Step one, decide which Bible stories you want to illustrate.

There are a lot to choose from. You don’t want to be overwhelmed but you have to look past the Sunday school stories you think you know. Remember, this is art. This is righteousness. This is the truth.

Make a list. Maybe Solomon and his harem or Salome’s sexy dance for her stepdad. Onan’s story is good. Lots of possibilities there.

I started with the story of Lot and his daughters.

Remember, we aren’t just sticking dirty pictures in Bibles to scare old ladies. We are giving these stories life. We are adding a new dimension. People need to be able to see it, imagine it, hear it. Smell it.

Step two, look up some porn.

(Side note: make sure you are alone, maybe lock the door to your room. Also, turn on the private settings on your computer. Just to be safe, delete any cookies after you’re done.)

I know what you are going to say. Porn is dirty. “Good girls” shouldn’t be looking at it, right? If my mom caught me looking at this, she’d probably cry. She’d make a scene. My stepdad, he’d have a Bible quote ready. As if the Bible wasn’t already full of pornography.

What they don’t know is, the Lord has called me to this work. He is speaking to me. Maybe He is speaking to you too.

Jesus said let those who have eyes see and those who have ears hear.

When words aren’t enough you tell the story with thighs and tits, clenched butt cheeks, torn stockings.

Do you think Mary Magdalene would wear fuck me boots?

So, Lot’s horny daughters, they thought they were the last people left on earth. They’d just seen God blow their hometown to smokey smithereens. Nothing but burnt flesh and crumbling buildings. Their mom got turned into a pillar of salt.

Lot’s daughters, unnamed in the Bible, they thought they were humanity’s last hope in a burning world.

(Side note: those girls needed to get out more.)

So they did what they thought they had to do to save the human race. They were good, God fearing girls. They knew they had to repopulate the world. Be fruitful. Multiply.

They got their dad stumbling drunk then took turns riding him until he got them both pregnant.

This was the first story I decided to illustrate when I started this work. It has so much potential. Incest. A three way. Outdoors. Mix in fear, desperation, hope. 

There’s literally tons of porn like this.

Find a picture or a still from a video of an old man on his back, preferably with wrinkly old balls and a gross expression on his face. What you are looking for is two young, naked women. You can search “teen” but believe me, those women don’t look my age.

Take a screenshot when one of the “teens” is riding him or, as the Bible says, when she goes to “lie with him.” One where she’s grinding down on him. Maybe her “sister” is helping. Maybe they are all smiling, one big happy family, eyes rolled back in fake orgasmic ecstasy.

Step three is print it out.

This part is tricky. Do you have a printer at home? Can you use the one at the library without getting caught?

You want color. It has more impact. Make sure to pick your copies off the printer quick. Don’t leave anything laying around. Flesh tones attract attention.

Now comes the important part. Have you ever scrapbooked? Does your mom?

You are going to need glue dots, double-sided tape, scissors.

Try not to think about it as putting porn in the Bible. Think of it as adding family portraits to God’s holy scrapbook.

My first time, I was in my room with the door shut. I was sweating so much I had to grab a towel to dry my hands. I had an old Bible I’d taken off our bookshelf. It was a kid’s Bible with cute pictures of animals and a pink cover. My mom had given it to me when I was already too old for that kind of stuff. On the inside of the front cover was my name and then mom’s, stepdad’s and stepbrother’s names. My dad’s name wasn’t written in the Bible. He was dead and my mom had found us a new family. The pink Bible was supposed to help me adjust.

Nobody ever read it, that little kid Bible, but then nobody actually reads the Bible.

I took three deep breaths with my eyes closed. I took my printed out picture of Lot and his daughters and trimmed it so it would fit on a page of my Bible. I found the page across from the story of Lot.

My first time, I felt dirty. My toes twitched. I felt warm in my arm pits, my neck, between my legs.

I took the picture, big tits bouncing in Lot’s face, his daughters holding him down, hips grinding, and glued it onto the thin page of Genesis.

Thanks for the supplies mom.

That first Bible, I put it on the bed stand next to my bed. I liked to look at it and know it’s there. The picture like a little pearl hiding within the pages.

I was flipping through the pages of my Bible when my stepbrother, the creep, opened the door without knocking. He saw the Bible and smiled.

“It’s good to see you taking more of an interest,” he said.

My stepbrother in his tucked polos and khaki shorts. He should be in college or something but instead he’s the youth minister at our church. My stepdad is an elder. Mom is so proud of them. We are one big happy Christian family.

So here’s the thing, don’t say I didn’t warn you, but once you’ve improved one Bible, you’ll want to do it again. And again and again and again.

Our Preacher tells us that we have to spread the good news to the nations. God has given us this task, he says. We just have to answer the call.

So now, step four, is increase production.

Find more Bibles. Look in those free little libraries. Go to thrift stories. They are cheap. They are everywhere.

But remember to pace yourself. You can’t illustrate all the sex stories in the Bible. You’ll burn out. You’ll end up breathing heavy and covered in glue, tape and the cut off edges of porn. Knees, elbows, strips of fake blonde hair. Hairless calves with fake tans. 

Don’t go too big. Don’t try to do the Song of Solomon. It’s basically the first romance novel. Go for something easier.

See, what I did is I started paying attention at church. I listened to the stories Preacher was telling and what he wasn’t.

I know, church sucks, but it gets better when you know what to listen for. It helps get through all the awkward hugs. You know, when the old men hold you a little too tight. Or when they give you a side hug and their hand creeps up to your side boob.

Usually, it’s some respected “elder”so of course you have to keep quiet and just stand there with a smile.

The cheap cologne lingers for hours after. You can feel his squeeze. You feel it even later that night when you are at home in bed.

