In this fiery short narrative, a Holy Figure takes retribution in the areas it deems most requisite.
io9 showcases fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Every month, we showcase a tale from LIGHTSPEED's current issue. This month's pick is "We Will Bring Siege to the Bastion of Corruption that Resounds in Your Plea" by Hammond Diehl. Enjoy!
We Will Bring Siege to the Bastion of Corruption that Resounds in Your Plea
By Hammond Diehl
You worship your holy guardians. Your Maries. Your Joans. Your Catherines. You ought to fear them.
If one ever obeys your supplication, and she appears without flesh, without nails, without every organ and every last seduction to offer, her halo a seething crown of fury-filled yellow flames, commanding you to boost her body with the bones of the burned, the mutilated, the young women: Be prepared.
You summoned her. You must be prepared to face the repercussions.
You'll deceive yourself, that you merely pleaded for guidance, for resolve. You'll deceive the media afterward. You'll deceive the doctors and nurses as you writhe in your hospital bed, blind—temporarily, you hope—as they inject you with substances that feel like divine mercy in your veins.
Not this.
Not.
This.
This is not what you desired at all.
You might persuade yourself. They might persuade themselves.
But she knew the truth as soon as she heard your entreaty. And if you're smart, you'll acknowledge it.
You'll have a better chance of surviving the war.
The one you prayed for.
She announced herself using the last two decent teeth she still had in her skull. She crushed them into my left forearm. Later she'd say that she'd tried to shake me first. I'm not sure I believe her.
It was hard to miss her, even in the early-morning gloom of my bedroom. Her halo had to be a foot high. That's what halos truly are, just in case you're interested in dropping some catechism knowledge in church next Sunday and want to astound someone with the truth. I wouldn't recommend staring directly into one. Certainly not once it reaches its full potential.
Girl, she said. You beckoned me.
She addressed me directly within my mind. Which was convenient. My parents don't sleep soundly.
No, I responded silently. Or was this the first lie I told myself? I'd just had a dream, a vision. The good saint … who was it, again? Panic robbed me of language.
You revealed to me the citadel of sin, she said. I will bring siege to it as you requested. You will deliver me a shirt of chain, and a flail of thorns, and a warhorse robust enough to lead a charge through a thousand panicking pikemen.
I'd risen by now, keeping my eyes on her, bare feet inching away toward the bedroom door, away from her—it, a four-foot-tall skeleton, standing defiantly, between me and the second-floor window she'd inexplicably breached.
I do not possess any armor, I managed. Then I sprinted to my bedroom wastebasket and vomited. The sun was just beginning to peek through the curtains.
She stared at me through empty eye sockets.
How many matins in a row, now?
You see within both my body and my thoughts.
A holy light reveals all.
So you … see my predicament.
I see the solution you need. Now, my armor. My weapon. My horse. Bring them to me.
I didn't ask why, like a rational person would. I said what I had, which was $10, a very used truck, and just enough scholarship money to cover one full year at the degree mill down the road.
I am resolved, the saint said. I shall wear no armor but the mantle of God.
But, I said from my thoughts, I merely require gas money. They executed the physician at the clinic up the road, so I just need enough fuel to reach the next one. It's the next state over, but the ride isn't too taxing.
Show me this clinic “up the road.” In thy mind.
I closed my eyes and focused, wondering, on the edge, what language this saint spoke in her former life.
The medica has indeed gone to eternal rest.
I sat on my bed.
Yup, the bones said.
Projectiles.
Mhm hmm.
The saint materialized before me on timeworn toes. She ordered me to dress, to pack lightly. I complied with her orders. Then she ascended upon my back, and we crept outside, through a living room filled with couches sheathed in plastic and walls smothered with novenas. Jesus peered down from a foot-high crucifix somewhere over the mantle. He looked drained.
We snuck outside, amassing my belongings into the truck. She inspected it like a general.
I shall find the citadel of sin that echoes in your supplication, she said. And we shall bring siege to it.
What citadel of sin? I thought to her.
She ignored me.
But first, I will need more bones.
She rode passenger side, pointing her vintage-white fingers at various highway exits. In Ohio, we sneaked into the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics and stole a femur from St. Victoria, tortured to death in a North African jail. In Louisiana, we took a crowbar from a junkyard. The dogs there avoided eye contact with us.
This could be a weapon, my saint mentioned.
I couldn't help but chuckle.
An identical noise escaped from her, emanating from the vertebrae at the base of her neck. It transformed my arrogant laugh into a croak.
The following day, my saint brandished the crowbar as we invaded the Church of St. Joseph. A St. Valerie awaited us under a canopy of glass and gilded copper. Valerie granted us a spare limb – all that was left of her after her beating by Roman soldiers.
Where did you emerge from? I asked my saint, somewhere along the Florida Panhandle. By then, we had a new travel companion – a twelve-year-old girl whose father had thrown beer cans at us as she scurried into the back seat and begged us to leave, just go.
A catacomb, she said. A pile of ash. A rotting rope swinging from a tree. It makes no difference. These thoughts shall pass.
With every leg bone, my saint grew taller; with every shoulder and hip bone, broader. Her face creaked as she removed a jawbone to create more space for additional hyoids. Forearms and hands separated with bone-chilling cracking sounds, detaching sinisterly from my saint's shoulders as more bones joined them. Soon her arms swayed like kite strings when she opened a window to feel the breeze.
