Same Size

     You power on your laptop. It is a few minutes past noon and you have just woken up. Sometimes, coming out of sleep, you need to watch a video before you can achieve consciousness. In the suggested thumbnails, you see the irritated face of a man with spotty, precision-trimmed bangs that have been folded over his forehead and are held in place there by a weathered baseball cap. The skin around the corners of his mouth is inflamed (as if by recent Botox injections) and coated in traces of desiccated blood. The clip would seem to have been filmed with an antiquated flip phone, whose camera has been smeared with the oils of overactive fingers: the result is a cloudy, haloed image. Harsh overhead lights from the ceiling of an Indianapolis-area library restroom add to the adrenal febrility of this scene. You press play for lack of anything else to watch. 

     "God entered into my body like a body my same size, like me floating into you or you floating into me. This is the Acts 2:38 Holy Ghost Baptism. I'm seeing non-stop visions from God. He tortures me, stiffening my neck and jerking my head from side to side. He rips and tears the corners of my mouth and shoots poison and electricity into my gums, mocking me..."

     You think back on your own studies of the Bible. For the past two years, ever since things became radically different, that haunting text which you had ignored for most of your youth has become a totalizing key to the present and the future. Acts 2:38 reads as follows:

"Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."

     For there are two baptisms for two bodies: a baptism of water for a body of fleisch, and a baptism of unquenchable fire for the subtle body of psyche. This you know. Bob Hickman knows it, too. And yet, 

     "I am the world's only Holy-Ghost-filled man. Did you know that God hates you and wants you to suffer?" Bob smirks, tucking his chin down and making his eyes suggestive and wry. "He put you here to watch you fall to pieces, to live out a nightmare of broad daylight. He made you a blind crumb in the middle of the supermarket aisle, which is really the mouth, teeth, and jaws of an unseen Beast. How does it feel to know that you will never be saved? 'You are all my children now...'"

     Then Bob sprints back and forth several times between the bathroom's narrow tile walls and jogs in place. His words are breathless.

     "I'm getting a message from Him right now, want to hear it?.. 'Tell them that I hear the world of the Lord... Pigging out is sin... Eat lunch... Luster hurts... Christianity is a metal wire - a clothesline - from which two babies hang by their chins: one is foaming, the other has solid-white eyes... Don't bug... I'm financial... America is the BABYLON of Revelation... Ezekiel 3... Jeremiah 16...' God sometimes messes with churchgoers, prevents them from entering his house when they have grown too wicked and stiff-necked... He can be your best friend or your worst nightmare... 'Un-guided missile... The turbo doesn't work... Bobby, press... Leave the bedroom... Dumitru Duduman, through the fire without burning... We want in your wallet... Rock 'n' Roll will send you to hell...' Oh, now he's telling me to zip the lip... 'I am a lineman for the counteee...'"

     This has been sufficient. You close the laptop and set it down on its side in the space between your nightstand table and your mattress box spring. You need to eat some quick eggs so that you can take your vitamins. Then, you will go out into the world. You have nowhere to be necessarily, but the plan of your day has just been delivered to you in a dense and cryptic form. Yes, there is a clear design.