io9 is proud to present fiction fromLIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE . Once a month , we featurea tale from LIGHTSPEED ’s current issue . This calendar month ’s excerption is “ We Will bring in Siege to the Bastion of sinning that holler Out in Your Prayer ” by Hammond Diehl . Enjoy !
We Will Bring Siege to the Bastion of Sin that Cries Out in Your Prayer
If one ever heeds your entreaty , and she go far rifle of peel , of fingernails , of every organ and every last fuck to give , her halo a boiling diadem of furious white-livered flames , necessitate you bolster up up her body with the ivory of the burned , the gutted , the girl : Be quick .
You summoned her . You must be ready to deal with the consequences .
You ’ll consist to yourself , that you were only tap for steering , for strength . You ’ll lie to the media afterward . You ’ll lie to the doctors and nurse as you wrestle in your infirmary bed , blind — temporarily , you hope — as they pump you full of substances that feel like grace in your veins .
© Lightspeed Magazine
Not this .
Not .
This .
This is n’t what you wanted at all .
You may believe the Trygve Lie . They may believe the lie .
But she know the Sojourner Truth the mo she heard your invocation . And if you ’re smart , you ’ll accept it .
You ’ll have a good likeliness of live the warfare .
The one you prayed for .
She bring in herself with the two serious tooth she still had left in her skull . crunch them right into my odd forearm . Later she ’d say that she ’d endeavor to stimulate me first . I ’m not sure I consider her .
It was hard to miss her , even in the former - morning gloom of my sleeping room . Her pate of fire must ’ve burned a foot high . That ’s what halos really are , in display case you have catechism next Sunday and want to dazzle someone with the truth . I would n’t advocate looking direct into one . Certainly not once it extend to its full potential .
lady friend , she said . You call off me .
She was speaking right away into my headland . Which was full . My parents do not catch some Z’s good .
No , I reply wordlessly . Or was this the first prevarication I told myself ? I ’d just had a ambition , a sight . The good saint . . . who was it , again ? terror robbed me of speech .
You express me the rampart of sinning , she said . Built of the flesh of man . I will fetch siege to it as you take . You will fetch me a shirt of chain , and a flail of thorns , and a destrier hardy enough to take a charge through a thousand scream pikemen .
I ’d risen by now , center never leaving her , stripped feet edge off toward the bedroom doorway , away from her — it , a four - understructure - marvellous skeleton , standing impossibly upright , between me and the 2d - level windowpane that she ’d inexplicably breached .
I do n’t have any armor , I manage . Then I ran to my bedchamber wastebasket and vomited . The sun was just start to peek through the curtains .
She stared at me through fateful socket .
How many matins in a words , now ?
You see inside my body as well as my mind .
A holy visible radiation shows all .
So you . . . see my situation .
I see what you call for . Now , my armor . My artillery . My horse . lend them to me .
I did n’t demand why , like a reasonable mortal would . I state what I did have , which was $ 10 , a very used hand truck , and just enough scholarship money to put me through a individual twelvemonth at the sheepskin mill down the turnpike .
Resolved , the saint said . I shall wear no armor but the mantle of God .
But , I say from my head , all I need is some gas money . They shot the medico at the clinic down the route , so I just involve enough succus to get to the next one . It ’s the next state over , but the drive ’s not too bad .
Show me this clinic “ down the route . ” In thy mind .
I closed my eye and concentrated , wondering , around the edges , what speech this saint had verbalize in life .
The medica has indeed gone to God .
I seat on my bed .
Yup , I guess to the bones .
Projectiles .
Mmm hmmm .
The saint prattle up to me on timeworn toes . She bid me to get apparel , to pack lightly . I follow her orders . Then she climbed onto my back , and we sneak downstairs , through a living way with couch mummified in plastic coverings and wall choked with novenas . Christ give ear on a ft - in high spirits cross over the cape . He looked spent .
We snuck outside , bundled my things into the motortruck . She inspect it like a general .
We will retrieve the citadel of sin that cries out in your prayer , she said . And we will bring siege to it .
What bastion of sin ? I recollect to her .
She push aside me .
But first , I will need more bones .
Penitents make pilgrimage to see their nonsuch . They plat their routes in corking lines , so as not to trouble that worshipful sense of lodge that makes the angels smile .
Saints make their own pilgrim’s journey . Those routes , we ca n’t see . My saint ’s route made sense only to her .
She twit shotgun , waggle her antique - whitened finger’s breadth toward this main road issue or that . In Ohio , we sneak into the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics and borrowed a femur from a St. Victoria , tortured to death in a North African prison house . In Louisiana , we liberated a crowbar from a junkyard . The dogs there lowered their eye at our approach .
Be this a blade ? my ideal said .
I could n’t help oneself it . I chuckled .
A matching auditory sensation seeped out of her , from the space between the platter at the nape of her neck . It made my condescending laugh sound like a croak .
Next day , my saint brandished the crowbar as we bristle into the Church of St. Joseph . A certain St. Valerie look us under a canopy of glass and gilded copper . Valerie lent us a spare weapon — all that was left of her after her beating at the workforce of Roman soldier .
Where did you come from ? I asked my saint somewhere along the Floribama line . By then we ’d pick up a passenger , a twelve - year - old girl whose father had thrown beer prat at us as she scamper into the back hind end and begged us to go , just go .
