The Gospel of Dr. Chad Jennings

Chad’s Chiropractic sits between a payday loan place and a liquor store with bulletproof glass. The waiting room is silent, filled with the usual ghosts.

The PowerPoint presentation loops on the mounted TV, flashing the same meaningless phrases. Your Spine is Your Lifeline. Subluxation: The Silent Killer. Pain is Optional—Get Adjusted Today!

A man at the kiosk swipes his card. A green light blinks, verifying his existence.

Lisa doesn’t look up from her phone. She doesn’t need to. She hears the chime, knows he’s here. Knows he’ll sit in the same chair, in the same posture, scrolling the same apps until the moment comes.

“Morning,” she mutters, voice as flat as a Nebraska horizon.

She barely notices the way people sit—fidgeting, rubbing their lower backs, gripping their knees, shifting their weight to avoid the pain that has followed them through every stage of their lives.

They wait.

For a sign. For a miracle.

For the man behind the double doors.

And then, they swing open.

Dr. Chad Jennings strides into the room, his presence like a jolt of static electricity. His eyes are a little too bright, his grin stretched a little too wide. His hands—veined and twitching—have cracked a thousand necks, pulled a thousand spines back into some semblance of alignment.

He dresses like a rockstar in the wrong decade—tight black jeans, a button-down barely clinging to professionalism, hair in a perfect mess that looks like it belongs on an album cover instead of a doctor’s license.

And God, the energy in him. It rolls off his skin like radio waves.

“What’s up, party people?”

His voice booms, bouncing off the beige walls, the acoustic tiles, the rows of slumped bodies.

No one looks up.

Lisa barely flinches, chewing her gum, scrolling past videos of pancake art tutorials.

But Chad doesn’t need a response. He is here. He is on.

“Eric! Come get your power turned on at Table One!”

Eric moves like a man bound by invisible chains—stiff, uncertain, wincing with every step. But he obeys. They all do.

The doors swing shut behind them.

And the waiting room returns to its silent ritual.

A minute later, the sound begins—the sharp pop of a neck adjustment, the heavy breath of someone who isn’t sure if they feel better or just looser.

Another voice crackles through the speakers.

“Daniel! Come get your power turned on at Table Two!”

One by one, they go back, moving through the same script.

And still, no one speaks.

Still, the PowerPoint loops.

Still, the kiosk screen waits for the next name, the next green flash of validation.

And outside, the city goes on, never realizing that a prophet is working miracles in a strip mall, that the broken are coming to be healed.

The door opens.

Lisa pokes her head in, snapping her gum. “You got a walk-in.”

The world tilts slightly.

He never takes walk-ins.

Walk-ins are chaos. Walk-ins are unfaithful.

The people who come to him believe.

They sign up for packages. They commit to the path.

But before he can argue, she steps aside—

And the man walks in.

Not just any man.

Someone different.

Someone who isn’t here to be saved.

The man is old but not frail. His body isn’t twisted with pain like the others. He doesn’t clutch his spine, doesn’t rub his knee, doesn’t wince with every step.

He stands there, still. Watching.

Chad feels something deep in his gut.

Something twisting.

Something wrong.

The energy in the room shifts.

The waiting patients, who have sat in silence for so long, feel it too.

The PowerPoint on the TV keeps looping, but no one looks at it.

The record on the turntable scratches to an end, leaving the room in a thick, airless quiet.

Chad steps forward.

The words leave his mouth before he even thinks about them.

“Do you actually want to be healed?”

A ripple moves through the room.

Lisa stops chewing her gum.

A woman rubs her wrist, suddenly uncertain if it even hurts anymore.

No one has ever heard Chad ask that before.

The man just stands there. Doesn’t move, doesn’t react.

Doesn’t answer.

And suddenly, Chad sees himself in that silence.

He feels his own hands tremble.

Feels his jaw tighten.

Feels the weight of every adjustment, every promise, every body he has cracked and sent away still hurting, still believing, still coming back.

For the first time, Chad feels it—really feels it.

None of these people are getting better.

Because they aren’t trying to get better.

They are just waiting.

Waiting for a miracle. Waiting for permission.

Waiting for him to tell them it’s okay to stop hurting.

The man meets Chad’s eyes.

Something unspoken passes between them.

Then, slowly, the man lowers himself into the chair near the door.

Waiting.

Not for an adjustment.

For the answer.

For the sermon.

And Chad realizes—

This isn’t just for the man.

This isn’t just for the patients.

This is for him.

