by Poppet
I'm too broken from the shock, too weak to move. I hurt, as if my organs are withering along with my ability to smile.
“Want one?” he purrs, his baritone oddly cheerful in the endless silence.
“Mmm,” I nod, too despondent to argue.
I'm just ... grateful.
Propping the filter between my lips, he brings the flame to the tip, letting me billow dreary clouds of pollution, leaving me to stare at the diaphanous swirls of gloom when they tendril into the dark corners.
His exhalation is loud. Loud as the monster under the bed when he finds a dildo, hoping it's a shell for a rocket launcher to shoot mommy and daddy, so sweet Serena will be alone in his nightmare with him.
It's lonely being a monster.
Wow, that was some profound insight right there.
The church candle lights and the click of the button releasing pulls my focus back to Preacher John.
“Why do you smoke?” I ask, my throat so dry it's burning.
“It's penance. I'm trying to burn out my weakness.”
Yeah, right. You are so psycho dude.
Leaning against the wall with his legs extended in front of him, hooking the ankles, he is über comfortable, watching me with those endless brown eyes.
His eyes are so gentle and imploring. When he stares the urge to kiss the monster wipes my logic clean off the slate. He appeals to me on every level. He's wickedly attractive. If he wasn't such a bipolar masochist I'd have crawled over hot coals for him.
I clearly need therapy.
The nicotine replaces a smidgen of fire back in my heart, enough for me to brave the ache and sit up.
“You thirsty?” he asks, his tone soft, as if we've been living in a dark cell together for eternity.
He makes it intimate and normal, when it's anything but.
Nodding, I wonder if I dare request coffee.
Smiling, the candlelight making his face all angles and a chin with a stubborn cleft, veins catching the light, mapping a physique that scares the shit out of me, he sticks his free hand in a red bucket, like some kinda lucky packet for sadists.
“I have something for you,” he croons, pulling out a plump yellow peach, offering it to me by extending his arm, making me lean close to take it.
I half expect him to pull a fast one when I seize it, but he doesn't, he just relaxes back, docile and mellow.... and naked... evening the playing field.
Tracing the soft curve of the fruit, I hold it possessively, waiting to finish my smoke before savoring it.
“You are like that peach,” he mutters, staring ahead, drawing idly on his filter, holding the nib between pinched fingers the way druggies do with a joint.
“Is that a compliment?” I ask, almost smiling at how dang bizarre this is.
“Soft, perfect, unblemished. Tempting because you smell sweet and you feel juicy, and when given a squeeze you bruise, your skin bleeds, ruining perfection. You were created perfect but when you are picked it's because you are feeding a hunger. A hunger mankind can't control. And once they've eaten that soft flesh, it's mutilated, it will never be the same, it is ruined, amputated by the emaciation driving those who feast on soft plump food, because they are thirsty. Those violators of innocence.”
Here we go. I'm a captive audience, what am I gonna do? He can preach all he wants, and I'm still going to eat my peach.
Snapping his focus back on me, he reaches out, holding my leg, “When you are broken by letting sinners feast on your flesh, it leaves you defective. The fruit begins to rot, becoming a haven for maggots, and that is why you require the salve. I am the salve in salvation, Julie. I want to make you whole and pure again. You were unblemished once, and you can be again.”
In his own crazy way he's a hopeless romantic.
He makes me want to smile, and be reckless. Still holding my peach, I aim my hand at him in half offer, “Would you like to eat it with me? I don't mind sharing.”
“You don't know what you're saying, Julie. I think you're missing the point here.”
“I'm offering you half of my peach.”
“Put your cigarette out.” His tone has changed, it's stern, menacing, gruff.
Turmoil twists my intestines into a perfect blood knot, but I do as he orders, stabbing it out in the empty cup he holds out my way.
“Your soul is like the ash of your cigarette, burned up, insubstantial, until you let God resurrect you. His fire may burn, but it doesn't consume.”
