Glory "Amen" Johnson

          Glory "Amen" Johnson sat in her car, stopped in the intersection of James Street and Teal Ave., muttering the lord's prayer!  Drivers honked their horns behind her, insistent, shouting obscenities at Glory as they pulled out from behind her into the braking cars of the eastbound turn lane.  The angry drivers spat out a final curse, some shaking their fists out the window, as they pulled back in front of her car and speed towards downtown.
          Glory couldn't move!  She had seen Lucifer, the deceiver! Satan!...the archangel that had been cast from heaven, after being defeated in the battle between good and evil, at the beginning of all time!  Armageddon was upon them and the end times were here!  That hot Saturday afternoon, Satan had come to the Book Woman Club and his name was Thunderbird!
           Glory closed her eyes, seeing again and again, Lucifer's transformation from woman to demon; human arms to taloned black wings.  She saw Thunderbird's face, made in the image of the almighty God, defiled!  Black razor sharp beak and evil yellowish eyes!  Glory had looked into a room of hell and she was afraid!
           Glory "Amen" Johnson knew it was her failures that had brought Lucifer to her; to Syracuse, to the Book Woman Club!  She hadn't been vigilant enough, hadn't prayed enough, hadn't pressed hard enough to safe the souls of the woman in the Book Woman Club.  Oh, she had tried!  Over and over again she had tried to get the woman to read the Holy Bible; to review God's Word instead of the evil writings that they seemed doomed to gravitate towards!  "The Color Purple", full of incest and homosexuality!  James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams;  homosexuals!  Those murder books by Jeffery Deaver and by James Patterson; heathen shrines to serial killers and blood!  They read books dripping with cuss words and profanity, reading whole passages of sacra-ledge out loud!"  "Evil begets evil...", Glory "Amen" Johnson murmured words that her mother had repeated to Glory throughout her childhood, "...and God don't like evil!" 

          Another angry driver threw his profanity out the window, and it landed with a thud on her hood. Glory "Amen" Johnson opened her eyes.  She looked around, shading her eyes in the bright sun and realized that no one else seemed to be upset by Lucifer's appearance, his flight into the sky in broad daylight!  "Was I the only one who had seen Thunderbird's change?", Glory pondered out loud.  And then she knew; her words left hanging in the small space of her car's front seat answered themselves.  She was the only one who had seen the evil one!  She had failed to safe the women in the Book Woman Club and now Satan was here to take her down to hell!
          Glory "Amen" Johnson pressed down hard on the gas peddle, the car taking flight as it carried her home.  She drove as if the hounds of hell were chasing her!  She continued to pray, her hands tightly gripping the stirring wheel of the car, her silent praying turning into a eerie keening as Glory began to call upon the name of Jesus.  "Jesus in heaven, oh Jesus!  Oh, Jesus!  Deliver me from evil!  Please, Lord!  Deliver me!"
          Reaching the corner of Oak and James, Glory made a screeching left turn onto Oak, ignoring the three massive Victorian homes that neighbored her house, and spun into her driveway!  She threw the car into park and yanked out the key.  Grabbing her purse, she ran to her front door.  Glory's eyes frantically searched the sky as she fumbled with the front door, finally unlocking it after dropping the keys twice!  She threw herself on her knees, slamming into the hardwood of the living room floor, pressing her hands together in a church steeple and again took up her desperate call to Jesus!  "Oh, Jesus, save us sinners!  Save us!  Jesus in heaven, hear my prayer!  Oh, Jesus!"  She then began to speak in tongues, guttural sounds rising from her throat!  A language known only to her soul bounced across the ten foot ceilings of her Victorian paradise, causing the cathedral windows in her dinning room to ring softly like bells.  Glory "Amen" Johnson rocked and moaned, her tongue flying, her knees aching on the unforgiving hard wood.   And then she passed out, delivered from her fears, delivered from the horrifying reality of Thunderbird's transformation into Lucifer's flight!