Blood and Blasphemy

by Gerri R. Gray

  “He is still your son, isn't he?”

  Ridiculous. "How the hell do you know about him anyway? Did the Reverend—”

  “It isn’t important how I know about him, Dick.” The old man’s dark eyes tightening slightly. “What is important is what I know about him, and whether you will listen to me.”

  “Pardon me, but what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “We don’t have much time left together to explain. It will be dark soon, and this is a tough place after dark.” His round, balding head twitches to the right. “Come with me. There’s something I’d like you to see.”

  “But—”

  “Come with me, Dick.” He extends his withered hand. “It won’t take long.”

  Lunatic.

  The thought lurches, suddenly like a spasm. Groundskeeper my ass. Mister Cauliflower, or whatever the hell he called himself, the man has to be a prize-winning lunatic. He remembers again those junkies and bums, the ones who had lurked around Eighth back in the day, the ones who Giuliani had loaded into vans and dumped in the Hudson or whatever. This guy, Cauliflower, was clearly one of those... those curbside prophet wackos. The kind who spends their days preaching about anything from pedophile politicians to lizard men from Pluto when they weren’t peddling drugs or rap CDs. The kind who sneak in vicious scams under the cover of bullshit. He finds himself struggling to imagine the chain of events that had such people now haunting historic Massachusetts churchyards, but there is just nothing else that makes sense.

  He thinks: Guy doesn't seem like he has a rap CD.

  “Not interested.” The words come quick like a boxer’s one-two punch. Turns sharply. And then he hears it. Hears the cry of a baby. A baby coming from somewhere deep within those papery birch trees. Somewhere below, he feels the man touch his hand.

  “Come with me,” the old man whispers, “Dick.”

  Those withered hands are soft. Like the way she used to feel.

  * * *

  “Richard!”

  It is raining now. The dark deluge pounds the glass like a hundred stampeding feet as he climbs inside. The leather seats are cold through his wet pants. Through the nickel of turned earth and the rotting stench of the dead leaves the smell of her perfume and the Piña Colada Magic Tree is like the last memory left.

  He feels her eyes.

  “Richard, where the hell have you been?” Her voice is shrill. Jarring and hostile like a badly tuned piano. “You’ve been gone over an hour.”

  He takes slow breaths. Below the idle engine throbs.

  “Are you okay?”

  Outside he hears the crackling of self-pity through the guttural churn of rain. Outside all that is visible is the spire of the old church as a spike against a thick winter sky.

  “What the hell were you doing?”

  In that rain it looks like a wreck. Tossed at the bottom of the sea

  “Richard?” She is prodding him now, light and needling fists on his shoulder. He senses her becoming angry. She always hates when he ignores her. Yet he says nothing, seeing only the church and the blackness beyond the church. The blackness of insect eyes. “Richard! Talk to me for God’s sake! What’s wrong!”

  And his own blackness reflected.

  “Richard... what's...”

  The sound is like a hiccupping. A small plosive of air, shock. Immediately the rain fades quieter. Inside the car it is too dark to see her face, but he sees it nonetheless. It is not her face but the face of a creature, the creature, a fucking monster who murdered their baby. A demon that left him in darkness forever.

  “Richard!” the creature gasps.

  He hears the throat closing as, over his hand, a warmth spills. He takes the blade out and does it again. Over and over, in and out, in and out. He doesn’t stop. Not until Robert’s cries became the dull hiss of the resurging rain and his pinched, nasal breath and there is nothing left but the still.

  THE END

  SISTERHOOD OF THE SALAMANDER

  By Clay McLeod Chapman

  For decades, the nuns have been breeding a specific kind of axolotl called the achoque, found only in Lake Patzcuaro, which they have used to produce a natural cough medicine. The nuns wouldn’t divulge how the cough syrup is made, stating only that the salamanders are a key ingredient. – Mental Floss, 2018

  ​Sister Asís was the first to lick the salamander’s back. All by accident, she confessed. Eventually. Such a flighty child. Always with her head in the clouds. Handling the axolotl de fuego is a sacred act. It must always be done with rubber gloves to protect our skin against its neurotoxic exudations. No part of your bare body shall ever come into contact with that of the salamander. This has been the way of our sisterhood for generations now. But such precautions must have slipped Sister Asís’ mind as she carelessly wiped the sweat from her brow while still gripping a mature axolotl in her hands. The mustard from its flaming mane rubbed across her lips, numbing them in seconds. Inhaling its herbaceous fragrance, the ruddy musk settled into her lungs until it burned to breathe, every last branching bronchiole on fire in her chest.

