Frozen Sunday

Lan keeps his eyes sealed shut, pinned under the oppressive stillness of judgment. His arms and legs have lost all feeling. This is the fourth creeping hour of his punishment.

The graveled, deceptive warmth of the Dedicate's voice is enough to make him sick.

"Renounce your sins, Lan. Leave them here with the stocks, and walk out of this holy place as a child no longer. Apologize to the commune for your offense!" the Dedicate says.

"I'm sorry her father said no, and I'm sorry that all of you are here, making a spectacle of it. But I'll never renounce my love for her. Crucify me. I don't care." Lan says.

He opens his eyes and glares at the man in the ridiculous purple robe. Then, hunchbacked against a heavy slab of wood with no reasonable expectation of relief in the near future, he spits at the man's feet.

The temple goers erupt, some gasping at his audaciousness, some bowing their heads in prayer to ask God to cleanse him of his blasphemous thoughts, and others appearing as though they've been slapped in the face outright.

The Dedicate frowns at him and nods at the lasher to proceed.

"For your original crime of the flesh before marriage, you will befall one hundred lashes. For your defiance in the face of the Creator, you will befall much worse. I ask Her now to reach downward from her throne and intervene! We will place you in the Facing Room!" The Dedicate exclaims.

"THE FACING ROOM! THE FACING ROOM!" They chant like mindless drones.

"For who has given us everything that we don't deserve?" The Dedicate turns his back to Lan in the stockades and spreads his arms like a prophet, his purple robe wingspan reflecting the pale light of the various torches around the temple.

The first bite of the whip breaks open the skin of his shoulder. He feels blood trickling at first, like a slow motion waterfall. His back ignites with each assault, and he sees starry explosions of white hot pain behind his eyelids amidst the growing volume of chants around the room. By lash number twenty five, his back shoulder resembles a shark bite.

“I miss you, Tess.” Lan whispers, gritting his teeth against the sting of cured animal hide.

The Dedicate lowers his arms and quiets his hive, then turns to face his captive once more.

"Speak mercy to Her, and your pain will be nothing. We can hold a meeting with our sister commune. I will speak to her father on your part so that he might forgive you for deflowering his only daughter who has now been lost to him, due to the difficulties of child birth. Should we redeem you in time, maybe something good can come of this after all." The old man says.

"And our child?" Lan asks. Again, the townspeople stare wide-eyed in shock.

"There is no child, and she is dead because of what you did to her. Both of them lost because you are a sinner." The Dedicate says with a cold, efficient frown. His fabricated façade fools his audience, but not the young man in the stocks.

"And again, we come to an impasse. You say something is a certain way, and I know it's not that way. All of you are being fooled by this fancy dressed man and his lies. Tess is gone, but they’ve hidden my child." Lan says. The whip bites him worse than ever before, and he cries out in pain.

They are outraged.

"The Facing Room, take him now!" One woman says.

"The whip is too good for the likes of that lusting vagabond. He is a child of darkness!" Another voice says.

“This young man will meet the wrath of God and learn to respect Her, but let us continue our service without his black spirit to muddle the conscience. Please turn your scriptures to the book of Marx as we pass around the offering plate. Brother Merritt will deliver the prayer of tithes….”

Lan listens to the violet hypocrite and suffers the lash for another three hours. He’s a background example for the Dedicate’s sermon, and his cheeks burn with fire as he feels the probing eyes of his fellow townsfolk on his person. He stays motionless in the stocks until the massive indoor amphitheatre of religious demagoguery is empty except for him and his tormentor.

The whip bearer dots Lan’s bleeding back with a linen cloth, and his voice is surprisingly gentle.

“I have to take you to the Facing Room now.” He says, loosening the top half of the wooden prison.

Lan stands up and his back screams in protest from the stress of a six hour ninety degree angle with his lower body. His arms tingle with electricity, and his legs feel they’re made of curdled milk. He sits down on the pulpit and tries to breathe as steadily as possible.

“Just give me a minute. I can’t feel my arms and legs.” Lan says.

“I’m sorry I had to do that.” The man says.

“It’s not your fault. I brought it on myself. I could have kept my mouth shut and pretended like I thought I made a mistake.” Lan says.

