an excruziatingly bad story about Ted Cruz

the cruzible

Ted Cruz is slipping.

He prays nightly, twice nightly, for a brokered convention. He prays for help, for divine intervention, for Texas and California. He prays to his God, the only God, skips Sunday pancake breakfasts for church; no one has the fever like a 45-year-old man in a neatly tailored suit and flag pin, American flag, he isAmerican, regardless of what the attack ads leveled against him are saying –

(He remembers what Marco told him just before dropping out; You've got to hang in there, you're the only one who can defeat him. You're the only one, Ted. He remembers Marco too fondly for someone who was supposed to be his sworn enemy, remembers him as the other witness, the other man who could have taken him down. The olive tree and the lampstand, you and me. He prays for Marco.)

He prays nightly for forgiveness; God almighty guide my hand, let me be the savior this country wants, let them pray not to false idols but worship only You and Your light, I am Your Son reborn, I carry Your light with me – let them judge not for You are the last judge, let them pray to Me, let them quiver and quake in the shadow of Your great and terrible disapproval of what this country has become –

And yet to false idols they flock.

The convention is a reckoning, Cleveland sticky and hot in late July. He wonders, faintly, through a fog, what bargains Kasich had to make to host the convention here. He wonders whether they were worth it, because he knows John was hoping for a better ending to this story than having been mathematically eliminated by late June.

(There are guns here, more guns than Ted has ever seen, and he feels an immense sense of comfort walking through the crowd of holsters surrounded by Secret Service armed to the teeth themselves. He'd concealed-carry if the holster wouldn't create an unsightly bulge on camera. He thinks of justice. He thinks of judgement, of a Great Judgment, of how someday the sins of the populace will all fall to him and how he will exact the greatest Justice the world has ever seen. It is warm here, too warm. Humid. He misses Texas. The dry heat, the desert, the telltale rattle of a viper coiled, ready to strike.)

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"I'm not asking you to be my Vice President," Donald says, and Ted stares at the floor. "I'm telling you, you're gonna be my Vice President."

"What happens if I say no," Ted says, his neck very warm beneath his collar, his body clammy and sweaty. "Because I'm saying no."

"What else are you gonna do?" Donald asks, and he takes a step closer, one finger jabbing Ted right in the chest, and the circle of Secret Service tighten around them but nobody else moves a muscle. Only Donald. "Go back to Canada? You think anybody's gonna remember you after this election is over? They're gonna remember me. They're gonna remember what I did. I'm offering you a chance to get your name out of the fine print of history –"

"We print the history textbooks in Texas, we decide what the world remembers," says Ted. Calmly. Concealing the sweat under his collar like a Glock beneath his suit coat.

Donald laughs. "When I'm the President, I can change that." History is written by the winners, says his body language, and Ted swallows. Tries to take a step back, but Donald only steps further into his space, and he feels a panic rise like bile inside him, keeps his face placid, keeps the mask on even as he shares breathing room with the great deceiver, the antichrist himself –

He has a vision, then, a clearer vision of the images that have woken him from sleep these past eight nights. It isn't cowardly, he thinks, if God's Hand is guiding him; if God tells him what to do, He couldn't be wrong.

"When I'm the Vice President," Ted says, and offers a hand to shake, clasps the smaller one in his own, expects to feel scales or feathers rather than skin – "I'll fight for Texas."

"See how easy that was," Donald says, and his face would almost be a smirk if he were capable of wryness, Ted thinks.

God has a plan, God will strike Donald Trump down, and He will place His own son in the White House where he has always belonged, and Ted will rule this country with rage and mercy, and exact justice, Justice, swift and divine and He will rule. This is not a bargain. This is a plan. This is God's will. Ted will bear this cross, he will bear it as long as he must, for there will be justice and it will come, not with love and kindness, but with fire and brimstone and only the good will be left standing.

+

He silently prays as he stands behind Donald amid an arena's worth of cascading balloons, red and white. Soon, he thinks, there will be blood.