That’s the perfect time to pull out one of the Bibles from the stash you’ve been collecting. I hid my Bibles under my bed, at the bottom of my closet under piles of old black sweaters, in old shoe boxes, in the toy box that I haven’t touched in years.

The second story I decided to illustrate was Onan’s. Don’t know him? He’s not as popular as Samson or Goliath.

You see, God killed Onan’s older brother so Onan had to marry his older brother’s widow, Tamar, and get her pregnant. Why? Not sure. Just part of God’s mysterious plan, I guess.

But Onan doesn’t want to do this. I mean, he was ok with “having relations” with his brother’s wife but he pulls out rather than knock up his sister-in-law turned wife. God doesn’t like this. It’s against his plan, I guess. Or maybe God is just really into cream pies.

Whatever it is, God kills Onan because he wouldn’t get his brother’s widow pregnant.

(Side note: God could have just given it some time. My PE teacher told us the pull out method isn’t very effective when he taught us that one sex ed lesson.)

But whatever, what’s really important here is that there is plenty to illustrate. Take some creative license here. The Bible says Onan “spilled his seed” on the ground.

But maybe you find a really good picture of a guy spilling his “seed” on a woman’s chest or all over her face or on her long, curled red hair. That makes a better picture right?

I glued pictures of dudes with big, veiny rods spewing gallons of “seeds” into a small stack of Bibles. I shoved them in my backpack and I went out on my first ministry.

Mom asked where I was going. My head was pounding. My palms so slick with sweat I struggled with the doorknob.

“I have to go for a walk,” I said.

“Be careful honey,” she said.

“Mom, I’m almost 18. I’ll be fine.”

I ran out before she could start talking about how the world is more dangerous now than when she was a kid. Or how Christians always have to be on their guard. Or some other BS she’s picked up from stepdad.

I hit every free little library and book exchange I could walk to. I had old and new King James Versions. The Bible for Teens and the New American Bible. Action Bibles and study Bibles. I had hardcover Bibles, ones with the family’s name written in the front, soft leather bound Bibles with Jesus’s words in red.

What’s important to remember here is that, you don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself. As you walk around dropping off your Bibles next to all those cheap paperbacks and library book rejects, just place them and move on. Don’t look over your shoulder. Don’t look like you are scared. Don’t make it look like you are ashamed.

This is the Lord’s work.

After that first round, I knew I had found my calling. As my backpack got lighter with each Bible placed, I felt like I was floating closer and closer to the clouds above our city. Past the tree branches and over the power lines. If I could place enough Bibles, I could get so high I would be able to look down on my mom and stepfamily and never come back down.

Our preacher always talks about listening for the voice of the Lord. I wanted to tell him I heard it.

When we first started going to this church, Preacher ignored me mostly. He was pleased we were there, he told my mom. He nodded at me, a scared little kid trying to hide behind my mom’s leg. I’d never been in a church before.

But that was then. Now, Preacher has taken an interest in my salvation. It was not long after that first ministry run. After placing the Onan Bibles. Preacher must have seen something change in me. He said he was worried about me. I was slipping, he said.

We have a nice church. It’s not the smallest in town but not huge either. It has oak trees outside. It has a stained glass window and a stage for Preacher and the band. A kid’s room and a kitchen for when we have meals together.

It also has special meeting rooms for when Preacher needs to counsel his flock, as he calls it.

I was turning into a lost sheep, Preacher said one day after service. He said to follow him. I ask why but he doesn’t answer. I look back at my family but they are all busy shaking hands and hugging old ladies. The only person who notices me walking away with Preacher is my friend — let’s call her Sarah, (side note: Don’t use real names.) She’s my best friend. Only friend, really.

We’ve known each other since we were little kids back when our dads were friends. They were in a band together. Not like a famous band or anything. Just like the kind of band that played at bars on Friday nights. When we were little, we used to go with them and play on the patios or around the pool tables while our dads played music.

But then my dad died, cancer. And Sarah’s dad took off, some woman. That left Sarah with a junkie mom and me with a depressed and desperate mom. That’s how I got a stepdad. It was my stepdad who was all about church. Him and my stepbrother, two perfect little Christians. Safe, stable, a good man, my mom said.

So we started going to church and I brought Sarah with me.

Sarah watched me follow Preacher and two elders into a room off the main hall. These three old men, tired looking, guts hanging over their dress pants, boring ties hanging around their necks. They looked like old tires stacked one on top of the other.

The preacher was my stepdad’s friend. He’s the reason we attend this church. They’d known each other a long time, Preacher said.

The two other balding men were just some old farts. Elders. The kind that like to stand too close and hug too long. We all sat in cheap folding chairs in a small room. They arranged their chairs so that I’m at the top of the U shape.

I had just started my ministry, my good works. Was I going to be martyred so soon? Beheaded like John the Baptist. Stoned like Stephen.

My armpits were sweaty and my toes felt too big for my shoes. I thought about my Bibles. The one at home. I’m pretty sure nobody’s picked that one up. How many had I placed around town? How many pictures of the cocks, tits and ass of the word of God?

“Thank you for meeting with us sister,” Preacher said in his holy, fatherly voice.

His fish eyes bulged out at me.

In the middle ages, monks drew pictures in the pages of the Bible as they copied it by hand. They illuminated the word of God. They were shining a light.

“The brothers and I, we are worried about you, young sister,” Preacher said. “You are at such a tender age. A dangerous age.”

He leaned down, elbows on his knees, like a tree bending at the waist.

I could see beads of sweat on his forehead. I smell the musty, stuck-in-a-closet smell coming from the old men. Preacher’s fish bowl eyes now level with mine.

