Work Text:
Kristen applebees; chosen by God.
When you were a baby, in a small yellow blanket with big green eyes blinking up at your mother, Helio came down from the heavens and blessed you. He took off his stupid fucking pit vipers and stuck them in the collar of his polo and kisses your forehead like a president.
You don't remember this, obviously. But your mother tells you the story every time you begin to question your faith. When you are six years old and you skin your knee and are crying fat tears and bleeding something that is almost blood, but thicker and sweeter, you ask your mother why God would let bad things happen to you. She brushes her fingers on your forehead and tells you that God needs to teach us some lessons sometimes, even if we don't like it.
This is extremely unhelpful in the long run because when you are fourteen Helio answers your question with finger guns and a “later!” and you arrive back on earth covered in corn and blood and feeling just as confused as you did when you were six.
Other adults in your life are also unhelpful because the man you consider to be a second father to you looks you in the eye and says that if your friend was gay she was going to hell, and you're not so scared of hell because you are the chosen one of Helio, but you think of Tracker in a dark club and the way her strong arms felt against yours and the way her furry upper lip grazed against your skin and your heart aches for her because she's so good and she doesn't deserve eternal damnation.
For a while, you thought all adults were going to be unhelpful. And then you meet your new friend's biological father and he answers all your questions about sex and sexuality and god with such an open mind and suddenly you're truly considering selling your soul to a demon. You suppose that it was maybe meant to clear things up, but all it does is confuse you because your whole life you were taught that demons were pure evil and you would never meet one because you were promised to heaven. But here is Gortholax the Insatiable, being a kind man and paying for his daughter and her five friends at an ice cream parlor and you'd rather follow his advice than your own gods and you're not quite sure what that means.
When you find out you grew up in a cult, you are less surprised than you should have been. The harvestmen were next to not eating meat on Fridays in terms of normalcy. But then Gorthalax is looking at you, his huge flaming mouth dropped in shock and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he reveals that they are a militant, violent organization of religious fanatics and you feel your world crumble in front of you. When you go to the library to ask the librarian if they have any literature that you grew up reading she stares at you in distress and informs you that what you asked for is religious propaganda you're reminded of your mother and father handing you the paperback copy of “Blood-Soaked Nails” and telling you that it is a lighthearted Y/A book.
When you walk out of the library holding “Theory of the Divine'', still reeling from the information that almost everything you learned about religion was from a cult, your mother texts you that she's having an emergency, and when you call her she tells you to get home immediately. And while you feel confused and betrayed, you still love your family, so you get your friends to speed to your house and when you arrive, almost the whole church is on your front lawn crying and holding hands and praying. You approach your mother, and your friends stay back and watch, and she falls into your arms sobbing about the church being attacked and calling your neighborhood unsafe.
As it happens, Coach Daybreak was the one who stole the door to the rectory. Not a “nonbeliever” as your mother thought. Not a fiend from hell, although you're starting to wonder if they're maybe not as bad as your parents would have you believe. The door is alight with purple energy, and you see new skulls attached to the arch. Daybreak all but confirms that he is, in fact, a part of the cult, and it's revealed that his plan the whole time was to send you to hell. Maybe you would've seen Tracker, or maybe Gorthalax would've kept you safe but you still would've been in hell. Helio is meant to be all-knowing, and you can't help but wonder why he didn't try stopping Daybreak at all. Maybe he wanted to teach you another lesson.
It's the question of what deity you should worship, not how hard you should worship Helio. When you fight your old vice principal in the gym and end up in front of the corny gates of the high heavens, your old lunch lady tells you that Sol has been looking for you. While you walk to his office, you wonder how you ended up back in heaven after everything you've learned. You've met people of all religions and read so many books, and yet you're back here again with all of the followers of Helio’s faith.
Arthur Aguefort is standing in Sol’s office, pantsless. He leads you to a door and tells you that that is where the gods get their answers. Which answers one question, that gods do not know everything. A voice coming from nowhere and yet everywhere speaks to you asking what question you would want to know. And it provides you with answers that Helio couldn't. And as it turns out, nobody actually cares if you're gay. Your mind flashes to dark skin in a dark club, and hairy legs brushing up against yours and you feel your heart thump against your chest. You want to care. You feel the need to know that others in the endless universe care, and you think about Helio and everything that was off-limits in the Helioic faith, and all you want is a god that cares as much as you and wants to let everyone do what makes them happy.
You come back to life with a gasp, not covered in corn, and hear your new god in the deep recess in your mind like a person at a party that you just don't have the energy for. Your heart still glows with the amount of caring you have for the world and the amount of hope you have for the future with your new god. But behind that, is a trickle of doubt, yet you feel more sure about yourself and your place in the world than you did with Helio.