The Cecilia Paradox: Short Story by John Mantooth Page B

doesn’t really say those last two parts.
    I’m trying to look around for something, anything that suggests people are still alive in the world. One good sign: I don’t see Freddie’s dead body anywhere. If he’d come out this door—which he did—his body would be somewhere over there by the end of the building. Hey, there is something over there. I crane my neck a little more for a better look and then WHAM. A big hand slaps the side of my face.
    “Eyes in front. Face the building,” Dominic says.
    But what was that thing I saw?
    The rumours are true. Ralph started the fire when he used one of his cigarettes to light a roll of toilet paper in the john. Funny thing is, he was taking a dump at the time, the dumbass, and after the toilet paper burned down to nothing, he couldn’t even wipe.
    This is our Messiah.
    Henry announces it is time for the Crucifixion. We gather in the rec room wide-eyed and eager for some entertainment. Dominic stands, arms crossed by the double doors which lead into Henry’s lair, aka Heaven, aka the promised land, aka some dumpy office with black construction paper shrouding the windows so none of us can see in.
    “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash comes on over the loudspeaker. Henry is a devout old time country fan. We get treated to all the old timers: Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Marty Robbins, and Willie Nelson before he discovered pot.
    The volume is louder than usual, and we can tell Henry is trying to MAKE A STATEMENT. The doors next to Dominic fly open and Ralph comes out, dragging his cross on his back. He’s wearing a pair of gym shorts but otherwise naked. Dark red lashes run the length of his thin frame, and this almost startles me a little.
    “So he really lashed him,” Frank mutters. “I wonder how much they’re paying Ralph to do this.” He whistles. “You think Henry spanked Ralph as a kid?”
    There are so many responses I have for this question that my mind goes swimmy and I can’t say any of them, so I simply shrug and watch Ralph drag what looks like a cardboard cross.
    “You’d think with all the CGI effects they used on the videos of our loved ones dying, they’d be able to afford more than a cardboard cross,” Marjorie says. “Very disappointing.”
    Johnny Cash reminds us it’s because “you’re mine” that he walks the line, and Marjorie shoves me out of the way when Ralph passes by. Dominic is behind him. Marjorie believes the TV camera is hidden somewhere on Dominic’s massive body.
    I drift to the back of our little group, where Cecilia puffs on a cigarette. She smiles at me. She looks hot. She’s got on my favourite gray mini and the red sweater that makes her breasts kind of perky and pendulous at the same time. Her hair is pulled back and her forehead shines with a sheen of sweat.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “Hey,” she says, and it’s a hey with possibilities in the tone, a hey that suggests another blowjob could be in the cards as long as I play mine right.
    “You know,” I say, “this Jesus stuff just isn’t the same when his hands smell like ass.”
    “Fully God, fully man,” Cecilia says cryptically. That’s the other thing about Cecilia, the thing you forget about her because she’s hot and capable of mind altering blow-jobs: she’s really kind of smart. Maybe too smart to be here with the rest of us doofuses. Maybe Freddie smart.
    “So what’s that mean?”
    She shrugs as Ralph climbs onto a stage Dominic constructed last week and lays his cross down on a chair. He looks dazed.
    “Drugged,” Frank says. He’s in front of me and Cecilia. “He’s been drugged.”
    “Fully God, fully man. It’s Biblical,” Cecilia says. “The Bible says Jesus was a paradox. Fully God and fully man at the same time.”
    Dominic is nailing the cardboard cross to the wall. Ralph watches him, red eyed and stoned.
    Cecilia takes my hand. “I don’t want to see this,” she whispers.
    “Nah,” I say. “Crucifixions bore me.”
    We head to