How to Kill A God

Wait.

Don’t be scared.

I can explain.

All of the suffering you’re feeling, all of the troubles you’re experiencing - I can make them go away. And no, it’s not something like me bestowing wisdom or influencing the subconscious to make things go your way - I can actually snap my fingers and make whatever’s bothering you disappear. Gone, without a trace. Like it never existed in the first place.

What’s the catch, you ask? Well, nothing too drastic- the law of equivalent exchange still applies here. I scratch your back, you scratch mine - you know what I mean.

How far are you willing to go? Is your wish equal to a few years off your remaining lifespan? One of your limbs? Your voice, your eyesight, your hearing? Or is it equal to another human life? Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you its value in return.

There’s no rush. Now that you’ve seen me, you can’t unsee. I won’t hurry you, but you’ll feel my breath in your hair, hear my voice in your ear, you’ll see my shadow from the corner of your eye and catch glimpses of me in reflective surfaces. Just to remind you that I’m not going anywhere.

So, what’s it going to be? I can’t wait to find out.

I have all the time in the world.

Of course my parents would choose to move during my senior year. I was supposed to be doing college tours, deciding where I wanted to attend, thinking of what I wanted to study.

Way to ruin things, mom and dad.

All because my father was chasing a stupid mystery.

My dad is a journalist, you see. His claim to fame is writing about the supernatural - debunking them, specifically - but isn’t it embarrassing when people find out that your dad has written about haunted places, aliens, and cryptids?

My mom isn’t that much better. She’s a romance novelist. But at least that scores me some points with girls who happen to be fans.

On the bright side, my new house isn’t too shabby. Actually, the whole town is weirdly wealthy for an agricultural and fishing community. Literally all the houses are gated mansions, with luxury vehicles in garages. Which again I found strange - I’ve never seen anybody drive much around here. It was such a small place that everything was within walking distance.

My new school is technically a public institution, but it looks state-of-the-art, with a manicured quadrangle and a reception area that looks more like a hotel lobby than a high school. Each room has a portrait of a solemn young girl in a white dress, which I think is one of the town’s founders because I’ve seen the same exact portrait in business establishments and wayside shrines downtown.

I heard the doorbell ring.

“I’ll get it,” I called to my parents, heading to the door. When I opened it, there were two smiling women standing on our front steps. The first woman had a covered pie pan in her hands. The second had a framed portrait, which she extended towards me.

“Put it on your mantle for luck,” she instructed smilingly. “It’s tradition.”

Do you ever wonder how gods are born? It’s different in every case, of course, but one thing they have in common is this - they start off with a seed of truth, which pushes roots of gossip into the ground, unfurling tender leaves of myth and legend, and finally, when they start to bud and blossom into something that is accepted as truth and fact, that is when a deity is conceived.

Basically, it begins when a real event becomes twisted into something either benevolent or sinister, fertilized by people’s imaginations and faith. There can be no deities where there is no belief. That’s why we say that every day, a god is killed - when they are forgotten, when their people are either consumed or pass away, their power also disappears.

This is why we need to work to remain in people’s hearts and minds. It doesn’t matter how we do it - some of us give luck, bring bountiful harvests or catches; some of us drag people into the sea and drown them - just to remind them that we’re here, we exist, and that since they brought us into existence, it’s their duty to keep us fed and propagate believers for our sake.

This town is no different. It’s a small rural town but you’ll notice that all the houses are luxurious, all the fields are lush with crops, and the rivers and bays are full of glistening fish just waiting to be caught. My name is alive in every household, my story whispered among school children and used by elders as a cautionary tale. I am not a beloved deity - I’m not delusional enough to think that I am - but they know that as long as they keep me in their thoughts, as long as they’re afraid of my wrath, as long as they feel uncomfortable enough to leave me offerings - just in case - their town will flourish and I will remain asleep for the majority of the year.

I was born an illegitimate child, and my circumstances were unlucky even without factoring that in. My father was a powerful man, he was a merchant but he was also well-versed in the occult, which he used to his advantage. My mother was a servant, and she gave birth to me and my brothers and sisters - five of us - during the night of a full eclipse. Our birth killed her, and my father, knowing that he would never be able to explain our existence to his wife and family, did something that to this day I cannot forgive.

Have you ever heard of the golden silkworm curse? Yes, that curse where you place several silkworms into a box and bury it. After a while, you can dig it up and you will find that only one silkworm has remained after cannibalizing its brethren. This silkworm is now ready to be used as a curse - you can send it to your enemies, who will gain material good fortune as long as the curse is fed, but once it’s forgotten, misfortune will befall them.

That’s what happened to me and siblings.

My father placed us in an underground cavern as infants, and, after a year, only I emerged alive, strengthened by the blood and flesh of my siblings and brimming with dark magic, just as he intended.

At least the kids in this town were nice. I made friends pretty quickly, and it was a relief to have someone other than my parents to hang out with. It was great to have people to eat with at lunch, and to walk to and from school with. They were a bunch of weirdos, but they were weirdos who had all the latest video games and played the same sports as I did.

Everyday, during lunch time, the entire student body stopped to place their palms together and sincerely thank their deity for the food. It was weird to see. I mean, in my old school, there were a few religious kids who muttered short prayers before digging in, but here everyone did it. At first it freaked me out, but I got used to it eventually. It was nice that they were so appreciative, I guess.

Another thing that bothered me at first was, once a week, on our way home, they’d all stop at the shrine by the mountain road and leave fruits and paper dolls behind. And by fruits I don’t mean random ones plucked hastily from the side of the road - there were baskets overflowing with perfect red cherries all around the shrine.

“Why cherries?” I joked, the first time I tagged along. “Why not bananas? Your god might need potassium.”

My new friends looked at each other uneasily. “It’s tradition,” they answered. “Red fruits only, one kind for each season of the year. Watermelon in the summer, strawberries in the spring, pomegranates in the fall and cherries during the winter.”

I looked at the marble tomb, which was cordoned off with an apparently blessed rope and had more paper talismans stuck to it than stickers on a teenage girl’s Hydro Flask. It made me uneasy, for some reason.

“Why?” I asked, picking up a cherry and turning it around in my fingers absently.

“It’s meant to appease her. As long as we leave offerings, we don’t get sick, our harvest is healthy, and our town prospers. We never have any natural calamities and the weather is always good.”

That was also one thing that stuck out to me - the unnaturally pleasant weather. I don’t think I’ve ever had an uncomfortable day here, temperature-wise.

“Come on, time to go.” One of my friends plucked the cherry from my hand and returned it to the pile.

We resumed our walk home. “College decisions are out soon,” I mused. “Have you guys applied to any good schools?”

They all did that group look again, which annoyed me. “We’re not going to college outside of town,” one of them answered.

I was surprised. “Why not? I mean, I’m sure your local college here is good and all, but it’s your chance to leave town and explore the world!”

They all had a good laugh at that.

“Why are you guys laughing at me?”

“Well, you see,” they all turned back to look at me, their expressions serious. “People come to this town all the time. But nobody ever leaves.”

It wasn’t bad, at first. I was brought into the main house and I only required one human sacrifice per year. However, the plague struck and my household forgot to feed me and, well, what was I to do? I had to eat. They weren’t taking very good care of me, anyway.

I guess I wasn’t as lucky as they thought I was, after all.

I also stepped foot outside the house for the first time in a decade and I couldn’t believe how much food there was, just walking around for me to pluck. Why did they feed me only once a year when there were THIS many people outdoors?

When the villagers got wind of what I was up to, they started leaving red fruits outside our gate - I don’t know why, maybe they thought I was stupid and didn’t know the difference between a liver and a pomegranate? But the fruits were nice and they did assuage my hunger somewhat - watermelon in the summer, strawberries in the spring, pomegranates during the fall and cherries in the winter.

