Whatever the Hell
The onlooker might assume that I, a student who had been sitting on the back patio of a local cafe with the company of my coffee and my work, was blind to the other students around me who were doing the same thing. I was not. And little did I know that my usual visit to this local cafe was one that pulled me to unusual realities. I was preoccupied with eavesdropping on a group I thought intriguing, perched on the steps next to me. Black attire from top to bottom. Piercings of all shapes on every part of exposed skin and dark powder smeared underneath their eyes. Chains dangling and hooked to belt loops, hooked to button and pins, hooked to leather jackets. My annotations in Jane Eyre were nothing more than a written record of their conversation.
“We don’t know how many people will be willing to help out, but the more people we have, the more good we can do.”
“We’ll get a five-minute event, and I’ll do an announcement to get people volunteering.”
“Right. We already have fundraising…We’ve got the petition in March, and we have the convention on October 27.”
“Good. What about Stan? What’s his status?”
“I called him yesterday. We had a falling out. He won’t host us anymore.”
“Well, to hell with him. Should have told him our group is The Satanic Temple after he’d agreed.”
My immediate reaction: What the hell? Followed by a frantic search on Facebook for Satanic conventions on October 27.
I will blame my attendance at the Bazaar of the Occult on pure curiosity. Surrounded by believers, I stood in my darkest clothing, pen and paper discreetly in hand. Lines of vendors (among them The Satanic Temple) were selling superstition, offering samples of goat-engraved soaps, taxidermy lessons, tarot card readings, clairvoyant consultations, bubbling green drinks, and the like. Craning above the bustling crowd were stilted performers dressed in glittering capes, tattered veils, frizzy wigs, bits of velvet streaming past their exposed thighs and down to their six-inch heels. I felt their high gaze fall on me. How could I ever blend in when I was scribbling notes and gaping at all the bustle like a kid examining a line of ants? Mesmerized onlookers stared at a small dimly lit stage upon which red, foreign symbols aligned in a circle on a rug. A throne loomed behind it in a purple haze. A woman with dark hair, wearing a see-through black leotard underneath a black cloak, floated onstage with a dagger at her side and sat on the throne. A man with a mohawk shouted into the microphone, “Audience! Are you ready? Let me hear you howl!” The audience howled. Did I nearly howl?
A smaller, naked woman crawled onstage and touched each sigil before she knelt before the woman on the throne. The audience howled again. The woman on the throne threw her black cloak behind her and stalked around her victim, holding the dagger close to her cheek. She bent down and grabbed her victim, pretending to stab her in a far too intimate manner. I asked a nearby vendor selling crosses bearing skeletons, “What’s happening?”
“They’re performing the Satanic Sacrifice. Next, they’ll perform the Satanic Metamorphosis.”
On the opposite side of the stage were businesses that dealt in intermediary services. A large man with greasy hair bunched in tight curls held a large deck of golden cards. The man introduced himself as Jim Winter from New Orleans. He wore a star necklace that represented “galactic energy power.” Not only was Jim a part-time tarot card reader who tells the future, but he also owned a car dealership in Chicago. I lingered among the other available intermediary services. I examined a display of eye-catching biographies, reports, and essays by an author named Alex Zielinsky. They consisted of investigations into murders and disappearances through the perspective of ghosts and spirits. As I shifted through Zielinsky’s books, Martin made his way to a mousy man with a mustard-stained shirt whose face was buried in a greasy hamburger who revealed himself as Alex Zielinsky. I was not convinced. My idea of what a clairvoyant looked like didn’t align with the one in front of me. I took the liberty of telling him that he looked like “a normal guy” and he bluntly replied, “I am a normal guy. I work with the Hammond Fire Department in Indiana, I teach at a safety company, I train rescue teams for combined space rescue…I’m a normal dude!”
In my own detective work, I discovered a secret stairwell that led to an all too quiet room. It resembled an old and creepy library that was pulled straight from the mystery novels I read when I was younger. Odd trinkets that exuded mystical energies lined the shelves. Books titled The Unexplained, Heaven and Hell, and Talking to Heaven all emphasized satanic morals and anti-Christian ideals. I felt my eyes burn as I read words I always knew to be morally unacceptable.
But who am I to decide what’s moral? Who am I to judge what people believe in? If there was only one true mind, the world would turn grey and air would turn stale from a uniformity that would shatter the natural way of life. I am just one person, and they are all just people breathing the same breaths and seeing the same Earth.
I closed the book and made my way through the crowd, still mesmerized by Satanic rituals. Just like me, they would all file out the front door that same night and feel the same cold air brush against their faces, hear the same buzz of street lamps, and wait for the same train to take them home.
The next day, Sunday, I sat in my usual spot in the pew, listening to the young pastor spew garbled words. I was baptized under the roof of this church some twenty years ago, an infant with long eyelashes looking into my grandfather’s eyes as he dipped my head into the baptismal fountain. The congregation that still remains to this day promised to support and raise me as a child of God. Now, a framed photograph of my Reverend grandfather hangs adjacent to the aging stained glass windows that spill color across white tile. I always looked to him for reassurance and renewal, but today as I looked at his portrait, I saw a stranger. I felt, instead, an uneasiness cloud my mind. The events that I witnessed the night before interrupted my every attempt to devote my faith to God. Perhaps this was temptation. Perhaps it was too powerful to ignore. I mindlessly joined the congregation.
“Our father who art in heaven…”
No different are we in the way that we think.
“Hallowed be thy name…”
It is the imposition of a higher being that makes us one.
“Thy kingdom come…”
The congregation of Satan and the congregation of God are the same in that we are human.
“Thy will be done…”
And if we are the same in that sense, then we all believe we are doing good.
“On Earth as it is in Heaven…”
And what is really wrong, when we all believe we are doing good?
I walked to the altar and kneeled, my hands cupped, awaiting Communion. I looked at the statuette of Jesus in a white palace as I scrubbed my tongue against the crooks of my teeth, sweet bread stuck between. I closed my eyes to pray for anything that was troubling me at that moment. I did not know what I was praying for or who I was praying to. I looked to the marble ceiling, hoping to see what, who, was watching over me. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. The words of a Satanic Temple member from the cafe came to my mind: “From the chapter of Genesis: We save the animals, not drown them. We can call it Satan’s Ark.” How different could that be from Noah’s Ark? What does it matter if we are all sowing seeds for the better and rooting for the greater good?
Originally from Washington D.C., Caley Koch is an aspiring writer and editor who is currently attending DePaul University for her undergraduate Creative Writing degree. Through her writing, she focuses on illuminating the raw stories of people whose lives are otherwise overlooked in traditional nonfiction storytelling. This past winter, Caley traveled to Morocco as a journalist for Moroccan World News. This is her second year as Poetry Section Reader for DePaul’s art and literary magazine, Crook and Folly, and she also holds the position of Managing Editor for the nonprofit organization, Propellor Collective. She looks forward to continuing her studies in Chicago and beginning a position as researcher and journalist for the start-up journal, FreePress in Washington D.C. this coming summer.