A Profound Religious Experience
A Religious Experience
The room embodied religion. As soon as I opened the door, blinked away the disbelief, and took in a breath of vanilla scent, I saw the woman hunched over on her couch crying; at least, I assumed it was her couch.
Above her, I saw a framed scripture of the ten commandments but knew whoever did this wasn’t someone who took the time to read them.
When she looked up, she looked past me, over the dead body on the floor and to the wall. There she read, out loud but quietly, the scripture framed in the same type of crafty concoction as the commandments:
Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
“Ma’am?” She was dressed in gold pants at least three sizes too big, a bright swirly green and red shirt sprinkled with those gawd awful sequences, and her hair was in a much-too-subtle bun. A shawl lay beside her, but the heat was scorching enough she didn’t need it. She matched the decor the way a buzzard would match a cat, they sort of sounded the same but looked and were completely different.
“Ma’am?” I said it louder this time, assuming she didn’t hear me over her own constant murmuring. When she finally looked over at me, I said, “I need to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t have any answers. Only the Lord above can explain this! When will this be cleaned up? I have company coming, and I doubt they’d want to eat my delectable asparagus sandwiches over a dead body.”
“I don’t think they’ll be coming tonight, ma’am. You’ll need to come with me. I realize you must be in shock and won’t hold anything you’re saying against you, but ma’am… ma’am… you need to come with me. Please put down the carton of cigarettes, where you’re going you won’t be able to have those. Ma’am, you are under arrest for the murder of Colonel Mustard.