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At the God Show

by Shaenon K. Garrity

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6:15 A.M.

“It’ll be Pternoch the Fisher,” Sheila overheard one pilgrim say to another. “Why did we bother coming?”

“May the Green Damsel stitch your mouth shut until your blasphemies cease,” said the other. “We come to honor Her and reveal Her glory.” There was a silence as the two filled out their name tags, then, “Where’d you hear that from?”

“Everyone’s saying it. It always goes to the Sanguine group, and this year Pternoch is the Sanguine with the buzz.”

“It wasn’t a Sanguine last year. It was an Amoratus.”

“And look how that turned out. The judges will play it safe. It’s all politics.”

His companion snorted—whether in disbelief or reluctant agreement, Sheila couldn’t tell.

“I’m telling you. The fix is in.”

Sheila handed the pilgrims welcome bags and pointed out the tent where they could set their ark. Sacrificial group, big surprise, they were always the complainers. After the effort she and her staff—all volunteer, she might add—put in to make this the high point of every village’s liturgical year.

Not that the gossip was entirely off the mark. Every year certain teams pushed the limits around campaigning. Deals were swapped, hexes carved. But calling it politics offended her. Politics and religion were different things. Or ought to be.

A topless woman with a sheaf of rye over her head loomed into Sheila’s personal space. “Your people have placed us next to the Eyes of Avayuvtakh.”

“Is that a problem?”

“A problem?” The woman drew herself up to full height, which, with the sheaf, came to a good eight feet. “We are the Vvivyeks. We find the Eyes of Avayuvtakh heretical to an intolerable degree.”

“Ah.” Here, at least, Sheila was on firm ground. “Is this your cult’s first show?”

“It is the first time the Blind Child has strewn entrails revealing that this be Vviv’s will.”

“If you don’t want it to be your last show, read the rules. Bald Hollow is neutral ground.”

“But the heresy of the Eyes—”

“We don’t do heresy here. If your team can’t get along, there are other places you can reveal your god.”

The woman huffed away, sheaf bobbing. She’d stay. Other places, yes, but around these parts there was only one show.

 

6:45 A.M.

Pilgrims from the Hawthorn Shaming and the Secret Carnival bickered over who had booked the river trail for morning processional worship. Blood was drawn—in anger by a Carnival harlequin, for sacrificial purposes by a Hawthorn.

Both groups served old gods that had been entered in the show since the days of stone counters. They should have known better. Sheila listened to their grievances, revised the schedule, assigned a nondenominational cunning woman to burn sage, and scooted off for coffee.

A line had already formed at the coffee truck. Ahead of Sheila, a man in slapdash woad griped about the tradition—established after more bloodshed than those bickering Hawthorns and harlequins could imagine—of holding the show in autumn. “It gives the death and harvest gods an unfair advantage,” he said, loudly enough that everyone in line was sure to hear. “They’re looking their best at this time of year. Plus, it’s gloomy. You know when they do the English show? Spring equinox.”

Sheila bit her tongue. She didn’t have time to rehash this old argument. She had to get to Devils Tower.

 

7:30 A.M.

Sheila paced the pentagonal room at the top of the tower. Lord Arkady and the radio crew were late. She didn’t expect flawless professionalism from the crew—volunteers again, what could you do?—but Lord Arkady was beyond reliable. He was one of the pillars of the show, as much a part of the celebrations as the Feast of Hearts.

Sheila glanced out the window. The red-and-gold glory of the treetops calmed her for a moment. The nerve of that man in the coffee line, calling this gloomy! Bald Hollow was hidden deep in the Hudson Valley. People drove from all over the country to see this foliage, and Canada, even. People who didn’t worship any kind of earth god had a better appreciation of nature than a man who, if she’d read the runes tattooed on his back correctly, claimed to run with the Wild Hunt.

Some people, you just couldn’t please. But that man, and the complainers at the sign-in table, worried her. They were too dismissive, too disrespectful…

The radio crew bustled in. Lord Arkady drifted behind, carrying the weight of authority lightly as ever. He wore a tailored suit, and he wore it well.