  Its mustard was so pungent. So piquant. Sister Asís found herself craving a taste. Who amongst us could resist a simple lick? Just the tiniest dash on the tip of her tongue. Surely no one here would fault her for such a minor trifle as this. Not even God would judge her for sampling one of His small wonders. But once she began lapping at the salamander’s skin habitually, shall we say ritualistically, during her tenure tending to the axolotl, there’s no denying Sister Asís experienced something the rest of the vestals never had before.

  Something miraculous.

  “I saw her, Sister Asensio,” she vowed to me on one of my daily visits, checking in on her as she convalesces in her quarters. “Such beauty. Such warmth…”

  Sister Asís is one of our youngest nuns. Just a girl, really. Her calling remains in question amongst the rest of us. Always given to flights of fancy, even before her visions.

  I went ahead and asked her who. “Who was it that you saw, child?”

  “The Virgin,” she beamed, already drifting off to images only her eyes could witness. “I see the Virgin Mary, wrapped in flames…”

  ​The Basilica de Nuestra Senora de la Arpía sits atop one of the highest peaks in the region. The convent was built in the early 1500s from stones dredged up from the local quarry. Those stones were brought back up the mountain. They became our home. Our cloister has stood overlooking Lake Patzcuaro for centuries. Less than a dozen nuns live here now. Though our numbers have dwindled over the generations, each has answered a singular calling.

  ​We are the Sisterhood of the Salamander.

  ​The mural of the Virgin was painted well before I arrived. See the lake. See the salamanders swimming within its blue waters. See the Virgin Mary walking along its surface, hands held out at her sides, her flaming blue fingers pointing to the heavens above, the water below. I do not know who painted this vision, but it is a vision—a dream—we sisters have all had at some point in our life. This vision, this dream, was our calling. Once we had this dream, we knew where our paths led. The dream brought us here. To this basilica. To the salamanders.

  ​Our convent’s primary congregant is the axolotl de fuego. You will not find pews here, but aquariums. Dozens of murky tanks line the crumbling plaster walls, stacked one on top of another, each filled with water taken from the lake below and carried back up the mountain by the bucketful. We must treat the water first. Purge it of its pollutants.

  For we house the last of the fire salamander.

  Only four hundred axolotl de fuego remain in existence. Our salamanders are the last of their kind. We tend to them, nurture them, and in return they give us their mustard. Samandarin is the name science has given the alkaloid secreted from the salamander’s dorsal glands, but we sisters have always called this precious poison mostaza. Simply grazing its pale alabaster skin can cause convulsions, perhaps paralysis, but we have come to discover small, more refined quantiti
es of its mustard has a medicinal aspect to it. It carries the power to heal.

  “She has healed me,” Sister Asís insisted. “Blessed me. The Virgin Mary touched my soul.”

  “But sister,” I said, gently chiding her. “Don’t you see? Your body is merely reacting to the mustard. You are having a physical reaction to the salamander’s own natural defenses…”

  Sister Asís only shook her head. Pitying me. This girl, this child, twenty years my junior, pitying her own Mother Superior. “The Virgin will show you, Sister Asensio,” she whispered in a tone I did not appreciate. “She will show you when you are ready to see. Then you will believe.”

  Our convent has supported itself off the proceeds made from selling cough syrup made from the salamander. It is a painstaking process that can only be accomplished by the Mother Superior. We have perfected our methods over the years, teaching each other how to hold the axolotls, how to wrap our gloved fingers around its throat and squeeze just so, sliding our pinkie around the base of its neck and hook back around in the gentlest noose, until its fern-like gills fan out and begin to drip. We must be ready to receive each tiny droplet of that most precious nectar, letting them soak into a cotton ball that is then whisked off to our ventilated kitchen where it is boiled down to its barest essence. Only one sister, the Mother Superior, is permitted in the kitchen while reducing the mustard, for fear the fumes might asphyxiate anyone not wearing the proper facemask.

