Coleman Bigelow

Listen to Coleman read his story

On bended knee, he came to me. Well, it was more like an army crawl. “Get down!” he hissed. I was confused. Couldn’t he see I was already kneeling? I was respectful – reverent. In fact, I’d been almost trance-like. Knobbly knees now nagging from my desperate desire that if I prayed long enough, an answer would arrive. The organ music was my meditative salvation. The blend of Vox Humanas and French Trumpet. The Orchestral oboe leading to the full fanfare. Short pipes reaching high. Long pipes casting low, so low I could feel their vibrations in my hollow soul. What kind of person chooses books over babies? the reverberations demanded.

I wasn’t exactly disregarding my duties. Sarah, the mother of my child-to-be, had sworn she was on the pill. The real question was whether offering Sarah child support would be enough. After all, I’d made her no promises. We’d had a bit of fun while I lived close, saving on rent by staying at my parents’ house and working on my thesis from afar. But now Sarah, the baby, and that intellectual black hole of my childhood home were threatening to suck me back in. Shackle me for good. That and my father’s scolding. Do the right thing, son.

“Get down!” The shadow-savior had slithered into my pew and was jamming my head below the seat back, wrenching my neck so my cheek banged against the hymnal rack. The mixture of horror and disgust on my face inspired the man to elaborate as we sprawled on either side of the kneeler. “Active shooter,” he whispered. He’s in the church.” And when I continued to regard this sudden redeemer like a madman, he added, “Didn’t you hear the shots?”

All I’d heard were the transporting tones of the Tuba Mirabilis echoing round the nave, bouncing off that glorious stone and wood and cast iron. And the soaring upness of it all. Up, up, up, to where I prayed my laden spirit might temporarily hover as I weighed whether to stay in this Gomorrah or return to my backwoods to take up that choking yoke of parenthood. A ray of light illuminated the stained glass window of St. Joseph holding the baby Jesus, and I considered how fatherhood should be a blessing, but then I thought of just how noisy babies can be. All that squawking would hardly be conducive to my research. And, I could ill afford further delays to my PhD. I was already on a ten year track instead of the tenure track.

“Help! Somebody, please help!” A hostage called out in an off-pitch tone that sounded an awful lot like my not-so virgin, Sarah. The hostage was moaning now – a loud, laboring cry.

“Shut the fuck up,” the shooter commanded. 

And, there, huddled below the pews in the Lord’s house, the answer to my dilemma arrived like manna from heaven. My epiphany was clear: it was time for me to serve. If this hostage was Sarah, I had to go to her. I pushed myself up, but the shadow man grabbed my arm.

“Where are you going?” The man’s angelic eyes were a cognac brown flecked with emerald – just like mine.

Where was I going? It was a fair question. I didn’t want to go anywhere. “You’re right. It’s too risky.” I flopped back down onto my soft belly.

“That’s not what I mean,” I heard him murmur from somewhere deep within. “It’s good you care to help, but you have to make a plan.”

My guardian’s counsel flapped inside my skull like a trapped dove. But what was there to plan? I imagined myself standing and heard the inevitable pop of the shooter’s gun. Pop. Pop. Pop. I saw myself falling and pictured my blooming stigmata.

No. I wasn’t made for sacrifice… even if I had a plan. With my cheek still pressed to the cold tile, I listened to that woman’s muffled cries and waited for someone else to save her.

Coleman Bigelow’s work has appeared recently in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Cleaver, Ghost Parachute, Flash Flood, Gooseberry Pie and Your Impossible Voice. Find more at: http://www.colemanbigelow.com or follow him on @cbigs.bsky.social.

Read more from Coleman:

Cleaver Magazine – ‘Because at Least We Drink Fresh Roast‘
Ghost Parachute – ‘Gotta Run!‘