOP HELPING HIM!” she yelled, the words barely recognizable anymore.
Christopher brought her to the edge of the lawn. The street was an inch away.
“You have to tell me!” Christopher said.
She reached up and gently touched his hand. She had no words anymore. The words had been tortured out of her. But he felt something. He turned around and saw his neighborhood through her eyes. Not as it was today. As it was two thousand years ago when there were no people here. No houses. Nothing but quiet and stars twinkling in a clear sky untouched by people. The clouds were pure. In a blink, Christopher saw the world grow up and people spread over the continents like trees.
God had a son who served on Earth.
The hissing lady looked at him. A spark of recognition filled her eyes.
But He also had a daughter.
Christopher held her hand and felt the truth flow through his skin like electricity.
And she volunteered to serve here.
Christopher felt the last of her pain with whatever strength he had left. Which wasn’t much. The warmth from his body left him. Then, he stood, shriveled and empty, and faced the nice man.
“No,” Christopher said.
The nice man turned to Christopher.
“What dId you say?” he asked calmly.
Christopher said nothing. The nice man walked over to him.
“The tree house made you God. I gave you that power to kill hEr. Are you refusing me?”
He smiled. His baby teeth trying hard not to look like fangs.
“I wouldn’t do that, Christopher,” he said kindly. “I can make this so much worse.”
He picked Christopher up in a warm, paternal hug.
“No!” the hissing lady cried helplessly.
He smiled and studied Christopher like a dissected frog.
“You think you’ve seen this place, son, but you haven’t. Do you know what the imagInary world looks like wIthout my protection?”
The nice man’s wrinkles began to spread from his eyes like the earth cracking in a drought as rage coursed through his veins.
“thiS iS whaT iT reallY iS!”
Christopher looked up in horror as the white clouds burned with souls crying out for murder and blood. The clouds twisting into the faces of the damned. The people there were not screaming, “Make it stop!” The people there were screaming, “More! Give me more!”
“i wilL pasS yoU arounD tO thE reallY baD peoplE anD telL theM thaT yoU arE a gifT froM heaveN whilE youR motheR watcheS theM. i wilL leT theM torturE yoU untiL yoU arE unrecognizablE tO goD.”
The nice man curled his lips and turned to Christopher. The little boy looked into the nice man’s eyes and saw them burn in different colors. Mountains melted. An eternity of warfare. It would spread and rage on and no one would ever die. They would just kill and watch helplessly as every square inch of the earth was covered with people stuffed like cattle on a train. The door locked. The fever burning inside their skin. Forever.
“i gavE yoU thE poweR oF goD tO kilL heR. usE iT anD geT mE ouT oF herE!”
“But I can’t kill the hissing lady, sir. I don’t have the power anymore.”
“whaT diD yoU dO?! wherE diD yoU puT iT?!”
“I gave it away, so you couldn’t get it,” Christopher answered defiantly.
“wherE iS iT?!?!?! wherE diD yoU hidE iT?”
“I didn’t hide it. I used it to make something far more powerful than you.”
The nice man laughed.
“morE powerfuL thaN mE. whaT iS thaT?! goD?!”
“No, sir,” Christopher said. “God’s mother.”
Christopher saw the nice man stop, sensing the presence behind him. He turned