Bury The Children, Bury the Gods
by Quentin Lucas
“Kill all our women and children,” Serenity Vega said. She stood up from the wooden table, her thighs clipping it and rattling the tin goblets and dishes on top. Her shoulders were pulled back. Her prop sword was low, by her side. Her face angled away from the floating camera, just as the director requested.
Her character, Fin K’tata, was preparing her warriors for an attack from a more powerful enemy, with no reasonable hope for victory and no demonstrated concern for death. She had practiced saying the line the way she spat out vegetables as a child. The way she preached the gospel as a minister. And the way she tsked at a sad memory as a former minister. She thought the way she had just said it, like an exhausted gasp after a hard run, might work, too.
A spot of blood streamed from her knuckle and down her finger like a wandering ladybug. She had scratched the itchy scab away just before the director said, “Action!” The fleck of ruined skin was still stuffed under her fingernail.
Hours earlier, the director had asked her about her hands. They were wrapped in white bandages that were spotted red.
“Just getting into character.” Her lips had barely moved when she answered. She was trying to remember why she’d punched a bathroom wall while the director stood on the edge of her peripheral vision. She thought it was because she hated her costume until she recalled that she didn’t. The chainmail, gothic breastplate, and fur collar probably weren’t historically accurate. They all felt too heavy for fighting. But at least the armor wasn’t molded to the curves of her breasts. The fur almost matched the beige of her skin. The horizontal stripe of black war paint across her big eyes complemented her dark hair, falling to her sternum in a braid. And her black lipstick accentuated the slope of her oval jawline.
While she tried to remember why she punched the wall, the director’s black Van Dyke beard and pale face had blurred into a Rorschach test. He was short and still hanging on the edge of her vision. So, she couldn’t tell if he had shrugged his shoulders upward because he was indifferent to her response or had sunk his head in between his shoulders because he was afraid.
“Okay, then.” He turned away and clapped three times. “Places, everyone. Places!” Returning to acting was a sudden decision. And it reminded her of a fling from months ago.
His name was Spenn. He had still been attending her church when she quit the ministry. They had bumped into each other at a costume shop not too far from that same church. Just a walk over a hill, which provided a clear view of the skyline, and by a public garden where one of the gardeners was offering samples of juicy, square plums. (The terraformed soil of the moons had quirky effects on some of the old-world produce.) That day, she’d walked the hill and seen four moons on the horizon. She had gone to the costume shop to find accessories for her warrior queen character. Spenn had taken an interest in the fashions of the late 21st and very early 22nd centuries.
“It was when everything was coming to a breaking point,” he had said. “The planet was dying. And you knew. But you still had to ask yourself, ‘What am I going to wear to work today?’”
They went for coffee. It had been years since they’d last seen each other. She’d always thought he was a little unkempt. His clothes ill-fitting. His hair a mess. But while they sipped their dark roasts, his with hazelnut cream and hers black, and talked about everything except why she left the church, and why he eventually left as well, his clothes looked fine. The forest green of his shirt complemented the deep brown of his skin. The weight he’d gained looked good on him. And his hair was more unrestrained than unkempt. Its bundles of dark thick coils twisted
upward and out from his scalp like tiny trees. And the occasional grays almost gave his black hair a shimmer.
He hadn’t been a very active member of the church. So, she was surprised that she’d had a fixed image of him in her mind at all. But that surprise was dwarfed by how exceedingly he had defied that image. He wasn’t the sad, downward gaze she had recalled. His cheeks weren’t slack with indifference. His mouth wasn’t a flat line. He maintained eye contact throughout their conversation. He seemed to be doing well for himself.
After coffee, they went to a dive with wooden tables and Christmas lights behind the bar. It was like something from another century and seemed to appeal to his appreciation for history. The bartender, a woman with a constellation of freckles splashed across her cheeks and nose, delivered their drinks and told a couple of good jokes. When Spenn laughed, his smooth cheeks almost squeezed his eyes shut and deep lines folded into the sides of his face. He had joked about having earned those lines. And when he’d said that she’d probably earned hers as well, the conversation turned toward why they’d never see each other in a church again. It was an important moment. She had needed to tell her side of the story and give someone else a chance to judge her the way she judged herself.