Medieval monks were celebrated for their drawings. Angels, demons, griffins, naked baby Jesus. They helped tell the story.

“As you know sister, ‘your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,’” Preacher paused and looked at the men next to him.

The noise from out in the main hall of the church – out where my mom was with my stepdad and stepbrother – faded away. How could I explain my calling to Preacher so he’d understand?

“We’ve noticed, that, well, how tight your clothes are,” Preacher said.

All three of the old farts looked at my chest. I looked too.

Yeah, there they were. My breasts. I didn’t make them get bigger over the last year or so. It wasn’t like I wanted them there. I knew the creepy old men liked to look. Some of the girls in my grade had bigger, some smaller. It’s not like any of us had anything to do about it. Not like we tried to have these eyeball magnets glued to our chest.

That day, I was wearing a normal bra and just a plain black blouse.

“The Bible says ‘women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control,’” Preacher said. “The brothers and I, we are just concerned, you know.”

Preacher was having a hard time getting the words out. I looked up and the other two old men suddenly looked up at the ceiling and out the window. Their suits were wrinkled and baggy. I could see stains on their ties and on their pants.

Preacher, his gray suit fit right. His veiny hands poked from the ends of the smooth jacket arms. I could see the scabs of scrapes and cuts healing on his knuckles.

“As you know, the Bible warns us, admonishes us not to be the cause for our brothers to sin,” Preacher said. “In Romans, Paul wrote that we should ‘decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.’”

My top, it wasn’t even anything special. It wasn’t like it had a plunging neckline. It covered my shoulders. I didn’t know it was too small.

Now the two old farts start jumping in, helping Preacher.

“The Lord himself tells us ‘temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come,’” said one.

“‘Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God,’” said the other.

“Remember,” Preacher added. “All things are lawful but not all things are helpful.”

My skirt practically reaches my ankles. I have regular black flats. I would never even wear this stuff outside of church. My mom never said there was anything wrong with my clothes.

My mind is racing trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. How I could have offended these old men. I wonder what mom will say. Or my stepdad. Will my stepbrother laugh at me?

“Thank you for meeting with us, sister,” Preacher said.

He’s already standing and so are the other two old farts. I’m a little dizzy getting up and one of the old men grabs my arm. His hand was like a vise. He smiled as he helped me to the door.

“Perhaps bring a shawl with you next week,” Preacher said as he opened the door and led me back into the church where my mom, stepdad and stepbrother were waiting.

Everybody nodded, shook hands, said ‘great to see you’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘God bless you.’

Mom asked what that was about. Stepdad said Preacher had asked to speak with me. That it was ok. That it was just some loving guidance.

My stepbrother smiled and nodded as if he agreed with my stepdad. My mom didn’t ask anymore questions. She messed with her hair, making sure it fell across her face just the way she wanted it and then she looked at me and said, “ready?”

We fall in line behind my mom, stepdad and stepbrother. Sarah looks at me and wants to know what’s up. I shrug my shoulders.

What am I going to tell her? My breasts are too big? That old men can’t stop staring at my chest. That I need to wear sweaters in the middle of the summer.

I want to get back to my pictures, my illuminations. Monks worked for years on their copies of the Gospels adding in ornate letters and decorations. It only took me an afternoon to add in some bare butts and matted hair. “O” faces and thrusting hips.

You know, I actually know those verses the Preacher and his two old fools were quoting. I’m not an idiot. I may have grown tits but I know what I’m talking about.

I also know they missed one.

Jesus himself said it: If your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.

To Onan and Tamar, Lot and his daughters, I start adding other illuminated stories. Samson and Delilah. (Side note: Look up huge dude tiny chick.) The kinky stuff Abraham, Sarah and her maid Hagar got up to. (Side note: Abraham and Sarah were old so look up some octogenarian porn.) That time King David has a soldier killed because David got the soldier’s wife pregnant. (Side note: Look up cheating Army wives.)

David is good for lots of illustrations actually. Read up on David and his “friend” Jonathan in 1 and 2 Samuel. They had some beautiful moments together. They kiss and cry together. They sneak around together, go hide out in the wilderness where no one will find them. They swear their love to each other. Jonathan’s dad wants to kill David but Jonathan saves David’s life. It’s the Bible’s Romeo and Juliet story.  When Jonathan dies, David is devastated and sings “more wonderful was your love to me than the love from women.” (Side note: If you wanted to include two cute guys locking lips, fingers digging into each other’s backs, rock hard dicks rubbing back and forth, this is your story.)

Step five, expand your ministry.

After that first meeting with Preacher, I started leaving my illuminated Bibles on coffee shop tables. I visited hospital waiting rooms after school to drop off Bibles.

Little old ladies smiled when they’d see a holy Bible pressed against my chest. My stepbrother told me he was happy to see me taking Preacher’s encouragement to heart. 

I wore loose t-shirts and jumped on my bike to find every book exchange and donation bin in town.

Soon though, I was running out of Bibles. I’d riffled through every shelf in the local thrift stores. Now when I found a Bible in a free little library, it turned out they were one of mine. They were the new and improved versions. In full color.

I couldn’t stop now though. My work was getting noticed.

“This is horrible,” mom says one day at the breakfast table before school.

She’s looking at her phone but wants someone to ask ‘what?’

I’m eating my cereal waiting for the bus. I’m not really paying attention until my mom says, “people are finding porn in Bibles.”

I spill milk on my lap.

I’m thinking stoning, crucifixion, sulfur, fire. I clean up the milk before mom notices. Her eyes are glued to her screen. My stepdad says what are you talking about like he doesn’t believe what my mom says. Mom points her phone at him. She shows him the post on one of her old people social media. Facebook or Nextdoor. She explains how Ms. Lewis, you know, from church, who uses a walker. She lives just a few blocks away. She picked up a Bible from the little book exchange at the end of the block and there was, well.

