Bonnie Found More Pages!

Let’s see, where does this paragraph start? Aha. Back on page 7…

However, they tell the Reverend – Now, remember this is the Reverend telling us all this under hypnosis – they tell the Reverend that there was this cat lady who died in 2015, who had said a quick prayer for him back in 1981 when she was young and pretty and had caught him shyly looking at her. When she arrived in the Spirit Realm, she found that dozens of her prayers from the pre-Internet era had been hopelessly mired in red tape ever since. She was rather dismayed to find that Skunk had been kicked around a bit. She even filed a formal complaint about the partial zombification thing.

She had been very kind to a great many creatures during her life and had more than a few fans in the Spirit Realm. She was able to insist that the bureaucratic spirits who ultimately get all the work done in the Spirit Realm finally follow through on all of her prayers.

That’s who the guys say they are. You know, Reverend Skunk’s guys. His voices. They say they’re the bureaucrat spirits who have to make good on the cat lady’s prayers. All thirty-seven of the things that she apparently had prayed for with the utmost sincerity and virtue back when such things were kept track of on an old IBM mainframe at the University of Pittsburg.

The guys say they’ve taken care of the other thirty-six prayers, but that – as difficult as those were – Reverend Skunk takes the cake. Apparently, after the formal complaint about the partial zombification, the amended Statement of Intercession for the cat lady’s prayer said that they had to give the Reverend something important to do, and that they have to look after him for the rest of his natural life.

So, they gave Skunk a job. A mission. They still don’t like him. They think he’s an idiot. They mess with him. You know, like, hide stuff from him. And send him on wild goose chases. But they look after him like the amended Statement of Intercession says. They’ve already saved his life seven times – they say – and they have prevented at least seventy-three serious injuries – five of them within minutes of each other.

So, the Reverend – the poor guy – has to fulfill this sacred mission, but he isn’t allowed to actually start a church. Or take donations. Or apply for a parking permit. Or preach.

The mission? Well, apparently there's an apocalypse that started a few years back, and the Reverend is supposed to go find all the Rapture folks. You know – all the really good folks who get to bale before the really bad stuff starts. All hundred and forty-four thousand of them. He’s not – I repeat, the Reverend is not – the guy who helps the Rapture folks bale or anything, He’s just supposed to give them an important message. Only he doesn't know who they are or how to find them, or what the message is. He asked the guys, of course. All they would tell him was to go see his uncle. “He has a tape,” they said. Carl was snickering.