“Apologies for the delay,” he said. “Time folded on us.”

It wasn’t an unheard-of issue around showtime, but it was a serious one. “Which path did you take?”

“Westward, through the elder gates.”

“That darn-blamed Cosmic group.” To the volunteers, Sheila added, “The ley lines there connect to a meteoric standing stone. We get time distortions when it’s charged up, which means someone was trying to use it to send a signal into space, against regulations and within a forbidden circle. I could just kill them.”

She pulled herself together. “I’ll take care of it. Right now, we have to set up for broadcast.”

Lord Arkady inclined his regal head. “I have utmost trust in you.”

“Ditto.” Sheila turned back to the crew. “Well? Get the Lord micced up.”

One volunteer handed Lord Arkady a bottle of water. Another set up a laptop displaying a feed of the show circle. Lord Arkady’s commentary would be broadcast over a local radio band, another feature of the show that seemed eternal. It wasn’t, of course. In the days before radio there had been criers, and before that smoke, and before that birds. Lord Arkady had always been part of it, though. He was older than he looked.

Lord Arkady launched into his broadcast, his lavender-honey voice smoothing over all difficulties. He welcomed pilgrims new and old, thanked the organizers, and worked in a gentle pitch for donations. He spoke warmly of the entrants and their worshippers, the strength of their bonds. As usual, he indulged in a few fond anecdotes about his own deity, Maghghamhainn, without coming off as evangelizing.

“In these days of megachurches and celebrity cults,” he said, “faith can feel impersonal. Some even question if religion has meaning anymore. But not here. Here, we raise our gods from mud and bone and serve them in the time-tested ways. Here, we know what we give and what we gain. Wherever honest people gather around a beehive, a burial mound, a seaside altar, wherever life is traded for something greater than life, that old-time religion will be good enough for me.”

Sheila left Devils Tower with one weight off her mind. Whatever else might go wrong, Lord Arkady’s voice wouldn’t waver.

 

7:40 A.M.

Sheila heard the shouting before she reached the standing stone. Pilgrims from five or six different teams, judging by the mix of costumes, stood arguing.

“What is this?” Sheila called. Half the pilgrims—the half that recognized her—turned to plead their cases. The other half went on shouting at each other.

“A blatant violation of the bylaws!” A lanky man in a T-shirt reading MAO GAMES SEMIFINALS waved a phone in Sheila’s face. Good gravy, he’d downloaded the regulations. “Prayers may be directed to the team’s entrant only, within sanctioned areas only, and may not include the White or Green Ceremonies or exceed a magnitude of thirty-six—”

“It wasn’t us!” a furtive youth ululated. “This is persecution both noisome and foetid!”

“Who did that, then?” The man in the T-shirt pointed to a car battery and a tangle of copper wires at the foot of the stone. “Somebody with a so-called deity in space, that’s who.”

“Persecution!”

Dealing with the Cosmic group was awkward. They’d been part of the show since the founding, but they weren’t gods, exactly. They were, at least by registered pedigree, extraterrestrials, elder beings to whom the Earth was a marble to be flicked to and fro and at last chucked into the darkness in a great cosmic game of five-holes. Yes, it was impressive, but was it divine?

The arguments went back and forth every year. They’re not purebred gods, said pilgrims from the other groups. They’re more powerful than half the “true” gods in the competition, said pilgrims from the Cosmics, usually insulting someone’s twiggy dryad or barely-ascended priest-king. That still doesn’t make them gods, said the other pilgrims. Are you sure? said the Cosmic pilgrims. For all we know, all gods are Great Old Ones and what you call divinity is just another frequency of the color out of space. At which point everyone usually got offended and the staff had to run around soothing egos and nullifying jinxes.

(What no one ever brought up, though everyone knew it, was that the Order of Ngartlep out of Cape Cod was one of the oldest teams and one of the biggest donors, and Ngartlep was a Cosmic entity.)

