NYC Midnight 2025 Round 2: "With My Blessing"

This is my second post about the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 2025, so if you haven't read the first one yet, then I recommend you do that before reading this one. You can find it here: https://www.josiejaffrey.com/post/nyc-midnight-2025-round-1-just-a-game

In the second round, which started in April, the original cohort of over 5,800 writers had been whittled down to just 1,250, participating in 42 groups, with 25 writers per group.

I was in group 31, with the assigned genre of Thriller (vaguely adjacent to what I usually write, at least). But the subject of the story had to be white-collar crime, and it had to feature a character who was a strikebreaker. Both of those things are MILES out of my usual comfort zone. I had only 3 days to write the story, with a maximum length of 2,000 words, which left me very little time to research a subject I'm just not that familiar with, or interested in, honestly.

So, I tapped into my true-crime podcast knowledge, and decided to blend the story into a subject I am interested in: cults. It seemed like the closed environment of a cult meshed really well with the closed environment of unions, and the theme of betrayal that you get with strikebreakers and with former cult members who've decided to leave.

I ended up being really pleasantly surprised by how well the story came out. I think it's fun, and silly, and I hope you'll enjoy it too. White collar crime isn't a subject matter I'll be returning to frequently, but it didn't half build my confidence to know that I can pull out a story from any starting point.

"With My Blessing" placed third in my group, creeping up one place from my position in round 1, and I was absolutely thrilled. I wasn't expecting to get through to the third round at all, but here's the story that got me there!

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With My Blessing

by Josie Jaffrey

Ezekiel blinked and checked the doorbell camera again, but no, he wasn’t seeing things. The bastards really were back, in force this time.

It had to be today, didn’t it? Of all bloody days.

He typed a command into the front desk computer and sent it off on its destructive mission, just as the doorbell rang for a third time. That was all the desktops wiped. There were the tablets in the prayer room, which Ruth was taking care of, and the Initiate laptops that were scattered throughout the Institute of Ethereal Transcendence. Esther and Bathsheba were busy collecting those and taking them to Caleb in the transept, to be reset and then incinerated in the Room of Rebirth. All the records would be destroyed imminently.

They just needed a little more time.

Ezekiel picked up the phone on the front desk and called down to Lazarus in the Confessional. He picked up on the second ring.

‘The time we spoke of has arrived,’ Ezekiel said, speaking quickly. ‘The black box.’

‘Where?’ asked Lazarus.

‘Under the altar. Go now, with my blessing.’

Ezekiel hung up and turned to the door. Everything was covered. He just needed to delay the heathens for five minutes more.

‘Ezekiel!’ came a shout from the Institute’s elaborate front entrance. ‘Open up!’

They’d made it past the gates, then. Ezekiel could see their silhouettes now, crowding beyond the frosted glass that was the last barrier between his Initiates and the outside world. He crossed the hall to open the doors before the oiks smashed their way in.

‘Agent Fowler,’ he said, standing to block the entrance. ‘What brings you to our sanctuary this evening?’

‘Answering your own door now, Zeke?’ Fowler said, pushing past Ezekiel with a gaggle of other agents in his wake. ‘I thought you didn’t dirty your hands with the mundane.’

‘Sundays are a day of rest,’ Ezekiel replied, in a tone of mild reproach. ‘My Initiates are engaged in quiet prayer.’

Keep him talking. Just four more minutes.

‘Really, is that it?’ Fowler said as his goons circled the front desk. ‘I heard your little disciples were on strike.’

Ezekiel forced out a laugh. ‘This is a spiritual commune, not a commercial enterprise, Agent. People don’t go on strike from God.’

They had though, the faithless ingrates. The piles of rubbish surrounding the Institute’s bins, the unwashed bathrooms, and the unscrubbed floors all bore testament to that. He’d offered them enlightenment, bringing meaning into their pathetic, empty little lives, and they’d quibbled over the price.

‘It’s been wiped, sir,’ the goon tapping at the front desk computer said.

‘And there’s nothing here but blank letterhead,’ said another, sifting through the papers on the reception desk.

‘I do hope you have a warrant for that, Agent,’ said Ezekiel.