I can see my mom looking at me from the corner of my eye. I stop breathing. I put my spoon back in the bowl and the clink of the metal spoon on the ceramic bowl is as loud as a church bell.

Mom tells my stepdad to read the description. She doesn’t want to say it out loud. I can see she’s blushing. She gets red on the back of her neck. As if talking about naked bodies is just something a woman like her doesn’t do. As if I haven’t seen the pictures of her and my dad when they were young, before me. Before stepdad and long dresses and shawls and discreet makeup.

As if I haven’t seen the fishnet stockings in the back of her drawer when I was rifling through it.

My stepdad shakes his head. Disgusting.

“Probably some teenage boys,” he says.

“What is the world coming to,” mom says.

The squeal of the school bus’s breaks is a blast of air to my lungs. I grab my backpack and run out the door.

“Be good today honey,” mom yells.

Step six is bring in partners.

Sarah was starting her shift when I explained my ministry. I brought her a copy of my latest work. A Bible with multiple illustrations. All the ones I’d illuminated before, Lot, Samson, David, plus some new ones. I was getting into some weird stuff now. The book of Ezekiel is full of erotic stuff. There are gang bangs in there. Toys. There’s even a chick using a sex doll. Well, the Bible says she made “male images and with them you played the whore.” But you know, close enough.

I worked hard to find the best images. Hours of online research.

Sarah, she almost got us caught when she found the picture of the lady with the donkey.  She shouted then laughed so loud a man walking to the elevator stopped and asked us if everything was ok.

Yeah dude, keep walking.

(Side note: Ezekiel 23:20 is pretty funny.)

Sarah said this was so wrong. She said we are definitely going to hell. Sarah bit her lip.

She shook her head no.

Sarah wasn’t always like this. She used to be brave. But these last few years, she’d gotten quieter. She was shy now and she worried. .

“I need your help Sarah,” I said.

What did I need, she asked.

Bibles.

Sarah showed me the pile of Gideon Bibles in the office behind the reception desk. Could we smuggle them out, I asked. Why, said Sarah, we could just do our work right there in the office. The Bibles were already here and there was a computer, a printer, and best of all, her boss didn’t care, she said.

“He said I could do whatever I wanted as long as I came to the front desk when a guest rang the bell,” Sarah said. “I think he meant I could smoke out in here but whatever.”

“Are you in,” I asked.

Sarah thought about it then nodded.

We decided the weekend graveyard shift was the best time to work. Sarah’s mom didn’t care what she did or where she was. I told my mom I had to study. Tests, papers, big high school projects. Getting ready for college entry exams.

And so we had a scriptorium.

Using the computer in the office and the printer, we could double, triple, quadruple my previous output. And Sarah thought of all kinds of new stories to illustrate.

At first, she didn’t quite get what I was going for. She wasn’t really going for the full truth. She was hiding her light.

She was picking pretty stories. She was going for all the sweet descriptions of love and desire in the Book of Solomon.

It’s all about a man and a woman and their love for one another. And tits. Lots and lots of tits that are like clusters of grapes or like two baby deer. (Side note: you just know that was written by a guy. What a weirdo.)

I told her to get edgier.

She illustrated the advice in Proverbs, “let your wife’s breasts satisfy you and be ravished by her love,” and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians where he reminds them that a “husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.”

That’s so sweet it makes you cringe. I told her, see how far you can take “conjugal rights.” (Side note: look up hotwife, look up swapping, look up pegging.)

It wasn’t about being perverted, I told her. We weren’t just going for shock value.

Sarah, remember, you are an artist, I said. Your illuminations shine a light on the truth.

Like, did you know the story of the men who ambush a bunch of young girls and carry them away to “marry” them? Or the one about keeping Midianite virgins as sex slaves. Or how about the sex in exchange for drugs story. That’s a good one. It’s there, all you have to do is look it up, I told her.

We are helping the blind see. We are waking them up to what is right under their noses.

It will start to work. Just give it time.

Pretty soon, Preacher mentioned our work in one of his sermons.

He liked to let the room get quiet when he was coming to something important. Let everyone lean forward in their chairs.

“Satan’s hand is in our community,” Preacher said first as a whisper, then again louder.

He stood on the stage. A choir sitting behind him. A large cross on the wall. His wasn’t the biggest church in town but it was well put together, he liked to say.

“Satan has snuck in like a thief in the night brothers and sisters,” he said. “What he is doing now I can’t even repeat. It is so gross, so heinous, so so — so evil.”

He looked around the room. I shuffled my feet and pulled the shawl tighter around my shoulders. I wanted the weight of a Bible in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. While he talked, I went through my mental catalog of porn thinking of new images to use. New stories to illuminate.

“We need to be extra vigilant. Take care of our little ones. Our sons and especially our precious daughters.”

I looked over at Sarah to roll my eyes but she was looking down at her feet. My mom was nodding along to everything Preacher said.

“We are called to be shepherds to our flock just as Jesus is the good shepherd,” Preacher said. “Satan is in a rage, brothers and we must guard against the wolf.”

After the singing and the final word from Preacher, we started our slow march to the front door. There was the usual gauntlet of old men who wanted to leer, old ladies who wanted to talk to my mom, the other kids my age who had perfect hair and easy smiles and never seemed to want to talk to Sarah and me.

My Stepdad had to stop and shake every hand while my stepbrother made a group of girls laugh.

I was almost to the door when one of the elders plucked at my elbow. Preacher wanted to see me. I ended up in the same room as before only this time it was just Preacher and me.

