MARTHA

Darkness recoils from the sudden flare of lit torches. The shadows unfurl figures wreathing the bound woman at their center. The monstrous trees cradle the spectacle, aged arms bristling with the industrious life of the Church. Ethen's face is tickled by candlelight. His eyes crack open slowly. Memory returns in a tide. The desert. The wraiths in white. The dizzying journey. Lukas is there, consciousness somehow seeping back into him also.

The cavern greets them. Its enormity haunts their fledgling senses. The towering trees beckon vertigo, dare them to try and look up at their peaks, the huts clinging onto them like glowing eyes, afar onlookers as focused as irises and pupils. They are within the throbbing heart of the Church of Oedipus, in St. Edmeus' deepest and largest catacomb; that cathedral that crumbled, now reborn in subterranean silence. A few hundred yards from them and at the base of the trees are the medical tents Ethen was once housed in charity, and in which he and Gracie made love.

Muddled thoughts untangle slowly, the murky fog of their minds parting. Reality settles like an elephant upon their chests. Their bound hands, the cloaked figures, the dispersed congregation. Ethen swallows the moldy air. He turns his head, the strain of the ropes gnawing at his wrists. Martha stands in the center of it all. His mother. Condemned. As the audience of clergy watches, a cold shiver grates down his spine. The scene crystallizes around them. It is a trial, the vehicle for a guaranteed verdict, preconceived and arrived at before its engines started.

An unspoken prayer finds its way onto Ethen's lips. He doesn't realize he's whispering it until Lukas nudges him, the plea lingering.

"Mom..."

"Betrayer!" The word lashes out, echoing through the earthen cathedral. Gracie, an ivory lich before the assembly, her mesh and silver gowns laced with metals and gold inlay, her face flushed with fervor and anger. She bears the slight scars of the shrapnel that kissed her from the explosion that day, marring her snowy pristinity. Her eyes, once Ethen's refuge, now bear the cold hardness of an impassable zealotry. There is a classical beauty to her still, but it has been repurposed, misplaced, and dusted with a pale cyanosis.

"Martha of our Church, Mother of our own." Gracie's voice swells, filling the cavern. The whispers of the crowd shudder into silence.

The woman in question remains stoic, her face bathed in the glow of the candles. A feral dignity clings to her form. Ethen, bound and on his knees, watches.

"Listen!" Gracie begins, her voice slicing through the thick silence. "See here the wolf in a Mother's clothing. Martha. Our sister. Once believed devout, yet ever a defector at heart. Cloaked in the robes of our order, the trusted seer, she sought to poison the roots of our faith. Not through direct rebellion, no. Subtlety was her weapon, a whispered heresy here, a questionable interpretation there."

"She painted pretty pictures with her deceit, garbed in the colors of reform. She claimed love for the Church, for the Mother-Goddess, while her heart plotted revolution. Using the Mother's words, she sought to unmake the Mother's world. Our world. Each word of discord cleverly wrapped in the silky ribbons of empathy, equality, and enlightenment. The allure of the new, the trendy, the progressive. Yet, at what cost?"

"She sold the sanctity of our beliefs. To whom? The wayward, the dissatisfied, the rebellious. Those in search of novelty rather than truth. All to paint herself the enlightened savior, the benevolent heretic, the profound prophet, too enlightened to conform to the ways of a mere herd of sheep. Am I right? Of course I am. You twisted our Mother's words to earn hollow praises of people who didn't know any better, to bask in the glow of cheap, parasitic approval. She conspires to bend the divine teachings of our Mother-Goddess, to grant voice to the male youth, the child-men! She denies their divine station, undermines our holy order. She has been devout, yes... but is not devout enough!"

Those of the Church gathered, approximately twenty of them, grumble in agreement.

"A prophet is rebuked most in her hometown; that which should make one closer is all the more an offense in such divergence against our beliefs. We elevate ourselves by putting this heathen down. Look upon her, children of the Mother-Goddess. See the serpent's guise. Learn the cost of falsehood."

A murmur snakes through the gathered, a choir of doubt and unease. Lukas' eyes flit between his wife and the venomous Gracie, the anxious muscle in his jaw ticking.

"Her words are venomous as a serpent's bite, threatening to wither the purity of our faith."

Each word dropped into the cavernous silence echoes like a tombstone thrown into a still pond. The knot tightens. Martha gazes at her son. Ethen meets her eyes. Neither blink.

