The Restoration Church of The Latter-Day Whale

Whoever said that the only things guaranteed in life are death and taxes had never partaken in the horror that is a family vacation and therefore had never experienced the deplorable and appalling nature of such an excursion, which David knew to be a sure thing. David, thirteen years old, rail thin and with the unfortunate disposition of an Africanized killer bee did not want to be with his family, hovering above the North Pacific Ocean in the shiny silver Leer Jet, and could not think of a worse predicament to find himself in. He had wanted to go to the beach yet his parents, arrogant and selfish in his way of thinking, had insisted on utilizing the money that they had put aside for many years on the purchase of plane tickets and the inexplicable destination of the Mariana Trench. David was an avid reader, one of his better qualities, and knew that the Mariana Trench was the deepest part of the world's oceans, located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. He knew although he did not care, that the deepest part of the trench went down somewhere around thirty-six thousand feet, which according to the brochure stuffed inside the back of the seat in front of him, was almost seven miles to the bottom. At somewhere between one and four degrees Celsius, nothing of importance or interest to David could live or exist there, deep in the dark depths of the ocean. There were certainly no T-shirt and souvenir vendors lined up along a boardwalk or an amusement park at the end with a Ferris wheel at the bottom of the trench and David found himself thinking once again about how stupid his mother and father were for spending so much money on such a meaningless and impractical family outing. He found himself flushed, once again, the heat of his frustration with the incompetence and impotence of his family rising in his cheeks.
"Are we still going to the beach?" His younger sister Mandy was speaking to him, innocent and pure, with the face of a cherub and a head of curly brown hair that glimmered underneath the LED lighting inside the cabin of the jet. Mandy was adorable and David hated her.
"Ain't no fucking beach," he snarled back at his little sister, his upper lip raised in a sneer.
"Aw," Mandy said wide eyed, "you said a bad word."
"So tell them," David said, gesturing with his elbow in the direction of their parents, seated to the right of him and his sister. "I'd like to see 'em ground me while I'm on a plane."
David found this funny and laughed out loud as abrasively as he could. People grounded planes first, then the expression mutated and soon parents grounded unruly children. The idea of being grounded by his parents while being on a plane in which his parents had no control or leverage over the grounding of said plane was quite amusing to the young boy.
Mandy looked up at David with loving admiration. "I'm not gonna tell on you," she said and smiled at her brother. "Just don't say it again please."
"Whatever," David mumbled, disregarding his sister and returning his gaze to the back of the seat in front of him.
Mandy hugged the stuffed animal in her arms tighter, closer to her body. The soft toy had once been a puppy but it had been loved and handled so often that it had begun to resemble nothing more than an amorphous blob of fake fur and fabric. She wondered why her brother was always angry. If I was big and tall like David, I would be happy all the time instead of mad, she thought. As she sat in her seat, clutching her toy puppy closer to her body, wondering if her brother was actually sad and not angry, her family and the other passengers were startled by an electrical sounding click followed by a voice that poured out of the speakers in the ceiling of the plane.
"Alright good people," said the confident and reassuring voice. It was a man's voice and Mandy wondered if it was one of the pilots who was flying this plane. "This is your co-captain speaking."
And so it was one of the pilots and Mandy was proud of herself for guessing this. She was four years old.
"Right now," continued the voice from the loudspeaker, "if you look over to your right, you can see that we are flying past the Mariana Islands. They got their name in honor of the Spanish Queen Mariana of Austria. These islands are part of the island arc that is formed on an over-riding plate, called the Mariana Plate on the western side of the trench. The Mariana Plate is also named in honor of the Queen."
"Who...gives...a...shit..." growled David, putting emphasis on the word shit.
"Dave, it's not so bad. You should enjoy the view," David's mother was saying, trying to sound consoling. Mandy didn't understand why her mother was tolerating David's poor behavior. After all, the family rarely took vacations and this one had obviously costed their parents a great deal.
"View?" David asked incredulously. "View of what? It's all just water and sky."
"You should enjoy it kiddo," his mother responded and Mandy thought she sounded almost placating.
"Shoulda gone to the beach," David grunted, always needing to have the last word. Mandy loved her brother but thought that he really should try to not be so negative all the time. She had been thinking about telling him this, preparing what she would say, letting the words formulate in her mind, when she noticed something peculiar about the other passengers aboard the plane. In every row and in every seating arrangement there were always two parents and two children. Nowhere did she see anything other than families and families in groups of four. How strange, she thought to herself.
"At this time,"said the co-captains voice through the loud speaker, "I'm going to need all adults and first born children to put on their seat belts, restraints and safety harnesses."