Chad takes a deep breath, rolls his shoulders back, and wipes the sweat from his brow.

His voice is steady when he speaks.

“Alright, listen up.”

"You ever seen a dog that’s been kicked too many times?"

Chad’s voice cuts through the room, sharp and clear.

A man in the back shifts in his chair. A woman near the door stops rubbing her wrist.

Chad steps forward, voice calm but relentless.

“It flinches at shadows. A ghost hand reaches, and the dog braces. But the kick never comes.

Still, the dog’s body doesn’t know that. It clenches, it stiffens, it holds onto the pain like a prize.

And then one day, it can’t even run anymore, even though the world ain’t kicking it no more.

That’s you.

That’s all of us.

Holding onto old pain, waiting for kicks that ain’t coming, locking our own damn bodies into suffering.”

A cough. A throat clearing. Someone crosses their arms.

Chad presses forward.

“You ever see a kid fall off a bike? They scrape their knee, they cry, and then five minutes later, they’re off running again. No limp, no hesitation, no ice packs.

Why?

Because they forgot to keep hurting.

Their brain moved on. No fear, no pain.

But an adult falls? Oh, we remember.

We start guarding. We start limping even when we don’t need to. We start expecting the pain, so it stays. It clings.

And here’s the wild part—

The pain ain’t just in your body. It’s in your mind, and your mind hates looking at its own reflection.

So what does it do? It throws you pain like a magician’s trick—‘Look over here! Your back! Your neck! Your wrist! Oh no, your genetics are bad! Oh no, your posture is bad!’—and the whole time, the real problem is buried under the stage.

You don’t need fixing.

You need to stop limping.”

The room tightens. Feels small, locked in.

Chad feels his pulse in his throat, but he isn’t stopping now.

“You ever notice how it don’t hurt when you’re laughing?

When you’re dancing?

When you’re busy?

But you sit down, all quiet and still, and suddenly—oh no, here it is again.

It’s not your body breaking.

It’s your mind looking for an exit.”

He takes another step forward, scanning the room.

People are still. Listening.

“You are holding onto something.

Something you don’t wanna look at.

Something that burned a hole in you, but you covered it up with pain instead.

And now it’s taken root, pretending to be part of you.

But pain don’t belong to you.

Not anymore.

Let it go.”

Silence.

No phone screens glow.

No one shifts in their seats.

The truth sits between their ribs, warm and unfamiliar.

Chad breathes in. Grins. And then—

“What’s up, party people?”
The silence sits heavy.

No one moves.

Chad can feel it—the shift.

Not in them. In him.

His hands have stopped shaking.

For the first time in as long as he can remember, the static in his head is quiet.

And then the man—the walk-in—stands up.

He doesn’t wince. Doesn’t roll his shoulders like they ache. Doesn’t even rub his back.

He just looks at Chad.

Long and slow, like he’s reading something invisible on his skin.

"You get it now, don’t you?"

Chad’s pulse slams against his throat.

He isn’t used to people talking to him.

Not like that.

He forces a grin. "Get what, brother?"

The man takes a step forward.

"You always knew this, but you couldn’t say it."

Another step.

"You built a whole life pretending you were the miracle."

Another step.

"But the miracle was always them."

Chad opens his mouth—then shuts it.

Because he knows.

Oh, fuck. He knows.

This is it.

The moment.

The final crack, the last vertebra slipping into place.

The alignment of truth.

The man smiles—soft, sad.

Then, without another word, he turns and walks out the door.

No adjustment.

No healing.

No goodbyes.

Just gone.

And that’s when it hits.

Like a freight train.

Like a bone snapping back into place.

Like something dead inside him clawing its way to the surface.

It was never real.

It was never real.

IT WAS NEVER FUCKING REAL.

He feels it—physically feels it—the moment his body lets go.

His shoulders drop.

His jaw unclenches.

His hands, the hands that once made him feel god-like, the hands that cracked a thousand spines—they don’t belong to him anymore.

Because he wasn’t healing them.

They were healing themselves.

He was never the power.

He was never the miracle.

They could have walked out at any time.

They could have healed at any time.

They just needed someone to let them.

And now—

So does he.

Chad’s knees hit the floor.

Not in pain. Not in surrender.

But in relief.

Lisa screams. Someone gasps.

Because Chad is laughing.

Laughing like he’s just crawled out of his own grave.

The patients sit frozen.

The PowerPoint keeps looping.

The waiting room kiosk flashes its green light.

But Chad doesn’t see it anymore.

Because for the first time in his life—

He is free.