Raymond Anganes

There’s a god living under my skin, inside of me. It crawled into me when I was too small to scream, before I had air in my lungs to cry how it hurt. This god was in my mother, but it was not her god. It crawled from in her into me, and it is the god that created me as I am today. 

The god under my skin had no legs when it burrowed into my fetal body. It wormed its way to my skull, settled in, and molded me to its will. Everything I do is under its watch, under its judgment, and it grows as I grow. For every muscle I grew, it grew a spindly leg that stretched out inside of me like a pipe cleaner. When I move, it fights me, and I convulse. When I speak, it twitches and hooks its claws into my tendons, and I sputter and stutter. 

I played piano once, and the god inside of me demanded I stop. “For you belong to me,” it said. “For you are a child of my design,” it said. “For I will shape you to my image.” And I could not fight the god that lives under my skin. It curled its claws as I grew better at playing, and the stabbing pain of its insectoid claws in the muscles of my hands curled my fingers shut. The god living under my skin was pleased with the submission it extracted from me. I dared not question the will of god. I could not expel the god from under my skin. 

No one can see the god that lives under my skin, but they know it’s there. There are so many of us with gods under our skin, and those without gods of their own look down on us. They pity us. They see how the god under my skin flexes its legs. They see that I do not choose when I move or convulse as the god wills. We with gods under our skin have churches and monasteries and lands of persecution. We are seen as unclean, and those without gods will speak to our gods before they speak to us. We are puppets, meat things whose minds are bitten and scarred by the gods that demand our flesh and souls. 

There are exorcists that the god-puppets run to. Some gods are greater, some are lesser. Some are known, some are feared, some are unheard of, many are weak, some are strong, and all of them are wrathful, angry. My god is powerful, unkind, and spiteful. For all that I give it, twofold is demanded of me. The exorcists say my god isn’t the god I say it is. They perform their rituals and thrust their tinctures into me. The god living under my skin only laughs. It laughs and laughs and curls its claws, forces my hands to convulse, and forces my mouth to stutter. It pulls my muscles  taut like ropes and then pulses them tighter until I fear they’ll snap. The exorcists say they’ll try again  in a year. The god smiles wide at them from behind the mask of my skull. 

I am a slave to this god, and the godless speak words of power to me. I am a pillar of inspiration. I am resilience incarnate. I am a god above the god living under my skin. And when I ask if this god must live under my skin, they tell me there are other gods. There are gods without the mercy of the god living under my skin. There are gods out there whose wrath would have killed me long ago. They speak with no god under their skin, telling me how thankful I should be for the god under my skin’s mercy. There are periods of mourning each year for those who were killed by those greater gods. There are great sweeping offerings to the exorcists and crusaders who combat the great malevolent gods. 

My god is far too obscure to earn a crusade. The god living under my skin will live there until I die. People will love me, and far too many of them will pretend there is no god living under my skin. It’s there. I promise it is. Look closer—you’ll see how its millions of legs prod and stab me, firing my muscles against my will. This god’s cult is not spread by gospel. This god loves me. It will die with me. Or it will be passed to my sons and daughters. Someone else will inherit this god even if it dies with my body. 

This god will never go away. Only a god made by the godless will ever bring it to its knees. I do not want a god made by the godless. I will be a slave to that one, though it may be kind, though its sole purpose may be to slay the god living under my skin. I do not wish to be a slave to a god that calls my flesh home. When one day I can watch the sunrise without a god seeing through my eyes, I will praise a god that lives somewhere far, far away. One that lives outside of my skin.