Mandy watched as David and her mother and her father pulled down arm bars from the ceilings above and fastened restraints around their waists. Many of the other passengers did the same thing but when Mandy attempted to imitate what the others were doing, she reached up and found no arm bar to pull down. She looked on either side of her seat for her own set of belts and restraints that her brother was fastening around his waist and found none. She began to panic, her heart beating faster.
A plump and red faced woman clasped her hands together and joyfully exclaimed "and it begins!"
Two male stewards walked to the back of the plane and stood on opposite sides of the aisle where the seating no longer continued. They reached down to the floor and pulled open a hatch and huge gusts of air bellowed into the cabin of the plane. Mandy turned around and could barely see over her seat even as she stood on top of it, but what she did see, filled her with cold fear, the kind of fear that is solid, fear that you can weigh and measure. After the hatch had been pulled back all that was visible below was sky and ocean. The hatch opened a rectangular hole in the bottom of the cabin. More air rushed in and she watched as a single styrofoam cup flew through the air and then was sucked into the hatch, flying down through the sky into the dark water below. An unattractive older stewardess approached the family and stared coldly at Mandy.
David looked at his sister, catatonic with fear, and felt a pang of sadness. She was so young and afraid. He watched her shake uncontrollably, her eyes glassy and cheeks wet with tears.
"I'll go," he said to the stewardess. "I'll go in her place. I wanted to go to the beach anyway."
"Dave," his mother said sternly, "it doesn't work that way. It must be the second born child. The whales won't accept a first born."
"What about the miscarriage?" David's father asked. "I mean, it died but doesn't that count?"
"Did you seriously just say that?" David's mother said, disgusted with her husband.
"I mean, honey," he continued apprehensively, "if he wants to go, let him go. He's been nothing but a pain this whole trip."
"But he's the first born!" David's mother screamed, shrill and hysterically. "He's our son, and that's not how it works!"
"Ask the stewardess how it works," her husband replied coldly. "It's not like I really believe in any of this bullshit anyway. The Provost changes the rules as he goes along. Makes it all up on the fly and you know it too."
"Blasphemy!" cried one of the passengers close enough to hear this. "Affliction!"
"Affliction?" David said cynically. "Affliction is sitting on this plane with all of you assholes."
The stewardess and David's mother looked like they had been physically assaulted by his words and winced in pain.
David's father groaned. "And this is the kid you want to spend the thirteen hour flight back home with?"
"Fuck off Dad," he said. "I said I'd go in her place, you can spend as much time with your favorite child after this."
"See?" David's father pleaded. "He actually wants to go."
"I can check the bylaws if this is what you wish," the homely stewardess said. She was extremely patient. Anything and everything short of a full on mutiny was to be expected aboard these decennial flights. An older child wanting to take the place of his or her sibling was far from an unusual occurrence.
The other adults on the plane, all parents, began to chant in low voices, first only a few and then what seemed like all of them.
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
Mandy became white with fear. The chanting continued, increasing in volume.
"Fucking fanatics," exclaimed David. "Don't cry about it Mandy. It's stupid"
He was looking at his sister, confident and steadfast. She calmed down, only slightly, the rare warmth in her brothers voice soothing her.
"Yes," said David's mother, resigned. Her whole body slumped into the seat. "Please check the bylaws."
The stewardess let out a sigh and reached into the large pocket in the front of her apron and removed a small black booklet with gold lettering on the front. Mandy attempted to make out what the words on the cover of the book were but was unable to decipher whatever it said.
"You had a still born child prior to either of your other children being born, yes?" The stewardess asked their mother.
David and Mandy's mother nodded, yes.
"Per the bylaws, a stillbirth is defined as fetal death after 20 weeks of gestation. Once the fetus has died, the mother may or may not have contractions and undergo childbirth although this does not count as an actual birth, and that's directly from the book." The stewardess closed the book and tapped the front cover.
"Stop lying honey," said the children's father. "There was no stillbirth or miscarriage. The child died in the crib after we took it home."
"He wasn't an it!" The mother shrieked at her husband. "He was our son."
"For a few days he was," snorted the father.
"What are you saying?" Asked the stewardess. "I need you all to be up front and completely honest. You're not the only family that paid for the privilege of this experience and you're holding up the process. The Provost would be furious if he knew how you all were behaving during such a sacred event."
As the stewardess said this the other adult passengers stopped their chanting and glared over at the family that was halting the process, a process which was supposed to be fluid and sacred. A process which was built on a foundation of rules and tradition, a process which demanded respect: This selfish family was ruining the whole experience for everyone aboard the plane.
"The first child died a day or so after we took it - I mean him - home with us," said David and Mandys father. "Died in the crib. SIDS."
The stewardess opened the small black book back up and thumbed through the pages until she found what she was looking for.