“Maybe you did. I’ve given lashes to many. We haven’t had someone resist the Dedicate in a very long time.”

“Well, it was time. He’s wrong. She loved me, and we were going to leave this place soon, but now she’s gone and I have nothing left. I’ll never tell them I was wrong for loving her.” Lan says.

“I see. But how would you leave? As soon as you leave the gate, the air is poison.” He says.

“You think it’s poison. They’ve told you that you can’t leave your whole life, and yet people from other communes get here somehow, don’t they?” Lan asks.

“The Dedicate has the support of the High Temple. They have the resources to transport us safely from haven to haven.” He says.

“Yeah? Or maybe they want you to think that’s the only way. Maybe if you don’t do it their way, they don’t want you to think there’s a way at all.” Lan says.

“I’ve never seen someone call the Dedicate a liar, and I haven’t unlocked the Facing Room in five years. I could be executed just for listening to this.” He says.

“You’re just as blind and naïve as the rest of them. There’s more out there than temple and the Sabbath and Her Word. There are people who live on the outside of our walls, and they live freely. I’ve seen them in my dreams.” Lan says.

“You’re strong, but I can’t listen to you any longer. Your blasphemy is harmful to my spirit.” The man says.

“Another impasse, then. Do what you’ve come here to do and leave me.” Lan says.

Lan stumbles behind the man until they reach the locked door. The words “FACING ROOM” are emblazoned on a silver placard.

His lasher unlocks the door, and Lan steps inside.

“Just know that you can’t hide from Her. She will quicken you as she has quickened all the others before you, and when you come back out to me, you will be as clean and pure as the Dedicate himself.” The lasher says.

Lan has no reponse, and says nothing. He steps inside.

The door closes heavily and clicks, locked shut not two seconds afterwards.

The room is nothing but an empty space surrounding an altar, constricted by vast wooden walls and a high, vaulted ceiling. The air smells of stillness. Lan hears himself breathing, and nothing else.

You’ve strayed off course.

The voice floats in to his ears from nowhere. It feels above him, but there are no windows. Lan jumps at the sound after the brief period of perfect silence. It’s a sweet sound, but also terrifying in the same moment because the young blasphemer sees nothing in the room except for the altar.

He kneels before it, but his fists are clenched. He shakes, infuriated by his isolation in the room where he’s been forced to talk to God.

“I’ve done no wrong if you look in to my heart, Loving One.” Lans says.

Your lusting hurts me.

“No. Not lusting. The Dedicate preaches love. LOVE. God loves you, I love you, we all love you and each other. As long as we love God first, we have everything that we could possibly ask for. This has been the word since I was an infant.” Lan says.

Marriage is my sacred commandment as a requirement for the pleasures of the flesh.

“Your priest is hiding my child from me. You know she’s alive. Tell me where she is.” Lan says.

Child, you do not command your Maker. Continue, and you will face redemption at my feet. Do you understand? Forget the babe, for it is a foul reminder of your sin.

“Then I have decided that you are nothing but a vengeful God, and I will go to the inferno before I will bow before this altar ever again.” Lan says.

He spits on the altar, and it brings relief to his anger and helplessness.

Until his saliva freezes solid.

He hears a hiss, and the room is instantly engulfed in a thick fog. He holds his hands in front of his face, but he can’t see them. He feels frigid, icy air and his bare arms prickle with goose bumps.

“If you are a benevolent God, then you know what I really held for her was love. Stop this.” Lan says, his voice much weaker than he expected when he hears it.

He can already feel himself shaking, and a layer of ice is starting to form on the surface of the wood at each corner of the room, slowly expanding in complete silence except for the occasional fracture or crack in the crystallized formation of divine pestilence.

Freeze. Suffer the bite of consequence.

“D-Don’t do t-this.” Lan stammers. The ice has encased his feet to the wood paneling, restricting his movement to his hands and head.

REPENT.

He hears it a mile away because his blood is thinning and he feels like he’s going to pass out soon.

“N-never.” His voice is only a shady whisper, weakened by the onset of frostbite.

