Evangelism Explosion

by Vic Sizemore

Monica Snow comes out of Starbucks with a tall latte. She walks back to her car in front of Game Stop, fishing in her purse for her keys. Up pulls this kid in a baby-shit yellow Ford Escort with silver duct tape holding the front right headlamp together. It smells of something burning, not oil, but some poison plastic chemicals. He parks beside the passenger side of her Camry, gets out, steps up onto the sidewalk and faces her. If they both reached out, they could almost touch fingertips.

He looks emo, with his hair dyed jet black and molded into a thick spike over half his face. It covers one eye, like he just stepped out of a Japanime film. He is skinny, has on a tight black t-shirt with the faded white word Agape across his chest. He has thin hips like a little boy, wears black stretchy girl jeans and a glittery metal belt. His shoes are white with black wing tip toes. He has a tattoo around his skinny right bicep, some Latin phrase beginning with Vocat.

He has gospel tracts in his hand, and a button on his shirt that has nothing but two question marks on it. He’s from Pinewood University, the Evangelical college on the hill.

 Monica is an atheist. Her parents are atheists. It never was a cause for controversy before, but in this small southern town, it can cause a scandal at a party. Monica’s dad warned her about Meadow Green. He told her, “Sweetie, the 2000 census has that little town at over eighty percent Baptist.” He said, “That’s a higher percentage than Salt Lake City is Mormon.” 

She came anyway, because of her friend Stevie.

Before she catches herself, she’s made eye contact with him. The one eye that’s not covered with hair is a big brown doe eye. A very pretty eye. A beautiful eye really. He is wearing some serious eyeliner. Monica has a soft spot for gay men. Stevie was gay—he committed suicide their senior year of high school, filled his pockets with rocks and walked off into the Puget Sound.

This gay man wants to tell her about Jesus. Or not—he’s just as likely to try and sign her up for some Christian Ponzi scheme. She steps off the curb and stands by the door of her Camry.

Instead of introductions, he simply blurts out, “If you were to die right now and God asked you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ what would you say?”


Monica sets her latte on the roof of her car and looks squarely at him. The day is bright white, the sun a fluorescent smear across the entire sky. She has to squint. She says, “I’d say, ‘God? I’ll be damned, you do exist.’” She smiles sweetly.

He steps off the curb and the two of them are beside her driver’s side door. He is a tiny guy, not much taller than she is. With gravitas, he says, “Sadly, you would be right on both counts.”

 “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

 “Not myself,” he says. “I’m sure whom I have believed and am persuaded—”

 “You’re eat up with this shit.” She says.

 From here, the conversation heats up, shifts and rises into a full-on argument, until Monica is standing in driver’s side door, shouting over the car roof at the pretty boy, who has retreated back around and is standing at the open door of his own piece of shit car. A train comes by on the hill above the strip mall. The whistle blows four times, and then the noise settles into its heavy rhythmic clacking. They have to raise their voices even more.

  “You sure are angry at a God you say doesn’t exist,” he yells.


 “It’s not god,” she yells, “it’s you—and I’m not angry; I’m frustrated.”


 “You ever consider that your anger is caused by the fact that you know down deep that you stand guilty before Him?”

 “Him?” she says. “Forgiveness? From him?”

   “We are all sinners deserving God’s just punishment.”

 “Eternal pain and suffering.”

 “And a life of unhappiness and lack of purpose. Don’t you ever wonder why God put you here?”

 “God didn’t put me anywhere.”


“Of course He did.”

 “There you go with the he again.”

 They yell on. The train is still clacking heavily above them, a very long train of rusting coal cars with glistening black mounds of coal rising out of their open tops.

Eventually Monica has had enough. “Why can’t you just leave people alone?” she shouts.

“Why can’t you see your need of God?”

She growls.

“You know in your heart of hearts that I’m right.”

“You go to hell,” she yells.

 He yells back, “I’m afraid that’s exactly where you are going.”

  “Fuck you,” she shouts.

 His lips curl into a prissy little smile and he yells, “No thank you.”

 “No, of course not,” Monica yells. “I don’t have a dick.”

His one uncovered eye goes wide in astonishment.

She drops into her seat with another low growl—she is not a person who says nasty things to gay people; how did she let him get under her skin?—she slams the door and starts her engine. As she swings out of the parking space, she hears a tumbling across the roof of her car and then a muted wet explosion on the parking lot.

Her latte. She left it on the roof. He just watched her do that.

“God damn it,” she shouts, “son of a bitch.” She puts her car in park. She sees him in her rear view mirror, standing, watching her. Poor Stevie. She couldn’t save him.

She gets out and stands by her open door and waves to the guy. He steps out and walks toward her on thin legs, swinging his hips like a model on a runway.

“Evangelism Explosion” is excerpted from Vic Sizemore’s novel Seekers. Other excerpts of Seekers can be read at Vol.1 Brooklyn and WIPs Works (of Fiction) in Progress. His fiction is published or forthcoming in StoryQuarterly, Southern Humanities Review, The Good Men 
Project, Connecticut Review, storySouth, Sou’wester, Blue Mesa Review, Superstition Review, A River & Sound Review, [PANK], and elsewhere. Excerpts from his novel The Calling are 
published in Connecticut Review, Portland Review, Prick of the Spindle, Burrow Press Review, Pithead Chapel, Letters and elsewhere. Sizemore’s fiction has won the New Millennium Writings 
Award for Fiction, and been nominated for Best American Nonrequired Reading and a Pushcart 

Prize. You can find Vic here.