"To defy the Mother-Goddess, to corrupt her teachings, is to invoke death." The words wrap around every heart, a cold vice. The spectators, cloaked in dread, are frozen as Gracie, First Priestess, casts her verdict. The execution is a breath away, a heartbeat from reality. Mother and son, bound by invisible ties stronger than the ropes that hold them, remain locked in their shared gaze.

The ice in Gracie's heart shifts to Ethen, her eyes narrow slits of crystalized fury. "And Ethen." She spits his name as if it's a curse. "Spawn of the wolf. You, who have run from the bosom of our Mother-Goddess, to turn against her in the ultimate betrayal. Your mother's sin is inscribed in your blood. Found you were, in the expanse of our mother's trial, the desert itself, a reflection and fitting destination for you and all your poverty. Begging for the mercy of death to swallow you whole. But death would have been too sweet a justice for the likes of you. It is not death's place to punish you, but ours."

"We see through you, Ethen, as clear as a mirage. You, the seed of heresy, the child of the blasphemer, the serpent's brood. Not innocent. Your hands, stained with the same guilt as Martha's. St. Edmeus' Cathedral, our holy sanctuary, brought to ruin by you and your accomplices. Proximity to sin breeds sin. You may plead innocence, claim ignorance, but we see you for what you truly are. An echo of your mother's defiance. A progeny of betrayal. The Church has borne witness to your crimes. Your guilt is the rope from which you hang."

"And it is you, Ethen, you and your wayward father here Lukas, who have sown the seeds of chaos, setting the fire that razed our sanctum. You plotted and schemed in shadows, detonated the bomb that consumed our holy abode! Mothers, fathers, innocents, children, their lives stolen in a heartless explosion. Our home, a beacon of light for our order, was engulfed in fire, reduced to ash because of you." Her voice is a low growl, hate and sorrow saturating each word.

"And now," she says, her gaze taking in their bound bodies, their sun-scorched faces. "Look at you. As helpless as newborns, at the mercy of the world you sought to destroy. Surely, this is the Mother-Goddess's judgment. You lay bound, broken, punished for your unspeakable crimes. A sign, clear as day, that you are to join Martha in her deserved fate. And the Church, your jury, your executioner, is all too ready to deliver the Mother-Goddess's verdict."

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Gracie barks at the three of them.

A flighted hand swings swiftly and strikes Martha's cheek, blood trickling down her jawline. She keeps her eyes closed and her jaw tighter. Slowly, she rightens herself, standing, and meeting and passing the eyes of Gracie in stature.

The room shivers in anticipation. Shadows teem, cackling at the absurdity of such small things in such large spaces. Martha stands alone in the heart of it. The elders of the Church of Oedipus, their faces shrouded in the half-light, encircle her ominously, their judgement poised like a guillotine above her head. Yet, she is unbroken. She announces to the gathered, her words a melody reverberating in the grand space. She releases her thoughts into the air like doves.

"I stand before you, not as a heretic, but a lone soul daring to voice the forbidden. The Church of Oedipus, once a beacon of spiritual awakening, now strays from its path. We have bartered authentic connections for illusions. This sanctuary, once brimming with spirituality and truth, now stands as a monstrous aberration, a perversion of its original ideals. Our teachings no longer reflect us but project distorted caricatures. In the name of rebellion against patriarchy, we have created a new form of tyranny."

Her mind drifts to Ethen, her son, caught in the ideological crossfire. "Our children, our sons and daughters, they are not mere vessels for our beliefs. They are individuals, their minds arrows in flight, out of our hands once we as bows give them unto the world. The spirituality meant for our offspring has been supplanted by a grotesque imitation." She looks deeply at Ethen. "I'm sorry, Ethen, my boy. I'm sorry it took me this long. You always had the strength and smarts of your father. It has saved you." She sweeps her loving haze to Lukas, a second of understanding finally between them, a thirty years' thirst quenched in a second.

"We have traded the compass of spirituality for the chains of physicality. A matriarchy should have an absence of pederasty. It shouldn't merely be a glamorous excuse for us to have our own variety. The point of ripping the whip out of an oppressor's hand is to deny it entirely, not wield it in the same way against our preferred Others. We've strayed from our purpose, becoming the monster we once fought."