A fresh and unrelenting wave of freezing force sweeps in to the room, and the ice solidifies around his calves and mid section. He is suspended below the altar, forced in to a contorted position by a prison of frigid malaise.

Forced to bow to an idol he doesn’t believe in.

You will spend one day of your life here every week until you feel remorse for your crimes against your brothers in the commune. Every Sunday will be a frozen one, and you will beg me for warmth when I finish with you.

Lan is unable to respond, as his entire body is sheathed in the deathly silent formation of crystal except for his cheeks and eyes, which burn bright with rage.

He thinks of Tess and her laugh. It sparks a cinder of warmth in the cold and dark places of his spirit.

In a small, hidden easement behind the crossbeam, an old man in a purple robe smirks through a one way window of polished glass.

***

The cloud is a forgiving and blissful perch of relief. He sinks in to it, and her fingertips are at his bangs, twirling his dark hair in a repetitious habit that he’s always loved her for.

“Thanks for staying true to me in the face of something so terrible, love.” She says.

“God doesn’t care about love, Tess.” Lan says.

“You’re wrong, Sparky. He does. The power in that room isn’t God.” Tess says.

“Wait. He? What do you mean, He?” Lan asks.

He gasps at the darkness when they wake him up before sunrise with a dousing of ice water. They strip him of his crafting license. They burn it in the fireplace, then ransack his living quarters, taking everything that he owns in the blink of an eye. He ends up in the Dedicate’s office.

This is one hundred Sundays later.

He keeps his head bowed and says nothing.

“Your resistance has led me to terminate your employment within the commune, Lan. You’ve had almost two years, and yet you are still a lone vigilante, floundering in your cause and infecting my brothers with blasphemous dribble. Every Dedicate of every other commune has laughed at me for not executing by now. I’m not going to pander to your fantasies any longer.” The Dedicate says.

“I will still never submit to your false god, and one day, I’ll have your life.” Lan says, his face expressionless.

“Threatening the head of the commune with murder? You realize the sentence for such a gross violation of ---“

“Death, or the Facing Room. Either is preferable to standing here with you.” Lan says.

“Very well, young fool. You shall know the wrath of God on the Sabbath.” The Dedicate says.

“One day, I won’t thaw out, and my heart will stop. Then you’ll feel like a real powerful man, I’d wager.” Lan says.

“If it is God’s will for you to die, then so be it.” He says.

“You don’t know the first thing about God’s will. Tess is trying to tell me something, old man. I’m going to find out what her message is. I have a feeling it’s not good for you or your brainwashed subjects.” Lan says.

“Look at the prophet of doom! See how his empty words give him false hope.” The Dedicate grins.

“Tess finally showed me. I know what you’ve been doing, old man. You’re a liar.” Lan says.

The lasher escorts him out. He walks in stifled silence, and he finds that he’s on the verge of a chaotic breakdown. His breath erupts upward from his gut, spinning his insides, and then it slows down erratically.

“Don’t be afraid, blasphemer. You need not fear God. This is a place of healing.” The lasher says.

“Before you lock me in that room again, let me ask you one question.” Lan says.

The lasher unlocks the door and opens it, but he hesitates for a moment.

“It’s about your benign God.” Lan says.

“Very well.” The lasher says.

“Why have we always referred to God as “Her?” Why couldn’t God be a Him?” Lan asks.

“The Lord has always been Her, since the beginning of the histories.” The lasher says.

“But there are histories that aren’t written down, even before our histories. What did they believe?” Lan asks.

“The old people were reckless and lost. A very scarce amount of them held false religions, but it is the Dedicates who have brought us real salvation.”

“Someone put on a purple robe after the air became poison and started talking about God and the way we should live and communal love. That’s what happened. I know it.” Lan says.

“Preposterous! They are our prophets and our leaders!” the lasher says.

“They’re magicians, putting things in front of your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Lan says.

“You are an odd man, and you say things that make me fearful for your life. You are fortunate that you have not been executed already.”

“Just think about what I said the next time you’re chanting and waving your arms around with the rest of them like a flock of hypnotized sheep. This is the Sunday that I might not come out of this room ever again.” Lan says.

“And you think. About the things you’ve said, and how many chances God has given you. Suffer, and think about the mercy you could have had.” The lasher says. He slams the door.

