an excruziatingly bad story about Ted Cruz

the cruzifizion

Ted Cruz is flying. 

He sees them in the halls, in the bathrooms, the restive few amidst the glassy-eyed followers of the man from New York. They wear no Trump insignia, no Trump memorabilia, no crimson baseball caps emblazoned with the prophetic pledge.

He sees the pins instead: the small white "C" with a flame at its heart, and he sees their eyes flicker to his among the crowd. They do not speak. They nod. Words do not pass their lips, but they are not silent.

The son of the Lord Almighty himself started with twelve, and Ted has got to have at least twelve times that, here in sticky-hot Cleveland where the cicadas seem to chirp louder and longer and the fireflies flicker menacingly bright all night outside the arena. The humidity, that's the only thing he can't take. Washington, built on a swamp, never prepared him for this. The way the thunderclouds roil over the city, but never come, haunts him. They stay over the horizon. When Ted looks at them, the clouds seem to look right back.

Go, they whisper to him, you're not safe here.

Ted has rattlesnake venom for blood. He is of the desert, the arroyo, the water that cuts the arid dry dirt. He laughs. He stays.

On the third night, they come for Heidi, wrest her from the arena when the Jumbotrons go black. "For your safety," they say, and the puppets chant her crimes aloud as she goes. Ted watches. She does not flinch. She laughs like a child, eyes burning bright as they take her. A good wife. A hard woman.

"Vote your conscience," he says, and he hears the chanting, the jeering intensify as he goes.

"Vote your conscience," he says, and he feels the heat in his veins, pumping out of his heart and spreading all the way down to the tips of his fingers. Feels the noise of the crowd vibrating in his core.

He will not bend the knee. He will not bow to false idols.

A map of Texas on a board. Red Xs drawn over San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Austin.

"We will strike you off the map," says one of the whips, fluorescent-yellow cap glowing eerie and bright in the dim room. Ted tests the give on his bonds. The zip ties hold fast, cut into the flesh of his wrists. He does not wince.

"Missiles," says another, "nuclear strikes. Remember the Alamo? No one will. Remember Ted Cruz?" Rancid breath, close to his face. Ted flexes an ankle. "No one will remember you. No one will know."

"Maybe it'll be a surprise," laughs another. "The book depository, perhaps, wouldn't that be fitting?"

Ted does not flinch. He does not swallow. The snick of the knife as it opens does not strike fear into his heart. He will be delivered; he will deliver them all.

"Not too deep," says one whip to another as the blood runs down his chest in metallic streaks. "But you want it to scar."

On the fourth night, the press is barred from the room; locked and barricaded out in the humid heat, cameras overheating as their reporters breathlessly try to make sense of it all. The signals are jammed. The floor is packed. The doors are locked. There is no exit.

On the fourth night, from the sixth to the ninth hour, they parade him in front of the arena, the crowd unrestful and thrumming with electricity.

The collective gasp of the room as they rip open his shirt, force him to his knees with the camera trained upon the cuts on his chest, block letters spelling out the name of the demon.

With the mark of the beast upon him -

Ted does not yield as the sky goes black.

On the fourth night, the earth breaks open, the rocks of the Ohio River Valley begin to split. "Extraordinary circumstances," report those who manage to connect to their satellites; the faithful foxes deemed part of the new order. "Earthquakes like these, they're uncommon in the Midwest, aren't they?"

The ground shakes, and around Cleveland buildings crumble, but the Quicken Loans Arena is a fort, a stronghold.

The ground does not shake when the beast enters the room. The ground does not shake but for the rock song that plays, and the deafening chants that drown out the screams of the few, the followers, the resistance bearing the white-flame buttons on their lapels. Blood pours from throat after throat, one after the other, a carefully choreographed dance. DON'T BLAME ME I VOTED FOR TED screams a pile of stickers that fall from the messenger bag of a woman bleeding out on the floor.

They will know of his name; they will preach of him someday. He will rise.

"You can't strike me down," he murmurs as they close upon him, "I am your Savior."

The first rock strikes the side of his head, and he laughs.