I remained in that house for several years until a drought and famine ravaged the land and the villages realized that my family’s fields were the only ones still thriving. So, by their logic, it must mean that it was my doing. I don’t know why they had to tie me up and bury me alive in this shrine, but I didn’t care - at least, now, the entire village participated in the responsibility of keeping me fed once a year.

“What’s wrong, champ?” My dad tousled my hair on his way back to his office from the kitchen. He had a can of lemonade in his hand, which he placed on top of my head. “You look grumpy.”

“Dad, why did we move here?” I groused again. “It’s going to be so hard to move out for college.”

He laughed. “I told you, it’s for work. I’m chasing a lead here.” He sat across from me, popping the lemonade can’s tab.

“Yeah, I remember. How’s it going?”

He took a long drink, then set it down and sighed. “The people here are very secretive,” he lamented. “They’re quite open when talking about their god, but when I start digging into the really juicy stuff, their mouths are suddenly all clamped shut.”

I perked up. “What juicy stuff? I could ask my friends, you know.”

He glanced at me thoughtfully, as if mulling the idea over in his head. “Not a bad idea,” he murmured.

I waited eagerly.

He sighed again, but this time he adjusted his glasses and looked at me squarely. “For a long time, there were rumors of this village being under the influence of a ‘god.’ As you may have noticed, it’s quite an unusual place. The first thing that intrigued me is the rumor of a wish-granting shrine, which I’m sure you’ve visited already.”

“You mean that temple that looks more like a fruit market?” I laughed. “It’s ridiculous how much fruit the villagers leave there.”

“Exactly. And what interests me further is that the villagers seem to leave these offerings not out of love, but out of fear. Why are they so afraid of their own god?”

I rubbed my chin, thinking. “It’s like they all believe that she’s real or something.”

My dad shook his head. “Oh, she’s real all right. There are town records that support proof of her existence - she was a real person, a long time ago.”

I stared at him. “Do you mean that the tomb in the shrine isn’t empty? It actually has somebody inside?”

He nodded. “She was a daughter of one of the town’s founding members. They buried her alive as a child, believing that the action would end a famine and bring them luck.”

I shivered. “That’s sad, but I don’t really see anything worth writing about here, dad. From what you’ve told me, human sacrifices were common back in the day.”

My dad pushed up his glasses again. “You’re correct. But it isn’t the history of their god that I find disturbing. I’m more interested in the wish-granting aspect of it.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t speak for a while. When he did, his voice was low, as if he were afraid that somebody might overhear.

“There have been accounts of humans being ritually sacrificed to the god once a year,” he told me. “And, from what I’ve heard, the whole town is in on it.”

I’ve lived here for half a year and, slowly but noticeably, me and my parents have gotten used to the town and its townspeople. We still thought the whole deity thing was BS, though, and frighteningly, it backfired on us in the end.

The first warning sign was when the grass and plants in our yard started to wilt and die. Our neighbors all had healthy lawns, so it was odd that we were the only ones seemingly affected by this blight.

The second sign was when both of my parents tested positive for COVID-19. Before them, guess how many active cases were in the town? You guessed it - zero.

It was strange seeing them in the hospital, where they were the only patients. Nobody got sick in this town, it seemed.

Several village elders visited my parents, not even clad in PPEs or masks. It was as if they thought they were invincible. They tried to convince my mom and dad to pray to their god, that once they believed, all would be well.

My parents refused until the very end. Which means, as you can probably tell, that they passed away.

I was furious. I did not know what to do, and my grief-stricken brain clutched at straws until it latched on to an idea that I actually could do something about - I would go to the shrine and make a wish.

No, it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not going to wish for my parents to come back to life. Since it’s the center of all of this, since it’s the reason my parents have died in the first place...I’m going to awaken the god and try to kill it.