The lock clicks shut behind Lan. Almost instantly, the room coats over in a thick coat of hoarfrost. The ice covers every inch of him except his eyes. As he is forced to bow, he stares at the frozen base of the altar with an empty, passive stare and refuses to acknowledge it.

In these moments, he begs for death.

Blasphemer. Death is too good for you.

Lan wants to protest, to say that these words are not the words of an all knowing and powerful Creator who loves all, but he only suffers in quiet torment.

But his insides feel warm.

He closes his eyes and focuses on the outline of the spectral face in his mind’s eye. He grows warmer. He feels the icebound vice grip around his waist and shoulders lessen, just a breadth. Frigid droplets of slush begin to melt off the ice sculpture that was once a man, only seconds ago.

The face is milky and undefined in his head, but he sees the unmistakable laugh lines and the pull of the most glorious smile he’s ever witnessed. This face makes Tess and her smile seem small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but only because Lan knows that her smile isn’t what makes her. It’s the warm soul inside….

The constricting ring of frost around his neck and shoulders melts to the darkly stained wood of the floor, and he finds that he can speak again. Relief is coming, little by little. The freeze isn’t painful anymore.

Another wave of frost.

This is the most potent and powerful ice attack in one hundred Sabbaths. The ice congeals on top of itself in layers, like a frozen katana blade. There’s a rhythm and a pattern to it.

He closes his eyes and sees the face once more.

He doesn’t hear a voice, and the face is not a man or a woman, but simply a presence. That presence fills him with hope. That presence tells him in one split second that this room is a deceptive tool of control and fear. In an instant, he knows, and he understands.

“I know you’re watching, old man. I know you can hear me. I can imagine that you’re probably turning the temperature down further. You’re pumping more water in to the room. That explains the extra four feet of thickness. Does it disturb you that I can stand here and move my lips freely, even when you drop it to negative five hundred?” Lan says, smiling in jubilation. The ice is down to the top of his chest now.

He hears no answer and meets another onslaught of winter. He laughs. The warm cinder at his core ignites, and for the first time in his life, Lan speaks with the real God.

The shell explodes in fragments of sharp rivets that ricochet off the walls and ceiling. Lan watches in bewilderment and awe. A dagger of ice collides with the alcove behind the largest crossbeam, and Lan hears a sound like splintering wood, except more high pitched. It’s a very odd sound, but God tells him that it’s the sound of his freedom.

Part of the wall is missing. The fragments of it are different than any material Lan has ever seen before.

“A room with walls of diamond.” Lan mumbles to himself.

“It’s called glass, you ignorant piece of shit. And the voice of God you've been hearing? That's a 'speaker.'” A familiar voice sounds.

Lan looks up the wall and encounters a familiar blob of purple. The smiling face tells him more of what he needs to know. As he takes in what the warm deity tells him, his face contorts with pain and denial, and then acceptance. All in a moment’s breadth.

“You’re a monster. Not the worst of them, but all of you. Soros, Trump, Buffett. Not prophets. Men of power who escaped the blasts.” Lan says in choked disbelief.

“We had the resources to survive the fallout. We were the men in power. The men with all the wealth, pulling all the strings, inserting all the politicians in the right spots at the right times.”

“You killed everyone who knew who you were.” Lan says.

“Religion is a powerful motivator, Lan. On any given day in the older times, I could make the right phone call and make anything happen. I was that guy. Then, the bombs fell. Money was useless. Political office meant as much as a Visa card, which evolved in to a worthless piece of plastic after the first week of catastrophe.”

“You kept the young ones alive, and wiped out everyone else.” Lan says.

“There were loyal soldiers and high ranking officers of the military who still considered me “Commander in Chief.” They had bullets. I used them, and anyone over the age of ten wasn’t spared. Anyone who knew my real identity got placed in an underground commune with a decade’s worth of supplies. When they re-emerge, they will play along with everyone else. They will pretend that I am Her chosen holy man.” The Dedicate says.

“Why not use a real religion? Why hide the technology from them and use it secretly in this room, making them think that God will punish them, when you could utilize it to make everyone’s life easier? And why the She-God?” Lan says.

