As the saying goes, one belongs to New York instantly, regardless of station, race or birth; the bourgeoisie and the disenfranchised alike finding themselves congealed within the melting pot. The implication, to some, is New York as the Holy City, a Mecca, brimming with a godly energy. To walk the streets of New York - glancing at one’s reflection through stained-glass storefronts, fogged over by the steam of communion hot dogs, 100% beef dipped in holy water - was to kowtow before God. To sit upon traffic jammed taxi cabs was the very essence of contemplative prayer; indeed, the most powerful places of prayer in this known world surely must be red lights and crowded intersections.
Cassia Muninn was the three hundred and seventy-eighth most holy of her graduating class, the forty-fifth most devout delinquent on Houston Street, whose tributes to God were ice crystal and hashish. She did not believe in God the being, rather she believed in God the kaleidoscope. She believed in God as the mirror in front of which her mother and her played dress-up. Likewise, she believed in God as the fragmented shards of their shattered house window, interlaced with the bullets and the blood of her parents; and she believed in God as the tinted glass of the car that had sped by. She believed in God as the most kind, but reviled him as cruel in his own way, saw him as whip-bearing overseer, yet also the water-carrier at the end of the desert.
But most importantly, she believed in God as New York, and Cassia belonged to God just as much as she belonged to New York, the concrete jungle, the crystal cave, the blooded desert, and the wine oasis. She was a slave to the whims of God, and to the red, yellow, and green lights upon that New York Intersection. And this, truly, was what, for seemingly eternities, had set her free.
So she lived her days out, watching those who lost themselves in New York, who found themselves in New York, or who had found New York just to lose themselves. And Cassia, who stood vigil at the Intersection, shepherded those who, like her, were lost and alone, offering them sustenance in sacred needle and crystal snow. They called her ‘Dealer’, and her disciples ‘Fiends’, base criminals and junkies. But Cassia believed she was enlightened for she still believed in God as both kind and evil; and she sought to emulate Him, offering shelter to the downtrodden, but stealing from those outside the flock.
Eventually, it was unclear, even to Cassia herself, if she believed that God would forgive her the dichotomy, or if God meant for her to act as such, or even if it was God himself who had acted, using her body as conduit. Yet, within the unclarity was happiness - she was the Shepherd, Keeper of the Weak, and she cared for the poor folk of Millennium City, of New York, serving as both a hand of God’s protection, and a hand of God’s cruelty.
But she was wrong, you see. For New York is not God, New York is Gods. New York is Gods, and Demons, and Devils, and Imps and Monsters, callous, wanton, whimsical, of many a thing greater than the Human. And she… she was not a Hand of God, she was Cassandra Muninn - a once bright and promising child who lost mother and father in a shooting, who became a drug-dealer, who became a thief, a crook, who became base, but never strong, never fit to be the Shepherd. If only the descent of meteors had taught her just how lowly she was - alas, that task was handed to others.
Human traffickers, peddlers of women and children, came in the night, while the Shepherd and the flock were in drug-slumber. Cassia had noticed first, for the crystal and the needle had not touched her, but her skinny, atrophied arms were numb, dull and unresponsive. They took her, just as they took her flock. When she awoke, bound and blindfolded in a rusted crate upon a rusted boat at sea, readers, is when Cassia realised that she had not found freedom through slavery.
Instead, she had found horror through freedom. Because she realised that God was not kind, and God was not cruel. God was not the play-set dress-up mirror that made her so happy when she was young, and God was not the window the bullets had pierced. God did not protect, and God did not torment - Cassia found that God was, simply, unmoving.
And so she, for the first time in her life, truly - truly - prayed.
“Oh… God, I cannot see, and I am cold, and my arms they… barely have the strength to shiver.
I wished... so badly to be your Shepherd, that for years, I had even believed that I was.
I’m not your Shepherd, I am just a girl, alone and desperate and wanting,
And so fucking stupid,
And the worst kind of liar; I lie to myself.
But please, let me save them. Once, for real, just one, actual moment of salvation, no matter how fleeting.
Let me be the shepherd.”
After she prayed, she wept - wept so intensely that the moisture in her throat dissipated, that she felt herself desperately begging for water. All the while, the world around her and the vessel shook, yet she wept all the same, convinced that her prayers would go unanswered.
Then it seemed as if Heaven itself turned on its head, as she heard the sound of hungering waves clashing against frightful hull, felt the world spin as the ship keeled over. The screams of their captors rang in Cassia’s ears as they began to sink; and she thought to herself, finally, that perhaps God was kind.
She awoke, alone, upon the surface of the water. The ship, nowhere to be found, captors and flock alike taken by the depths. Her heart sank as she accepted… her God’s kindness was never without cruelty. Only this time, the revelation did not set her free.
She was not the Shepherd.