Her voice rises. Her steady heart buttresses her words as rhythm against the hostile hush. "We stand on the precipice of change. We can either linger in the shadow of our faults or step into the light of redemption. We must remember the Church's original aim. Its ideals were to help those who are sick, be a therapeutic hand, not one that seeks to decorate itself with gems and jewels and self-importance. It's time to reclaim the lost spirituality, transmute our petrified remains into a body of understanding and acceptance. Let the Church of Oedipus not be a monument to corruption and compliance unto the world's ideals, but a testament to our capacity to rise, learn, and evolve. We should not be a tomb, but a womb for a new dawn."

She punctuates her account. "Help others for the right reasons. Don't couch them dishonestly as an excuse for your own ego and hedonism. There is no honor in popularity won through betrayal. No virtue in the clout that comes at the cost of one's soul."

She leaves her words hanging in the stillness, a daring challenge. Martha, not just a mother, but a mast of hope; ready to fight for the future of the Church; for Ethen; for every son and daughter lost in the labyrinth of any twisted ideology; for any solitary voice against a crushing majority; for any outcast, any ideological leper; for any vestige of asceticism in the face of overwhelming access to endless pleasures of self. Her defiance dissipates into the silence like day setting.

In the blink of an eye, steel sings. A Merope advances, blade flashing. Cold metal invades her core, an unwanted intruder in the temple. A gasp rings out. Martha's eyes widen. Life, once rich, now wanes in an irretrievable instant. A deep-set burning sensation, searing, cleaves through her. She stumbles, half turns, and takes sharp inhales that feel like her last. Her hands reach for her belly, touch the unsought wound, cradling it like a babe with her hands, collecting spilled blood as if it mattered. Her heart shudders, its beat faltering. Tastes dance upon her tongue – metallic, salt, blood, sour, vivid. The world tilts, balance eludes her.

Eyes heavy, she looks down. Her gaze finds crimson glistening dark against the smooth ground. An alien sight, her life's essence leaking out. An exhale rips through her lips. The world narrows, the edges fade. Her fingers, now slippery, slide down her failing body, their composure lost. She tries to remain upright. Feet, once steady, now stumble. Her knees buckle, body folds, weightless, sinking.

Martha's fall to the cold stone seems a gentle drift. Each gasping breath tears at her, respiration immensely painful, the biting chill of the end wraps its arms around her, catching her, so she doesn't die alone. In her fading vision, she glimpses the stark horror mirrored in two pairs of eyes – Ethen and Lukas, powerless observers in this cruel spectacle.

Ethen roars. The sound rips through the chamber, primal and raw, almost shaking the leaves of the giant trees above. He wars against his bonds, every fiber straining for his mother, slipping away from him.

"Gracie!"

He bellows, voice crackling under the weight of the betrayal. Every word is a lightning bolt, a jolt of pure, white-hot emotion. His eyes are floods.

"You are pure evil!"

He chokes on the words, pain lancing through him. His roar descends into sobs, each one echoing Martha's faded, softening heartbeat. Lukas is silent. His world, already fractured, now shatters utterly — for his son, but for himself. He stares, aghast, a corpse in his throat. A single, guttural word slips from his lips like a cadaver dumped into a mass grave.

"Monster..."

Anguish sweeps through Ethen. His protest devolves into a keening wail. Each word falls heavy. "How... could... you..."

The wails reverberate through the cavern, shaking even the Meropes into disturbance & doubt. Their pain seeps into the stone, the air, the silence. The Cathedral, this cavern of judgement, becomes a tomb anew.

Gracie's voice cuts through the cavern, a scythe reaping their sorrow. "And what do you have to say for yourselves? Have as eloquent of a defense?" Her voice drips with scorn. "Let me illuminate the shadows of your ignorance. Martha, your revered matriarch, was once in line for the role of the First Priestess. Her ascension seemed inevitable."

A pause, a smile, sharp as a dagger plunged in a back. "Yet, her reign was never realized. Do you know why? It was because the council felt she couldn't even bring up her own son, her own flesh and blood, within the embracing folds of our teachings… but I could. I did. Isn't that right, Ethen? You are my crowning achievement and also the blemish on her record, the flaw in her perfect façade."

Her words linger, a poisonous truth seeping into him. "After I was chosen instead— younger, more promising, with more captured youths under my belt — Martha asked to be sent on her mission trip, not out of faith or altruism, but out of spite. She left us in a storm of resentment, a fury ignited by wounded ego. She was pathetic; a nobody, not even a Son to her tally. Her total was weak."

