Joshua Ryder scowled at the teenage girl in the mirrored door of the cabinet. She was dressed in utterly immodest clothing: a miniskirt that showed an unseemly amount of leg and a halter top that showed a provocative amount of chest and two whole inches of midriff. In a perfect world this girl would have been wearing a modest dress, maybe a nice shawl. But this was far from a perfect world, wasn't it?
He couldn't blame this girl. Not entirely. She was a sinner, yes, but she was also a victim of her times, of a culture that said that it was acceptable for women to wear revealing clothing, or pants, and to express their sexuality, and to work outside the home instead of raising children. Women had far too much independence these days, and Joshua found it repulsive. The bible said that women were to submit to their husbands, and the bible should have been the final word on morality... but it didn't seem like it was these days. Not anymore. Not in America.
Joshua had always envied his grandfather. His grandfather had died in 1959, a few years before Joshua had been born. He'd been spared the horrors of the 1960s. That's when it had all gone wrong. First the negroes had started getting uppity and demanding the vote. Then the hippies had appeared, with their drugs and their anti-war protests and their abominable values. Then it was feminism. Then environmentalism. Then, good lord, homosexual rights. The country had been in a steady nosedive since the early sixties, and Joshua had been bracing himself for the inevitable crash. He'd always known it would be ugly. He'd never realized it would be this ugly.
Joshua's beliefs weren't popular. They'd cost him a lot. He'd lost friends, relatives, several jobs, even his wife and children over his beliefs. Even most of the people at his church had called Joshua "extreme", even a "bigot." But Joshua knew there was nothing extreme or unreasonable about his views. He simply believed in truth. God's truth. And he knew God was angry at the world... how could he not be, with all that was going on? The world had made so many compromises... Joshua refused to compromise. If that cost him, so be it. Martyrs and prophets had always suffered for standing up for God's word.
Joshua ran a hand through the long blonde hair of the woman in the mirror, then over the outline of his body. This girl looked so frail, so small... Joshua preferred his women with a little more meat on their bones. Joshua had been a big man; this girl looked like she would break in a strong breeze. So bizarre.
It was their fault he looked like this. It was their fault everyone believed he was a girl. That's what Reverend Foster had said. It was the sinners. God had punished the town by casting the wicked and the righteous alike into bodies that weren't their own, all because of the stubborn sinfulness of the town's sinners. Now the sinners were destroying themselves. Joshua had seen the fires, the riots, the accidents as he had walked home. Given time, the sinners would burn themselves to oblivion, because that's what sinners did. But Joshua wasn't sure the town could afford that kind of time. There were good people here, too, and Joshua couldn't stomach the thought of those good people getting hurt wihile the sinners tore each other apart. So Joshua knew that he had to give the sinners a little push.
After taking one last look at the girl reflected in the mirror mounted on the cabinet door, Joshua opened the door. Joshua's collection waited inside. Two dozen knives and nearly as many guns. He'd prepared a long time for this day. Judgement Day was coming; the plague that had struck town today was merely the latest, most dramatic sign Joshua had been arming himself all his life in preparation for Armageddon, been training himelf to be a warrior for the Lord. Now it was time to act. Strapping a couple of belts over his skirt and halter, Joshua picked out the cream of his collection: his favorite knife and the beautiful handgun he'd bought at the gun show last month. Then he lovingly took out his baby, his 12-gauge shotgun named Ruth.
Together, Joshua and Ruth would cleanse the town of the cancer of its sin. And Joshua knew exactly where to start. A few blocks from downtown, there was a rotten, sinful district with a strip club, a pawn shop, a whorehous, and, worst of all, an occult shop all on the same block. It was where all the worst sinners in town congregated. If Joshua was going to purify the city, that would be the place to start. So, slinging Ruth over his back, he closed his cabinet and headed out to his car. It was time to get to work.
