by Marc Barnes
nerve failed him.
"Upstairs." he muttered, turning red.
"Alone?"
Isaac burst into tears. "No." he whimpered.
"No?"
"No."
The priest regarded Isaac as if he were an unpleasant smell under his nostrils.
Isaac eyes widened. The priest closed his own and controlled himself. When they opened, he was kind again.
"Son, do you know the story of Adam and Eve?"
Isaac hiccupped. "Yes."
"Do you know what Adam was doing while Eve talked with the serpent?"
He shook his head miserably. "No."
The priest nodded his chubby head, understanding. "Not many people do. They think Eve called him over after she'd bitten the apple and doomed the world. In actual fact, he was standing by, letting it happen."
Isaac stopped crying.
"He was a coward. One damn job, to guard the garden, and he failed."
Isaac breathed shakily, sniffing a thread of mucus that had started to drip out of his nose.
The priest brought his face dangerously close. He held himself there, looking deep into Isaac's eyes until he saw whatever it was he was looking for. Then he smiled.
"Off you go, son."
Isaac nodded, and picked up a small lamp from a table by the door.
The ice-cream man had removed his clothes, and Miriam was regretting her decision, looking anywhere but at the alien body before her. Was a baby worth it? He saw the look of fear in her eyes and approached the bed quickly, pressing his face to hers so she could see the shine of grease on his pale skin.
"Look, it's now or never sweet-pea, yes certainly."
"I don't-"
"You don't what?" he cut in, squinting at her.
Miriam shook in indecision. The man began to remove her shirt. His breath was awful, sour and dead.
"I think I will help you help yourself, yes," he whispered, evilly. Then the lamp shattered over his head and he fell to the side, revealing Isaac, who was panting heavily and looking - she couldn't help but notice - awfully pleased with himself.
"Isaac, I-"
"No." he said, pointing to the naked figure lying prostrate on the carpet.
"I'm sorry. I wanted-"
Then a priest walked cautiously, almost absentmindedly into the room. Miriam froze, turning white as a lily. The priest regarded her calmly, fingering a St. Michael medal that lay on his pudgy chest. Something resembling a smile danced in the cleric's eyes. Miriam tried to hold his gaze but broke, suddenly a schoolgirl again. She began to cry hysterically.
"Father, help!" she sobbed, half sliding, half falling off the bed into a lump at his feet. "I promised the devil anything if he would give me a child. This is what he sent me! I'm sorry, I didn't think it would work -" she was overtaken by tears.
The priest simply giggled.
"You promised the devil?" he asked, raising a set of caterpillar eyebrows. He began to laugh outright.
Miriam, who had been expecting a reprimand, and was feeling completely ashamed, sniffed in confusion. Isaac looked with annoyance at the priest.
The priest calmed himself and kicked the naked man over in disgust. "This isn't the devil, my daughter. This is Samuel Dechante."
"You know him?" Isaac asked, moving towards his wife.
"Of course. He was an altar boy a couple years ago, until he had an accident with a weed-whacker and got," he paused, looking around the room for a word, "grumpy with the Church."
"Weed-whacker?" Isaac repeated, only half-listening, gazing with new eyes at his bride.
The priest sighed, knelt down, and with a grimace grabbed the man's scrotum. It was scarred and empty. "No balls."
"Gross." Miriam said.
"And no babies." the priest grunted as he stood up, glaring pointedly at Miriam.
"But my prayer-"
The priest beheld her, in a stare that seemed to have looked upon every human emotion, sin and virtue, and seen through them all.
"Oh my daughter," he said, shaking an age-old head. "Do you not know that the devil hates you? Yes, he has hated you since the day you were born. The Decrepit Old Ass wouldn't give you a gift if you begged him on an altar of blood, at the blackest of Black Masses, at the very gates of hell."
He started to leave, snorting over some bottled joke.
"But the baby-" Isaac cried out, stepping towards the door. But the priest kept walking, calling over his shoulder as he clumped heavily down the stairs.
"A child will come when you learn what a child is. Is it a gift you give yourself? Is it a gift you give your wife? Or do you not know the scripture that instructs you even now, to become one flesh? One, kicking, crying, shitting flesh, that will beg for food and love until you die?"
Then he was gone.
Isaac stepped over the face and embraced his wife, pushing her into him from the small of her back, holding her as they had never learned to do.