A mocking chuckle emanates from Gracie. "Oh, the sheer count of boys I have known, who I have brought unto the fold. Those whose adoration I command, a following of admirers, worshiping my each step and speaking; not with the illusion of purity, but with the carnal reality of desire." She unsheathes the words with deliberate poise, each syllable rich with arrogance and self-congratulations.

The two Meropes are cued into her wishes without word, and they encroach upon Ethen and Lukas like strangulation. She continues as they complete their incursion, blades drawn. "All her dissent, all her grand words, are nothing more than the lament of a wounded ego. So tell me, how can her defiance hold any merit?"

"See, I do not fear to wield the weapon of my femininity. I do not cower behind a veil of false modesty. I claim my victories, each lover a notch on my belt, a testament to my power, my total rising like a mountain above all others in the Church." Her voice escalates. "This is about conquest now; what's real and quantifiable. And isn't power what truly matters in this world? Not the hollow words of a bitter woman, but the tangible, pulsating force of influence? This..." She gestures around her, at the grim spectators, the bloodied stone, her expensive garbs. "This is the new order of the Church. One of strength, of dominance, of unapologetic conquest. And if I can find a way to get more followers; that is my testimony. If my method for doing so runs afoul of the Church's dead and antiquated ideals, then good... I don't give a damn about the ideals. I help people in their adoration of me, bring them a heavenly joy. I am to be worshiped. I am the Mother-Goddess Herself, made flesh."

She is animated into pacing, pointing, and shouting, as if unwilling to have her accolades and actions speak sufficiently for her in quiet confidence. "How many more of us are there here than you, huh? You're hopelessly detached, hopelessly alone. You claim to see things we can't yet you are not among us. How dare you claim to know us. I am the First Priestess, the unchallenged authority of this Church. Who are you?"

"Disingenuous." She spits out the word, as if bitter. "That's what Martha was too. A disingenuous apostate draped in the garb of a martyr, but nothing more than a petty girl, unable to compete with the likes of me. And you... you are nothing more than the hapless victims of her deceit. I hereby sentence you to death for the bombing of our great Church and the deaths of the innocent." She raises her hand and swipes it downwards, as if mimicking a guillotine. She does not give pause to let Ethen or Lukas speak in return.

Like clockwork, the last two Meropes raise their blades until their muscles are locked in an apex stretch, the elasticity of their arms bands that will carry the blades with the added velocity of gravity — that great and final victor. Ethen, his head held towards the shrill stone inches from his nose, sees drops of his Mother's blood fall from a Merope's uncaring sword. His final strength is in his eyes; he attempts to sight his Mother, her body limp and blanching somewhere up ahead on the hard earth. He hears his father whimper to his side.

The congregation, back near Martha's body, interrupts the proceedings. Their commotion draws attention; they are murmuring in a panic that quickly ignites into screams. Ethen's voice cuts through the chaos.

"Mom!"

His shout pierces the cathedral's gloom, a single note ringing out in the confusion. It's enough. The Meropes' impending blades freeze in their descent, held captive by the raw truth in his voice. Gracie, the Meropes, Ethen, Lukas — confounded, their eyes and bodies turn, drawn to the spectacle unfolding.

In defiance of reason, Martha rises. The gathering — a chorus of fear and incredulity —parts, their murmurs dissonant against the sudden silence. Gracie's orders, a harsh discord, ring out.

"Stone her!"

Yet, the crowd withdraws, their hearts shriveling in the face of such a preternatural display. Martha's face remains hidden, her voice — alien and unfamiliar — sends tremors through the stone beneath their feet. It's a sound Ethen knows. It rings in his memory, distant but unmistakable.

Like a startled flock, the congregation scatters, their fear-driven flight sounding through the cavernous chamber. The Meropes, frozen in their terror, snap to Gracie's command.

"I said kill her!"

The sight of them, charging with drawn swords towards the still figure of Martha, becomes a tableau, frozen in time. The Meropes are arrested, choked, then hoisted into the air, their gated screams gurgling through the stillness as their blades fall clattering to the ground. Guided by something invisible, they are levitated above Martha, positioned in a bizarre gyre around her, fixed stiff in an impossible place. The Meropes, struggling to move and breathe, hover just above each of Martha's shoulders, their bodies rigid and skyward, their toes pointed down and touching gently upon her scapulae.