  The recipe for our cough syrup is as old as the convent. It is said our basilica had only been built for less than a year when a young girl, no older than ten, came walking down the mountain without any shoes on her feet. No one knew who this child was. The nuns believed she must have been of the indigenous people who lived throughout the mountain area before the Spanish colonized the region. In her bare hands, she carried an axolotl de fuego. The first salamander. Flames fanned out from its pink gills, a halo around its pale head. The girl was wrapped in a ghastly plasma, as blue in hue as the cool water of the lake. Cerulean flames rippled all around her. But the girl did not burn. There was no smoke. She released the salamander into the lake and the water went ablaze. A Lake of Fire. It was blinding. Such luminescence! The sisters had to shield their eyes. To look at the water was to stare straight into the sun. “Look unto me, sisters,” the girl spoke, “for I shall heal the wounded, those who are blind I shall make see, and those who believe I shall show such wondrous things to behold…“

  That girl was none other than the Virgin Mary. Who else would have been capable of creating such an elixir? Simply rubbing the mustard over your chest cleared any congestion. All aches and pains washed away within its mentholated flames. Her recipe has since been whispered from sister to sister. We dare not write it down. It is our burden, our blessing.

  I am the sole holder of the recipe now. Other nuns tend to the axolotl, but it is my duty, my calling, to create the syrup. It was passed down to me by the previous Mother Superior. One day, before I breathe my last, I will whisper its mysteries to my successor. And so on and so on.

  We are never to partake in the mustard. No nun is ever permitted to taste. Our meals have never been prepared with much seasoning. The food has always been bland to my tongue, no thanks to inhaling so much of the mentholated fumes from my work in the kitchen. But the salamander’s secretions, the mustard, supposedly had a particular piquancy. It is sharp. Rich.

  ​Who amongst us hasn’t been tempted to taste it? To lick the salamander’s back?

  This is our way. This has always been the sisterhood’s way.

  Until Sister Asís.

  She had been sneaking into the aquarium room while the other nuns slept. Reaching her bare hand into the tank. Taking hold of the axolotl. Bringing it to her lips.

  By the time her indiscretion was discovered, she had already slipped into anaphylactic shock. The mustard had tapped into her nervous system, sending her into an epileptic fit across the stone floor. She was hallucinating. Foaming at the mouth. Crying out to the Virgin.

  “She is here,” Sister Asís called out. “She walks amongst us!”

  You cannot find the axolotl de fuego anywhere else in the world. Their species belongs to Lake Patzcuaro and nowhere else. I myself have seen their numbers dwindle during my time here at the convent. Seen how the water suffers. Pollution permeates the lake now. Raw sewage suffocates its aquatic inhabitants. The flora, the fauna, have all become endangered. The sisterhood has taken it upon ourselves to salvage the salamanders. To save them at whatever cost. We have our own hatchery in the convent, turning our bathtubs into a breeding ground for future generations of axolotl de fuego. We no longer bathe. No longer need to. Every last tub is now full of hundreds of eggs. The fiery larva, little amphibious candle wicks.

  But their numbers continue to dwindle. They are dying.

  Our salamander is dying.

  “The axolotl never was of this earth,” Sister Asís presumptuously attempted to explain to me in her delirious state. “They are angels. They come baring a gift. A gift from God…”

  Such mutterings were nonsense. I feared the mustard had taken hold of her mind, reducing her to these wild ravings. She clutched onto my wrist and pulled herself upright in her cot. Her eyes latched onto mine, her stare suddenly full of a disarming clarity.

  “The gift is within me,” she said. “I hold the fire.”

  Word of Sister Asís visions quickly spread throughout the convent. Whispers like wildfire. How could they not? She claimed to have seen flaming angels—not with wings, but fiery gills branching out from their necks. “I see them!” she cried. “There they are! They are here! Look at them, flying down from heaven, setting the clouds afire! Look at them land in the lake!”