‘For every electronic device and written document on the property,’ Fowler replied, holding up a few sheets of paper. ‘So why don’t you save us both some time and tell me where you keep your accounts?’

Three and a half minutes.

‘Accounts, Agent?’ Ezekiel blinked innocently.

‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ Fowler said, waving a finger in Ezekiel’s face. ‘You call this place a church—’

‘And so it is, all legal and above board.’

‘—but it’s nothing but a jumped-up Ponzi scheme. Your followers think they’re investing in their “ethereal transcendence”,’ Fowler went on. He used two curled fingers on each hand to mark the quotes in his speech, in the condescending manner of stupid men who think they’re being smart. ‘You promise them wealth in this life and the next, but what you’re really running is a racket. You’re using the seed money your new converts invest to plump the pockets of the rest, then calling it divine providence. Prosperity gospel bullshit. But what happens when you run out of new followers, huh? How are you going to make good on the returns you’ve promised when there’s no more money coming in? You got greedy, Zeke.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ Ezekiel demurred.

Fowler was right, though: his flock was already suspicious. There was going to be a meeting tomorrow, that traitor Isaiah had told him, to discuss the terms of the newer Initiates’ transcendence. Until then, they’d sequestered themselves in the Garden of Reflection, leaving Ezekiel to rely on just a handful of the faithful to weather this taxpayer-funded storm. But that handful was faithful; Ezekiel had made sure of that. His black box was filled with video confessions enough to sink each and every one of them. The Institute’s blasphemy laws would keep the others quiet, strike or no strike, certainly for as long as Ezekiel controlled their money, and in two and a half minutes’ time all evidence of that would be gone too.

Everything was covered.

‘With so many “Initiates”’ – there went Fowler’s fingers again – ‘you must be keeping records. I know you have hidden accounts, and we’re going to find them.’

‘There are no accounts,’ Ezekiel said, pretending confusion as he played for time. ‘I have no dealings with the mundane, as you’ve observed. God rewards the faith of his children directly. I’m just his mouthpiece.’

‘You’re no prophet; you’re a profiteer,’ Fowler spat.

It was child’s play to rile the man; he had the temper of a toddler.

Two minutes.

‘We’re searching the place, top to bottom,’ Fowler said.

‘Be my guest,’ Ezekiel invited him, sweeping one arm towards the west wing of the Institute, which housed the offices and teaching space.

In retrospect, that was a mistake. Perhaps Ezekiel was more panicked than he’d appreciated. The moment the gesture was made, Fowler narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Search the east wing.’

Shit.

‘Gentlemen,’ Ezekiel said urgently, following on behind them at a pace that challenged the ethereal grace of his standard prophet walk. ‘There’s nothing in the east wing except the church and… ancillary rooms. As I mentioned before, Sunday is a day of—’

Fowler slammed open the double doors to the church, startling Lazarus out from behind the altar.

‘Agent, this is a sacred space!’ Ezekiel protested, drawing the agents’ attention just long enough to let Caleb scuttle out of the south transept with the laptops in his arms, heading for the incinerator.

‘That’s as may be,’ Fowler growled, ‘but it’s time to render unto Caesar.’

He strode down the aisle with the other agents at his heels. Ruth, Esther and Bathsheba were in the first row of pews, hands pressed together in prayer. They’d made it, then, which meant the only data left to recover was on the hard drive hidden in the altar, and Lazarus was right there guarding it.

Thank God for Lazarus. Not that Ezekiel truly believed God was real, but in a purely secular sense: thank God. Lazarus was unshakeably reliable, however much shit he took from the others for breaking their little strike. Ezekiel had known he’d get the job done, come what may.

Except the expression on his face right now was not entirely reassuring. His mouth was downturned, his eyebrows raised in a grimace, his shoulders shrugging slightly in a posture that suggested he hadn’t got the hard drive covered after all.

Shitting hell.

Sweeping his arms wide to spread his robes to their best effect, Ezekiel sped his prophet walk into a rapid glide that had him overtaking the agents before they reached the altar. He stood behind it, next to Lazarus, and adopted a benevolent pose.

One more minute for Caleb to get the incinerator cranked up.

