Squirrel Blood

It has been forty years since our cult has met.

I am still here in the woods: carving the visage of our God - missing my friends but missing my God even more.

The pine trees outside swayed as the lightning and thunder remarked on the wind. I refresh and refresh on my rectangle... and the trees outside sway. My eyes. I could feel my eyes burn as the blue light filled me with things that I had not felt since the Visiting.

I could hear screams deep in the forest. I could see the rectangle’s feed and I feel the harbinger of my god feeding.

It was the harbinger that called the other cult members away. The True God has been forgotten... but not for long.

I put on my rainslick, took my axe, and cut a few more logs and looked at my rectangle. Forty car pileup on the Klondike Highway. Humans trying to escape. Americans escaping the rubble that their country has become. 

There will be more, and they will be desperate.

For a moment, I wonder if any my friends died in that. I swing my axe down and hear another scream in the woods. I smirk. I wonder if they will see my god before they die.

Leaves falling. December, and it’s thirty celsius: it hasn’t snowed in a year or so and as hot as late Spring. Everything is in disarray. I look at my rectangle again. It’s gone quiet. I continue slapping my axe into the tree. I throw my knife into a squirrel that was waiting on a tree. I take it inside and I gaze at my God’s carving.

For a second I can hear my God. Somewhere in the ocean, it calls to me. We speak for a while as the fire flickers on my God’s face. It has been forty years since our cult has met. It was the harbinger that called the other cult members away.

The harbinger has done its job: it has prepared the earth for the arrival of my God.

I looked out the window: pitch black. My rectangle gave one last blip a few hours ago: a stinging, repeating noise, followed by a voice... and then nothing forever.

I excused myself and stepped out into the woods once more. There was a blast of wind that near knocked me over. I held onto the doorway and crawled back inside. My God was still there. It asked me a question. I listened and responded.

“You are not irrelevant, my lord,” I said. “The harbinger has made you more relevant than ever. That country has no future anymore due to the influence of the followers of your harbinger. They have ransacked it.”

I could see its eyes glow white while the wind tormented the outside of my cabin. The walls bulged and sagged, like a corpse breathing. I continued.

“Your harbinger has made the world insane,” I said. “The humans have mistaken it for God. For you. It has taken thousands of years, but now they hunger for your touch.”

I waited for its response and put more squirrel blood on my face. The wind and thunder howled - merely the temperate breath of my lord compared with what is to come - as I recalled the calmer, cooler days of my youth. My mothers, both abandoned by their own parents, moved us to the Canadian woods - far away from the harbinger’s influence.

I would bike around the small town with my friends. I must have been about thirteen or so when we all decided to spend a Saturday night getting high at the park. 

That’s where we met God.

God lived under a bush near the basketball court. My moms were okay with me staying up late. It had truly gotten late as the sun set behind the tall pine trees, leaving the four of us shrouded. Hidden. 

It was a weak voice. It was funny and witty. It knew a few wry jokes and told us some things about ourselves. When it told us its name, we wanted to have a look. I caught a glimpse and realized how deep we had gotten.

Every Saturday for a few years we would meet up there. God taught us some spells and told us about the harbinger and its plan.

What a clever God we have! Our spells were potent and we tried to use them for ‘good’ - or at least what we thought good was - but God reminded us of the Harbinger and its goal. We wept for the world but knew that it was our fault.

I was still in the doorway. My rectangle was on a nearby table, playing the Canadian Emergency Notification sound - a harsh buzzing. I didn’t need to see what it said. I knew that the harbinger had conquered our neighbors and part of me was happy. Part of me was sad. It was all part of the plan.

I found the squirrel and squeezed some blood onto the wooden floor, drawing what was commonly known as a pentagram with its life essence.

God made a whistling noise from the dark corner of the cabin as the wind calmed and calmed. It encouraged me to draw more, but I told it to wait. My phone was still vibrating and vibrating, finally falling to the floor and cracking as I finished the sigil.

I sighed and asked God if the harbinger was fated to bring insanity to humans. God slowly shook its head, its white eyes beaming. 

“That means we brought it on... ourselves?”

A nod. I whimpered and sighed and ran my fingers through my auburn hair. It was mostly white now, but there were a few strands left. 

“The harbinger convinced everyone that it was God,” I said, sitting against the wall. God’s eyes were getting brighter now, and it smiled its funny smile as it vanished - receding into the wood itself.

I blinked, stood, and got a beer from the cooler. Sitting down again, my finger meandered along the sigil.