I was sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair. Preacher grabbed a chair and pulled it close to mine.

“Thank you for taking our advice to heart, sister,” he said and looked at my chest.

He reached his hand out and for a moment I thought he was going for a grope but he grabbed the shawl I’d found in my mom’s closet that morning.

He rubbed the material between his fingers. Preacher, he wasn’t old necessarily but he had gray hair that he flopped over the bald top of his head.

“Let your adornment be the inner self the Apostle Peter tells our sisters,” Preacher said and looked up at my eyes now.

He is close enough I can smell the cologne he pours on to cover his rotting carcass smell.

“Young girls like you have to resist this evil naked culture we live in,” he said with spit in his mouth. “It must be so difficult for you. Be careful with all this dark makeup that obscures your inner beauty and with these skirt lengths.”

He dropped his hand to my knee and held it there a moment before getting up and leaving the room without another word.

I stayed in the room until I couldn’t smell his cologne anymore.

Modesty. Inner beauty. Those things weren’t in my Bible. My Bible was full of tits, ass and throbbing cocks. I wanted everyone else to see it too.

Sarah looked worried when I rejoined them all at the front of the church. Stepdad was done glad-handing and mom didn’t seem to care that I’d been gone. Only my stepbrother smiled.

“It’s good that Preacher is spending extra time and attention on you,” he said. “That means he must see something special in you.”

We piled into my stepdad’s minivan. My mom upfront with stepdad. Sarah and I in the very back. My stepbrother in the middle.

Mom and stepdad talked about Preacher’s sermon.

“I didn’t realize it was so widespread,” mom said. “Who do you think is doing it?”

“We should probably ask the police to get involved,” stepdad said.

They, the step people, showed up back when mom was sad all the time. Our apartment in the rundown part of town. Mom kept the rooms dark and the stereo, dad’s stereo, turned off.

Mom went to work. I went to school. Then we’d come home and mom would usually cry or she would curl up on the couch and want to watch movies but it wasn’t like before. When dad, mom and I would watch movies together it was fun. We’d have popcorn or ice cream and dad would make corny jokes and make us laugh even when the movie wasn’t so good.

Once dad died, all the instruments in the house disappeared. All the trips to bars and music shows stopped. Mom didn’t want to see anyone, she said.

Only Sarah and her mom, let’s call her Delilah, would come over sometimes. Then mom and Delilah would just get really drunk or high or whatever. Sarah and I would pretend to watch cartoons and listen to them as they laughed or yelled or talked really loud and dumb.

Delilah would start complaining about Sarah’s dad, about how he ran off with some woman – the woman always changed, first it was a waitress, then it was the lady from the bank, other times some lady singer.

Mom and Delilah used to go to our dads’s shows and act silly and dance and play with us. But now mom and Delilah just talked shit about our dads. Delilah said it was my dad’s fault that we were poor. That he should have saved something. That he should have thought of us not just himself. The drunker mom got the more she agreed and the more she blamed dad for shriveling up like a dry leaf and dying.

“What about us,” mom would say. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Exactly,” Delilah would answer. “Men are always just thinking with their dicks.”

“At least I got all the instruments. They were worth a little something.”

Then they would cackle like the seagulls we use to see on our yearly trip to the beach.

That’s how it was until suddenly it wasn’t. Stepdad just kind of appeared. Mom said she met him at work. He made her happy, she said. He was a good man. Suddenly, it was important to believe in God. Suddenly, we started going to Church.

Then he was part of my family. Or I was a part of his, I guess. He said he was happy to have me as his daughter. He said that his son could give me Bible lessons.

And just like that, we moved into their house. A big house in a nice neighborhood with sidewalks and bike lanes and parks. Before, I used to be able to walk to the trailer park where Sarah lived. Now it was across town.

My mom told me to be polite. That this was good for us. To be nice to my stepbrother. To not wear too short shorts and to make sure to wear a bra around the house when my stepdad and stepbrother were around.

“Why,” I asked her.

She’d never cared what I wore before.

“Because,” she said. “You have to be a good girl now.”

That’s us – Sarah and  – a couple of good girls. As soon as we are alone again in our scriptorium, I tell Sarah we have to double our production. Triple it. We have to get our Bibles all over town, in every hand, in every house.

Sarah, she says she’s ready to do some different illustrations. She says she wants to illustrate the rape of Dinah. The one where the crusty douche bag named Shechem rapes her then wants to marry her. Or, Sarah said, the one where David’s son Absalom rapes his dad’s wives. Yeah, wives, multiple.

“I want to illustrate the one from Deuteronomy too,” Sarah said.

Deuteronomy is tough. It’s a bunch of dry laws. Nothing exciting in there I say.

Sarah grabs a Gideon and points to Chapter 22. If a virgin is raped and she doesn’t scream loudly enough, she must be stoned to death.

“You must purge the evil from among you,” Sarah reads.

Now we are talking, I tell her. Let’s get to work, I say. We have lots of Bibles to illustrate.

“I know some girls that might want to join,” Sarah said.

It’s a risk but we need more hands. We need to download more porn. Paste them on to more pages.

I nod. Ok, do it.

Sarah texted these friends of hers, two girls from school who play volleyball.

“Everybody says they are lesbians but they aren’t,” Sarah said. “I don’t think anyways.”

Would they be ok with what we do, I asked. I had cut up pieces of vulvas and foreskins  all around me.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Sarah said. “They go to that church across town but they are cool.”

While we wait for them to show up, Sarah starts working with a picture of a woman with tears running down her face. Her mascara is running. Her arms are tied. There’s duct tape over her mouth. Her eyes are looking up at the man who is holding her down.

It’s gross stuff but it’s the holy word of God.