This was just the usual eruption of bad feelings. So why did it feel dangerous?

“Everyone take a breath.” Sheila shot a meaningful glance at the man in the T-shirt, who was reaching for a conjure bag at his belt. “If there’s been a rules violation, we’ll track down whoever’s responsible—”

“The staff’s biased!” shouted the Cosmic kid. “You—” –he jabbed a finger into Sheila’s face— “—probably serve one of these squalid and squamous earthly idols!”

A gasp rippled through the group. The Cosmic kid shuffled his feet defensively. “Yeah, I said it,” he muttered, avoiding anyone’s gaze. “Squamous. Go ahead and be offended.”

“It’s not that,” said a woman with red threads woven into her locs. “It’s not about being offended.”

“I’m pretty offended,” said a man in the back.

“The staff serves no gods,” said the woman. “By compact, they’re unbelievers.”

“Agnostics, technically,” the man in the T-shirt said under his breath.

“It’s the only way the show can work.”

“Anyway, that’s Sheila,” added a man Sheila recognized as the clayworker from Crawford’s Farm. “If anyone’s impartial, it’s her.”

“Sheila doesn’t believe in a darned thing!” someone agreed.

The tension broke. Some of the other Cosmic pilgrims made the kid apologize. Sheila made a show of checking the wires, though she didn’t expect to learn anything. She’d go to a scryer for that—probably Terry, they always brought their gear along. She asked for the time, even though she had her phone, which had the intended effect of reminding all the pilgrims that they had places to be. Crisis averted.

But it felt like the trouble had just begun.

 

8:25 A.M.

By the time Sheila did her pre-show rounds, the group preliminaries were almost finished. In the Psychopomp tent, the judges were clustered around a few final arks, double-checking the entities inside for divinity, health, and group standard conformation. Catrina, an anthropology professor from Marist known for her by-the-book standards and eye for an aura, gave Sheila a quick thumbs-up.

A row over, a group of cloaked pilgrims was packing up its ark and casting apologetic glances toward a volunteer nursing a withered hand. Cursing a judge meant instant disqualification. It wasn’t just about the judges’ safety, Sheila always said, but the entrants’ well-being. A wrathful god was a stressed, unhappy god.

Over in the Sanguine tent, the preliminaries were all over but the screaming, as the saying went—accurately enough, as a few groups were already busy with ceremonies of either celebration or penitence. It was hard to tell the difference with blood gods. Sheila noted ribbons on a stone ark carved with jaguar heads, a black wooden box, and a clockwork contraption with stilettos jutting from the lid. No big surprises, then. Pternoch the Fisher had won best in group.

Sheila turned to leave, only to find a shape blocking her way. It stepped into shadow and became an indeterminate clean-cut man. He smiled, showing perfect teeth.

“My group would like to apply to the show. Not this year,” he added quickly. “We know it’s too late. I’m here to make connections.”

Sheila took in his smooth cheeks, his ironed jeans. She was pretty sure she had him pegged. “I see. Mr.—?”

“Josh.”

“We don’t allow unsolicited applications. Or uninvited guests. Anyway, Mr. Josh—”

“Just Josh.”

“Mr. Josh, am I guessing you represent a major church?”

“Currently, we have only a few branches—”

“But you’re a splinter sect of a larger group? You worship one of the…big players?”

Those teeth again. “Oh. Oh yes, ma’am.”

“Then you don’t qualify. I’m sure your god is too important to compete in pageants with little village deities, anyway.” Flattery often did the trick with these types.

“Our Lord, yes. But we’re looking for growth opportunities. Thinking outside the ark.”

If it was a joke, neither of them laughed. “Mr. Josh, I have to be fast. One, this is a divine trial, not an evangelizing opportunity. Two, none of the major world deities meet group standards. They’re too syncretized.”

“Eh?”

“They’re mashed together from dozens of belief systems. That’s how the big gods get big. They’re mongrels. This is a purebred show. And three, the nature of the show being what it is, we can’t permit entrants that have trouble getting along with others. Aggressive monotheistic entities are impossible to handle in the ring, and we all know your god is a jealous god.”

