You're giving the sermon

I didn't want to go to church. I pretended to be asleep. It was hard, because I woke up early, and I was laying (lying?) there for hours under the covers, waiting for her to leave already. Once she went downstairs and opened and closed the garage door. I think she was trying to draw me out. But it was way too early and I stayed in bed and didn't get caught.

So after that she just came upstairs and started hitting me, so I got up.

I drove. I insisted on driving. I took a left where I was supposed to take a right, but she grabbed the wheel and turned us around. So I stomped on the pedal and sped right past the church, but she jumped between my leg and pressed the brake with her hands, and then grabbed the wheel again and turned us around. So I hit her in the nose and while she was distracted trying to stop the bleeding I drove the car into a stream and hit a tree on the other side. So she got out and said "we're walking."

We got to the church, dripping water and scraping mud on the carpet. The organ prelude was playing. We walked into the chapel room, and just before we were in the sanctuary, she pulled my sleeve and said, "you're giving the sermon today."

"What do you mean?"

"The pastor wanted a week off, so I volunteered you to give the sermon."

"This week?"

"Yup."

I headed back into the chapel room and sat down at an old wooden table, because now I had to write a sermon, I guess.

She followed me out there. "The theme is 'faith of my father,'" she said.

"What does that mean?"

She handed me a Bible and a program that indicated the verse in question. Inside, they had already moved passed the opening greeting and were well into the first hymn.

I started flipping through the Bible, but I couldn't find the passage. The page number was a misprint or something, I think. I gave up and started combing the hymns, hoping for some inspiration there. It wasn't a real hymn, though, some American-themed jingoistic thing some dude in the church had written. It had no tune. Inside, they blazed through the children's message. I had like ten minutes and not a single word.

"My grandfather went to church sometimes," I scrawled on the back of my program. Trash. I crossed it out. I could just lie, just make up a bunch of weepy stories about faith and fathers and Jesus, talk for three or four minutes if I go real slow, let everyone out early. They would like that, anyway. It was summer.

She came out to check up on me. "I don't have a word," I said. I was almost crying. "Not a single word."

"I can make it go away," she said, real low, right in my ear. "Just ask me and I can make it all go away. But you have to ask."

I knocked her over and ran up to the pulpit. They weren't done reading the scripture yet, but I told everyone to stop now, because I was ready to give my sermon now.

They were all quiet. Not silent, because the pews were creaking and people were clearing their throats and sucking on mints and rustling their stiff church clothes, but quiet. All their eyes were on me. I hadn't a word.

I shuffled through the papers on the pulpit, hoping the pastor had left something behind I could steal. All he had up there were doodles of people from the church he hated, being hurt, with axes through their heads and whatnot. A couple crosswords, some box scores, nothing theological. Everyone was looking at me.

I cleared my throat and looked at everyone looking up at me. I grabbed the microphone, then rearranged it. I heard no sound. I hit the mic and it made no sound through the speakers. Was the mic hooked up? It was a small church anyway; we didn't really need a mic. Still. I grabbed the cord and tugged. It ran under the pulpit through a small hole drilled in the top. I tugged again. Both times, it didn't give.

I punched a hole through the top of the pulpit. It was thin wood and it shattered right away. The cord was tangled up with a lot of other cords that went through a tunnel. I pulled at the mic's cord (it was the only white one), ripping it away from the others. I stepped through the hole in the pulpit, holding on tight to that cord.

I crawled through the tunnel, ripping the cord free of the wall and the tangle of other cords along the way. It kept going deeper and deeper and deeper until I didn't know which direction was which anymore. I followed the cord all the way to the end of a tunnel to a small, dusty room in the basement, below the church and all its worshipers, with dozens of cords and a couple of radiators and big, hollow water heaters, and the room throbbed with power and charge and spirit, maybe.