You shouldn’t have sneaked in here, you know. You shouldn’t have peeled back the paper talismans and cut through the protective rope.

I may have been mostly asleep for several centuries, but since I’m in the constant stream of my villagers’ thoughts, I know what’s going on in the world right now. I know that there’s a new disease spreading around, and that must have been why nobody has been here to feed me - it’s been six months, and my shrine has been empty and forgotten.

Oh, you’re wondering why I’m hungry even though it hasn’t been a year yet? Well, here’s the thing about curses - they evolve. They accelerate. And the sacrifices will have to occur more and more often as well.

Your friend? Oh, yes. Did I thank you already? It was so nice of you to bring him tied up so nicely, it’s always more satisfying when I can play with my food first before eating. And I was starving. I needed sustenance. But now that I’m properly fed, I feel magnanimous - tell, me, what was your wish again?

____________________________________________________________

I was strangely blank and mechanical as I dragged my friend, who was bound and duct-taped, to the shrine. I guess I was too emotionally spent to feel anything else.

I tossed him unceremoniously to one side, then ripped off the cordons and the paper talismans. There were so many of them - the fresh new ones from this year gave way to faded, torn, yellowed older ones and eventually rotten and crumbling ancient ones- it was like peeling a mummy.

When I finally peeled all of them off, I was surprised to see that the tomb was a lot smaller than I originally thought. Without the extra padding from the paper talismans, it looked just like any other person’s grave.

And, with all my strength, I shoved off the heavy marble lid.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. Dust and bones, perhaps. But not a young girl who looked like she was merely sleeping. As soon as light flooded the recesses of her tomb, her eyelids fluttered open and she sat up, stretching languidly like a cat.

“Oh, good,” she said. “Mealtime.”

“Not so fast,” I hissed. “First you have to grant my wish.”

She tilted her head to look at me. “What is it, then?”

Moment of truth.

“Tell me how to kill a god.”

____________________________________________________________

Huh. That’s a new one. You see, we can’t lie - we are duty-bound to tell you the truth, especially since you’ve already given me something in exchange.

All right, here you go - the only way to kill a god is if you kill every single one of its followers.

I had to burn the village down. And I had to do it in the middle of the night, while everyone was sleeping. Starting from the sleepy little police station, where I had to first kill all of the officers on duty so they couldn’t stop me.

When the sun finally rose, the village was in flames.

The shrine on top of the hill was surrounded with billowing black smoke, and after a while, all the windows exploded, the shattered glass momentarily littering the air with a shower of glittering shards. I watched as its foundation finally crumbled into the flames, the once-sinister building that held the town in its grasp finally destroyed.

I wish there was some other way that I could have done this, but it wasn’t enough that the people had to die - I had to destroy all the artifacts, all the writings, all the portraits, everything that linked this forsaken village to their ‘god.’

I could immediately feel the difference in the way the atmosphere felt lighter, less shrouded in fear.

I did it.

I killed a god.

Two hundred miles away, a girl was unpacking her belongings in her new dorm room. She was excited for university, although she was also a bit nervous - after all, she was the first person to have left their secluded mountain village in over 50 years.

“Hey,” her roommate greeted her, plopping down on her unmade bed.

“Hey,” she answered, smiling as she unwrapped a framed portrait and set it on top of her dresser, putting an incense burner and some incense sticks beside it. She placed a shallow dish before the portrait, and carefully arranged a couple of strawberries in it.

“Who’s that?” Her roommate asked, peering curiously.

“It’s our village deity,” explained the girl, touching the frame reverently. “It’s silly, but I don’t feel safe so far away from home without it.”

“She’s so pretty,” commented the roommate. “How come I’ve never heard of her?”

The girl smiled. “Really? It’s such an interesting story - I’ll tell you all about her one of these days.”

The two girls gazed at the portrait, their faces reflected in the glass. For a moment, it looked like there was an extra person in the reflection, but when they blinked, it was gone.

Start writing here…