elimination
Chapter Twelve

“Christianity,” Bump Nose begins, “was a prominent belief system used to control the masses from the time of the Roman Empire to the fall of the papacy in 2058. It had a profoundly negative effect on humanity, spawning weakness. This weakness manifested itself primarily in the religion’s promotion of disbelief in the sciences and instigation of conflict with other established religions over trivial differences in dogma. Overall, it slowed down the development of the human race.” My intensely painful attempt at focus has abated into total zoning. I vaguely hear him drone on and on about some idiot teenager named Mary who got herself pregnant and tried to blame it on God. She somehow convinced a herd of other idiots to follow her and her son Jesus who got crucified by a bunch of salty Romans.

My eyes wander around the room eventually getting stuck on One’s nose, for some reason I dwell on the way the very tip of it sticks up and out. There is something about her. The way each and every bone is sculpted, the protrusion of the veins on her hands, the subtle almost invisible cleft in her chin: I replace her features oddly captivating. I try to remember the day I first started hating One. The memory is hazy, but I believe I can still recall.

At 10 years old I was friends with a One and Dagger in a way. One day I was running between them talking and laughing when my left ankle hit a chunk of ice and rolled over. My ligaments tore with a sickening pop. I immediately fell to the ground and began crying. I called out for One and Dagger to help me. One leaned down and put her hands on my shoulders so that we were face to face and whispered with cold smoky words. “Falling is for the incompetent, and tears are for the weak.” I remember feeling her warm breath on my face as humiliation coated my throat. It was a feeling of utter powerlessness. I felt as though she was melting my resolve, melting the tears out of my eyes with her breath. Then, they ran away and left me alone with a purple ankle and the fast falling snow. The cold froze my tears. I got up and let out a high pitched yelp as I distributed my meager weight equally on both feet and began to run. I never looked back and I haven’t cried in front of anyone else since. Except for 14.

Bump Nose has started talking about the crusades and the various abuses of the Catholic Church. He says that it held a vendetta against science and practicality, condemning the heliocentric theory, the theory of evolution, the practical necessity of contraception, global warming and more. Bump Nose gives us our reading while informing us that our test tomorrow will cover Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity.