A work of flash fiction in which a last meal, preceded by a hallowed cocktail, conjures reflections on the almighty’s persistent lure…
by: Rachel Isaacs Allen
My sister wants to have lunch. She always does when someone dies. She says, it’s what they would want. It’s what God would want. She’s very in tune with God. What he needs. What he demands. Whom he loves.
The only difference is, this time, the person dying is me.
My sister and God are roomies. She says he lives in her heart. I wonder how much rent she charges to live in that frigid apartment. God knows she won’t turn the heat on. I’m curious, how many chambers does she let him occupy? Is it a one bedroom or did she knock down a wall, so it’s more of a trendy loft setup?
She lugs around his blood red words in her big pink purse. The one she insists is a fake but I know is real. Sometimes, she types His words into Instagram. With a digital deity, she influences her thirty-three thousand disciples. Following her every move. Liking every photo. They comment: “How cute!” “Love it!” “So fun!” I must confess, this morning, I searched her profile. Just to check on her. I don’t follow her anymore. That cybersin was my fall from grace.
At first, I thought it was just an app we downloaded for fun. To scroll through pictures of over exposed rainbows and sunsets and smiles. To digitize our family photos. Until, they added that feature. The one where you can crop people out. Not just out of the images. But of your memories too. That was the end of loving each other in real living color. No filters.
There’s three of us sisters in my family. I’m the oldest. My name means Lamb of God. So I thought it was my birthright to be the black sheep, the one who drank and dreamt out loud and snuck out the guest bedroom window ripping my jeans for easier entry. You see, we don’t have any brothers, except the boy who never lived. He was a deity too, to my mother anyway.
I told my sister I was busy. But, saints are stubborn. She spammed me with invites until I caved. The restaurant she chose is pretty nice. We have a reservation for a Wednesday at 3:15. The reviews rave about the sangria. One woman described it “like taking communion straight from God’s mouth.” A confusing metaphor. I asked Google, “Did Jesus–” I paused, wrought with second thoughts, until the app autofilled, eat himself at the Last Supper?” And for once, the internet made me feel less alone.
I arrived an hour early to sit at the bar and plan what I will say at my funeral. The bartender poured me a glass of sangria.
“Can I have a straw?” I asked. I didn’t want my lips and teeth stained purple.
The bartender was prepping for dinner service, dicing fruit and slicing limes. The air smelled too sweet, like roses.
“Do you think you could serve my head on a platter?” I asked.
He lowered his eyes. He didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to explain about the followers. That it wouldn’t be just for us, here, today, but immortalized on the Gram. He kept chopping his way through a pineapple. Tossing yellow chunks into plastic containers. I thought, maybe he doesn’t speak English. Then I realized that’s racist. Great. Now I’m dead and a racist too.
I remembered that night, twenty summers ago. Dole Whip piled high above our wide eyes. Brains frozen. Fingers grazing the stars. Riding Thunder Mountain seven times straight until all that pineapple burst back out of us. My hands holding her hair away from her face. Fireworks crying technicolor tears down the sky.
I swirled the glass. Mumbled my last rites, praying this sacrament might taste as sweet as absolution.
Rachel Allen is a Punjabi-Irish writer and educator from Southern California. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn and is an MFA candidate at St. Joseph’s University’s Writer’s Foundry. A 2025 Barbara Germack Fellow, Rachel is an editor of The Foundry Review. She is a founding member of TBR: An Emerging Writer Reading Series, an MFA adjacent reading series for emerging and independent authors. Her writing tackles regional identity and performance, and explores the relationship between Celtic and Hindu Mythology. Find Rachel’s creative nonfiction essays, travel diary, and Newsletter at champagnewishesandcurrydreams.
