“I’ll tell you how I survived,” the old man said. We sat in an empty coffee shop at a table set up next to a floor to ceiling window. The window looked out onto a busy main street full of people walking back and forth. I kicked my feet against the legs of the chair, staring down at a mug of hot chocolate. The old man turned a half-empty red mug around in circles on the table. “It’s quite funny, actually.”

The people outside, in their hooded winter coats and scarves, were braced against the cold, fighting the wind. I squinted at them. There was something strange about them. Something that pulled at my attention like the shrill beep of an alarm clock in another room, but I couldn’t-

“Stop kicking your chair,” the old man said. “Please. How old are you anyway, girl?”

My eyes looked over at the dim reflection of the cafe in the window. Hair shaved down to the scalp, I wore a beige cotton tunic so thin I could feel the cold coming off the window, with matching pants and sandals. “Twelve,” I said.

I looked with envy at the warm black wool pea coat the man across from me wore as well as the black scarf and gloves on the table beside him. His hair was bright white, cut short, and flowed down into a thin, neatly barbered, mustache and beard. His skin was the wrinkled brown of a long life spent under the sun. “And why do you keep looking out the window? Do you want to hear this story or not, Jaquelyn?”

I stopped swinging my feet. Not because I wanted to hear whatever story the old man wanted to tell me, but because of a thought that crept into my head as quiet and ugly as a cockroach’s shadow: I had no idea who this man was.

I looked out of the window, my gaze falling from the city skyline that I didn’t recognize to the people walking by on the sidewalk. Every attempt I made at catching someone’s attention, they’d suddenly turn their head away or cross the street.

He took a sip from the mug in his hands and shook his head, his face twisted in distaste. He frowned into the steaming cup. “My people invented coffee,” he murmured under his breath. “It is beyond me to understand how, with the example of the marvels you’re surrounded with on a daily basis, you call this tasteless brown water,” he nodded at the mug in his hand, “coffee.”

He sighed and collected himself. “Have you ever read the book in the Bible called Leviticus?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I replied without thinking. “They haven’t covered living divinities yet.” They? Who were they? I tried chasing the thought back to wherever it came from, but it was like trying to catch fog with a net.

“Really?” The old man studied my face for a moment and continued. “Cultivating an education that is both broad and deep is never a waste of time,” he said. “If you should pick it up, you will find that in Leviticus chapter eighteen, above the line where it says man should not lie with man, it says: do not pass your children through the fire to Molech. It never fails,” he said. “They read those words, and then they wonder.” He leaned forward and smiled, like a comedian who thought he was about to hit the punchline of his funniest joke. “Who is Molech?”

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I didn’t laugh.

He frowned and slumped back in his chair. “It’s thin,” he said. “It’s a little splinter of a thing. But there’s just enough of a prayer in it that it counts.”

The old man drummed his fingers against his coffee cup and looked out the window, his eyes wandering over the buildings of a city I couldn’t name if my life depended on it. “We all start out bloody. Sacrifices and the like. Everyone offers miracles. Everyone offers the promise of victory, or luck in the hunt or the marketplace, but,” he nodded his head in grudging admiration, “he got it right. While everyone else was talking about prowess in battle and premonitions, He…” I felt something brush over my thoughts, paging through them like a book, “He re-branded himself. Cornered the market in forgiveness.” The old man shook his head in amazement. “Forgiveness!”

Not knowing where I was didn’t bother me. Not being able to see the eyes of the people walking on the street didn’t bother me. Feeling him pluck thoughts out of my mind didn’t bother me. It was the fact that I wasn’t bothered by any of it; that all I could manage was the vague feeling that if things were normal, I would be afraid-no, that I would be terrified, that made me realize how much trouble I was in.

“I’ve seen people sacrifice their animals, their elders, even their children,” the old man said. “That kind of belief is potent. Compared to that kind of faith, swallowing sins is like trying to get drunk on water. But only so many people can afford to sacrifice an animal. Only so many are desperate enough to spill the blood of their children. You don’t have to move out of your chair to give someone forgiveness. The ones who pray to you? They do all the work. They forgive themselves. But in order for the forgiveness to take, they must believe in you. Master or slave, rich or poor, from the bravest warriors to the most cowardly of dogs, everyone needs forgiveness.” A bitter smile graced the old man’s mouth and then vanished. “And so a river of ambrosia and honey flows to the Nazarene’s table. Meanwhile, I survive off the crumbs that are the idle curiosity that falls from his plate.”

He took a deep breath and stared hard into his coffee cup. “How old did you say you-”

I threw the mug of hot chocolate at his face. I kicked the table, my chair falling to the floor with a crash. Rolling sideways onto my hands and knees, I scrambled towards the door; the old man shouting behind me as I burst out of the coffee shop.

I grabbed at the elbow of the first man I saw hurrying by outside. The moment I saw his face my cry for help dried up in my throat.

His eyes.

Where his eyes should have been, moist tentacles turned and twisted. The one to the left reached towards his eyebrow while the other flopped down his cheek. I backed into the street, staring wide-eyed at the gray, twisting things on his face. The horn of a braking car blared as it skidded. Next thing I knew I was lying on the street.

The driver of the car got out and stretched a helping hand towards me, a frown of worry on her face. The long blonde hair on her head caught on the hard twitching hairs of the spider’s legs sprouting from where her eyes should have been.

Screaming, I scrambled away from her hand. They were all looking at me now. Worms, spiders, tentacles, smoke, darkness; all the things they had in place of eyes were turned in my direction.

I ran. But, in spite of their lack of eyes, they were not blind. They dragged me back to the coffee shop.

The old man nodded, sitting at the table as though nothing had happened. “The young make the best sacrifices.” He playfully flipped the cup I’d thrown at him in the air, caught it, and slid it to the end of the table. “They aren’t old enough to hold anything back.” He stood, grunting as he bent down to right the chair I’d knocked over. “When my people burned me as a sacrifice to myself and made me a god, I was nine.”

He walked towards me, an almost apologetic look on his face. “Whoever sent you here, they meant you nothing but ill. I have been many things in my time. I was even a spirit of justice for a while. But after surviving so long on nothing but the dregs of wonder that is my name written in another’s holy book…”

Molech reached for me, the flames in his widening mouth blistered the air. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it’s been so long. And I am so hungry.”