Sarah and I, we didn’t know about porn, not really anyway, until my stepbrother showed us.

My mom and stepdad thought it was great that stepbrother offered to study with Sarah and I when we first moved in together.

Stepbrother started with the normal stuff about loving God, about how we were washed in the blood, how we needed to be born again, about how Jesus was God and also the Holy Spirit. We had to have faith, he said.

There were a lot of scriptures to read and memorize but Stepbrother said he’d make it interesting. He’d show us where the good stuff was in the Bible.

“They don’t teach you this in Sunday school,” he said and winked.

Then he moved on to how we, Sarah and I, as young women, we had to be pleasing to God. We had to make sure guys didn’t think we were sluts, he said.

Guys only want one thing, Stepbrother told us. Jesus said it was up to girls like us to make sure it didn’t happen, he said. Worldly girls could give guys what they wanted but not us because we belonged to God. We had to be an example.

“Things that cause sin are sure to occur but woe to the person through whom they occur,” Stepbrother told us, his back straight, eyes shining. “That’s what Jesus said.”

Then, once my mom and Stepdad weren’t around, Stepbrother told us that the worst thing though, for girls like us, was to be ignorant. To not be ready to resist. To not understand what was going through every man’s head.

“You don’t want to be like my mom,” he said. “Running off like a whore of Babylon.”

He pulled out his laptop, opened a private browsing window and typed in a website. Every chance he got, he would show us porn, so “we would know what bad girls do.”

So that we never did those things, he said.

“The Bible says ‘my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge,’” he said. “Watch this.”

He would pull up a video of two naked bodies writhing all over each other. He would have Sarah and I sit next to him. It was when his hands started crawling over our legs and then down our shoulders that we told him we knew everything we needed to know about the Bible.

Look, it’s not that I’m a prude. I want to have sex. I even like some of the boys at school. One boy, really. He plays guitar and writes poems and he had long hair until the school made him cut it. We even talk at lunch and stuff.

But it’s not like we could date. It’s not like I could ever go anywhere with him. Stepdad would blow a fuse.

“Bad company corrupts God’s people,” he says.

Stepdad says I’m supposed to be pure. A virgin. Unstained. I don’t want to be a licked cupcake, do I? A used piece of tape. Would I want to chew gum someone else already spit out?

I finally worked up the courage to tell my mom about the videos my stepbrother was showing us.

Stepdad and stepbrother were off at some men’s bible retreat camping trip. I sat on the bed mom shared with Stepdad. The room seemed so big and dark. Like they didn’t like letting the light in through the windows. I could still smell my Stepdad’s mix of stress sweat and salesman desperation in the room.

“Mom, can I tell you something,” I said.

What a trusting dork. What an idiot. What did I think she’d do?

She didn’t even stop looking at herself in her vintage, vanity mirror as she applied makeup. Stepdad had bought the vanity set. Mom said she’d always wanted one like that.

When I told her what Stepbrother had been doing, what he’d been showing Sarah and me, she put down her eyebrow pencil at least. She looked at me through the mirror.

“What did you do,” mom said. “Did you ask him to show you that stuff?”

Nothing, I told her. We just sat there.

Mom shook her head and picked up her pencil. 

Mom said it was mine and Sarah’s fault. We must have been leading him on. We must have been tempting him. Boys can’t help themselves when girls do that, she said.

“He is a good Christian man just like his dad,” mom said and made faces in the mirror. She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. She turned one way and the other. “You are the one we have to watch out for.”

I never brought it up again.

So what you have to do is not think about what your mom says. What you have to do is get your group together and find your own scriptorium, it can be an office, it can be your room, it can be a garage, a corner in the library or the alley behind your friend’s house, whatever works. Wherever you can get together and work. Because this is work. It is holy work. It is righteous work.

When Sarah’s volleyball friends joined us, let’s call them Esther and Ruth, they came straight from practice in short shorts and with their backpacks and gym bags.  They smelled the way sneakers squeak on a gym floor.

Sarah handed them each a finished Bible. We watched them closely, waiting for reactions. When they looked up and smiled, I walked them through the steps, picking the right Bible story, finding the right images to illustrate the story, splicing it into the holy book then discreetly placing the illuminated Bible.

Esther and Ruth nodded.

“Hell yeah,” whispered Ruth.

(Side note: be ready for new ideas when you bring people in.) 

Esther asks, can they illustrate the rape of Dinah. I explain that of course, we’ve done that one.

“No, but I want to illustrate what they do to the rapist and his family,” Esther says.

After Shechem asks to marry Dinah – after he raped her – Dinah’s family agrees to marriage only if Shechem and all the other men in his village get circumcised. Then, when all the men are sore from having the tip of their penis chopped off, Dinah’s brothers come in and kill them all.

Makes you wish you had a brother like that.

Esther says she doesn’t want to illustrate the rape. She wants to illustrate the circumcised penises. On her phone, she pulls up medical pictures of infected, bulbous, deformed penises. She finds pictures of botched jobs, slips of the knife. Diseased, oozing, mutilated penises.

Ruth asks if she can put a picture of Joan of Arc in the Bible.

I ask what?

Or what about Hillary Clinton or Ida B. Wells, Frida Kahlo and Susan B. Anthony, asks Esther.

Why, I ask.

Esther, she says, see 1 Timothy 2:12. Women can’t teach or be in charge. Women are supposed to stay quiet. Or 1 Corinthians 11:3 says Ruth. The head of a wife is her husband.

“Our preacher has been going on and on about the Me Too stuff and about women politicians,” Esther says.

“About how good, poor Christian men are getting accused and their lives ruined,” says Ruth.

“So like a picture of Michelle Obama in 1 Timothy would totally piss him off,” Esther says.