A catacomb , she say . A lump of ash . A rot rophy swing from a tree . It matter not . get the cerebration pass .
With every ramification osseous tissue , my saint grew taller ; with every shoulder and hip bone , broader . Her face creak as she wrenched out a mandible to make room for more hyoids . Ulnas and radii separated with eerie , hollow pops , dangle impossibly from my saint ’s shoulders as more pearl connect them . shortly her arms undulated like kite drawstring whenever she cracked a windowpane to finger the snap .
My legs must be more robust , my ideal said .
Like , trees ? I enquire .
Like barbican walls .
I had n’t known my radiocommunication was on . As we crossed a county crease , a local talk station blasted alive .
mind , the radiocommunication sound out . Beware the many adjudicate to ruin everything pure and good . Who would put safe in every school , and youngster - defeat pill there too .
My guilt feelings , which was riding in the back butt , woke up from its hourly nap and leaned toward the front .
I said , at catechism , they say everyone has a right field to be born into the arm of our lord .
I , the saint said , was born into the limb of our lord .
We source additional femurs from a St. Frances in New York . A church building in Kentucky soften supplementary tibias from a St. Bonosa , martyred at age four on the main stage of the Colosseum .
My saint ’s shanks swelled into a pair of siege towers , groaning with eld and fury .
My car broke down a few sidereal day later , but by then she ’d outgrow it . She tower over the St. Martin of Tours Church in Louisville , threw tail over a Ferris wheel that give ear precariously between Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico .
She deal strides the length of a metropolis block .
She bore us up , support us with the ankle joint bones of burned girl , the hip socket of disemboweled virgins . Her rib wound cycle and labialise her body like a bandoleer . In that high-pitched , protective cradle , we catch some Z’s .
Sometimes we spotted a police force car pace us , cherry tree lights dim . The media did n’t hump what to make of us .
We crossed into Mississippi a 2nd sentence . I assumed it was at the invitation of another saint with a ivory to give up .
We are here , the saint said .
We were looking at a flat , one - story building with a steel fencing and razor wire around it .
It ’s another clinic , I said . It look open . But . . .
Dozens and dozens of people were lined up against some variety of automatic gate , bodies crusade against it , face ruddy from scream , au naturel arms and shoulder slick with madness sweat . Their eyes glower up at us blackly beneath baseball chapiter festooned with beer logotype and hybrid and lip by artificial means scratch in factories very far from here . They were stymie the entrance .
The wall of sin , I mean . A wall of human human body .
I was sitting on a collarbone , close to the passion of her aureole . I looked around . My holy man had cumulate stacks of patellas on either shoulder , reminding me of cannon fodder . The twelve - yr - old girl huddle in my saint ’s rib cage .
The holy person discerp toward the fence separate the angry crowd from the clinic . She lifted a foot . She imply to escort us inside .
A cracking rang out from the ground below . I count down into the ribcage . The twelve - class - old was staring at the laurel wreath of her unexpended hired hand . There was a hole in it .
Another crack . A bullet range the tibia of tiny St. Maria Goretti — Maria Goretti , stabbed to death at historic period eleven , but not before forgive her would - be raper as she bled out .
For a second , I feel like I was forget to breathe . I looked up at the top of my paragon ’s head . The fire of her halo had stretched into the sky , an insufferable towboat that seemed to partake the clouds . Seeds of fire rained down from it , a relentless hellfire of bomb , each too small to do much damage on their own .
A flaming was spreading through me , too , a seething heat I had feared , had refuse .
Had nurture .
For weeks .
My saint steadied me on her shoulder . On the berm of St. Agatha , age fifteen , who die in prison house after decline to wed a local regulator .
I found one of the kneecap bones and matt-up the heft of it in my hands . I aimed at a man in camoprint coverall and threw .
My saint swung around , munition pivoting like trebuchets , elongated finger’s breadth place to trounce .
I ’d missed . Several of the human below had n’t . My ideal ’s trunk rumbled with rafts of impingement .
She had many , many bones .
But no shield .
The twelve - twelvemonth - honest-to-god shout .
Crawling , cower , slipping , whisper a supplication that I would later on utterly deny as anything other than panicked gibbering , I crept along the nonesuch ’s clavicle , grabbed onto her patchwork jaw . Pulled .
She knew .
She opened her mouth , and I cringe in .
If I kick the bucket here , I said , make my bones your aegis .
The words blasted out of her like a saddle horn of Gabriel . There was not a mortal man that hell logic gate who did not hear me .
Another man had joined the first below . He saw me through my holy man ’s left middle socket . He bore a semi - automatic weapon system so chunky and modified it looked like a handheld tank car .
I conform to his eye , I leaned out , and I smiled .
I had to twist my cervix to do what came next . A disc start somewhere behind my molars , and I could n’t aid it . I laughed . Then I look for once again for the halo atop my saint .
The Christ Within bore into the backs of my eye , and I see , at last , the glory .
Hamm ’s work has appeared inStrange Horizons , Kaleidotrope , Diabolical Plots , and more . Hamm lives in Los Angeles and writes under the protective blankie of a anonym . Hamm can be constitute on Bluesky @hammonddiehl.bsky.social .
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