“I'm a sinner John. I'm happy being a sinner. I don't hurt anyone, or judge them, or force them to do the things I like to do. There's enough room on this planet for all of us to live in harmony.”
“Sample your peach,” he commands.
His weird turnabout is stressing me out, so I comply, biting into the sweet fruit, juice running down my chin.
Wow, this is yum! It's like eating sunshine and summer while holed up in the hibernation mausoleum.
“It's morning,” he comments, to no one in particular, making a statement.
I just watch him exhaling the last lungful of his smoke, studying his new hairdo. “Short hair suits you,” I mumble around my second bite.
“Worshipping God suits you,” he snaps, crawling over me now that his cigarette is extinguished.
“Meaning?” I whisper, suddenly too tense to eat.
“The body is the temple, and yours requires morning mass.”
“Mass?”
Holding my knees, his grip biting, he says low and hostile, “I'm going to squeeze all the juice out of this peach so I can refill it with God's spirit.”
Oh god!
The peal of a gun's report exploding in close quarters is so loud that it could have been from a shotgun.
His head snaps back as if he's been struck. In a complete one-eighty the huge mofo curls up on my legs, short hair tickling my chest, and he sobs as if someone just stole his Ferrari.
I heard the announcement. I guess the Angel of Chaos is running wild in the hallways.
Is he a prisoner now too? What the fuck is going on out there? Hot tears run onto my tummy, and this feels too intense and personal; it's downright fucking weird.
He keeps making me think of that line: Jesus wept.
Two words, that break your heart. It makes me want to hold him, when really I should be sticking my fingernails in his eyes and biting anything close enough to cause agony.
He's crying for the people out there living their day of judgment.
“John? Why are you in here?” I whisper, leaning down to his ear.
“Because I will die to save your soul. You are the one I have to save. I'm here, because James has to go through me to reach you.”
“Why are you crying?” I whisper, panic coming on strong.
“Because they'll all die if they don't repent. All of them. It's like opening the gate, scattering the sheep, and watching hunters skin your flock because they are heathen and lawless. I've taken care of each and every one of you, but you hate me for it. You all hate the son of god. God told me you're all going to die.”
Sitting up, tears staining his way too smooth cheeks, he shouts in my face, “YOU WILL DIE! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M TRYING TO SAVE YOU!”
My schizophrenic jailer shakes me so hard I lose my peach to the grit on the floor, my face numbing with the endless slaps his strength delivers with a flat palm.
“Repent! Confess! Atone!”
The blood is surging through my head, throbbing my temples, and I sound like I've had a year's supply of Novocain when I hiss through bloodied spittle, “Violence never convinced a soul. It's savage, primal, and deficient.”
“Fear God, Julie! For Christ's sake fear him! He will destroy you!”
“Let him. At this rate you'll beat him to that finish line.”
“You defiant, stupid, bitch!” shouts in my face, his rage distorting his features.
“Kill me, John. Your hands are already covered in sin, why stop now? Do it. Show your god how fucking mighty you are. Ho
w fucking pathetic you are that you have to beat women to get a boner.”
The next gunshot is outside the door, and it flings wide, spilling halogen light onto the floor.
The barrel of a Winchester aims at me and John.
Oh god! He's going to kill John! I need John to kill me, I can't stay in this cesspit with a new sadistic overlord.
John's twisted, staring behind him at the doorway, and I just react when that bronze handle drops, reloading. Clamping both arms around his head, I throw my weight left, making him roll with me, burrowing into his neck, whispering, “Don't move.”
If he's going to shoot John, at least I'll die too.
Diabolical laughter echoes hollowly inside my cell, the door slamming shut with such a brutal smash that I pee a little.
The lock spins, engaging cylinders, and I'm left feeling stupid and foolish. Two big hands clamp my head, forcing me up, his chest rumbling with laughter, “I knew you were the one. You were willing to sacrifice yourself to save His own. Your satan has left you.”