‘Gentlemen, please,’ Ezekiel murmured, gesturing at the women in the pews. ‘Can you not see that our Initiates are in deep communion with God?’

‘The box isn’t in the drawer,’ Lazarus whispered in his ear.

‘Then we’re not likely to disturb them, are we?’ Fowler replied to Ezekiel, unsympathetically.

‘And what of religious freedom?’ Ezekiel intoned, surreptitiously feeling under the altar cloth with his bare toes as he spoke. If the bloody thing wasn’t in the drawer then it must have fallen out of the rickety old desk that was standing in for an altar, and ended up on the floor again.

‘Go ahead and practise your religion,’ Fowler replied. ‘We can search around you. Start in the side rooms,’ he added to the other agents. ‘I smell burning.’

‘Incense,’ Ezekiel said nonchalantly, just as his toes closed around his prize.

There the little bugger was. It had got folded up in the drapery at the back corner of the altar cloth, where it pooled on the floor. No wonder Lazarus hadn’t been able to find it.

‘Sir!’ one of the agents shouted from the direction of the south transept. ‘They’re incinerating it all!’

They’d found the Room of Rebirth, then. No matter. If the machines were in the fire, then Caleb had already erased them; burning the hardware was just a precaution.

Just the black box to worry about now.

Ezekiel allowed himself a small smile, then whispered, ‘Under my foot,’ to Lazarus, who crouched down quickly, then scooped the black box into the folds of his robes while Fowler’s back was turned. Just in time, too, because Fowler didn’t run off to salvage the charred scraps of motherboard from the furnace. Instead, he turned back to spend his rage on Ezekiel.

‘It’s a crime to destroy evidence,’ he seethed.

‘Evidence of what, Agent?’ Ezekiel replied. ‘You already know that our Initiates renounce their worldly shackles when they enter this commune. That’s what the Room of Rebirth is for. For so many of them, their shackles are online. Is it any wonder, then, that they burn their computers?’

Fowler’s face was reddening in a way that suggested he knew Ezekiel was going to win this round. 

Poor Agent Fowler. He’d been so close this time.

‘If you’ll excuse us,’ Ezekiel went on, gleefully pressing his advantage, ‘we are neglecting our evening prayers.’

‘We’re not done here,’ Fowler yelled as Ezekiel walked away.

‘By all means, continue your search,’ Ezekiel said as he slipped into the pew across the aisle from the women. Lazarus sat down beside him. ‘You know where to find me when you’re done.’

‘You don’t move from that spot,’ Fowler yelled, pointing at Ezekiel emphatically. With one last, vitriolic glance, he followed his men to the Room of Rebirth.

The moment he was out of sight, Ezekiel bent his head close to Lazarus’s. ‘Empty them all,’ he whispered. ‘Transfer everything to the offshore account, then wipe the drive and throw it in the septic tank. Come back here when you’re done.’

Ezekiel doubted this was the end of the Institute of Ethereal Transcendence – he didn’t credit Fowler with sufficient ingenuity to make it stick – but it didn’t hurt to have an exit plan. Once the transfers were done, if it all went south then he could walk out of here with empty pockets and a full bank account, and never look back.

‘The drive password?’ Lazarus murmured.

‘John 11:35,’ he whispered. ‘Go now, with my blessing.’

When this was all over, Ezekiel was going to have to create some kind of prophet-adjacent role to reward Lazarus. Either that, or dig up enough collateral to ensure his continued fidelity, to the grave and beyond.

Fowler and his goons shut down the furnace. It took hours for it to cool down enough for them to extract and box the charred remnants of the Institute’s digital paper trails. They would find nothing there, Ezekiel was sure, but that wasn’t what was worrying him. In all those hours, as he sat and waited in the pew, growing more and more anxious by the second, Lazarus did not return. When he finally did, it was with the black box in his hand.

‘Got them all,’ Lazarus said. ‘Every single account.’

But he wasn’t talking to Ezekiel. He was talking to Fowler.

‘Good work, Agent Lee.’ Fowler turned to Ezekiel, waved the black box, and grinned.

Lazarus was a sleeper agent.

Jesus wept.