Christopher stood in the middle of the cul-de-sac, the key in his pocket, looking at the nice man. So calm. So gentle. So patient and polite. There was no terrifying face. There was only his reassuring smile with rows of perfectly white, perfectly straight baby teeth.
“All you have to do is kill the hissing lady, and I promise you, everything will be okay,” he said.
Christopher looked down the street. The man in the Girl Scout uniform was happy and innocent.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone, Christopher,” the nice man said. “I just want my freedom. It’s all I want.”
The man in the Girl Scout uniform pulled himself into the bushes.
“I just want out of this prison, so I can do some good. You see that man in the bushes? Do you know what he did to a little girl?”
“Make it stop!” the man in the Girl Scout uniform screamed.
“It was terrible. And he knows it now. I just want bad people to stop hurting good people. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
The mailbox people moaned and pulled at their stitches. The street was so loud, Christopher couldn’t hear anyone in the woods, but he knew they were there. He felt Mrs. Henderson on the real side. She saw her husband sitting in the kitchen. She cried tears of joy. He was home! Her husband finally came home! She ran across the kitchen to hold him in her arms. Then, for some reason, she couldn’t stop herself from picking up a knife and stabbing him.
“NO! I don’t want him to die now! He’s finally home!”
Christopher looked up. The street went silent as the nice man’s eyes changed to a beautiful green color. He smelled like pipe tobacco. This was the man Christopher remembered. The man who got Christopher’s mother a house.
“What about the people in the town?” Christopher asked.
“You want to save the people who hurt you and your mother?” the nice man asked.
“Yes, sir,” Christopher said.
“There will never be another like you.” The nice man smiled. Then, he looked at the little boy and nodded.
“Once you free me, you can free them.”
Christopher looked into the nice man’s eyes, pained and wise.
“How can I trust you?” Christopher asked.
“You don’t have to trust me. You are all powerful. All knowing. You are God here. You can save anyone you want. But someone has to die for the rest to live. It’s either the hissing lady or your mother. There is no other choice. I’m sorry.”
He spoke the words, then went silent. His face remaining still and solemn. But Christopher could feel the thoughts playing hide-and-seek. He would not let Christopher kill himself like David did. The choice was set.
The hissing lady or his mother.
Christopher looked at the nice man, then over to the hissing lady bound in a heap in his yard just off the street. She panted like a deer that had been hit by a car.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her.
Christopher began to walk toward the hissing lady. She screamed in her restraints. Terrified. Writhing in pain.
“NO! DON’T! STOP!” she begged.
Christopher walked to the lawn and grabbed the hissing lady.
“YOU’RE OFF THE STREET!” she cried.
Christopher felt the fate of the world as he held her, and she struggled. He felt her torment. The world’s torment. All the moments the hissing lady tried to scare him away. She had been here forever. She was exhausted. Tortured 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 and saw her.
Christopher’s mother.
Her eyes glowed with the light of one hundred billion stars. Her voice boomed.
“GET AWAY FROM MY SON!”