The man stared for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, no. Do you think I’m a Christian? No wonder you’ve been so hostile.”

A business card appeared in his hand. Sheila took it. Embossed letters read

 

Executive Empowerment Seminars

human optimization & excellence training

“THE TRIANGLE SYSTEM”

 

Sheila looked up. “I don’t get it.”

“We’re not a church. We’re a corporation.”

“And you’re here because…?”

“Well, we’re also a cult. One of the fastest growing in the country by recruitment rate. You’d be amazed what people will do in exchange for business success and, as significant side benefits, a positive personal mindset and weight loss guaranteed within three months after taking the brand.”

Sheila shoved past him. The man followed her out of the tent.

“I’m offering you a chance to synergize—”

“I don’t have time for this. If you’re a cult, what do you worship?”

“Profit. In all its forms.”

“That’s not a god.”

“How many of your entrants are imagos of Mammon or Midas? How many golden calves in these tents?”

“Money and religion are different things. Or ought to be. Who told you about us, Mr. Josh?”

“It’s hard to keep secrets these days, Sheila.”

“I didn’t tell you my name.”

“No, I don’t think you did.” Mr. Josh focused the full force of his grin on her, as if waiting for a response. When he got none, he loped away.

Catrina sidled up. “We’ve been getting complaints about that guy all morning. Did you tell him his team can get its invitation rescinded for aggressive evangelizing?”

“He wasn’t invited. Call Security on him.”

“You sure? Most of the redsmocks are stationed around the circle for when the Goat comes out.”

“The Goat already?” Sheila checked her phone. “Sugar, it’s almost nine. I have to get down there.”

Crashing through the hazel path that was the quickest way to the circle, Sheila fumed at Mr. Josh for wasting her time. That was all it was, a waste of time. The show would never bow to big money, big religion, or any unholy combination of the two.

Still, Mr. Josh bothered her. Not his words, so much, as the fact that he was there at all.

 

9:45 A.M.

Sheila’s hurry was for nothing. The opening ceremonies started late—a combination, according to the texts agitating her phone, of an unusual number of minor scuffles and the big problem everyone had known to expect, the problem of the Goat.

By tradition, every show opened with a demonstration by the previous year’s winner. But last year’s Best in Show had gone to the Triple-Horned Goat of Pickrock Ridge, a rowdy fertility god whose poor ring discipline had been made up for, in the Amoratus Group judges’ eyes, by his shaggy haunches, priapic display, and orgone aura. That darn aura. The Goat had been so excited to have the blue ribbon pinned to His beard that He had released wave upon wave of erotic radiation, sparking one of the largest, messiest sacred orgies in show history.

In the aftermath, the trouble wasn’t with the human participants, except for a few teams that complained about having to find new virgins. The trouble was that the Goat’s aura had inspired even the gods. For months afterward, litters of mixed-breed deities kept turning up in woods and marshes and small farming towns, hopelessly syncretized and useless from a competition standpoint.

Sheila and the other volunteers tried to adopt them out to local communities. A syncretized deity was just as good as a purebred, she insisted, if you weren’t planning to show it. You could still curse foes or fertilize crops together. But finding believers for unwanted gods was an uphill battle these days.

As the delay stretched to the better part of an hour, the tension in the crowd could be felt like the evil eye. Sheila stood in the shade of the barbecue stand, scanning the bleachers, telling her stomach that if it settled she’d reward it with one of Amrish’s venison skewers.

When at last the Goat’s team, naked save for animal masks, filed in to the circle, the murmur that arose was a mixture of relief and heightened anxiety. Sheila braced herself as the worshippers assumed formalized if rude positions. She didn’t have time for an orgy.

To her relief, the Goat manifested only long enough to strut once around the circle, displaying the anatomical features that had won him the blue ribbon. He let out a triumphant bleat as his team kissed his feet and other available parts, then vanished in a rain of rose petals, which was actually nice.

