Numinous

Numinous- having a strong spiritual or religious quality

Ex: Fall has begun, you know what that means! The time has come for those amongst us with repressed psychological trauma from their upbringing to proclaim that they are “Wicken” and that their fascination with all things malevolent and depressing stems from some numinous source, and not from an uncle with a penchant for a game of Twister in a sweaty basement on a board he just happened to spill olive oil all over right before game time.

The moon is a wet ball of fresh mozzarella. It casts a fluorescent glow over the rail thin woman in a black dress fashioned from the same duct tape that acts as a window on the passenger side of the tuna can Subaru that brings her to either the jewel shop, the tattoo parlor, or the medium, depending on the fingertip sensations she receives from her amethyst prophecy sphere. She is hunched over on the front stoop of her apartment building clutching an orange carving tool. You can hear the faint chorus of Charli XCX’s “Apple” through the cracks in the front door as she jostles the tool into the milky white pumpkin. With the deft skill of a butch Smurfette wielding a hand saw, she etches a design into the tough rind of the excavated spook squash.

“What is that meant to be?” asks the polite blue-collar neighbor with the plumbing truck (Rick’s Poo Purveyors: “Show me that shit! Your poop, my paycheck!”), who doesn’t see much of the woman.

“It’s the spirit of Ruth Bader Ginsburg possessing the body of an unfairly born infant that would have been terminated in a state where that sort of thing is legal. It’s meant to be ironic. Like, maybe now one of these poor infants condemned to life by backwards Christian Nationalist laws will grow up to be a champion of women’s reproductive rights in the future, dismantling the very system that birthed her.”

“Oh. I just made a Lightning McQueen design for my boys. They’re really into Cars right now.” replies the neighbor timidly as he takes a few steps back from the poison-tongued social justice serpent woman. He misses his former neighbor Terry who he could josh around with about their respective fantasy football team performances and who they were trying to snipe off of the waiver wire before the upcoming week’s slate of games. They would have discussed Stefon Diggs’ ceiling now that Nico Collins has emerged as the No. 1 wideout on the Texans. But no, there would be none of that now. This woman was a devil. She was the pumpernickel to Terry’s wonder bread. A dark cloud hanging over their block of brick townhomes in downtown Cleveland. And for that reason, she would have to go. The elder spokesmen of the community would argue the semantics over a basket of chicken wings later that evening. They would settle it NFL style, with a coin flip. Heads, she drowns. Tails, she burns.