Pastor Revlin took a swig from the pocket flask stitched into his Bible cover, looked out over the scattered flock at Old Bethel Revival Tabernacle. His lips tingled, then loosened.
“God ain’t interested in your polish,” he preached, voice slurred just enough to sound prophetic. “He wants the raw parts. The bruised fruit. Bring Him your rot and let Him distill it!”
The old folks shouted Amen!
From the third pew, Daisy Dwyer scribbled “Distill rot = sermon title?” into her spiral notebook between cookie order names and weed strain notes. She scratched her wrist—damn barn cat brushed her again on the way to the grow room. Gonna be a rash.
Her peanut butter mint cookies sold like fresh ammo at a farm auction. No one suspected a thing. Not even when the old timers started having dreams of aliens milking cows with angel wings. “Extra potent, Miss Dwyer!” they’d say, laughing and ordering more.
She baked the cannabis straight from her parents’ barn-grown stash. The plants grew under solar panels that powered irrigation drip lines. Her dad pretended not to know. Her mom did know and blessed it nightly with anointing oil. Said it kept Daisy from joining TikTok.
That Sunday, the man in the back pew didn’t sing. Didn’t lift his hands. Didn’t kneel. But when Revlin barked, “There’s someone here runnin’ from his name,” the man twitched.
He wore a denim jacket too clean for this town. Carried an unbranded leather satchel. Said his name was Mal. Didn’t say from where.
Daisy knew fake names like she knew THC—by smell. After service, she offered him a cookie.
“They’re blessed,” she said, smiling.
He hesitated. Bit half. Blinked. Coughed.
“You sleep okay lately, Mal?”
He looked at her. “You always talk to strangers like this?”
“Only the ones hiding something.”
Three days later, Daisy found Mal in the church basement with blood on his boots and a broken bottle in his hand. She didn’t scream. She didn’t run.
“Whose blood?”
He looked up, eyes full of whiskey and ghosts.
“My brother’s. It’s... it’s gone. Buried. It’s not what you think.”
“You don’t know what I think.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“What’d you mean to do?”
Mal fell back against the freezer used for casserole overflow and stared at the water-stained ceiling tiles. “I meant to scare him. That’s all.”
“Where is he?”
“West field. By the dry creek. Under the driftwood.”
Daisy crouched. “You running from justice, or you running from guilt?”
“What’s the difference?”
She stood. “One can find you in your sleep.”
That night, Daisy baked a new batch. Special blend. Added a few pinches of amanita caps she’d dried last summer. Not to kill, but to reveal.
She handed Mal a cookie under the stained glass halo of a bored-looking Saint Peter. Mal bit and swallowed. Said nothing. She watched his pupils expand like puddles after thunder.
He dreamed of fire. Of hands around a throat—his own. Of dragging a body through gravel and weeping because the gravel was white like snow. He hadn’t wept in years.
Daisy watched his tremble fade to stillness.
She whispered, “You buried a brother. But forgot to bury your name.”
Revlin wasn’t stupid, just liquored. He saw Mal’s type before—the Prodigal with a Gun. Probably a drifter. Maybe worse. But Daisy? That girl could see into a soul like flipping through a seed catalog.
He saw her watching Mal. Saw the way she didn’t blink. The way she dug in the garden behind the barn last night with a red-handled spade.
So, Pastor Revlin made a call to Sheriff Dockson. Not a law call. A favor call.
“I think the boy might be troubled,” he said, sipping whiskey from a communion cup.
Next Sunday, Mal showed up wearing the same jacket. Dirt under his nails. No satchel. No smile.
Daisy passed the plate and skipped him. She slipped a note instead.
A storm is coming. You can’t hide under driftwood forever.
Mal looked up. She didn’t smile. Neither did he.
Outside, thunder cracked like God’s own gavel.
The next day, the sheriff came knocking.
“Girl says you confessed,” Dockson said.
Mal shrugged. “What’s confession worth in a place like this?”
“Depends on the ears.”
They searched the west field. And found bones with picked-apart flesh.
They cuffed Mal under a sky that didn’t blink.
Daisy sat on the barn roof that night, watching the stars dodge clouds. Revlin climbed the ladder, two flasks in hand.
“You broke that boy.”
“He broke himself.”
Revlin passed her a flask. She sniffed. Cinnamon and sin.
“He said he thought this was sanctuary,” she said.
Revlin took a swig. “Well, it was. Up to the moment you became God.”
Daisy drank. Felt the fire in her chest.
“You preach with whiskey,” she said.
He grinned. “And you bake the body and blood of Christ into cookies.”
They laughed.
In the distance, sirens wailed like lost hymns.
Mal never made it to county jail. Truck crashed at Devil’s Elbow. Some say the driver jerked the wheel. Some say the sheriff's truck lost traction. Others say Mal saw his brother on the road and tried to jump.
The papers said accident.
Revlin called it atonement.
Daisy shrugged it off, called it expected.
A week later, Daisy laid new seeds in the barn. Deep purple strain. She named it "Sanctuary." Said it helped people forget their sins long enough to imagine forgiveness.
That Sunday, Revlin preached with fire in his throat and thunder in his eyes. Called it a revival.
Nobody asked about the stranger.
But everybody bought cookies.
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First published at Substack. Image created by ChatGPT.
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