And then, in a grotesque puppetry, their feet are extended fully into points and by an unseen force are jutted into the shoulder blades of Martha, who does not move or react as they are planted deep into her body, their ankles disappearing into her. The Meropes beg for help and mercy as they are skewered into Martha up to their calves, their screams of pain mingling with the splinter of bone in the chimera created.

Their swords follow suit. They rise to the Meropes' skulls, their tips carve into their skin, incising their nerves. They are given free rein to scream as they please. The swords move frictionless down their bodies, again and again, peeling them methodically as one would scales from a fish. Their upper bodies contort and convulse in agony, their cries echoing through the cavern.

The swords regroup at the underbellies of the planted Meropes, and in a swift flash, eviscerate them, their entrails hanging like cast nets. Finally, the grisly marionettes sag, their life force draining away as they slope and curve downwards. Martha looks up, two macabre appendages crowned upon her shoulders, their blood and viscera forming a plumage. Martha flaps her newfound wings as if stretching from a long sleep. The Merope's necks, spines, and ligature snap and crack apart as she instrumentalizes their hollow bodies into their new purpose.

Ethen sits amidst the organic ruins newly created before him, his heart attempting to escape his chest. The taste of blood and ash fills his mouth. His eyes water at the expulsion of internal gases now diffusing into and around him. The screams of the Meropes delay in his ears, a haunting sound, the only thing that can escape from excruciating death.

Ethen and Lukas squint as the glory of the creature before them ignites in a yellow glow reserved for starlight. An alien voice blooms from every direction around them and distorts space and time, the gravitational waves played like syllables. It is not English. The voice directs itself forcefully at Gracie. Between her sobs and tears, there is an unspoken, ancient conversation taking place. Martha is crying too. Her illuminated face is a mask of stoicism, but her eyes betray a storm of emotions: guilt, relief, and a deep, consuming sorrow churn within her like a tempest.

As if innately understanding what is decided and by a force well beyond her persuasion, Gracie mumbles her last formed sounds through a mask of melting, unspeakable terror and attempts to flee.

"No... no, no... no..."

In an instant, the space before the sprinting Gracie dilates into a small orb of black and static. With a final and forceful deflation of voice from her lungs, Gracie is violently pulled into the small dimensional orifice face-first and is delaminated over the course of several seconds, portions of her internal anatomy spilled from the dimensional anomaly, with other portions caught unseparated from her and whipped behind her disappearing body into the void. Ethen catches a glimpse into the pocket dimension to what is left of her; strings of viscera and static. The portal closes as quickly as it came and the static ends.

Martha, transformed into an unrecognizable but fully feminine visage, ascends upwards. The limp heads of the Merope-wings bob in a dyssynchronous rhythm with her slow rise. Psychic tendrils reach out, a stratospheric consciousness extending from Martha to Lukas, and through him, to Ethen. Shared perception — a phenomenon they'd encountered once before — returns, binding their minds in a sole cognition. They perceive Martha through a prismatic lens, like a kaleidoscope. She is donning a halo that refracts her in a myriad of colors and glory. Her voice, a cosmic echo, invites them to join her, each word a saccharine beacon pulling them from the cavern's dark reality into an aural embrace.

The cavern convulses, a seismic shift unfurling within it. Rocks, like raining fragments of an old world, plummet from the heights, heralding imminent collapse. In these throes, Ethen feels his restraints dissolve, as though his body is no longer tethered to the physical plane. In his new freedom of motion, he glances towards Lukas, but the perfectly reflected person that meets his gaze is a stranger, an avatar of a masculinity he cannot place. And then a name broadcasts like a cosmic melody into his consciousness.

"Edmeus. Come unto me."

A vertiginous sensation takes hold, their individualities pliable and friable at the edges, their separate helixes of identity intertwining. Ethen and Lukas dissolve into an essence, not two but one, unified in this spiraling journey toward Martha. The sensation is not of loss, but of discovery, as if they are returning to an original state, an unbroken singularity that was once sundered.

They rise to her, swimming up into the dead air space of the cavern. Martha awaits them, not at the end of their journey, but at its beginning; not as its target, but as its scope; not as its culmination but its resplendent fulmination. Their reunion vibrates across the cavern, a wave of divine energy that illuminates the ongoing structural fatigue. As they embrace, the chamber shudders under the weight of their conjoined energy, succumbing to a cataclysmic discharge that shakes the very foundation.

In a final, radiant burst of dancing light, they disappear, leaving behind only the whisper of their names in the collapsing cavern.

The universe ends.