•
James:
John nearly pissed his potty there. Hahaha! Stupid fuck.
Strolling up the stairs with my iPhone to my ear, I grin when Simon answers.
“You busy sweet-pea?” I tease him.
“James, fuck off.”
“I love it when you talk dirty to me, do it again, mean it this time.”
“What do you want, James?”
“Your big heavy python. Three, if you can spare them.”
He moves about, a door closing, silence reaching me down the line. “When?”
“Ten minutes?” I ask, feeling hopeful.
“You are such an ignorant shit. They don't eat unless they're hungry, and they're heavier than fully armed tanks. You come help me load them up and you can have them for the night.”
Laughing, I smooch the phone, teasing Simon, “When I get there I'm french kissing you to Paris big boy.”
“Try that and you'll be limping around with half a dick for the rest of your days.”
“I love you too baby, see you in your sexy black outfit when I get there. You have five minutes to shave your legs and brush your teeth.”
“James, I am warning you, do-not-fuck-with-me!”
“I ain't gonna fuck you sugar, just play with your python until it bites.”
“You are a sick fuck. Victor may have enjoyed your twisted sense of humor, but I'm warning you, try that shit with me and I'll cut your tongue right down the middle so you can kiss my python good and proper.”
Locking the satanarium door, striding to my truck, I press the keyfob, opening the door and hopping in, saying in my seduce-the-sinner voice, “I'm starting the engine, your time is running out baby.”
Disconnecting, I can't wait to get there and collect those vehicles of satan. John wants to purge his sinners, well he doesn't hold a candle to me.
The Angel of Chaos is in the house, and I am sending all of them back to their lord in the underworld.
•
66: Evan:
I like to read books in order, but this thing skips around like a meth head playing hop scotch. I’m a fast reader, too, but damn, I can’t even understand half this shit. The shit I do is so fucked, Stephen King would have nightmares after reading it.
Who made this up anyhow? And who the hell turned it into a religion? Men to rule women and make some money? It doesn’t even make sense. Even back then there had to be some kind of honest work they coulda found: farming, herding sheep and goats, that shit. Who woke up and said “Hells, yeah, I want to be a prophet when I grow up”? Once the king, or the people, or both didn’t like what you had to say, they offed you anyway.
Look at this David guy. Supposed to be some kinda hero, but from what I read, he took women that didn’t belong to him, killed their husbands, had a bunch of wives. Sounds like the guy the FBI killed up on Ruby Ridge. Nobody told that guy he was a man after god’s own heart.
The report of a gun startles me, and I almost drop the ‘good book.’ That won’t do for anyone watchin’ the cameras, and John’s ugly replacement seemed to be okay with me since I was readin’ it. That little decision may have saved my ass.
I grip it tighter, and bow my head like I’ve seen people do when they’re supposed to be prayin’, but really I’m listening and waiting.
That fucker, or anybody else, comes through that door right now, I am going to fuck them up. If I’m goin’ down now, I’m takin’ one of the fuckers with me.
Another shot sounds, just a few cells down.
Fuck.
I tense my legs, readying for action, but then I hear a door clang shut, laughter, and then. . .
Nothing.
The walls seem to hold their breath with me, but nothing.
No echoing footsteps.
No shouts of praise.
No preaching.
I wonder if John is dead. In a way, I hope so. In another, as loony as he is, he beats the hell outta this crazy new fuck.
“Praise Jesus!” I say, just loud enough for the hidden cameras to hear, and open the bible again.
I can’t focus on the words. My mind keeps focusing on one thing. I gotta find a fucking way out of here.
~ Chapter 15 ~
We must not put the Lord to the test, as some of them did
– they were killed by snakes.
~ 1 Corinthians 10:9
18: Sarah:
A soft whimper is all I can manage. The agony of every breath is a thousand eternities of torment.
Oh god I hurt. It's excruciating.