My legs must be stronger, my saint said.
Like trees? I asked.
Like fortress walls.
I wasn't aware that the radio was on. As we crossed a county boundary, a local radio station suddenly awoke.
Beware, the radio warned. Beware those attempting to destroy everything pure and holy. Who would distribute condoms in every school, and abortion pills there too?
My conscience, which had been napping for an hour, stirred, leaning towards the front.
I said, at catechism, they say everyone has the right to be born in the arms of our lord.
I, the saint said, was born in the arms of our lord.
We acquired additional femurs from a St. Frances in New York. A church in Kentucky offered supplementary tibias from a St. Bonosa, martyred at four years old on the main stage of the Colosseum.
My saint's legs transformed into two towers of siege, creaking with age and frustration.
My car broke down a few days later, but by then, she had outgrown it. She towered above the St. Martin of Tours Church in Louisville, casting shadows over a Ferris wheel suspended between Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico.
She took strides over a city block length.
She supported us, walking on the bones of burned girls, the hip sockets of disemboweled virgins. Her ribcage encircled and protected us like a bulletproof vest. We slept snugly in her protective embrace.
Sometimes, we spotted a police car following us, its cherry lights dimmed. The media didn't know what to make of us.
We crossed into Mississippi a second time. I guessed it was at the invitation of another saint with bones to share.
We are here, the saint said.
We were staring at a one-story building fortified with a steel fence and barbed wire.
It's another clinic, I said. It appears to be open, but . . .
Dozens and dozens of people were huddled against some kind of automated gate, their bodies pressed against it, faces red from screaming, arms and shoulders slick with sweat. Their eyes glared up at us, filled with hatred beneath baseball caps decorated with beer logos and crosses. They seemed determined to block our entry.
The wall of sin, I thought. A human barricade.
I was perched on a collarbone, close to the warmth of her halo. I looked around. My saint had piled up patellas on both shoulders, resembling soldiers awaiting orders. The twelve-year-old girl hid in my saint's ribcage.
The saint strode towards the fence separating the angry crowd from the clinic. She intended to guide us inside.
A shot rang out from below. I peered into the ribcage. The twelve-year-old girl stared at her left hand, a hole in it.
Another shot. A bullet struck the shinbone of tiny St. Maria Goretti – Maria Goretti, who had been stabbed to death at eleven but had forgiven her attacker before her final breath.
For a moment, I felt like I was losing consciousness. I looked up at the top of my saint's head. The radiance of her halo had ascended into the sky, forming an impossible tower that seemed to touch the clouds. Sparks of fire rained down from it, destined to leave lasting scars.
A fire was burning within me, too, a raging inferno that I had denied, fed, and nurtured.
My saint hoisted me on her shoulder. Upon the shoulder of St. Agatha, who had died in prison after refusing to marry a local governor.
I stumbled upon one of the kneecap bones and felt its weight in my grasp. I targeted a man clad in camouflage overalls and tossed it.
My holy relic spun, arms rotating like catapults, digits poised to pulverize.
I missed the mark. A few of the men on the ground weren't so fortunate. My relic vibrated with numerous collisions.
It was stockpiled with numerous bones.
Yet, it lacked a shield.
A twelve-year-old let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Driven by fear, I crawled along the relic's clavicle, clung to its patchwork maw, and yanked.
It recognized my intrusion.
It opened its mouth, and I dove in.
If I were to perish here, I pleaded, consign my bones to be its defense.
The words echoed out, loud and clear, sounding like the horn of Gabriel. It reached every ear guarding that infernal gate.
Another man joined the first on the ground below. Through my relic's left eye socket, I saw him. He wielded a semi-automatic weapon, so bulky and altered it resembled a handheld tank.
I met his gaze, leaned out, and smiled back.
I needed to turn my head to carry out the forthcoming action. Somewhere behind my molars, a disc popped, and I couldn't suppress the laughter that followed. Retracing my steps, I found the halo adorning my relic once more.
Light pierced the back of my eyes, and I glimpsed, at long last, the radiance.
About the Author
Hamm's writings have been published in Strange Horizons, Kaleidotrope, Diabolical Plots, and more. Hamm resides in Los Angeles and continues their creative journey under the protection of a pseudonym. Hamm can be found on Bluesky @hammonddiehl.bsky.social.
© Adamant Press
Please visit LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to indulge in more captivating science fiction and fantasy. This story originally appeared in the November 2024 issue, which also includes short fiction by Isabel Cañas, Aimee Ogden, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, P H Lee, and Ai Jiang, as well as a novella by Ashok K. Banker, and more. You can wait for this month's contents to be featured online, or you can immediately purchase the whole issue in a reader-friendly ebook format for only $4.99. Alternatively, subscribe to the ebook edition here.
The future of fiction storytelling could greatly benefit from advances in technology, as shown by the use of digital platforms like io9.
In the worlds created by LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE and featured on io9, technology often plays a pivotal role. For example, in "We Will Bring Siege to the Bastion of Corruption that Resounds in Your Plea" by Hammond Diehl, the protagonist summons a saint who can materialize using technology-enhanced bones.
In the future, we might see even more innovative uses of technology in fiction, such as virtual reality settings or AI-generated characters.