The unexpected connection that evening, and later that night, exposed her to an unexpected connection between sex and acting. During the sex, her legs had been positioned just so for hers and the man’s pleasure, as they were now for her character’s lighting. Her gaze had been attentive when he called her pretty and ran a fingertip along her earlobe (she’d always thought they were too big,) as it also was for the camera’s close-up. Her hand had held him by the back of his neck when he was on top of her, filling her with an honest desire, as if he were a precious thing. And she now held her prop sword the same way. Both sex and acting demanded performances. Both offered temporary escapes from a wound that wouldn’t heal.
The drone-hauled camera was still recording. She eyed the actors who were staring at her, as if she actually were their honored queen. One of the actors jabbed his finger in her direction and ranted about her character’s immorality and she wanted to rub her stomach. A habit from childhood. Sometimes she would do it when she was hungry, other times because of sadness, as if she were making sure that melancholy hadn’t eaten a hole through her body.
Her thoughts trailed back to the line about killing women and children—and then to children—and then to babies. Weeks ago, she had come across an article referencing a protest from decades past. Almost a hundred citizens of the sixth moon, hungry and unemployed, had marched through the streets of a small town, protesting the poor quality of their water. Smaller towns typically meant low tax revenue, and low tax revenue sometimes meant a town didn’t have enough money to buy Grade A water. It was one of the harder complications that came with terraforming.
Patrollers arrived at the demonstration and mowed down the protestors with live ammunition, killing almost half of them. The article was trying to unravel the mystery of what had happened, of what had led the patrollers to make such a tragic mistake. The article referenced an unsupportable but widespread suspicion: That generations of living in space, before finding the seven moons to settle, had warped human DNA and cursed everyone with a touch of hereditary madness. Another notion implied that the unsanitary water had driven the patrollers crazy and that they should’ve been marching with the protestors. The final thought noted that it was a full house night: Six of the seven moons were in the sky along with Erda, the dead planet around which all seven moons revolved. Strange things always happened on full house nights. But Serenity believed that the Cultural Stagnancy Theory, which she read about in a book, explained
what had happened: Technological advancement was easier for humans than cultural advancement.
She was consumed with the fact that she was only a three-month-old when the massacre happened. It didn’t matter that she was five moons removed from the killing. She wondered why her parents had her and why they thought they could protect her from such horrors.
The scent of honey-glazed ham drifted. She swallowed gently and anticipated the cue for her next line. A tech aid in gray shorts and blue flip flops was just outside of the three-wall room that had been built for the scene. The aid’s fingers drummed a handheld device that remotely positioned the drone-hauled cameras, lights, and microphones hovering in the air. When the aid guided the shotgun microphone over the actors until it reached Serenity’s side of the table and pointed at her, she would give her next line.
She gazed around and considered the idea of discussing the slaughter of women and children over a feast. The set was little more than food, a long wooden table, and the three faux stone walls. If this were a true event and not a movie scene she might have vomited at the idea. She repressed the scowl that almost came when she remembered the director telling her that the story was based on a true event. On something that had happened a long time ago on Earth.
She thought about the underdeveloped script and how she needed to create a backstory for her character. Did Fin K’tata want to kill the children because a quick death was the best they could hope for? Was she going mad with power and saw the children as the one threat she could defeat? Or did she think children were a distraction which had to be forgotten during war? Serenity wondered if killing children was the kind of decision a strong leader made. And, if that were true, did that mean that, once upon a time, she was a strong leader?
She reminded herself that she did not actually kill a child, a young boy. She adjusted her grip on her sword, worried it might slip away, and thought of the word ignored. Saying that she ignored the boy was a closer fit, though not as illustrative as gave space to which felt like a truer accounting of what had happened once, long ago. Some part of her was comfortable with, at least, the conclusion that the boy had ultimately moved on to a safer place, a place better equipped to prepare him for a world where children were sometimes killed.