Sheila didn’t realize how tense she’d been until she saw the blood in her palms from where her nails—manicured for the show but already chipped—had dug in. Quickly, she wiped her hands in the dust of the show circle.

The show began.

 

10:30 A.M.

The Junior division went first. Watching the under-eighteen pilgrims worship their hand-raised godlings always put the crowd in a good mood. Sheila smiled as a group of Appalachian teens animated a scarecrow and a boy in a Sunday suit offered berries and flowers to something snarling in a pet carrier.

The first adult category to show was the Apotheosis Group, an unpredictable bunch. Any mortal elevated to divinity qualified as an Apotheosis, which meant everything from sacred trees—seldom entered because they were fussy to transport—and animals to, more and more often, cult leaders raised to godhood. That last category had become trendy, and Sheila fretted that it would lead to careless, rushed ascensions. Popularity had nearly ruined corn gods, back in the day.

The team that had won Best in Group entered carrying an herb-bedecked litter. On it sat an ascended man who seemed to consist entirely of wild eyes and wilder hair. Sheila thought He hardly looked worth worshipping. But every god deserves a believer, the show’s welcome pamphlet reminded pilgrims. Sheila had written that herself. Terry had laughed and reminded her that she didn’t have a god.

“The rest of you can do the worshipping,” Sheila had said. “I have the show.”

The winner vomited snakes, eliciting coos of admiration from His team. Sheila applauded politely. Apotheoses weren’t her thing.

Next came the Potnian Group, the nature gods, a reliable crowd-pleaser. Sheila wished she could stay to get a good look of the Group winner, which seemed to be a carpet of fungus covering Its pilgrims, but there wasn’t time. As long as there weren’t any fires to put out, she needed to talk to Terry.

 

11:55 A.M.

“Sorry,” said Terry. “I’m not reading anything. Spritzer?”

“Wine’ll slow me down.”

“More for me, then. I’ve got canned coffee if that’ll do you.”

“Coffee, I can use.”

Sheila leaned across the folding table in Terry’s Airstream and squinted at the cards. Terry read ordinary playing cards, tossed around in a pattern known only to themself. But it worked. Usually.

Terry plunked down a can of wine, a can of coffee, and a dead pigeon. “Lets see if we can’t focus our third eye a titch.” A swift snap, and the pigeon’s head was gone. Terry’s practiced fingers traced blood around the cards.

“Well? Do you see the standing stone now?”

“I see the stone. I see the electric charge. But I don’t see the stone’s power going anywhere. Just up and out. If someone was trying to summon something, it was a damned sloppy effort.”

“Who did it? That’s what I really want to know.”

Terry cracked the can of wine. “Reply hazy. Ask again later.”

Sheila tried the coffee. It wasn’t good, but she wasn’t picky. “A guy called Josh snuck onto the show grounds. Here’s his card. Anything?”

Terry fingered the embossed text, leaving bloody streaks. “Yeah, that’s a cult with a lot of dark energy. Got that void-of-insatiable-hunger vibe.”

“How’d he find his way here?”

Terry sniffed the card. “Don’t know. Might not be supernormal. I wouldn’t pick up vibes if he just followed a rumor or pulled info off, what do you call it, the dark web. The ancient mysteries ain’t as mysterious as they used to be.”

“Don’t I know it.” Sheila took another gulp of coffee. “I have to admit, I was hoping for more.”

“It’s more art than science, my dear. What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Something’s off. Everything’s off.”

Terry grabbed a wet wipe. “Maybe it’s not about what’s there. Maybe…”

Sheila’s phone buzzed. Seconds later, she heard the screams.

 

High Noon

Screams during the Sacrificial Group display were nothing to worry about. But these weren’t the healthy screams of a god being ceremonially murdered. They were…

…the screams, it turned out, of people on fire. Non-sacred fire.