"Ok," read the stewardess. "It says here that SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion and should be applied to only those cases in which an infant's death is sudden and unexpected, and remains unexplained after the performance of an adequate postmortem investigation. Was there an an autopsy and investigation of the death scene and circumstances of the death? Was there exploration of the medical history of the infant and family?"
"God yes!" David and Mandys mother cried. "Are you implying that our child did not die naturally? How dare you."
"Ma'am," said the stewardess with the patience of a monk, "you have to understand, some of these infant deaths are found to be caused by accidental suffocation, hyperthermia or hypothermia, neglect or some other defined cause...child abuse."
"Child abuse?!" Screamed the mother, appalled at the implications the stewardess was making.
"Ma'am, please calm down. I'm simply trying to verify that the child died naturally. I'm not accusing you or your husband of anything. It's just that the book and the Provost specifically say that if the child doesn't die naturally it doesn't count. The Whales, praise be upon them, will not accept this. If your first child was a live birth that later on died of natural causes as you say, no matter how soon after the birth, this would make your son legitimately your second child, and in this case eligible for the atonement process."
David's mother said nothing and Mandy did not understand what was going on. Many of the words that the adults were using were ones that she had never heard before. What made it all the more confusing was all the talk of whales. Mandy knew what whales were and couldn't comprehend how they could possibly be relevant to the current situation.
At that moment, a small child not much older than Mandy ran down the aisle of the plane, towards the back of the cabin where the two male stewards stood, guarding the open hatch.
"Mommy! Daddy!" the young boy screamed. "I'm going to the Whales! I'm good and they will like me!"
"No!" shouted a woman from somewhere inside the plane. "It's your brother's day! Honey come back here!"
It was too late. The boy rushed passed the male stewards and threw himself down into the open hatch, the air sucking him through and below. Mandy leaned over her parents to look through the window below as the plane continued to circle above the ocean. There was no trace of the young child, the deep blue sea had swallowed him up, and he was gone forever. Mandy was paralyzed with terror made all the more horrifying by her utter confusion.
"My baby!" screamed the woman, her words garbled by tears. "He was my first born! They won't take him! His was a suicide! Murder!"
"Can we please continue?" A man's voice shouted impatiently. "I paid good money to be a part of this and I have no idea if we will be able to afford to be here again in ten years. For goodness sake people!"
"Probably won't even still be a practice or tradition in ten years," muttered David and Mandy's father.
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
The passengers had begun to chant again.
"See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya," David looked down at his sister and stuck his tongue out. He was standing in the aisle now, next to the stewardess.
"I suppose you're next then," the stewardess said. The sooner she had this unruly family taken care of the sooner she could move on with the others and then she began to think about what hotel she would have dinner at later that evening when this ordeal was over.
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
The chanting mixed with the roar of the wind coming through the open belly of the back of the Leer jet. David took the stewardess' hand and proceeded to the back of the plane. The air was already trying to suck him in but the stewardess held on tight to his hand as he stood at the edge of the open hatch.
"Definitely should've went to the beach," David said, grinning at Mandy, and those were his last words. The stewardess let go of David's hand and he tumbled forward down into the opening of the hatch. Mandy screamed as her parents joined in with the chant of the other passengers.
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
"De sanguine in expiationem Ceti!"
"Wash us in his blood so we may be clean again!" A woman's voice.
"Forgive us our trespasses, oh great ones!" sobbed a man's voice. "So that we might forgive ourselves for trespassing against thee."
Mandy climbed over her parents, who didn't seem to notice her, as she clawed her way over to the window and pressed her face against the glass. Her brother was a black speck amongst the dark indigo waters of the freezing ocean below. Before Mandy saw it emerge from the darkness of the water she believed that she saw her brother wave to her.
At first she was not sure what she was seeing. It first appeared as a large ring in the water, like the ripple effect that occurs when you throw a pebble into a lake. Then the ring expanded and began to churn like a huge whirlpool. The next thing she saw were the teeth, hundreds of them, each one as long and thick as an elephant's tusk and the same ivory color.
The teeth were attached to shiny blue flesh, what had to be lips. The distance from the upper row of teeth to the lower row had to be as long as the plane and as wide as her school gymnasium. Water sprayed everywhere, rushing over and down the blue flesh and shining white teeth. As soon as the upper row and lower row of teeth interlocked and closed, the mouth sank back under the dark water and all that was left was a colossal ripple in the ocean, the size of a football field. Mandy's brother was gone. David was gone and soon the ripple in the water was gone as well. The chanting stopped and the hatch was closed back up. Mandy heard someone clapping and soon everyone was clapping, including her parents, although her father appeared to be only pretending, and half heartedly at that.

---fin--