Looking down, my tears distort the dust, dripping, every beat of my heart pours a pain so severe into my body that it feels like I have severed and exposed nerves. Like toothache, everywhere, radiating agony in blinding pulses, pounding torture in an endless surge of incinerating wrath.
Across my belly runs a slowly scabbing strip of flesh nearly three inches wide. I know it goes all the way around not because I can see it, but because I can feel it. I sob, but my weeping is acidic: there is so little fluid left in my ruined body.
Why? Is this all for Jesus? He loved sinners, he didn't disfigure them. Right?
I took such pride in my flat belly; my toned form. I went to the gym, stayed in shape. The clientele liked it. I took care of the temple. No matter what he said, I took care of it.
Now it’s annihilated. The tattoo I got with my sister on her eighteenth birthday, gone. We spent our childhood in the bowels of hell, knowing he'd be coming to one of us in the wee hours. The day he beat me so I'd miscarry, I wanted to die. God, I begged him. I prayed, so hard. No one heard, no one answered. No one listened. The only angels now are this crowd, the fallen and fucked up.
Even if I get out of this, I will be mutilated for life. No man will ever desire me again.
The belt of truth, as he called it, will leave a vicious scar.
I’ll never be able to forget. I wish hypontherapy worked, I wish someone could erase every memory I have of abuse, of trauma, of the hole in my heart where I crave love. I just wanted to find a good man, someone who holds me inside his strength instead of using it to rape me, to beat me, to flush his sin out in my first trimester through kicks and punches, until I hemorrhaged.
I cannot get comfortable. I can’t lie down because a part of me always touches the rough mattress, and it sears. I cannot sit, or bend at the middle, because it pinches and bend the raw belt circling my torso.
Stinging. Burning. Depleted. Wrecked.
I can only stand. Even leaning against the wall brings pain.
My body holds torment for me that I cannot escape.
The nervous system can be seductive and delightful, and it's also the vehicle of agony so severe it can make you insane. I've experienced both.
He’s coming back.
He told me he’s coming back to sanctify me.
Maybe he’ll kill me.
Please, God if you are up there, let him kill me.
I don’t wa
nt to live, ruined like this.
I hope sanctification and killing are the same thing, because I’m not sure I can take any more of this. I just want to be put out of my misery.
•
Preacher John:
Pressing a jubilant kiss on Julie's plump lips, I push her off me, the lacerations in my skin objecting to the fresh round of abuse.
“I need to check on my flock. I gave James authority, but like some watchers they don't all stay within their proper limitation. I must go and speak to God.”
“Speak to him here. Show me how it's done,” she says, sitting up and glaring at me.
“He speaks through us, Julie. He doesn't speak to women. And I have a direct line.”
Bending, planting a quick kiss on her head, I pick up the candle and the bucket, reaching back and giving her another cigarette, letting her light it from the candle. She has been good, I can reward her. Oh how I'm going to reward her with the riches of heaven.
Dropping manna on her mattress, with a flagon of water, I stride to the door, spinning the lock, telling her, “The lights should be on by now. You'll have illumination in a few minutes.”
Opening the door, I look back at her, warning, “And if you use that cigarette to hurt yourself, I will burn every inch of you. Are we clear?”
“Just go,” she says, deadpan, expressionless.
I know that look, I've watched it on her screen. It's her tough act because she wants to cry.
Glory be, she truly is delivered.
Closing and locking her door, I face my asylum. Alarmed, I speed down the passage, glancing in the doors left open. It's carnage out here. Taking the stairs two at a time, ignoring the objections of my wounded body, I stop dead at the top of the ground floor.
The door to 59 is open, he hangs by his heels, his gut cut open, spilling intestines to the floor, the satan of greed cut out.
58: Blood and optic fluid has congealed on the sinner's face; the blades in his eyes must have reached his brain. He is unmoving, the satan of coveting his neighbor's wife cut out.
Who's going to clean this mess up?