The barbecue stand was ablaze. Fire spread across the bleachers. Sheila fought her way through the crowd, trying to reach the show circle, only later realizing how dangerous that was. A man in a jaguar skin slammed into her, stared wildly, and stumbled off. A Vvivyek ran past with her sheaf of rye trailing fire. The Apotheosis Group winner wailed for His litter-carriers. Pilgrims scattered every which way.

That was wrong.

In all her years at the show, Sheila had never seen anything so wrong.

The pilgrims should be running as one toward the arks. They should be running to their gods.

How could they forget what they loved?

 

12:30 P.M.

By the time Sheila reached the show circle, rage had burned away fear. “Get out here!” she screamed at nothing. “I know you did this! Own up to it!”

Catrina ran up. “There was an accident—someone on the Sacrificial team fooling around with their sagebrush torch—”

“Fooling around?” Sheila spun on her. “What kind of pilgrim fools around with ceremonial fire?”

“You know how people are—”

Sheila grabbed Catrina by the wrist. “I know these people. I know when something’s wrong with them.”

“You’re hurting me!”

“I bet I am. Blood on my palms, shed for one greater. You’re not Catrina, are you?”

“You’re not making sense—”

“I called you and you came. You must want to brag. Well? Show me who you are!”

Catrina’s face twisted into a smile. A haze passed over Sheila’s vision, and she was holding Terry’s wrist.

“Couldn’t see a thing, could I?” Terry smirked. “Did you really believe that?”

“You’re not Terry either.”

The Terry-thing tried to yank itself free, but Sheila held on. The air turned yellow with smoke. She coughed. When she opened her eyes, Lord Arkady faced her.

“Surprised?” he said.

“Not buying it. Who are you, really?” It was getting hard to breathe, hard to see, but Sheila tightened her grip. Lord Arkady snarled and clawed at her wrists. She held on.

And there she was, a blushing green girl, fresh and sweet in autumn.

“The Childe Greening,” said Sheila.

“How do you know my name?”

“I know it and I bind You with it.” Sheila turned away from the girl long enough to shout at two redsmocks racing by with fire buckets. “Get everybody whose gods can summon rain or suppress oxygen and tell them to get praying!”

The girl struggled again, but weakly. Sheila had bound her with blood and spoken her truename. The show had taught her many things, but above all it had taught her how to handle gods.

“I never forget a winner,” she told the girl. “You took Best in Potnian Group back when I was an assistant redsmock. Which was a long time ago, but not that long.”

“I’ll curse you!”

“No, because first, I don’t think You can, and second, You’re the god of an apple orchard in Elmira. I remember Your team demonstrating very nasty things they did to ensure a good harvest, but personally I could just not eat apples.”

Thunder cracked the sky. The smoke in the air swirled around them.

“You underestimate Me,” hissed the girl. “Apples embody so much. Knowledge, for starters.”

“And that’s what You’ve been spreading, huh?” All of a sudden it was clear. It was written on the god’s face, small and fierce and resentful.

“I showed a novice torch-bearer that impressing a girl with fire tricks was better than honoring his weakling god. I sent directions to a greedy cult, knowing they’d make a nuisance of themselves. I shocked the standing stone to expose the violence these pilgrims can barely conceal. And I spread word of this show’s corruption.”

“You won!”

“I won Best in Group!” Lightning flashed, as it tended to do at dramatic moments for gods. “Tigon the Skinless won Best in Show, and all He does is eat teenagers up in the pine barrens!”

“The Sanguine judges thought he had good ring presence,” Sheila murmured.

Thunder rumbled again. Rain fell, thick and hot, like the sweat of a long day.

“It wasn’t enough. My people lost faith. Some even went off to worship Tigon.”

“That wasn’t the show’s fault. We always say, a god is for eternity, not just for a solstice.” Sheila had written that one too. “Wait, are You saying You have no worshippers?”

“Exactly!” The god’s eyes flashed gold. “I’m nearly powerless. I had to do all this Myself! With My own incarnate form! Like…like a mortal! But it was worth it to kill your show!”

