Spillglass didn't mean to become a prophet.He just wandered into a community center, wine bottle in hand, looking for a toilet.But the sign said "Book Club: Speak Your Truth" and he figured, why not?It was air-conditioned and nobody told him to leave.
He sat down. Read one line from The Alchemist, paused, and said:
"Sometimes the treasure is unresolved childhood abandonment."
Everyone nodded like it was divine revelation.
Week two, he showed up drunk, wearing robes made from curtains.
Week three, he gave an impassioned speech about "love being a form of strategic spiritual warfare."
Week four, someone in the club tattooed a Spillglass quote on their forearm:
"Pain is just God's way of flirting."
Week five, he told a lonely widow she was "a volcano learning to be soft again." She wept. A pigeon exploded outside.
By week six, the group had robes, mantras, and a cursed logo made of broken wine glasses and typewriter keys.
Word reached Father Asher.
He showed up wearing aviators and a raincoat."Spill, what in the sacrilegious hellfire are you doing?"
Spillglass shrugged, sipping out of a hollowed-out dictionary. "They asked for meaning. I gave them metaphors."
Juno leaned in. "You have forty followers now. They chant when you sleep."
Spillglass blinked. "...I thought that was a dream."
They tried to shut the group down.Didn't work.The followers staged a sit-in outside the Church of Last Pour, singing rewritten hymns like:
"Take me down to the metaphor cityWhere the words are drunk and the truths ain't pretty—"
Thorne walked out mid-song.
Spillglass ended it himself.
He stood on a milk crate, tears in his eyes.
"I am not your messiah," he declared. "I'm just a man with a tragic backstory and an above-average vocabulary."
Someone yelled, "THAT'S WHAT MAKES YOU HOLY."
He sighed, set his robes on fire, and wandered back to the Communion grounds.
Marrow slapped him with a pamphlet.
"You're banned from community centers now."
Juno handed him a new book. "Boundaries for Dumb Mystics."
Gojo dropped by, sipped his tea, and said, "Heard you started a religion. Amateurs. I started three by accident."
Spillglass flopped onto a bench. "I just wanted to read sad poetry and cry in peace."
Father Asher placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You did. You just dragged forty souls with you."