Colossian, Prophet of God
A guy once told him a story about how lies could pile up on each other until they collapsed on top of the person telling them and crushed him to death. The guy had been cheating on his wife with a younger woman and feeding his wife bullshit until finally she flipped on him and went to the press. The marriage collapsed. He paid an enormous divorce settlement, filed for bankruptcy, his children were ridiculed about in school, and then he accidentally impregnated his mistress. The guy was him. And he had told himself the story many times since it had happened, but he never truly believed any of it, and he had made the same mistake again - and the only thing that kept him from making it a third time was his diminished interest in sex.
That’s not to say that he stopped lying. He lied all the time. To everyone, sometimes for no discernible reason whatsoever. Like just a moment ago when he told his wife he needed an hour of alone time to read an infrastructure report when he really just wanted to try out a new rub-in tanning lotion in the bathroom. It wouldn't have made a difference to her if she knew what he was up to, they rubbed tanning lotion onto each other all the time. But the lie just fell out of his mouth, like a poker chip-shaped turd, and he wasn't about to pretend like he hadn't meant to have it in there in the first place.
The tanning lotion had a sweet, baked goods-like scent to it, but it went on a little too sticky and he knew it would leave a brownish stain on the collar of his shirt and the back of his hair. The thing with the bricks piling up and collapsing story was that it was a bad metaphor, because when bricks actually fell on your head, your skull caved in on your brain and you died, which never happened to him, no matter how dishonest he was. Little ones or big ones, he’d never died - and wasn't there some saying about whatever not killing you only made you better? So really, lying made him a much better person, because he did it a lot and had always been alive.
The most recent lie he told fell into the big category. He had told everyone that he was Colossian, the prophet of God and had proof to prove it. It was an important lie because it meant that all his decisions were really just God’s decisions that he was implementing - and no one could argue with God. It meant that he could imprison or murder his opponents, steal whatever property he had his heart set on, enslave anyone he didn't like and rename the continent after himself. It was a great lie, and he was sure it wouldn't kill him. Using his fore fingers, he rubbed some of the lotion into his nose, pushing it into the little corners where it met his face, massaging it along the bridge and even coating the inside of his nostrils with it. Now that he thought about it, the lie wasn't even that big. How many prophets of God were there in the bible? Hundreds? Thousands? He didn’t know. He'd never read it, but he was sure there were thousands. And what were prophets, anyway? Pruny, old women with headscarves, cheap jewelry and glass balls; who worked out of tiny storefronts on Bleeker street, spoke a bunch of mumbo jumbo and gave hand jobs for an extra fifty? He had nothing in common with prophets. If he wanted to tell a really big lie, he could have just said he was God, and not his little messenger boy running around delivering tiddily bits of news. He cursed himself for making him out to look so small in front of everyone. He didn’t pass messages along to anybody! Man, God, animal or woman!
Sticky as it was, the lotion felt nice on his face. It had a warming, tingling effect on his skin. From the kitchen he could smell steaks sizzling under the broiler, and he knew his wife was preparing his favorite meal: ketchup and steak. Ketchup was sweet and smooth, and steak was grisly, salty and could hold a lot of ketchup. It was the greatest meal in the world, no doubt about it. For dessert, he’d fill up on ice cream and leave his stomach in an unpleasant, but worth it, knot. Some liquid settled on his lower lip; his mouth was literally watering at thought, so he left the bathroom for the kitchen to get fed. But when he got there, the room was empty and there weren't any steaks in the oven. And he grew very angry, because someone was cooking steaks and deliberately keeping them from him. He stormed down the hallway, his bronzed face scowling at paintings of John Adams, Abe Lincoln, Something Truman and How-The-Hell-Was-He-Supposed-To-Know-Which Roosevelt. A bunch of elites —all of ‘em — looking down on him, judging him, thinking how much greater they are than him, plotting their next move against him. After he ate, he would tell someone to hang them all lower so he could be the one looking down on the stupid ex-presidents who left such a mess for him to clean up.
The whole goddamned place stunk of grilled meats!
The lotion was getting a bit too hot on his skin, but there was only so many things a man could get upset about at once. He stopped in front of one of his Secretary’s office and smelled the steak smell billowing from beneath the door door. He kicked it in with his wing-tip, expecting to find the piece of shit spearing prime rib from a Hibachi grill on his desk, but instead the man had his pants around his ankles, his palms and forehead were against the wall while the First Lady stood behind him pushing something long and green into him. No steak anywhere.
He watched in awe as the thing slid in and out, like a cat gliding in and out of a flap in a door. The skinny man’s skin sagged. He softly clucked. The First Lady had one shoe-less foot up against the wall, which was strange because she always wore heels with him. And it made him wonder, for a moment, if this meant something profound.
“Stop! I’m the best!” He lied. Truthfully, he hadn't had or even wanted an erection in the last 36 months. But he continued nevertheless: “I’m the greatest lay there ever was, probably better than any person to ever set foot in this building. In this whole country. People say that!”
“Uh, yes sir. Oh god,” the Secretary scrambled to cover himself. “Of course, you are.”
“I explain,” the First Lady said, her new, publicly funded breasts stood proudly, always in the direction of the flag. “It isn’t how it looks like. Very simple, really. I was helping him with the spreadsheets and then we decide to buy clothes, so the tailor ask us to get undress while he brings fabric and then we made this sexy joke for him when he return.”
“It would have been funny,” the secretary assured.
Just then another Secretary came running in with a bolt of black velvet. “Guys!” he said, “How about this one?” He burst into laughter, mechanically. “Oh they are such kidders!”
He wasn't an idiot. He knew something wasn't right. The First Lady knew nothing about spreadsheets. “You’re lying.”
“No, my love.” she said. “My love, your face: It looks like burning.”
“Don’t change the subject! You’re having an affair!”
“No!” they both said in unison.
“Sir,” the other Secretary then said. “I can’t keep up this charade. They were cheating and I was trying to cover for them.”
He stared at his wife dumbfounded. It didnt make any sense. How could she be attracted to someone other than him. Him who was the richest, smartest, most handsome person he knew. Him, who was Colossian, Prophet of God, who was probably even God himself. How could she be so cruel to him, lie to him so blatantly. He was about to scream something horrible - something having to do with Eastern Europe and extreme poverty and coprophagy and race and the bible and lots and lots of adjectives in between, but then something heavy fell on the ceiling above them. It sounded like bowling balls spilling from a duffel bag and then everything came crashing down. Bricks, dust, smoke, air conditioning duct, steel filling cabinets, ethernet cables, fax machines, the Consititution, leather chairs, stateroom china. The First Lady got crushed beneath a slab of kitchen-top marble and a sub-zero fridge, one of the Secretaries suffocated beneath reams of fiberglass insulation and wall paper meant to resemble leather-bound books, the other died of asbestos inhalation. Colossian was knocked unconscious by a decorative pillar and speared through the heart with a flag pole. Just before he breathed his final breathe, he remembered the story he used to tell himself, and he realized he had been wrong all along because sometimes it was the lies of other people that brought the house down on you.