That was why Terry hadn’t been able to sense anything. The meddling might have been done by a god, but it was mundane. Sheila had the sudden odd image of an apple dryad contacting business seminars and hooking wires to a car battery, but she didn’t have time to linger on the notion.

Dragging the Childe behind her, Sheila marched for the tents. Around them, figures sloshed through the rain, tamping down fires and attending the injured. Soon Sheila would have to make herself seen, but not yet.

“And I killed it!” the god cried. “Look around you! A few hard truths, and Bald Hollow is in ruins!”

“You won Best in Group!”

“An insult!”

Sheila could barely get the words out. Her heart was too tight. “It’s an honor. Just. To. Be. Nominated.”

She dragged the struggling god to the mess tent, where, unless the show truly was dead, the Feast of Hearts was being prepared.

A volunteer met her at the entrance. “Who’s in the Feast tonight?” Sheila asked.

“We don’t even know if there’s going to be—”

Amrish appeared behind the newbie. “It’s okay, Jackie. This is Sheila.”

“Hi, Amrish. Who’s on the block?”

Amrish turned to survey the cooking, cleaving, shouting, and slicing behind him. “Six volunteers from Sanguine teams. A couple of failed candidates for the Förhöja Mysteries. A cop who got too close to Oakes Isle. Oh, and an evangelist Security picked up this afternoon.” A spray of blood spattered against the side of the tent. They weren’t kidding when they called it a mess hall.

“Make sure there’s a Feast tonight.”

Amrish shrugged. “What’s going to stop us?”

From behind Sheila came the sound of bleachers collapsing and a chorus of screams. “Thanks. At least someone understands.”

The Childe Greening bit Sheila’s arm. She ignored Her. “Think you can fit one more on the spit?”

“Of course.”

“Set the heart aside for me. For later.”

Sheila walked away before the Childe started to scream. She didn’t want to hear it. It was always hard when an entrant had to be permanently disqualified. And she had a soft spot for the Potnian Group.

Besides, there was work to do. It might happen after the longest delay in a hundred years, but the show must go on.

She put the fires out. She ordered the rain dances replaced by clear-sky asanas. She reunited every entrant with its pilgrims. She got the finalists back in the show circle, their teams ankle-deep in mud, and she drew an audience around them.

Pternoch the Fisher won Best in Show.

 

Midnight.

After the celebrations had ended, after the pilgrims had departed with their arks, after the last soma worshipper had been escorted to the cool-down tent for orange slices, Sheila knelt in the center of the show circle.

In a few hours, as soon as there was light, she’d catalog the damage. The morning cleanup crew would need marching orders. She’d have to salvage waterlogged paperwork, and compose emails, and schedule purification rites, and correct misspellings on a couple of ribbons. Some of those runes were tricky.

And there was the larger crisis of faith, the doubt the Childe Greening had sown. Or maybe she had nurtured a doubt that was already there…

But this came first.

Sheila grilled the god’s heart over coals. It was entwined with leaves and, burning, smelled of applewood. When it was ready, she prostrated herself, belly in the mud, hands to the smoke in the sky.

“This is for you,” she whispered. “I do it all for you.”

Pilgrims showed their gods, and that was as it should be. But Sheila had the show.

She ate the heart, savoring its tartness, and began to plan for next year.

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Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 970

April 4th 2025

At the God Show by Shaenon K. Garrity

Narrated by Scott Campbell

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart with audio by Chelsea Davis

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Hi folks, welcome to PseudoPod, the weekly horror podcast. I’m Alasdair, your host and this week’s story is by Shaenon K. Garrity and is a PseudoPod original. Shaenon K. Garrity is a cartoonist and writer best known for Narbonic, Skin Horse (cowritten with Jeffrey C. Wells), and the Willowweep Manor graphic novels (with art by Christopher Baldwin). She lives in Berkeley with a cat, a man, a boy, and two chickens.