  Sister Asís has been confined to her cot. Her visions have persisted, which has only stirred a commotion amongst the other nuns. We all knew what she had done. That she had partaken in the majestic mustard. “She is here,” she said, ecstatic. “The Virgin is with us!”

  This was not the convent’s way. For generations, we have been told to tend to our amphibious flock. Not to partake. Not to enjoy. It is not our place to taste the pleasures of the salamander. But it wasn’t long before other sisters were sneaking in their licks. We take turns tending to the axolotl. It is our duty to feed them. Clean the aquariums. Squeeze the mustard. Their alabaster bodies look as if they are made of marble. Pale albino skin laced in pink veins. Pink eyes rimmed in red. Their pink gills are fern-like filaments that branch out at either side of their throat, fanning through the water, as if their heads were on fire. Oscillating flames.

  It wasn’t difficult to determine who amongst us had tasted the mustard. Some sisters’ skin took on a wet complexion, as if they were covered in sweat. But no, this was not perspiration. They were coated in a thin, translucent film, much like a layer of slime. Under certain light, it left them looking as if they were glistening, shimmering, wrapped in a halo.

  Soon Sister Asís’ visions were shared amongst the others. Now more nuns were baring witness to this miracle.

  The sisters were putting the axolotl larva into their mouths, sealing the salamander within their lips, letting it rest on their tongue, feeling it wriggle along the roof of their palate, letting it explore that darkened grotto, letting it muster its mustard within their mouths. Its first mustarding. The flicker of its tail against their tongue. Like kissing. Deep, passionate kissing.

  Speaking in tongues.

  Flaming tongues. Like candles lighting our path.

  Our way.

  I have looked in on Sister Asís as she has continued to convalesce. She no longer speaks to me—or rather, no longer talks in a way that I can understand. She speaks in tongues, communing with the angels all around her. She looks so feverish. So slick. Her habit is always soaked in sweat. When I finally decided to pull Sister Asís’ wimple away to wipe her brow, I gave a start. There, wrapped around her neck, I found gills. A fern-like pair of fiery pink gills fanned out from either side of her throat.
They oscillated with every shallow breath, every infinitesimal bronchiole spreading out as she tried to inhale, clasping at the air all around her.

  Sister Asís needed to return to the lake.

  We all must return to its waters.

  The journey down the mountain was difficult, but I was able to guide Sister Asís down the craggy path with the aid of my hand. She slid into the waters without any struggle. Her head slipped below the surface, punctuated by the last of her air bubbling up from below. I waited for her to resurface. And waited. After ten minutes had elapsed, I knew Sister Asís was at home.

  The others will follow when it is their time. I have vowed to lead them all down, one after the other, until they have all returned to the waters whence they came.

  I am the last.

  The basilica is empty now. I have waited to receive my calling, tending to the axolotl de fuego alone. The last batch of larva has now been born. Their eggs have all hatched.

  I held an infant salamander in my palms, as if my hands were a cup. A chalice of flesh and blood. The salamander slithered across my bare skin. It was cool at first. Wet. Then it began to burn. I could feel the heat. The singe sank into my skin. I had never touched one of the salamanders with my bare hands before. After all these years tending to them, caring for them, I had never given myself over to them. Never let myself feel their warmth. Their gift. Such heat. My hands were now on fire. A cool hued flame seeped into my palms, my skin, my very bones.

  I brought my hands up. I opened my mouth and received this amphibious sacrament. I ran my tongue along the length of its back. Its skin was granular. Coarse. There was a wet coating, an incendiary slime, like napalm. Greasy heat. When the tip of my tongue reached its frilly mane, I swore I had touched an open flame. It had a fierce heat. A candle branching out at both sides of its neck. I couldn’t help but gasp. I inhaled it. Its musk. Its flame. The heat rushed down my throat, filling my lungs like a flood of fire looking for somewhere, anywhere, to settle. And burn. It burned to breathe. I held this hot coal in my mouth as it swallowed me and I swallowed it and we became one, finally became one, my whole body now consumed by flame.