Before Serenity was an actress, she was an ordained minister. And before she was a minister, she was a martial artist who sometimes acted, spending much of her teenage years and early twenties playing thrilling but predominantly mute characters in her father’s community theater productions. Thrilling because she could fly across a stage like a fired bullet. Predominantly mute because she would sometimes recite lines just as rapidly, the words racing out of her like they burned her tongue. Her father had been patient with her rushed speech, saying that nerves affected everyone differently.
One day, she found her mother’s Bible, boxed away in their basement years after she’d passed. After a few months of reading, the time spent with passages on love and faith, highlighted and underlined by her mother, drew an unexpected calm out of Serenity. A few years later, she found herself reading and reciting scriptures in front of congregations of hundreds, with a voice that was steady, full, and clear, as comfortable as someone catching up with an old friend. A journalist had even interviewed her because of her church’s growth, asking if she would help build satellite churches on some of the other moons.
She never knew she could act until she started talking to members of her congregation as friends. She glanced up at the shotgun microphone. It would be coming toward her soon. She wondered if talking to the boy like he was a friend was where she went wrong. Because the boy, ultimately, believed they shared a friendship. And she had, too.
She had first met the boy when he was young, 14, but tall for his age. His skin, just a little lighter than hers, was smooth and unblemished, like a new candle. His hair was always cut close. He loved to talk about the ideas of God, love, and hope despite life’s brutality. But he didn’t just like to talk. He liked to converse. To think before responding and to listen with watchful eyes. The boy slipped his way through complex subjects like light through glass, and never lost faith when she had no simple answers for his tough questions.
Unfortunately, the boy liked to talk to some of the other ministers, too. And, unfortunately, one of the other ministers wasn’t particularly interested in the boy’s conversation.
Unfortunately.
Unfortunately was a word embedded within the cowardly reply from her bishop. It had stood out to her. The reply came after she’d contacted the bishop and reported everything the boy, now a man in his twenties, had told her. Everything about how—though the boy now had the body of a man, the beard of a man, and even a few grays in his cornrows—it was hard for him to feel like a man. Because of what had been done to him by a man.
The word unfortunately stood out to Serenity like it was from another language. Like it was an entire message all by itself. Hidden in between the spaces of the word’s letters, she could almost read the bishop saying, “I’m using this particular word because I don’t actually know how to discuss the rape of a child. I suggest we seek guidance through prayer.”
The present moment hung on the edge of her thoughts. The actors. The script. The shotgun microphone. Everything felt almost two-dimensional, like she was watching her life on a screen. One of the actors gestured toward her, reciting his lines, and she recalled that she was making a movie.
She considered the possibility that Fin K’tata wanted to kill the women and children because of shame. Because the sight of dead women and children, splattered like raindrops by the hand of a more cunning enemy, might have killed Fin, too. The people Fin had once known and loved now empty husks, voids reflecting the void which had always existed within her. Serenity touched her stomach, confirming that she was still whole.
“I should’ve known,” she had said, years ago, when the boy had first told her.
“Why? How could you have known?”
“I had heard things about … But I didn’t think ….” She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe
someone would actually ….”
She was considering softening her voice for the next line. She hated the script. It didn’t make any sense. There was too much dialogue. She hated the director. He didn’t actually direct. He was more interested in waxing his beard than hiring a full crew. She wondered why she could never find a Bible verse that explicitly condemned pedophilia.
Her church had counseled its members on ways to settle disputes between each other. The
church’s foyer was large, almost as wide as the church itself, and built with a dark brown wood. She used to walk through the entrance and see a door to the right of the foyer which led to the bathrooms, a door in the middle which led to the sanctuary, and a door to the left which led to her office and other rooms on the lower level. Projected above the entrance to the sanctuary was a holographic animation of two men, smiling and shaking hands. Beneath them hovered a passage from Matthew 18:15-17, “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private ….”
