MADNESS AND LOVE MIXED: PART 3-Jonah: Bipolar Fisherman, Reluctant Marathon Runner, Accidental Sage of Inner Fishing
The first set of this series is available Madness and Love Mixed: Part 2 — The Holy Fools.
Do not miss the third eye shaped zit on my face between my eyebrows for authenticity !
The scene begins unusually this time.
The sun is low, not fully risen.
The Starbucks is uncharacteristically empty for a Monday morning.
We check our Apple Watch.
7 a.m. EST.
Whatever.
The café is already dressed for another chapter of the late-night talk show that somehow always begins early morning. We do not even bat an eyelash anymore. Absurdity rarely announces itself; it simply sits down beside us and asks if we’re drinking that.
We settle into the nearest tan leather chair — the one Star always remembers to preheat. Perhaps the fact that she is in fact us makes it easier for her to anticipate our narrator-needs. Who knows.
We wait, but not for long.
We still hope to get a little more work done on the serious business of sleeping.
“Dust—”
That unmistakable voice. Masculine in timbre, deep and reverberating, yet somehow feathered with motherly tenderness as she rests it upon our shoulder. How could the others not see She — We — are Feminine?
We turn to see her standing close. So close that little motes of celestial Star-Dust drift from her hair like eldritch dandruff, but way more majestic. Typical Star: making even the shameful things seem cool. We get it. She is us in heaven, but the “us” here does not always understand.
She is wearing her VERY fuzzy, shag-carpet, triple-XL forest-green hoodie. Hood up. Prada glasses framing silver hair and cosmically glowing eyes like the grim reaper’s mother at a furry convention.
“Same jeans again, Star?”
We sigh, already knowing we are wearing the same pair. Unwashed. To preserve the fabric, obviously.
“Why just you and me today? Won’t most readers think us properly mad if we don’t at least introduce a few more voices for the silliness?” we ask. Star always knows things we do not.
“I came because this next guest is special.”
She smiles — the pained, tender smile reserved for difficult topics.
“Jonah. He’s… still not completely okay. Even after eternity he remains jumpy and flighty. I thought I should say something.” She shrugs our massive shoulders, waiting for us to respond.
We pinch the bridge of our nose after removing our glasses, sipping the brew we somehow manifested through absent-minded thought. The hot liquid kisses our tongue, grounding us to not accidentally bleed into who we will become.
“Star… control him as best you can. That’s literally all we can ask. If he’s anything like us now—”
We gesture vaguely at ourselves from head to toe.
“This side of heaven, pre-you… we get it. We are mad. As the world will soon learn. Bring the next Holy Fool.”
Star walks to the far-right window seat and concentrates. In a blink she removes every customer except a single table of young girls giggling over bagels and sugary drinks. She cannot bring herself to cut even imaginary joy short. Soft as usual.
Then she sits.
And Jonah appears.
He looks bewildered, perched in the chair —
wait… it was tan before, right?
Now it’s white.
Bleached.
Divine bleach, perhaps?
He turns his head jerkily — left, right — like a squirrel considering whether to cross the road, already halfway across. But what truly shocks us is that he is white.
Not “Caucasian” white.
Not “goth recluse avoiding sunlight” white.
His skin, hair, eyes, nails, clothes — everything — gleams with a white so pure we watch it begin to leach the color from Star’s favorite Starbucks.
Star approaches gently, placing her hand on Jonah’s shoulder as though approaching a skittish animal.
“Jonah, sweetie… it’s okay. You’re okay. No need to sanctify my little bit of heaven on earth, alright hun?”
Jonah locks eyes with her.
The tension eases.
The manic shine dims.
He nods.
“Jonah,” Star continues, withdrawing her hand slowly. “I’m going to speak to you the way I’d want to be spoken to. Is that alright?”
“Thanks, Star,” he stammers, flinching at a stray beam of morning light.
“Think nothing of it.”
She waves a hand like a seasoned prophetess who has also done customer service.
“So, why did you run? Not for me — I know why. But the readers won’t make heads or tails if we don’t set the stage.”
Jonah shrugs — a movement bordering on seismic.
“I didn’t want to do it! Ninevites? Those guys?”
He almost spits, then remembers himself, looking over his shoulder with another shiver.
“I told myself I wasn’t ‘running.’ I was… curating a very long scenic route. A… detour.”
He glances at Star, seeking absolution.
“Hun,” Star says flatly, ditching her earlier gentleness entirely, “stop deluding yourself. You ran. Your hatred for the Ninevites blinded you to Love. Admit it. After seeing them… aren’t you glad you went?”
( Narrator note — Did she just create a false emotional stage to raise the stakes instantly using reverse logic? Classic Star. )
Jonah’s bleached eyes flare, then soften.
“Yes… I love those bastards. I didn’t at first. But the fishermen? They tried to stop me from throwing myself overboard. They showed more love to me as pagans than I showed them boarding that ship. I drowned my conscience with wine and nearly killed families because I was hard of heart.”
He rubs a parchment-white hand over his barren scalp.
“I don’t have to be happy about it,” he barks at the ceiling — as if addressing God directly.
Then he flinches.
Mercy hits him like a lash of light.
Star leans in.
“How does it feel to finally be free of the bipolar?”
Jonah jerks — clearly mid-conversation with Someone Else.
“FREE? Star — I’m not free of squat. I am manically in love with Him for eternity. Bipolar doesn’t exist in heaven because we never come down. We go higher and deeper into Him forever.”
He sighs — ecstasy shining.
“It feels like rest, Star. Simple. In heaven, we lay burdens down and just… exist. Replenish in the Source. There is room for fools like us. Broken-blasted prophets.”
Star grins mischievously.
“So Jonah — what’s with the white? And how does it feel being the first fisherman in history to use yourself as both chum and bait?”
We nearly spew our Venti Blonde Roast across the keyboard.
Jonah explodes.
“WHITE, Star?! Fisherman?! CHUMMING myself!?”
He stands — even his sandals are white. Is that… celestial toe jam?
“You cannot imagine the things I saw inside that swimming sushi roll! BLEACHED!”
He gags.
“The SMELL—”
He winces.
“And the mushrooms. I may or may not have taken too many that night. Hence, passed out in a hurricane. I missed His warnings entirely.”
He drops back into the chair.
“The white is an outward display of my inward terror at missing another sign. The twitching… the scanning… it’s me watching Him without blinking, like a marathon gamer hopped up on energy drinks playing Super Smash Brothers.”
He exhales.
“The white is the result of ten epochs of training condensed into three days inside a fish. A reminder never to go ‘fishing’ with myself again. And — like your Beloved tattoo — a reminder that He is with us. Among us. Even in the fish.”
The scene granulates —
as dreams do.
As visions must.
As madness and holiness always dissolve when too much truth is spoken at once.
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Eiri Waters