I smile and nod. 

Then Ruth asks, what about Jesus?

What about him?

“Like, are we sure he was a guy,” she asks. “He was 30 and unmarried right? Maybe he wasn’t a guy. Maybe they were non binary. Maybe, being the Son of God means they were everything to everyone. Maybe they shouldn’t have been gendered.”

Esther nods and now they are both looking at me.

“Can we illustrate a non binary Jesus,” Ruth asks.

Sarah looks at me.

You have to be able to change, right? Evolve. Don’t hold on so tight that you kill what you love.

“Look, the rule is,” I say. “It’s your Bible. You illustrate it how you want to. Your job is to find the truth and illuminate it.”

This is how we became a group of scribes. A society of illuminators.

From now on, we are the Daughters of Eve I tell them. Nameless, faceless, ignored. But essential. We wouldn’t be here without them.

So we got to work. Our Bibles started getting popular. Like really popular. At school, everyone is talking about the Bibles. Teachers are having to confiscate them when students bring them on campus. On social media, people are making videos when they open a new Bible to reveal what’s inside.

Preacher, he doesn’t like it. These “defaced and defiled” Bibles were popping up everywhere, he said. It was a sign of the end times, he said.

“The antichrist has come to our community,” he yelled with his fist high in the air. “The love of God has grown cold among the people. Keep on the watch brothers and sisters. We must pray. The evil one could be amongst us even now.”

He was working himself up into a sweat. He took his suit jacket off. The pit stains under his armpits grew the more he talked and yelled. His tie was skewed sideways and he was breathing heavy. We could hear him puffing on the microphone.

“This antichrist is crafty,” Preacher said and poked his temple with his pointer finger. “This blasphemer is trying to trick you. Suck you in with these these these images!”

Preacher thundered out the last word. It made the PA feedback. He held up a Bible and I thought maybe he actually had one of ours.

“This beast is desecrating God’s sacred word but know this brothers and sisters, our God is a God of vengeance. He. Will. Destroy this antichrist in our midst,” Preacher slammed the Bible down with his last words.

The congregation was shaken after the sermon. The singing was all wispy like everyone forgot their voices at home. We muddled through it and, once the service was over, people started making their way to the door of our little church. An elder came over and plucked at my elbow again.

I already knew what he would say. Preacher wanted to see me.

Another lecture about my clothes, my makeup, my attitude. Or did he know something?

Back in the little room, Preacher was already sitting in his chair and mopping his forehead with a towel. He smiled as I came in.

“It is good to see you taking my counsel to heart,” he said as he looked me up and down.

He patted the chair next to him for me to sit. When I did he immediately put his hand on my knee. I could feel his crusty finger bones through the thin fabric of my skirt.

“Sister, I know you are a good girl so now it is my turn to come to you for advice.”

His breath was a combo of stale coffee and rotting Brussel sprouts. His hand squeezed my knee and he looked at me in what I assume was an earnest look.

“The person defacing the word of God, do you know who they are? Is it some angry soul lost to the traps of Satan and this godless world? I’m sure the boys must talk to you. Boys like to brag to pretty girls,” his eyes shined and he licked his lips.

He asked again, “do you know who is doing this?”

“I-,” I started to answer but stopped. I looked at the floor. Preacher’s hand moved up my leg and he squeezed my thigh.

“It’s ok,” he said in a smelly whisper.

The door to the office room flew open and there was Sarah wild eyed. Preacher snatched his hand back and started mopping his forehead again.

Behind Sarah an elder shoved his head in and apologized.

“I told her you were busy. I tried to stop her but she insisted,” the old elder said.

“There is something I have to tell you, Preacher,” Sarah said.

Preacher waved her in and told me I could go. I tried to look at Sarah, look her in the eye but she wouldn’t look at me. The elder lead me out and I saw Sarah sit down next to Preacher.

Sarah wouldn’t talk to me in the car ride after church. It wasn’t until later when she was at work and the Daughters of Eve were gathered that I could finally ask her what the hell was going on.

When she was finally done helping a customer, I had my chance.

“What did you tell Preacher,” I said.

Ruth and Esther, all legs and arms sprawled out on the office floor, stopped what they were working on. I’d jumped up off the floor and was standing next to Sarah as she walked in her eyes burrowing cigarette burns in the green carpet.

“Tell me,” I said. “Did you snitch? Did you rat me out?”

Sarah stopped moving. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t answer. She didn’t sit down or start working on her Bible.

“Did you tell him it was me? Have you forsaken us?”

I didn’t realize it but I was yelling. Ruth had jumped up and grabbed my arm to get me to stop.

Sarah was crying. It started as small tears rolling down her face and worked up to full on sobs like the way my mom used to cry. The ones that rocked her entire body and sounded like something in her throat was breaking. Now, it was Sarah who was breaking. She crumbled to the floor. Ruth and Esther went to her and told her it was ok while side-eyeing me.

Finally, Sarah said something.

“I didn’t tell him about you or our work. I didn’t mention the Daughters,” she said between half sobs and sniffles.

Now I was the one frozen in place. Ruth got the tissues from the front desk. Esther tried to hug Sarah but Sarah pushed her away.

“So why did you go in there with Preacher,” I asked.

“Do you remember when we started going to church,” Sarah asked. “My dad was gone and your dad had died. My mom and your mom were still like drinking and shit all the time?”

I nodded. Sarah hugged her knees to her chest.

“That’s when Preacher told me he thought I needed special attention. That girls like me could go astray when our family lives weren’t good. He said he wanted to make sure I stayed on God’s true path.”

She cried again. Esther and Ruth and I waited not wanting to hear what was next but knowing it was going to come.