But the boy, wearing his patchy beard almost like it was a disguise, had lost his gift for conversation. So, she agreed to go with him to confront the minister. It was the last time she wore a clergy shirt.
She decided she would use a stern voice for her next line. Most of the dialogue in this scene went to the men who were playing her subjects. One with white hair, tan skin, and a beard that was braided all the way down to his beltline was agreeing with Fin. He was topless and she noticed that his muscular chest was almost as broad as his double-bladed ax. She wondered if too much time in the gym, and not enough time with the script, was why he was such a stiff actor.
She recalled how the minister had confessed, wept, and begged, for the sake of his wife and children, to not be exposed. The minister had also wondered aloud if the church could survive the scandal. He had asked the boy and Serenity to pray with him.
Serenity had kneeled to pray and heard a squeak. She thought the sound came from her knees before she looked behind her and saw the boy. His fists were raised to his beard. Glassy streams ran down the sides of his face.
“No!” he had said. “No more praying. That’s how it would start.”
The memory almost distracted her from the shotgun microphone pointed at her.
“I know this is hard,” she said. Her voice was calm. The quartet of actors in front of her grunted and nodded. “But there are wrongs and then there are wrongs!” A roar from one of the actors. More nodding. A horned helmet was too big for one of them and almost fell off his head. “Our blades will be a mercy compared to what those animals will do to the most vulnerable among us.”
The actors broke into an outcry that sounded like anger but was supposed to be excitement. They started shoving each other. She thought of the holographic animation in the foyer of the church. Prop swords sprouted into the air. Fists banged against the long table. An actor snarled. Another screeched. The men in the old animation were smiling and shaking hands.
She wondered why the men in the animation were smiling. Who smiles when confessing their sins?
The scene’s climax was coming. She tried to remain present. But she was also frustrated and grinding her teeth. She couldn’t remember if she had looked into the minister’s eyes when he had apologized, or not.
She remembered rising from her knees and returning to the boy. He was leaning back into a corner of the room, breathing hard. With all of the moisture on his face, there was no way to know where his sweat had ended and his tears had begun. She placed a hand on either of his trembling shoulders, tried to hold him still, and offered her thought: “Maybe not today, but the time will come when you have to forgive him. It’s scripture.”
The words had come slowly. They were casual, as if, instead of speaking to a terrorized soul, she was speaking to an old friend.
The memory faded. She squeezed her sword’s handle and spun the weapon over her head and into the table which broke in half. She had hit the spot marked with chalk perfectly. The two halves of the table fell toward each other. The ham and plates tumbled. The goblets clanked against the floor and spilled non-alcoholic beer.
The boy hadn’t agreed or disagreed with her words about forgiveness. He only hollered. His eyes widened, his mouth gaped, and the sound burst out of him. He stared at her while standing up and reaching for the doorknob somewhere behind him. After finding it, he snatched the door open and sprinted down the hallway.
“There are many ways to die,” she said to the actors. “Is it not best that love kills our people instead of insanity?”
She knew the boy would never be able to forgive the minister and wondered if a life of faith was a life of lost battles. She wondered if those losses were why, in the moment, she had decided
to sacrifice the boy’s faith with a quick death-stroke of dogma. Maybe it was best. Because she knew she could never forgive the minister either. Not even after his conviction. Nor the bishop. Nor herself.
“Cut!” The director was hugging her from behind. “Perfect! Seriously, thank you. That was just what we needed.”
She murmured while gently pushing the director off her. She looked down, saw an empty goblet by her foot, and thought about visiting the freckled bartender with the Christmas lights and lighthearted jokes. She thought that Fin K’tata would be killing herself, too, if she killed all the women and children. The movie was terrible but she signed the contract and needed the distraction. She walked to her dressing room and wondered what the boy would have said to her about the movie if they still had conversations.