I almost died yesterday. Let me share my narrow escape with you, faithful reader.

I was driving to pick up steak burritos from King Taco. I frequently volunteer to pick up lunch for everybody at the office. This allows me to escape the flickering light bulbs and nattering tech speak for a few minutes. I get to breathe fresh exhaust and try to run over squirrels with my four door sedan. I was casually screaming down the street when my radio began playing interviews with excited heavy breathing frantic people. Another religious story. More testimonials from idiots.

I was prepared for this. Ever since the Pope shat his pants for the last time, people have been fondling their rosaries with rekindled desperation. They've been mumbling at the sky with double the hallucinatory fervor. This story, however, was not about the Vatican. The Virgin Mary had returned to Chicago. Catholics were making pilgrimages to the underpass to see her pray for their eternal souls.



The underpass, you ask? Why yes. The concrete supports that hold up the Kennedy expressway have grown a moldy mother of god. Praying freaks are drawn to the spectacle like children with sticks to a rabbit corpse. Below the roaring shuddering rumble of rushing cars at Fullerton Avenue, the candles are burning, replacing the bitter artificial lighting with the warm soft glow of a thousand tiny dancing flames of love.



I brought back the burritos. I bade my time, seething and scheming. I couldn't wait to depart work and go raise hell. When I finally left, I went to the supermarket for some high powered sanitizers. Good strong chemicals that would bleach the nighttime back to dawn.

I'd already had my fill of Pope shit. All sorts of people bitched and moaned about some frail old fuck croaking because he held God's sceptre of divine lightning. Or something like that. I've always maintained that God is Santa Claus for adults. Come on, the parallels are stunning. Heaven is a new bike and hell is a lump of coal. He knows if you're naughty or nice so you better watch out. Et cetera.

That would make the Pope an elf. I like the elves that hide in trees striping cookies with fudge. Since the Pope elf is not, he's off my love list. People wonder why I'm an agnostic.

I just wish I could've scored the last Pope's feeding tube. Those things are shit hot right now. I'd make my own shrine around the corner near the entrance ramp and charge viewing "alms" for all the condemned drooling goulashbrains that walk by, chanting at the sky. Hell, I'd even bless them.

So I went to visit this site to spread my gospel. These people needed to know a few things. I spoke to the assembled worshippers.



"The reason that concrete discolors like that is usually from seepage. There are plenty of birdnests that fill up with corrosive green pigeon feces until a particularly violent sideways rainstorm knocks them asunder. The shit reliquefies and runs down the concrete, staining it forever.

Also, rock salt for dissolving snow from the highway drips down here and discolors the concrete. Try scraping that off and sprinkling it on your french fries.

There's another possibility! Sometimes homeless people die leaning against these cold lifeless stone monoliths, and nobody notices for days on end. Their pulpy flesh merges with the concrete as the bacteria slowly nibble their way through the corpse.

It isn't God! It's some sort of stain. Go away. Save your wax! Save your matches!"

I may be an irredeemable unrepentant asshole, but I'm nowhere near as violent as a Christian who thinks somebody just called Jesus a dirty effeminate wino. Which I did. I also said this Mary they found was better than the one in their silly book with thin paper, because this one is actually probably a real honest to god filthy dead whore. Or at least the remaining stain of one.

They chased me. They pelted me with lit candles that were originally meant to call old Jesus's attention to their pappy's gangrene amputation operation. Candles rained upon me, splashing hot wax all over my clothes and my exposed skin. It felt sexy.

I ran and ran, desperate for an idea. Hell, I even would've settled for divine intervention at that point. If he came, I'd convert. But no God appeared to remind all those foamy mouths to stop chasing the infidel. No heavenly reminder to remember the old adage about turning the other cheek. I would've been trampled and killed and likely crucified if I hadn't pulled the old "made you look."

"Hey, look at the shadow of that fire hydrant! It's the manger with little baby Jesus snoring blissfully under the stars of Bethlehem!"

Only about seven of the furious crowd fell for the obvious dupe, but that was enough to trip everybody behind them. People tumbled and tangled and screamed. I saw elderly skulls pop and splash. I saw middle-aged fat guys with untrimmed mustaches roll off into oncoming traffic, where they met their maker for real under squealing rubber and screeching brakes. I saw an angry mother swearing at me in Spanish until she was tripped by a writhing headless body. She broke her collarbone on the hydrant.

Back down the street at the shrine, forgotten strollers with abandoned babies rolled about aimlessly, carried by gravity and incline. Cracks in the sidewalk halted many of the drifting children. The babies cried for their mothers. Terrible vengeful mothers who'd rather drink my blood than tend their young.

Those poor babies had no idea that Mommy left Jesus to look over them. If he could see through the highway from up there in the dark sky, that is. If he couldn't, they were on their own.

Back at the scene of my gory diversion, blood splashed everywhere, running in amazing fractal pattters across the sidewalk, seeking old cracks and crevices where it could well and dry and make new visual tributes to the Virgin Mary. The blood of the Romans ran at my feet, and I felt like Jesus with a machine gun and a cigar.

The feeling evaporated when I spied a few particularly athletic Christians extricating themselves from the bowels of the limb pile.

Yeah, so I got the hell out of there. I'll try to cleanse the shrine with ammonia later, when there's fewer crusaders. If that fails, there's always paint.

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Many thanks to Jamas.org for the photographs. You can visit her by clicking the sidebar or either of the two large photos above. 7:20 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm