The 45th President of the United States and I Went to Church by Grant Gerald Miller

The 45th President of the United States and I went to church. The sermon opened with the preacher asking us all to pray with him to God the Father. During the prayer, the 45th President of the United States nudged me. I opened my eyes and he had an open hymnal. On one of the pages he’d written MY FATHER WAS A JACKAL in pencil. I closed my eyes again and pretended to ignore him. He nudged me again. I opened my right eye slightly. Underneath MY FATHER WAS A JACKAL he’d written BUT STILL I MUST AVENGE HIM FROM THE LIZARDS. I squeezed my eyelids shut and bowed my head further down. When the prayer was over, I opened my eyes and the 45th President was gone. The hymnal lay open on the pew. I picked it up and thumbed through the pages. Some of the pages were smeared with bloody fingerprints. I stood up as the choir went into song, closed the hymnal and slid it back into the rack, and followed the 45th President of the United States’ bloody paw prints out the front doors and into the empty street

Grant Gerald Miller was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama and an assistant editor at Black Warrior Review. His work has appeared or is set to appear in various journals including Hobart, Shirley Magazine, Entropy, Qu Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, Necessary Fiction, and Nimrod.