If all this is a surprise to you then you haven’t been paying attention. You need to read your Bible. It’s all in there. We just brought it to life.

Sarah told us what Preacher did. The words he said that made her at first think it was ok and then convinced her nobody would believe her. And it was true, Sarah said, because when she told her mom, Delilah just told her it was her fault for being such a slut.

Once we could all move again, Ruth, Esther and I sat down with Sarah. We told her it was ok, that it wasn’t her fault, that she wasn’t a slut.

I told her I was sorry. When she was ready, we gave her a hug.

“I busted in on you and Preacher because I didn’t want the same thing to happen to you,” Sarah said.  “I didn’t want him to do to you what he did to me.”

We all sat quiet for a little while. The room was full of pictures of dicks and vaginas, strap ons, handcuffs, bruised skin and bloody hands. It gave me an idea.

We were done with pictures, I said. 

So this is the last step.

Step seven is be ready for the end.

Nobody knows the day or the hour but the end will come and you better be ready.

When I left the motel that night, after we’d finished our newest work, I didn’t know how near the end really was.

My backpack heavy with new Bibles to distribute, I didn’t notice Preacher’s car in our driveway until I was almost to our front door. It was black and had the look of a car that had never broken the speed limit, like the tires have never kicked up rocks.

Do you know the story about Jesus, the one where he says “he without sin”? It’s one of my favorites. In it, the townspeople are dragging a woman through the street. She’s committed adultery, they tell Jesus. I imagine they’ve already started roughing her up. (Side note: I guess they forgot to accuse the guy she was having sex with. Wouldn’t he have committed adultery too?)

I imagine this woman looking up through bruised and bloodshot eyes at all these men ready to stone her to death because that is what the Bible says you should do to adulterers. The faces she saw, I imagine they looked like the faces around the dinner table as I walk in.

My mom, stepdad, stepbrother and Preacher, all sitting, waiting.

Stepdad looks too angry to say anything. Mom has been crying. Stepbrother looks like he wants to smile.

“Come sit with us sister,” Preacher says. “We have to talk.”

I sit across from Preacher. No hands on my legs this time. No stinky breath in my ear.

“Your brother has told us your secret,” Preacher says.

I look at him and my stepbrother breaks out in a smile and sits taller. So happy with himself.

“I knew you liked porn. I told Preacher about it so it was pretty easy from there,” stepbrother says. “I just looked at the Bibles in the house and found yours.”

He’s talking about my first illuminated Bible. The one I left on the nightstand next to my bed. Preacher puts it on the table in front of him. Stupid me.

“Sister, do you want to tell us why you have been doing this? What evil has possessed you? You have hurt your family, your community, your congregation. You have hurt God and you have hurt me,” Preacher says.

Do you know the story of Judges 19? No? It’s not something they teach in Sunday school.

I pull a Bible out of my backpack and place it in front of me. Everyone’s eyes lock on to it.

“Will you turn to Judges 19 with me Preacher,” I say.

“Why, is there more filth you have defaced the holy word with?”

“Porn is fantasy,” I say. “This is real.”

Judges 19, is the story of a woman who leaves her husband and goes back to live with her family. Why? Maybe the husband was beating her. Maybe he was cheating. Maybe he just was a shitty husband. The Bible doesn’t say.

It does say that the husband goes and collects his wife. They head back to his house but it is a long trip so they have to stop for the night at some random town. A kind man offers to host the husband and wife and gives them a place to sleep. That evening, the local perverts come pounding on the door. They want the kind man to toss the husband out so they can “know” him. Instead, the husband opens the door and flings his wife into the crowd. The crowd gang rapes her all night. When they are done with her, they leave her in the dirt. When the husband comes out the next morning, he finds his wife at the foot of the door. He doesn’t say anything, just picks her up and throws her on the back of his donkey. When he finally gets home, his wife is dead. He cuts her up and sends a portion of her body to all the tribes of Israel, I guess as proof, and then the tribes gang up and punish the village where she was raped.

Nice story huh?

Preacher, he knows Judges 19. Or he thinks he does. He’s read the Bible cover to cover, as he likes to say.

In that story about Jesus, when they bring the woman before him, the townspeople ask if they should stone her. Jesus starts writing in the sand. He’s making a list. At first the townspeople don’t know what he’s doing and they pester him. They want to get on with the stoning.

What he is writing is the list of their sins.

Jesus replies, “Let him without sin pick up the first stone.”

One by one the townspeople recognize themselves in the sins in the dirt and they walk away until just the woman and Jesus are left. In my mind, Jesus helps her. He heals her wounds. In my mind, she looks in his eyes and smiles and Jesus tells her, “go on your way and sin no more.”

As I slide a Bible across to Preacher, I tell him, “Let him without sin, Preacher.”

Mom, stepdad, stepbrother, they are all just watching me like I’m crazy. Preacher though, he’s just looking at the Bible. It’s hard green cover. The pages near the middle where you can tell that something has been added, something’s been illuminated.

Except this time, we didn’t use pictures. We used words. Sarah’s words. Everything she told us, everything Preacher did, typed out and added to Judges 19.

He takes it and opens it. The pages fall right to Judges 19. His eyes flicker back and forth.

He slams the book shut and jumps out of his chair. The heavy wooden chair snags on the carpet and falls back on the floor. He snatches the Bible from the table.

“Don’t worry, I have more,” I tell him.

Preacher runs out and leaves the front door open. We can hear his tires squeal as he pulls out of the driveway.

“What was that about,” mom asks and they all look at me.

I pull out more copies of the Bible and slide them across the table.

“I’m with the Daughters of Eve,” I tell them. “And I’m here to talk to you about the Bible.”