“Because it’s not about everyone else, Lan. It’s about me. I need the power. It’s all I have left. I created something that the whole world believes in, and regardless of what happens to me, you will never have a taste of what that can feel like. What it can do to you. The world started its destruction, and I eliminated the leftovers of something that was wrong and twisted. Where was God then, Lan? Tell me.” The Dedicate says with a defeated look of disgust.

“He got caught up to you. He found the one person who never bought all your shit in the first place. Maybe we were doomed to destruction, but we persevere, and the spirit carries on. That spirit is what defeated your manipulation of information and plague of ignorance. My God broke your science and technology, and you belong in the lowest circle of hell. The circle for treachery." Lan says.

The old man's eyes grow fearful at the reminder of his fate in the nether of eternity.

"The world will become right with time, and perhaps you can redeem yourself with God. Tell me where my child is, and I'll spare your life. This can be step one.” Lan says.

“I sent them to a different commune. You need transport to safely get inside their temple without risk of poisoning, and only I can arrange that for you. If the other Dedicates know that I’ve told you all this, you won’t be safe, and neither will I.” The Dedicate says.

“You have technology that can create ice in an instant, but you won’t give them running water.” Lan says.

“Don’t judge me. Don’t you dare. You weren’t there when every city erupted in to flames. Thirty one nuclear warheads in ten minutes, Lan.”

“God will carry us through this. Not you.” Lan says.

“You can’t get her back without my help. You can't kill me. You can't radicalize the people in the commune and tell them the truth, and you can't spread anything that contradicts the High Temple. If you show your brothers this room and these machines, they will know fear and chaos.” The Dedicate says.

“You're not a real leader. Not an example for a good man to follow. I'm going to show them what your socialists and wealthy false demigods don't want them to see. God also wants me to tell you one thing, Dedicate.” Lan says.

“You’re not talking to God, but I’ll entertain you. Go ahead, tell me. Tell me what God wants me to hear, since I’ve been telling you your whole life.”

“The difference is, old man, I’m not lying about it to control people’s lives.” Lan says.

“Spit it out. What does your almighty God have to say to me, the most powerful man on earth?”

“Look at the king of nothing. Look how his empty words give him false hope. God wanted me to tell you that you will die on the false altar that you created. Thou shalt not have any graven image before me.” Lan says.

Lan bounds the Dedicate like a swine, and eventually deciphers the process of operating the frost emission device on the foreign control panel. Despite his recent visit by the Creator, he is still amazed by his first glimpse of old world technology and the inventiveness of mankind.

He switches off the torrent of frost.

He takes one of the glass shards from the floor and places it in his pocket as a reminder of the day when he saw the face of the Lord. Then, he locks the door with a certain purple robed man screaming in desperation behind him, ice creeping up his legs.

“Eye for an eye, Dedicate.” Lan says, amazed at the display of divine retribution before him. The ice is not manufactured by scientific devices. It is created by the Creator, and the effect is phantasmic and beautiful.

Lan thinks that purple is a rather beautiful color when filtered through four feet of ice.

He follows the glass corridor leading from the back of the easement. He opens the massive doors at the termination of the glass tunnel and encounters yet another new material as he approaches the airlock: metal.

The containment field glows with a dull red hum, and God speaks to him once more.

Lan learns that he will be responsible for healing the world and spreading truth, but first, he has to become a family man.

He knows that his journey will be long on foot, but as he steps through the containment barrier and the poison of radiation begins to seep in to his body like the Dedicate’s corrupt lies, he feels warm again. The warmth allows him to breathe safely.

“Thank you for safe passage to my family, Lord.” Lan says.

The voice is never as strong as it was in the moment when he fractured the icy shackles of a false prophet, but trudging through blasted lands of cold death and an invisible sickness in the air, Lan has never felt more free or alive.

This voice isn't from a speaker. It's genuine and real. This voice is his strength against the fallout.

You're welcome, my son.

Standing tall on a highland ridge with a bleeding sunset and the very slightest hint of a crescent moon, Lan begins the perilous descent in to the lowlands, to a fleeting vision of a cooing infant.

He will reach them just before Christmas.

But he'll never be cold again.