Your narrator this week is our own Scott Campbell. Scott Campbell searches for challenges that will increase his skills for the battles to come. The slush pile underneath PseudoPod Towers is a worthy opponent. Scott started as an associate editor at PseudoPod in 2016, he become Web Wrangler in 2021, and ascended to Assistant Editor in 2022. He is an invaluable resource for not only his assistance with reviewing stories but also helping to build all the blog posts and ensuring our website and bios are up to date.

He also writes, directs, and performs for the queer (in every sense of the word) cabaret The Mickee Faust Club. He also write far too infrequently at the official online home of the Sleep Deprivation Institute (and pop culture website) Needcoffee.com. He lives in Florida with absolutely no pets.

 

So get ready for the battle to discover who is truly best in show. And ain’t that the truth.

---

‘Persecution both noisome and foetid’

That’s how you complain! It’s right up there with ‘Devour feculence’ from the most recent season of Severance. It slso becomes, s we get to the end of the story, part of an act of devotion to the one business that no other business is like. Show business.

Everything in this story is a devotional act, even the story itself and walking through what I see here is like walking through the centre of a slowed down explosion of joy, horror and techies who’ve Seen. Some. Shit.

The base level of devotion is the gods themselves, and the fact they’re being put forward for competition. That’s not just devotion that’s faith and fanaticism. The unshakeable belief that your God wins, and you’re more than happy to test it. That’s horrifying by itself. It becomes horrifying, and poignant, when you realise almost all of them will lose and how that will feel.

Then there’s the show itself and what it represents. Showbusiness is one of those terms that covers, how appropriate, a multitude of sins. You’re participating in the business of show now. So are we. I’ve worked as a techie, a stage magician, a security guy, a leafleteer. All of them show business, none of them glamorous.

All of them FUN.

Or at least fun enough.

That’s how it gets you. That’s the act of devotion that the god shaped like a stage asks of you. Just have a little fun, it’s even better if that fun is effort too. A little hit of dopamine, a little catharsis, as a treat and the whole time you her just enough applause, ‘Maybe this time’ getting a little louder every time. The devotion is both the hit and the side effect, the benediction and the damnation. We keep going because it feels good, and then we keep going because it will feel good and then we keep going because it doesn’t feel good but stopping feels worse. Faith not as a comfort but an obligation. We’ve always lived in the castle. Mass should always be in Latin.

And then there’s the final act of devotion, the one we’re all carrying out. The storygod manifests once again and we devote ourselves to it for 45 minutes. What is a podcast but a ritual? What is a story but a prayer? What is art but faith persisting?

That’s where the horror and the hope lie in this story for me. Because there will always be another show. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. Brilliantly done, thanks to all.

Onto the subject of subscribing and support: PseudoPod is funded by you, our listeners, and we’re formally a non-profit. One-time donations are gratefully received and much appreciated, but what really makes a difference is subscribing. A $5 monthly Patreon donation gives us more than just money; it gives us stability, reliability, dependability and a well-maintained tower from which to operate, and trust us, you want that as much as we do.

If you can, please go to pseudopod.org and sign up by clicking on “feed the pod”. If you have any questions about how to support EA and ways to give, please reach out to us at donations@escapeartists.net.

If you can’t afford to support us financially, then please consider leaving reviews of our episodes, or generally talking about them on whichever form of social media you… can’t stay away from this week. We now have a Bluesky account, and we’d love to see you there: find us at @pseudopod.org. If you like merch, you can also support us by buying hoodies, t-shirts and other bits and pieces from the Escape Artists Voidmerch store. The link is in various places, including our pinned tweet.

 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license. Download and listen to the episode on any device you like, but don’t change it or sell it. Theme music is by permission of Anders Manga.

 

As is sometimes the way, the calendar is in a bit of flux at the moment. Right now our story next week is Tree of the Forest Seven Bells Turns the World Round Midnight by Sheree Renée Thomas and narrated by our own Premee Mohamed. Chelsea’s back behind the desk, I’m back in front of it and we’ll see you then. And we leave you with this quote from Showbusiness by Hilltop Hoods.

What and quit show business?
What kind of low is this?