Reddit mentions of Perjure, Book 1: Welcome to the Multiverse

I try to be honest about who I am and where I came from. When people ask about my parents, I usually keep it as vague as they'll allow. But there's always that one friend or date who, sitting across the table from you with a fistful of french fries, will end one of their long, humorless, self-effacing monologues by looking at you and saying, with an inflection in their voice, "Oh, but I've been talking too much haven't I? What about you? What were your parents like?"

I don't lie at this point. My mom says I should, but my mom's just ashamed that it even happened to her. And not even for a good reason. I remember on my fourteenth birthday when she was driving me to the toy store, she said, "Now Chloe, honey, a lot of people might ask where daddy is. And what are you gonna tell them?"

"In hell?"

"No."

"In a lake of fire."

"No!"

"But he is!"

"Yes, but we don't tell people that, do we?"

"Why? Shouldn't you be proud of being part of the second virgin birth ever?"

"No one is proud to be a virgin," she said, looking me in the eye. "No one."

She had me there.

Anyway, in such a situation as someone is seated across from me, waiting silently for me to tell them about my father, I just flat out say he's Satan, and they'll probably meet him someday unless they're really nice. Or lucky. That's when they'll laugh and change the subject, or persist until they come to the conclusion that I'm being difficult, or that my father's actually dead or, worse, the owner of the restaurant we're at.

"Is he watching right now?" a guy once asked, looking around.

"Who?"

"No one," he said. Then he saw a big waiter standing by a wall tapping his foot. "Is that him?"

I identified the worst thing about being Anti-Jesus a long time ago, but the second worst thing will either surprise you or seem obvious, depending on how far you live from the bible belt. See, as Anti-Jesus, I do actually have the ability to speak to divine and demonic beings. So I have sat down and actually chatted with God. I don't bother anymore though, because it usually gets weird fast.

Last time I got on my knees and prayed, I was seventeen, and I was doing it quietly in my bedroom. "Please God, don't let anyone tag me in those pictures from last night. Please God, I swear I'll feed a kitten and pet a homeless person."

"Uh, hello?" said a voice in my head.

"God! Hi!"

"Uhh."

"God, please. Listen."

"Uhh, we're sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Beep."

"But God!"

"Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!"

The number one worst thing about being Satan's daughter is knowing exactly how sinful every person around me has been in their lives. It's usually signified by an aura around them that I can only see when I close my eyes. I go by homeless men and blink for just a split second and get a flash of a blue aura. At my job as a bank teller, I see men with perfect hair, broad shoulders, sharp jaws and thousand-dollar suits walk in. Red aura.

I see these things and wonder what beautiful things this man has done that has led him nonetheless to be sitting in an alleyway on a December night in New York City, or what ugly things this other man has done that led him nonetheless to be pulling into the parking lot in a car that costs more than my house.

Sure the one will soar in heaven, and the other will burn in hell, but is that any justification at the end of the day?

And then there are the cases that break my heart, like this guy I'd had my eye on for months. I first met him outside the back of a convenience store at the edge of town. There was a big gravel lot behind it, and at the furthest corner where some trash had been piled near the wall, a momma cat and her baby kitties were hiding away from the world. I went there once a week to drop off some cat food, thinking I was their sole protector, until one week I went on a different day and found a guy who'd also taken up the job.

When he heard me coming, he stood up straighter and turned to look, slight panic in the tightening of the corners of his mouth.

"Hi," I said. "You too?"

He sighed and then smiled. "Me too."

"I just hate to see a little baby suffer," I said.

He nodded. "I know what you mean."

I refused to close my eyes. Refused to blink. Refused to judge him on anything other than what he presented me with. And every week we met back at that same spot, and we talked a little more, and then we left, until eventually we were talking a lot before and after feeding the cats, and most of the conversation wasn't about cats.

"Hey, you wanna get coffee sometime?" he asked one day as we were walking out of the lot.

"Sure," I said.

"How about right now?"

I smiled. "Sure, I'm not busy at the moment."

"Great. My car's over this way. I gotta stop at my house real quick and then we'll be on our way."

I nodded and stood there a moment. Silence.

He grinned. "What's wrong? Thinking about something?"

I nodded.

He waited.

I stood there, facing him, and finally decided to close my eyes.

And I saw his aura.

"I should've known," I muttered to myself.

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If you enjoyed my writing, I've written a book you may enjoy.

Also, here's another prompt I've done that you might like.

I have a recommendation, though I'm preparing myself for potential downvotes.

Perjure: Welcome to the Multiverse is a scifi story heavily inspired by ASOIAF. The tl;dr explanation is that the Multiverse is not an infinite set of alternate universes, but a void in which infinite separate universes exist. Basically the Multiverse is to a universe as the universe is to a galaxy--some people can travel between them and visit the planets within.

You end up with people from different eras mixing. Half-cyborg people interacting with worlds that are still in the dark ages, or trans-human half-AI intelligences interacting with the equivalent of 21st century people.

There's an organization called the Watchers who try to keep the universes segregated--humans in these universes, non-humans in those universes--and the plot centers around an alien race that is essentially a sentient disease. It spreads through food and water, and when it infects a human body it takes it over and adds it to the hive mind. The Watchers try to wipe this creature out, but the main character needs it alive because it can help him restore his home universe, which was destroyed--the universe Earth existed in.

The story is told over 4 POV's, and there's a lot of political maneuvering, backstabbing, plot-twisting and lore, which is all heavily inspired by book series like ASOIAF and TV shows like House of Cards.

Full disclosure, and the reason I might get downvoted, if anyone reads this at all: I'm the author. Still, this is honestly the story I've been reading and re-reading (editing, working on the sequel) as I await TWOW.